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+*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 78876 ***
+
+
+
+
+                             ROMANTIC HISTORY
+                    _General Editor_: MARTIN HUME, M.A.
+
+                            TWO ENGLISH QUEENS
+                                AND PHILIP
+
+
+
+
+[Illustration: _Philip II in 1586._
+
+_From a contemporary engraving by Essarts._]
+
+
+
+
+                            TWO ENGLISH QUEENS
+                                AND PHILIP
+
+                                    BY
+                             MARTIN HUME, M.A.
+                       (PEMBROKE COLLEGE, CAMBRIDGE)
+   EDITOR OF THE CALENDARS OF SPANISH STATE PAPERS PUBLIC RECORD OFFICE
+
+                  WITH A FRONTISPIECE IN PHOTOGRAVURE AND
+                        TWELVE OTHER ILLUSTRATIONS
+
+                        _Con todo el mundo guerra_
+                        _Y paz con Inglaterra_
+
+                               METHUEN & CO.
+                           36 ESSEX STREET W.C.
+                                  LONDON
+
+                         _First Published in 1908_
+
+
+
+
+CONTENTS
+
+
+                                                                      PAGE
+
+                                CHAPTER I
+
+  INTRODUCTORY (1552-1553)                                               1
+
+  The Emperor and England—Death of Edward VI.—Mary and
+  Renard—To capture England by marriage—Philip II. accepts the
+  sacrifice—Spanish efforts to moderate the religious reaction in
+  England
+
+                                CHAPTER II
+
+  1553-1554                                                             32
+
+  The Coronation of Mary—Noailles _versus_ Renard—Mary
+  accepts Philip—The marriage treaty—Alarm in London—Egmont’s
+  missions—Wyatt’s rebellion—Attitude of Elizabeth—The coming
+  of Philip—His voyage and arrival—His popular manners in
+  England—Arrival at Winchester
+
+                               CHAPTER III
+
+  1554-1555                                                             75
+
+  Philip’s first meeting with Mary—The marriage—Discontent and
+  disappointment of the Spaniards—Philip’s kindness to his
+  wife—Spanish descriptions of England—Philip in London—Arrival of
+  Pole—Philip’s religious policy in England—His attempts to marry
+  Elizabeth to Savoy—The Emperor’s war with France—Departure of
+  Philip from England
+
+                                CHAPTER IV
+
+  1555-1558                                                            128
+
+  Religious persecution in England—Philip’s attempts to restrain
+  it—His efforts to keep control of English policy—Elizabeth comes
+  to Court—Return of Philip to England—French intrigues—The
+  English drawn into the war—St. Quentin—Loss of Calais—Penury of
+  the English treasury—Illness and death of Mary—Feria’s approaches
+  to Elizabeth
+
+                                CHAPTER V
+
+  1558-1565                                                            181
+
+  Accession of Elizabeth—The beginning of the long duel—Feria
+  urges Philip to use force—Philip’s many difficulties—He offers
+  his hand to Elizabeth—The Peace of Cateau Cambresis—The
+  Franco-Spanish Alliance—Fears of a Catholic League—Philip marries
+  a French Princess—English Catholics appeal to Philip—Mary
+  Stuart claims the Crown of England—War with Scotland—Philip’s
+  efforts to effect a reconciliation—Bishop Quadra—His relations
+  with Leicester—Intrigue for a Catholic reaction in England—Mary
+  Stuart approaches Philip—Disgrace and death of Quadra—A war
+  of tariffs—Guzman de Silva, ambassador—The interviews of
+  Bayonne—Failure of the Catholic League
+
+                                CHAPTER VI
+
+  1565-1569                                                            234
+
+  Mary Stuart marries Darnley—Their intrigues with Philip through
+  Guzman—Plan to promote revolution in England in favour of
+  Mary—Expulsion of the English ambassador from Spain—Recall of
+  Guzman—Don Gerau de Spes ambassador—His character—Commences
+  conspiring at once—His turbulent behaviour—Seizure of Philip’s
+  treasure in England—Indignation of de Spes—His imprudent and
+  disastrous action—Alba stops trade—Strained relations—Proposed
+  declaration of war against England—The views of Philip and
+  Alba—The Norfolk plot—The Northern rebellion
+
+                               CHAPTER VII
+
+  1570-1578                                                            296
+
+  Desperation of Alba—Fresh Catholic conspiracies—De Spes’s
+  complicity—Alba and the Ridolfi plot—Discovery—The revenge
+  of John Hawkins—De Spes outwitted—His expulsion from
+  England—Guaras appointed Spanish Agent—Reopening of trade—Guaras’
+  intrigues with Mary Stuart and Don Juan of Austria—The plot
+  discovered—Imprisonment of Guaras—Fall of Don Juan—Bernardino de
+  Mendoza appointed ambassador in England
+
+                               CHAPTER VIII
+
+  1578-1584                                                            354
+
+  Mendoza and Elizabeth—His haughty behaviour—The French in
+  Flanders—Elizabeth’s approaches to Philip—The Spanish designs
+  on Portugal—Renewed plots of Mary Stuart—Appeals to Philip to
+  aid her in England—Philip’s attitude towards Guise—Co-operation
+  with him in Britain—The Jesuit mission—Mendoza and the Catholic
+  plot in Scotland—Elizabeth aids the Portuguese Pretender—Anger
+  of Mendoza—His altercation with Elizabeth—Progress of the
+  plots—Collapse of Lennox—The interference of Guise in the
+  plans—The jealousy between English Catholic exiles and the
+  Scots—Development of the Anglo-Spanish plans and intended
+  exclusion of Guise—Arrest of Francis Throckmorton—Discovery of
+  the plot—Expulsion of Mendoza—Philip faces the inevitable and
+  slowly prepares for a war of invasion
+
+                                CHAPTER IX
+
+  1584-1588                                                            416
+
+  English Catholics _versus_ Scottish—Santa Cruz’s proposal to
+  conquer England—Enlisting the Pope—Intrigues in Rome—Mary
+  Stuart and Philip—Drake’s raid on Galicia—Elizabeth assumes
+  the protectorate of the Netherlands—War at last inevitable—The
+  preliminaries of the Armada—The Babington plot—Philip’s
+  consent—His distrust—Discovery—Elizabeth’s fears of war—Her
+  approaches to Spain—Santa Cruz’s fresh proposals to invade
+  England—His great plan—The Scottish Catholics try again to
+  share the attack upon England—Failure of Huntly’s scheme—Guise
+  not allowed by Philip to interfere—Mendoza in favour of the
+  Scottish plan—Philip’s claims to the English crown—The peace
+  negotiations—Drake’s dash upon Cadiz—Parma and the Armada—Death
+  of Santa Cruz—Medina Sidonia—The Armada—The failure and its
+  causes—The end of the struggle to win England
+
+
+
+
+ILLUSTRATIONS
+
+
+  PHILIP II. IN 1586                                         _Frontispiece_
+    From a Contemporary Engraving by Essarts
+
+                                                              TO FACE PAGE
+
+  PHILIP II. AT THE AGE OF 24                                           38
+    From the Painting by Titian in the Prado Museum.
+      Photograph by R. Anderson
+
+  WILLIAM LORD PAGET                                                    62
+    From a Painting in the National Portrait Gallery
+
+  QUEEN MARY AT THE PERIOD OF HER MARRIAGE                              80
+    From the painting by Antonio Mor in the Prado Museum.
+      Photograph by R. Anderson
+
+  CARDINAL REGINALD POLE, PAPAL LEGATE AND ARCHBISHOP OF CANTERBURY    102
+    After a Painting by Sebastiano del Piombo. Photograph by W. A.
+      Mansell & Co.
+
+  QUEEN ELIZABETH                                                      192
+    From a Painting by Zucchero in the National Portrait Gallery
+
+  ROBERT DUDLEY, EARL OF LEICESTER                                     208
+    From a Painting at the National Portrait Gallery
+
+  WILLIAM CECIL, LORD BURGHLEY                                         228
+    From the Painting by Marc Gheeraedts in the National
+      Portrait Gallery
+
+  FERNANDO ALVAREZ DE TOLEDO, THIRD DUKE OF ALBA                       308
+    From an Engraving
+
+  ROBERT PARSONS, S.J., 1546-1610                                      368
+
+  HENRI, DUC DE GUISE                                                  400
+    From an Engraving. Photograph by W. A. Mansell & Co.
+
+  CARDINAL ALLEN                                                       432
+    From a Photograph by W. A. Mansell & Co.
+
+  QUEEN ELIZABETH                                                      464
+    From the Painting by Marc Gheeraedts at the National
+      Portrait Gallery
+
+
+
+
+TWO ENGLISH QUEENS AND PHILIP
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER I
+
+INTRODUCTORY
+
+1552-1553
+
+    The Emperor and England—Death of Edward VI.—Mary and
+    Renard—To capture England by marriage—Philip II. accepts the
+    sacrifice—Spanish efforts to moderate the religious reaction in
+    England
+
+
+At an uncovered table, upon which rested a clock, a pair of horn-rimmed
+spectacles and some other trifles, there sat a prematurely aged man of
+fifty-two with a long, fair, sallow face and a white beard. His great,
+projecting nether-lip was cracked and sore with fever, and between it and
+the tongue there lay a fresh green leaf to give coolness and moisture.
+His hands and feet were distorted by gout; and his fur-lined, black
+gown clung around a once-stalwart frame now shrunken with sickness.
+On his right hand at the other side of the table a stout, somewhat
+pursy, middle-aged English gentleman, with his cap in his hand and in
+an attitude of profound respect, was delivering a speech in Italian,
+to which the old man was listening with eager attention, now and again
+painfully raising his hand to his flat black velvet cap in salute when
+the name of King Edward was mentioned. It was in the little city of
+Landau in the Bavarian Palatinate, and Sir Richard Moryson, the English
+Ambassador, had ridden from Spires, nearly twenty miles away, that day,
+the 4th October, 1552, bringing his message to the greatest potentate on
+earth, the Emperor Charles V.
+
+Fate had dealt hardly with the Emperor of late, and the impossible task
+he had assumed was breaking him down mentally and physically. Once again
+he had found himself faced, not only by his old enemy France, but by his
+own German Princes; and solely by flight and good luck had he escaped
+capture at the hands of the Judas whom he had made powerful at the
+expense of right and justice, Maurice of Saxony. From sheer impotence to
+struggle further, the Emperor had been forced to accept the humiliating
+terms of the Peace of Passau dictated to him by the Lutheran Princes. But
+free now from danger from his own people, he had turned again to cope
+with the foreign ally of his rebel vassals, determined this time to make
+a supreme effort to crush his French rival utterly before his growing
+infirmities crushed him.
+
+As he had always done throughout his reign at such a juncture, he looked
+to England for aid. The insults offered by Henry VIII. to his House
+and to the Catholic faith, whose champion he was, had not been able to
+alienate the Emperor, who well knew that with England permanently on the
+side of France against him, the vast ambitions he cherished for himself,
+his son, and his country were doomed to failure; and now, notwithstanding
+the still more aggressive Protestantism of young Edward VI. and his
+mentors, it was as necessary to Charles as ever it had been to secure the
+goodwill of England in his struggle against France in defence of his own
+Netherlands. So long as Charles had been fighting his German Lutheran
+subjects it was hopeless for him to bid for Northumberland’s help; and
+one of the considerations that led him to accept the terms imposed upon
+him by Maurice and the Germans was that thereby he might the better
+enlist his old ally England against the monstrous coalition of France,
+the Pope, and the Turk. The suggestion for an alliance had reached
+Northumberland from Charles’ sister, Mary Queen of Hungary, his Regent of
+the Netherlands; and Moryson had received his answer from England whilst
+he was following a day’s march behind the Emperor and his army, who were
+on their way from Austria to Flanders when Charles had fallen ill at
+Landau.
+
+Much dulcet verbiage there was in Moryson’s address, and much vague
+desire expressed on the part of the English King—or, rather, the Duke of
+Northumberland—to join a coalition against the Turk; but what Charles so
+eagerly listened for—a declaration against the French—came not; though
+he knew that the English had just then a bitter quarrel of their own
+with France about the seizure of English ships and cargoes by French
+privateers. Charles lisped and mumbled much at the best of times, but
+now that he had the green leaf on his lip, it was difficult for Moryson
+to understand what he said in reply to the speech, which, indeed,
+the Emperor interrupted more than once in his anxiety to get at the
+important point of it. “He could not forget,” he said, “the love of Henry
+VIII. for him, shown at sundry times, nor betray the trust the late King
+had put in him in asking him to protect his young son. He would never
+forget the amity that for many years had lasted between England and his
+House, and he had perpetually tried to preserve this ancient friendship.”
+Then, raising his voice and speaking more emphatically, he said that
+friendships that had long been tried and found good should be made much
+of. Charles was not a man to wear his heart upon his sleeve; and his
+stolid face and leaden eyes as a rule gave no key to his thoughts; but
+Moryson says that on this occasion “he did so use his eyes, so move his
+head and order his countenance, ... as I do surely think he meant the
+most of what he said. Sure am I that he is too wise not to wish the
+King’s Majesty surely his.”
+
+That Charles was sincere in his wish to gain the help of England against
+France on this, as on all other similar opportunities, did not require
+much penetration to understand; but when Moryson left the Imperial
+presence and came to close quarters with Charles’s minister de Granvelle,
+the wily ecclesiastic and future Cardinal tried what cajolery could do
+the further to persuade the Englishman of the goodwill of the Emperor,
+and his wish for England’s friendship. “He [the Emperor] only wished,” he
+said, “that he found in the rest of the Princes the like godly mind as
+in King Edward, his good brother, and did trust he should be a king of
+as great honour as hath been in England this hundred years. This and a
+hundred times as much he spake with such affection as, if words may be
+thought to mean what they say, there can be no more wished for than is to
+be hoped for.”[1] There was no thought yet of the young King’s premature
+death; but Northumberland had many bitter enemies at home, and to him it
+was a matter of policy to secure for himself a powerful supporter on the
+Continent. The Catholic and Spanish interest being naturally against him
+for his religious action and his treatment of the Princess Mary, he had
+always hitherto looked towards France as his friend; but the maritime
+aggression of the French and ancient prejudice had aroused a bitter
+feeling against them generally in England; and it behoved Northumberland
+at this juncture to make an appearance at least of conciliating the
+ancient ally of England, the Emperor-king of Spain and monarch of the
+Netherlands. To Northumberland in the circumstances this was a passing
+expediency: to Charles the alliance or benevolent neutrality of England
+was a permanent necessity if his cause and country were to prevail.
+
+This necessity became more pressing still three months after the
+interview just described. The Emperor with a demoralised and discontented
+army laid siege to Metz, which the French had captured from him, and
+after months of effort and hardship in the depth of winter he was obliged
+to retreat, defeated and heartsick; already swearing that he would turn
+monk: “for fortune, like a very strumpet, doth reserve her favours for
+the young.” In his palace at Brussels—sick, sorry, and dejected—he was
+obliged to haggle with the German Princes as to the price of their
+aid to fight the French. His darling son Philip, they stipulated,
+must be separated from the succession to the Empire, and the dream of
+the Emperor’s life to leave Philip strong enough to triumph where he
+himself had failed must be forfeited. The French had stirred up trouble,
+too, in the Emperor’s Italian dominions; the Turk was dominating the
+Mediterranean with the blessing of the Christian Pope; the Netherlands
+were sore and angry at the war taxes and the presence of marauding
+Spanish soldiery; the Imperial ministers were at deadly feud with each
+other; and on all sides Charles was surrounded by debts and difficulties.
+If only England could be prevailed upon to divert the French by attacking
+them in the Channel during the coming spring campaign, the tide of
+victory for the Emperor might yet be turned and France be rendered
+powerless. That, however, was the last thing that suited Northumberland’s
+book.
+
+The continuance of the war, nevertheless, was a standing danger
+to England itself, for it would have been impossible for her very
+long to have stood by idly whilst the French overran Flanders; and
+Northumberland made desperate efforts to bring about peace between the
+two antagonists. To all approaches in this sense the Emperor and his
+sister, the Queen-Regent of the Netherlands, could only point to the
+aggressive action and impossible demands of the King of France. “And,”
+writes Moryson in April, 1553, “whyle all these sturres ar growing great
+in Germanie, and whyle the French King is plying both sides with secret
+aydes and unseen practices, th’ Emperor keepyth his bed as unfyt to hear
+of the myschiefs that grow rownd about him, as unable to devise how to
+remedie them if they were told him.”
+
+All through the spring, however, the Emperor’s officers worked hard
+to muster his armies in Germany and Flanders to face the French and
+save the Netherlands. Northumberland still pressed upon both sides the
+mediation of the King of England in their quarrel, but in the midst
+of these negotiations in April, 1553, the new Imperial general, young
+Prince Emmanuel Philibert of Savoy, suddenly dashed upon the French
+frontier-fortress of Thérouenne and inflicted a heavy defeat upon the
+Emperor’s enemies. Northumberland’s new embassy to urge peace upon
+Charles found less ready response even than before, whilst the King of
+France in no wise abated his extravagant claims now that the Emperor was
+looked upon as sick unto death. When the English envoys at length gained
+audience of Charles in Brussels early in June, 1553, they found him with
+his gouty limbs propped up, “looking very pale, weak, lean, and feeble,”
+though his eyes were still bright and his mind clear. “Marry, to judge
+him by our sight, we must say that he appeareth unto us rather a man of
+short time rather than continuance.”[2]
+
+How important the life or death of the Emperor was at that juncture to
+England, few people outside the immediate circle of Northumberland’s
+friends fully understood. Already dark rumours were spreading abroad that
+the slight indisposition of the boy King of England was really a mortal
+malady. If Charles died first, it might easily be foreseen that the break
+up of his Empire and the confusion resulting from the demise of his many
+Crowns would deprive his successor of the power at the critical moment to
+interfere with Northumberland’s plans to exclude the Princess Mary from
+the throne and to perpetuate the Protestant _régime_ in England under
+his own Dudley descendants. If, on the other hand, Edward died whilst
+the Emperor’s power was intact, it was certain that such support as he
+could give would go to his cousin Mary Tudor. To Spain and Flanders the
+goodwill of England was the crucial point upon which their future power
+and prosperity turned. To gain that, Charles had already condoned and
+suffered much, and there was hardly any sacrifice too great for him if he
+could win it now. With Mary on the throne and at his bidding—for he had
+been her only friend in all her tribulations—the sympathy of her country
+would be secure to him, and he and his could face France with confidence.
+So Charles and his Ministers were alert for every whisper as to Edward’s
+sickness, and the English envoys who were at his Court grew daily more
+apprehensive at what would happen to them and their master if the young
+King died before the old Emperor.
+
+On the 24th June Sir Philip Hoby, one of the English envoys in Brussels,
+received a visit from Evered, “the King’s jeweller dwelling at
+Westminster,” who had just come from Antwerp. In that city, he reported,
+it was current, and wagers laid on it, that King Edward was already
+dead, and that Mary had succeeded. To make matters more threatening for
+Northumberland’s friends, it was further stated that the Emperor was
+sending to England with all speed three Catholic Flemish statesmen to be
+councillors of the new Queen of England. Well might Hoby in his private
+letter to Cecil, written the next day, exclaim in dismay: “Pray God that
+England’s wickedness may not be the cause of His taking away the King”;
+for if the country was to be guided by Charles’s councillors, of whom
+Hoby held but a poor opinion, then goodbye to Northumberland’s ambitions
+and to the prosperity of all his friends. “England would go to utter
+ruin,” he said, “if ruled by such men.”[3]
+
+The three envoys sent by the Emperor to capture England for Spanish ends
+when Edward should die had indeed received their instructions two days
+before Hoby wrote his letter to Cecil. They were all men of mark—Jean
+de Montmorenci, Lord of Courrières, Jacques de Marnix, Lord of Tholuze,
+both members of the highest Flemish nobility, and one of the Emperor’s
+Masters of Requests, a keen, sagacious lawyer named Simon Renard. Charles
+had maintained a minister resident in London, one Schefyne, who became
+Chancellor of Brabant, but for so important a mission as that now in
+hand he was considered inadequate; and in right of his experience and
+ability Simon Renard, though inferior in point of rank to his colleagues,
+became the real leader of the embassy. The envoys were to seek audience
+of Northumberland and Edward, and to say that, as the King of France had
+sent a secretary to visit him on account of his sickness, the Emperor,
+whose affection for him was infinitely greater, could do no less. All
+sorts of assurances of friendship and goodwill towards England were to be
+given, and care was to be taken in any case to conciliate Northumberland.
+“But,” continue the instructions, “if you arrive too late, you must take
+counsel together and act for the best for the safety of our cousin the
+Princess Mary, and secure, if possible her accession to the Crown: whilst
+doing what you see necessary to exclude the French and their intrigues.
+You must endeavour also to maintain the confidence and good neighbourship
+which it is so important that our Flemish States and Spain should enjoy
+with England for mutual trade and intercourse; and especially to prevent
+the French from getting their foot in, or gaining the ear of the men
+who now rule England, the more so if it be for the purpose of troubling
+us.”[4]
+
+Already news had reached Flanders that Northumberland would endeavour to
+exclude Mary from the throne on the death of her brother; and although
+the Emperor foresaw that in such case the life of his cousin would be
+in grave peril, especially if French aid were given to Northumberland,
+the principal efforts of the envoys were to be directed to assuring the
+English Government, in any case, that the Emperor was their real friend
+and not France, the ancient foe of England. If Northumberland and his
+friends feared that Mary would contract a foreign marriage under the
+Emperor’s influence, they were to be assured that no such thing was
+thought of, and Northumberland was to be given to understand that any
+husband chosen by him for the Princess as future Queen would be willingly
+accepted, though the actual fulfilment of the promise was to be postponed
+as long as possible in order that Mary might, if she was strong enough
+later, avoid compliance with it altogether. The envoys, indeed, were to
+promise anything and everything to secure the throne for Mary. No change
+should be made in the government or in religion, and full indemnity
+should be given for all past acts against her. It is clear throughout
+these instructions, however, that, much as Charles desired the accession
+of his cousin Mary, he was prepared to accept any solution that would
+enable him to remain friendly with England and exclude French influence
+from the country.
+
+Before Renard and his colleagues arrived in England, Schefyne wrote
+to the Emperor the news of the King’s expected death, and the patent
+intrigues of Northumberland to exclude Mary from her inheritance; and
+when, on the 6th July, 1553, the Imperial ambassadors entered London,
+though Northumberland’s officers greeted them as though all was well,
+they promptly discovered that Edward was no more for the world, and that
+everything was prepared for the elevation of Jane Grey to the English
+throne. On the day after their arrival, the 7th July, the ambassadors
+learnt secretly that Edward had died the previous night, and that Mary
+in fear for her life had fled to Norfolk and had resolved to proclaim
+herself Queen as soon as her brother’s death was officially announced.
+In their perplexity at this critical state of affairs, and their dread
+at driving the ruling power of England into enmity with the Emperor, the
+envoys took the unheroic course of blaming Mary’s bold action instead
+of supporting it. Certain it is that if the Princess had waited upon
+her Imperial kinsman’s effective aid, her opportunity would have been
+missed and she would never have been Queen of England. She had, indeed,
+no one to thank for her crown but herself; and the attitude of the
+Imperial envoys towards her in her hour of trial proves once more the
+impossibility of the Emperor and his son allowing any considerations,
+either of religion or kinship, to stand in the way of their securing the
+co-operation of England to their ends.
+
+Renard and his colleagues were weak reeds for Mary to depend upon,
+and she did well to go her own way, understanding the feeling of her
+countrymen better than they did. The envoys found Mary’s action in
+defying Northumberland: “Strange, difficult, and dangerous.... All the
+forces of the country are in the hands of the Duke, and the Lady has no
+hope of obtaining forces nor aid to oppose him, whilst her proclamation
+of herself as Queen will justify the new King and Queen in attacking
+her by force, and she will have no means of resisting them unless your
+Majesty stands by her. Considering your war with the French, it seems
+unadvisable for your Majesty to arouse English feeling against you, and
+the idea that the Lady will gain Englishmen on the ground of religion is
+vain.”[5] Serious remonstrances were sent to Mary herself by the Imperial
+envoys, pointing out her danger and the hopelessness of her position in
+the face of Northumberland’s supposed strength; and at the same time they
+laboured hard to dissuade the Duke from the idea that they had been sent
+to England to sustain Mary’s cause.
+
+The Emperor himself was no bolder than his envoys. “If you cannot draw
+the Duke of Northumberland to our cousin’s cause, you may see if you can
+gain over some of the nobles by promises about religion or otherwise, in
+order to alarm the Duke into showing some favour to the Princess.”[6]
+Renard and his colleagues had been in London five days and had already
+assumed the attitude towards Mary just referred to, before Secretary
+Petre came officially from Northumberland on the 10th July to inform
+them of the King’s death. They merely begged the Council to be kind to
+Lady Mary, although they well knew that she was mustering her forces and
+issuing her decrees in Norfolk, and that Jane was to be crowned in the
+Tower of London on the following day; after which they feared that Mary
+would be captured and done to death as a rebel.
+
+All through the critical time, whilst Mary was sturdily asserting her
+rights and gathering her friends, the envoys of her cousin were thus
+paltering, in mortal fear of driving the new government into the arms of
+France, limiting themselves to a repetition of the mission originally
+intended for Edward, and: “recommending Lady Mary to them with all
+softness and modesty, without entering into any contention as to the
+succession, which would be of no use.” In the meanwhile Northumberland’s
+cause grew more and more hopeless, though the Imperial envoys did not
+even yet understand it. English Catholics and others came to them begging
+for information as to the Emperor’s attitude, and urging him to make
+at least some declaration in his cousin’s favour; but all the answer
+they got was a mild deprecation of violence of any sort, and an appeal
+to the Emperor for instructions. The over-cautious ambassadors first
+began to pluck up courage when the heralds proclaimed in London the
+accession of Jane and her Dudley husband on the 11th July amidst the
+silence of the frowning citizens; but when on the following day, 12th
+July, a deputation of Jane’s Council, Lord Cobham and Dr. Mason, came to
+inform them of the accession of the new Queen, and told them haughtily
+that their embassy had come to an end, as they were known to be in
+England only to help Mary, the ambassadors replied with bated breath and
+whispering humbleness, and with perfect truth, that they had done nothing
+of the sort. Their only mission, they said, which they had hitherto no
+opportunity of carrying out, was to thank King Edward for his efforts to
+bring about peace, and to assure the Government of the Emperor’s desire
+to be friendly with England in spite of French lies and intrigue.
+
+On the 13th July the ambassadors had their first audience with the
+Council. Northumberland, of course, was absent: he had just started on
+his disastrous expedition to Cambridge, already a beaten man in the
+face of Mary’s growing popularity; but Arundel, Shrewsbury, Pembroke,
+Mason, Petre, and others received them. Renard was the spokesman of
+the envoys, and he laboured hard, even now, to persuade the Englishmen
+of the Emperor’s desire to banish from their minds all suspicion
+of his motives—a suspicion, he said, engendered solely by French
+misrepresentations. He was naturally anxious for the safety and good
+treatment of his cousin, Lady Mary, but he had no desire whatever to
+use her as a political instrument, or to promote her marriage with a
+foreigner, or indeed to interfere in any way with the established order
+of affairs in England. The Emperor’s message was received courteously,
+as well it might be, for the Councillors were already trembling in their
+shoes, and the envoys were requested to defer their departure from
+England until further instructions came from the Emperor—a notable change
+of tone since their interview with Cobham and Mason the day before.
+The ambassadors, however, were still as far as ever from understanding
+the real state of affairs, even at the date of their next letter (16th
+July). “We consider it certain that before four days are over the Lady
+will be in the Duke’s power if she has no force to resist him.... He is
+raising troops everywhere and is strong on land and sea, so that we do
+not see how those who secretly hold with the Lady will be able or dare
+to declare themselves. We have no confirmation that the Lady is aided
+by so many people as was reported.... On the contrary, a messenger from
+the Lady brought us to-day the copy of the Council’s reply to her letter
+to them, and a verbal message from her telling us that she saw the ruin
+into which she would fall unless your Majesty helped her.”[7] If this had
+really been the case, Mary would never have been Queen of England, for
+the Emperor plainly told his envoys that, for an infinity of extremely
+sage and prudent reasons which he detailed at great length, he could not
+give the help that Mary hoped for. New credentials, indeed, were sent
+to them, and instructions that they were again to ply the Council with
+assurances that nothing was farther from the Emperor’s thoughts than to
+interfere in any way in England. A mild word or two was to be introduced
+on behalf of Mary; but the whole object of the mission was to induce
+the English Government, whatever it might be, to renounce the French
+friendship and depend solely upon their ancient ally the Monarch of Spain
+and Flanders.[8]
+
+Before these instructions reached London, Northumberland’s house of cards
+had fallen. His son, Henry Dudley, had in vain prayed for help from the
+King of France; but the latter was now at grips with the Emperor and
+dared not send troops to England, where the dread and hatred of the
+French was one of the principal reasons of Northumberland’s fall. The
+Duke himself was hopeless and helpless at Cambridge, ready to save his
+unworthy skin by throwing up his bonnet and crying, “Long live Queen
+Mary!” when in spite of him the Princess he had just declared a bastard
+was acclaimed Queen; whilst the miserable Councillors he had coerced into
+being his tools in London were tumbling over each other in their anxiety
+to disclaim him and betray the unhappy girl whom his ambition was to lead
+to an untimely death.
+
+On the 19th July the Earl of Shrewsbury and Dr. Mason came to the
+Imperial ambassadors in a very contrite mood. There was no talk of their
+embassy being ended now, no haughty reproaches for their supposed support
+to the bastard Lady Mary. After much hemming and hawing, the deputation
+of the Council announced to Renard and his colleagues that they came with
+glad news, which they thought would be welcome to the Emperor. All that
+the Council had done previously had been under the coercion of the wicked
+Duke of Northumberland, whom they repudiated. They now all acknowledged
+Mary as their true Sovereign, and they had decided to proclaim her
+publicly that day in London. To the delight of the Imperial envoys, but
+still apparently to their bewildered surprise at the failure of all their
+predictions, Mary was proclaimed both in the Tower and the City amidst
+the frantic joy of the people. Bonfires blazed, feasts were spread,
+wine ran freely in London,[9] and coins galore were scattered; for the
+rightful Queen had come into her own at last, whilst the “nine-days’
+Queen”—the poor fated girl in the grim fortress that had been her only
+palace—found herself a prisoner instead of a potentate; and the cowardly
+craven whose tool she had been was basely striving to win mercy, if not
+favour, from the proud Princess whom he had injured beyond forgiveness.
+
+Still intent, as ever, upon gaining the friendship of England, no matter
+who reigned over it, the first instructions of the Emperor to his envoys
+when he heard the good news of Mary’s accession were to urge upon the new
+Queen the acceptance, at all events at first, of the _status quo_: not to
+be in a hurry to change anything, to bow to the decisions of Parliament,
+to practise her own religion only in private, if necessary. “And above
+all things she should be a good Englishwoman, and let people understand
+that she has no intention of acting alone and without the advice and
+co-operation of her nobles and the Parliament.” An assurance might now be
+given to her of the Emperor’s desire and intention of supporting her—as
+had always indeed been his intention, he said—and upon her, as formerly
+upon her brother, was to be urged the first and principal points of
+all—distrust of the French and the conviction that the real, trustworthy
+friend of England was the Sovereign of Spain and Flanders.
+
+Mary was perfectly well aware that she owed her Crown to her own right
+and to the boldness of the action she had taken, and she was not inclined
+to accept to their full the moderating counsels of the Emperor, who
+had done so little for her in her need. But she also understood that
+her position was, as yet, far from stable; and with French intrigue
+against her and in favour of the _régime_ she had supplanted, she turned
+naturally to her powerful Spanish kinsman for such support as she might
+need, as well as for counsel. So anxious was Charles to consolidate her
+position as Queen, that the advice he gave her might rather have come
+from a Protestant constitutional monarch than from the absolute champion
+of Catholicism. She was urged to moderate her religious zeal, to abandon
+her intention of celebrating the obsequies of Edward with Catholic rites,
+and whilst using severity with the few leaders of the revolt against
+her, to be clement to the great majority, and not to begin her reign by
+any vengeful action either of her own or of the friends who had suffered
+under the rule of her brother. Above all, she was recommended to summon
+Parliament in the old form and banish most of the foreigners, especially
+Frenchmen, of course, from her realm. With these sage counsels the
+Emperor sent Mary a promise that if the French attempted anything against
+her, she might depend upon the aid of Imperial troops under the Prince of
+Savoy.
+
+The very first letter written by the Emperor after he had news of
+Mary’s proclamation instructed Renard to tell the new Queen that it
+would be advisable for her to take a husband at once, and to say that
+the Emperor would support her in any choice she might make. There were
+really very few princes whom Mary could have chosen. If she married an
+Englishman, there was none of fitting rank and faith to be her husband
+but Courtenay, whom she had just released from his long durance in the
+Tower, and the elderly Churchman, Cardinal Pole, both of these being of
+the blood royal of England. Mary, in violet velvet, rode in triumph from
+New Hall in Essex to the Tower of London on the 3rd August. A thousand
+velvet-clad courtiers followed in her train and ten thousand armed men
+formed her bodyguard. As she passed through the leafy lanes and into
+the smiling villages, and so to the eastern gate of her capital, no
+discordant voice reached her. Close behind her in a litter rode her
+younger sister, Elizabeth, with her fair skin and yellow hair, composed
+and self-possessed; but, as Mary well knew, ready to make common cause
+with her enemies if it would serve her own ends. Before Mary had left
+New Hall the clever, courtly French ambassador, Antoine de Noailles, had
+ridden out from London to greet her. Noailles’s task was a difficult one.
+He had done his best, almost openly, to aid Northumberland and exclude
+half-Spanish Mary from the throne; indeed, the Londoners, who hated
+him and his country, were loudly proclaiming that six thousand armed
+Frenchmen had been ready to invade England in the interests of Queen
+Jane.[10] But Noailles was supple and insinuating, and the first speech
+he made to Mary when he greeted her was an assurance of the devotion of
+his master to her and an offer of armed assistance if she needed it. Mary
+was polite but cool, for she knew, notwithstanding Noailles’s charming,
+that she had nothing to hope for from France. As she entered London there
+rode also in her train the Imperial ambassadors, jealous and distrustful
+of the Frenchman, who they knew was trying to checkmate them. Beyond
+formal greetings in the presence of many watchful eyes Renard had not
+been able to obtain private conference of the Queen, who remained in the
+Tower of London awaiting her journey to Richmond. Mary herself, knowing
+who her friends were, was naturally anxious to have speech with the
+representatives of her Imperial cousin, to whom she looked for guidance,
+and she suggested that Renard should seek entrance to the Tower in
+disguise to see her.[11] The ambassador, however, appears to have thought
+it safer and more dignified to have patience for a few days until, in
+the comparative freedom of Richmond, he could see the Queen without
+attracting so much attention as in the Tower. In the meanwhile he had
+been able in private conversation with Paget, of the Council, to broach
+the subject of the Queen’s marriage. From him he had learnt positively
+that the current rumour of the intention of Mary to make Courtenay her
+Consort was untrue. “She was against such a match, because she distrusted
+the English nation, knowing it to be treacherous and fickle, because
+Courtenay is too young and lowly, her heart being high and magnanimous.
+Besides which, if she married an Englishman, the children—if she had
+any—would not be so much thought of as if her husband were a foreign
+prince.”
+
+The Emperor’s son Philip, a young widower of twenty-seven, after
+several years of widowhood, was betrothed to his cousin, the Princess
+of Portugal, whose rich dowry was sorely needed by the Emperor for the
+war; but Renard well understood without instructions that if Mary of
+England could be won for the House of Spain, the gain would be infinitely
+greater than any Portuguese money dowry could bring. So he gently hinted
+to Paget in his talk that the Prince was not married yet, though the
+Spanish merchants in England had falsely reported that he was. Paget
+was doubtful. Yes, he said, no doubt the Queen’s marriage would be
+the richest one in the world, but it was not yet time to discuss it.
+Nevertheless, Renard decided when first he saw the Queen in private to
+mention Philip’s name as if by chance, “so as to put the idea of such a
+marriage into her head; for if she takes to it, she will be better able
+to convert her councillors to it than anybody else in the world.”
+
+The idea once started was eagerly taken up by the Emperor—if, in fact, it
+did not originate with him—and no time was lost by him in preparing the
+ground on his side. He wrote to Philip as soon as Renard’s information
+reached him that Mary would probably favour a foreign marriage,
+recommending him to send from Spain a formal embassy to congratulate
+Mary upon her accession. But to this recommendation he added the hint
+that if Philip would break off the Portuguese match and consent to his
+marriage with the new Queen of England it would be a masterstroke of
+policy. Charles had not seen his son for two years, and although he knew
+well that Philip was dutiful, yet he did not venture to press him too
+urgently. The Prince was, as Granvelle wrote to Renard, a man of full
+age, with children,[12] and the Emperor would do nothing decisive with
+regard to the English marriage unless Philip’s own inclinations led him
+to it. There was some fear on the part of the Emperor that Mary might
+think of himself for a husband. To this he had no inclination.[13] He
+was, as we have seen, in declining health, and had in secret already
+made up his mind to embrace a monastic life as soon as he could cripple
+France and leave his son at peace. Pending Philip’s reply, Renard was
+instructed to keep the affair open with the Queen, always mentioning
+Philip as being the preferable _parti_, but without pledging him, “in
+case the Portuguese affair has gone too far, ... or if the Prince’s fancy
+alights elsewhere.” Even Courtenay, who was known to be intriguing with
+the French ambassador, was not to be banned entirely, though that idea
+was to be gently discouraged; “for if her fancy tends that way she will
+not fail, if she be like other women, to go on with it, and would never
+forgive you if you had said anything against it.”[14]
+
+When, after all, Renard was received privately by the Queen in the Tower
+on the 6th August, he slily introduced the idea of marriage, after
+all the more prosaic points of his instructions had been disposed of.
+At the suggestion of a foreign match, but with no mention of Philip,
+Renard says: “She laughed, not once only but several times, whilst she
+regarded me in a way that proved the idea to be very agreeable to her.
+She clearly made me understand that she would not attempt or accept an
+English marriage, but preferred a foreign one, ... by which I recognised
+that she had her usual pride and inclination to speak of her rank and
+grandeur. From what I can understand, her idea is that the Emperor should
+propose some one to her, ... and I am in good hope that if his Majesty
+inclines to our Prince [Philip], it would be the most welcome piece of
+news that could be taken to her.”[15] But whilst this was the case, the
+observant ambassador also recognised that the English Council would not
+be so easily pleased as the middle-aged Princess, who for her thirty-nine
+years of life had been starved of love—she, a Tudor, true daughter of her
+father, whose passions and affections were strong; she, a Queen, who had
+been outraged and insulted for years and now hungered for the vengeance
+upon her foes that was only possible with the possession of power such
+as the Imperial connection could give her. The French, said Renard with
+perfect truth, were leaving no stone unturned, by intrigues, bribes, and
+promises, to make the idea of a Spanish alliance hateful to the English
+people; and if Mary’s councillors were to be gained to the Spanish side,
+it could only be done by lavish expenditure both in ready money and in
+future pledges. Gardiner, the most powerful of Mary’s Ministers, was
+strongly in favour of his late pupil Courtenay as a Consort for the
+Queen, and even Paget and Petre, both pro-Spaniards and former pensioners
+of the Emperor, looked askance at a match which it was seen would be
+hateful to the great majority of the English people.
+
+As week followed week—for the road between Spain and Flanders was a
+long one—it is plain to see that Mary became somewhat restive at the
+delay. Renard saw her privately at Richmond early in September, and, in
+order to start the conversation on the subject, mentioned the common
+talk in London of her intended marriage with Courtenay. Mary coldly
+replied that she had never spoken to the man except when she pardoned
+him. She knew nobody in England whom she would care to marry. Had the
+Emperor, she asked, made up his mind about recommending any suitor to
+her? Renard had much to say about the difficulty of selecting a fitting
+person, though he was sure that the Emperor would do his best. Renard
+dared not go too far, for no reply had yet been received from Philip;
+and rumours were current in London that his marriage with his Portuguese
+cousin was now irrevocably settled. But Renard began by mentioning the
+various unmarried Catholic Princes—the Archduke of Austria, the Prince
+of Savoy, the Princes of Ferrara and Florence, and even the Dauphin; to
+all of which Mary listened crossly, for she knew this was only fencing.
+“Of course, your Majesty,” continued Renard, “if you think twenty-seven
+or twenty-eight too young for a husband, I do not know any other Princes
+who are not too old.” Mary took the hint, for she knew that the age of
+Philip was twenty-seven, and she replied: “But your Prince is already
+married, I hear, to the Princess of Portugal.” Renard said that he did
+not think that the marriage was concluded yet, though he knew that it
+had been mentioned before the war;[16] whereupon Mary, apparently losing
+patience at so much beating about the bush, determined to speak more
+plainly. She was sorry, she said, that Philip should marry his Portuguese
+cousin, as they were such near relatives. All the Princes that Renard
+had mentioned to her were very young—she might be the mother of any
+of them. She was even twelve years older than Prince Philip; besides
+which, the Prince would want to remain in Spain and his other dominions,
+and she knew how much English people objected to any reigning foreign
+Prince marrying an English Princess.[17] When her father was alive, she
+continued, several proposed matches for her had fallen through for this
+reason alone; and when the late Duke of Orleans was proposed to her,
+the affair was prevented by the antagonism which always existed between
+England and France. She hoped the Emperor would bear this point in mind,
+and not recommend her to marry a man she had not seen and spoken to in
+England. Renard then began praising Philip’s good sense, judgment, and
+seriousness. He had already a son six or seven years old, he said, and
+was wise and experienced beyond his years. Mary, apparently thinking she
+had gone far enough, broke into Renard’s panegyrics and declared most
+emphatically that she had never felt the smart of what was called love,
+nor had she ever had a voluptuous thought. She had never had an idea of
+marriage until God called her to the throne, and now the step would be
+taken against her own inclination and on public grounds alone.
+
+There need have been no misgivings as to Philip’s attitude in the
+matter. Throughout his life he made of himself a martyr to his duty.
+Overshadowed always by the immensity of the task confided to him and
+his House, awed by the greatness and majesty of his father, he looked
+upon himself from youth to age as an instrument in the hands of the
+Most High to compass the victory of righteousness upon the earth as he
+understood it, and incidentally to exalt Spain to the highest place among
+the nations. That human suffering had to be endured to arrive at the end
+was only an incident: that he himself, in his degree, should forego his
+own inclinations, his ease, his comfort, and his pleasures in favour
+of the great objects for which he lived, was to him quite natural and
+inevitable, and he accepted the fate without repining. The marriage with
+Mary—a woman whom he had never seen, who was twelve years his senior and
+no beauty at best—could not have been attractive to him. His domestic
+life with Doña Isabel de Osorio had apparently been harmonious; and the
+absence from Spain which the English marriage would entail was both
+inconvenient and unpleasant, whilst the necessary concessions in manner
+and demeanour to his wife’s English subjects would, perhaps, be more
+distasteful to him than any other of the sacrifices imposed upon him by
+the match. But, as his Spanish contemporary biographer says, like another
+Isaac he readily submitted himself to his father’s will and wrote without
+a day’s delay that the Portuguese match might still be avoided, and he
+had already taken steps in that direction, “cheerfully and unreservedly
+placing himself in the Emperor’s hands to do with him as he thought
+best in the interests of their great cause.”[18] Two days after the
+Emperor had received the welcome letter from his son, a swift courier was
+speeding to England with instructions to Renard to propose Philip, Prince
+of Spain, as a husband for Queen Mary.
+
+The occasion was one of supreme international importance. Ever since
+Ferdinand the Catholic sixty years before had betrothed Mary’s mother to
+the heir of Henry VII., the sovereign of Spain had been trying to win for
+his country the control of English policy, in order that France might
+be beaten in the struggle for the hegemony of Europe. The tremendous
+cataclysm of the Reformation, personal ambitions, the weakness and
+sensuality of Henry VIII., and unexpected deaths, had again and again
+frustrated the design. England had more than once fought by the side of
+France in the great Continental duel, and the English friendship upon
+which the House of Spain was forced to depend as one of the main elements
+of success, had been for all those sixty years an unstable quantity,
+though generally on the side of its traditional ally. But what was
+necessary for Charles and his son was a friendship that could be counted
+upon in all circumstances—an alliance that no bribes nor blandishments of
+Frenchmen and Lutherans could shake; and for the first time this seemed
+possible of attainment if by the marriage of Philip and Mary the crowns
+of England, Spain, and Flanders could rest upon the same brows.
+
+To Mary of England, too, the match with her Spanish second cousin had
+more than a sentimental interest, strong as that was with her. The
+English people had rallied to her cause under the influence of their
+recognition of her legal right to the throne, and their detestation of
+Northumberland and his French friends; but Protestantism was undoubtedly
+strong, especially in London and the Eastern Counties, which had first
+acclaimed the new Queen; and it was evident to Mary that if she was to
+impose her faith upon the country, as she was determined to do, even
+against the advice of the Emperor, she must be able to depend upon some
+force independent of her own people to aid or support her at a pinch.
+France, of course, being out of the question for her, she could only look
+to a Spanish match to serve her turn. Mary shut her eyes obstinately to
+the vast change that had come over her country in the last thirty years.
+She believed, as did the Churchmen throughout Europe, that she only had
+to decree a return to the state of affairs prior to her father’s apostasy
+for the country to accept the change without demur. Pole was for extreme
+measures at once, and so, of course, was the Pope, Julius II.; but the
+Emperor, who in the supposed cause of religion was always ready to
+postpone religious considerations for politics, continued to advise Mary
+through Renard to go slowly and to avoid incensing her people until at
+least she was strong enough to coerce them. The marriage of Philip with
+the Queen therefore seemed to hold out to both contracting parties the
+ideal opportunity of attaining their great desire—in the one case the
+control of English policy to the detriment of France, and in the other
+the increment of strength necessary to force England once more into the
+fold of the Church.
+
+Thenceforward for forty-five years Philip of Spain strove, often in
+almost impossible circumstances, to attain this end. There was no
+instrumentality left untried by him to secure it. Marriage, and proposals
+of marriage, wars, and threats of wars, arrogance, humility, diplomacy,
+bribery, subornation of treason and murder, were some of the means to
+which Philip in his long struggle appealed; for to him and his cause and
+country it was a matter of life and death; and it is my object to set
+forth in the following chapters from contemporary sources the story of
+this long series of efforts on the part of the Spanish King to win the
+support of England by fair means or foul. To regard Philip as a fiend,
+or even as a bad man, because in the cause of this life-struggle of
+his he assailed England with weapons that would now be rejected by any
+right-thinking statesman, would be unjust. The ethics of the time were
+widely different from those prevalent to-day; the supposed interest
+of the State was infinitely greater in proportion to the lives of
+individuals that is at present the case, whilst the assumed interests of
+religion—or, rather, of the orthodox Church—were considered by Philip to
+be so overwhelming as to condone any action necessary to serve them, no
+matter how criminal it would be if employed for other ends. No doubt,
+in the view of the present day, Philip blinded himself to a sense of
+right and wrong in his zeal to serve the cause for which he lived,
+namely, the dominance of Catholicism for the temporal benefit of Spain.
+But to him there was no wrong if it was done by his orders in the cause
+which he believed to be that of righteousness. Sacrifice and suffering
+seemed to him, as to most Spaniards of his day, a natural and necessary
+preparation for spiritual exaltation and triumph; and whilst he never
+flinched from inflicting suffering upon others, though naturally he
+was a tender-hearted man, he never spared himself in the same cause.
+Throughout his long life he made himself a martyr to what he conceived
+to be his duty; a slow, laborious, unimaginative, morbidly conscientious
+man, a good son, a good husband, and, according to his lights, a good
+father; kind and indulgent to his servants, patient under adversity and
+humble in success: indeed, a man endowed with most of the elements of
+righteousness; and yet with a sense of right so blunted by his zeal as to
+think that he might do God’s work with the weapons of the devil, and turn
+enemies into friends by fear. How these principles as applied to England
+ended in failure, it is the purpose of the present book to tell.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II
+
+1553-1554
+
+    The Coronation of Mary—Noailles _versus_ Renard—Mary
+    accepts Philip—The marriage treaty—Alarm in London—Egmont’s
+    missions—Wyatt’s rebellion—Attitude of Elizabeth—The coming
+    of Philip—His voyage and arrival—His popular manners in
+    England—Arrival at Winchester
+
+
+All London was ringing with preparations for the coming pageant of the
+Queen’s coronation. Fenchurch, Gracechurch, and Leadenhall, Cornhill,
+Chepe, and Saint Paul’s were erecting the scaffoldings for their
+triumphs, repainting and gilding gable ends and pinnacles, and trimming
+forth their fine stuffs and liveries in honour of the great day when the
+Queen was to ride in state from the Tower to Westminster.[19] Away across
+the fields in the little sylvan palace of Saint James’s, Mary sat under
+her canopy in her audience chamber one day in late September, surrounded
+by courtiers, all, like the Queen herself, in a blaze of magnificence;
+for the prim Puritanism of the late reign had been banished as savouring
+of Reform, and the splendour of King Henry was being copied by his
+daughter. To one man alone had Mary somewhat sourly prescribed modesty
+in attire, and that was to Courtenay. The dissoluteness of this young
+man of twenty-six, who had never before been free since his childhood,
+had already shocked the austerely virtuous Mary, and had made his chances
+of winning her hand more impossible than ever. But neither she nor those
+around her could fail to see that the cunning Frenchman Noailles was
+still ostentatiously feasting and honouring him, and already the talk
+of the French party at Court was coupling the names of Courtenay and
+the Princess Elizabeth in a way that boded ill to Mary’s peace of mind.
+Courtenay had ordered a gorgeous suit of blue velvet covered with gold
+for the coming ceremony; but blue was the colour the Queen had chosen for
+her own outer garb, and she had no intention of allowing so much bravery
+to the man she knew was being made the tool of her enemies to injure her,
+and Courtenay was ordered to put his finery aside and wear more modest
+raiment. At the public audience Renard brought forward to present to the
+Queen two great Spanish nobles—Don Diego Hurtado de Mendoza and Don Diego
+de Geneda—who were on their way from Flanders to Spain, the latter a
+member of Philip’s household. As the two gentlemen in their distinctive
+Spanish garb and with national gravity were led forward for presentation
+to the Queen, many scowling brows were bent upon them; for although the
+matter was supposed to be so secret, the talk of the Spanish marriage was
+already common at Court; and Noailles, in the deepest chagrin at the way
+things were tending, noticed that Don Diego de Geneda on this occasion
+had whispered conference with the Queen, unheard even by his colleague or
+by the Imperial ambassador.[20]
+
+Whatever French gold or interest could effect to alarm people at the idea
+of the coming of a Spanish Consort was done. Stories of the terrible rule
+of the Inquisition in Spain, and of the pride and cruelty of Spaniards
+generally, were spread industriously by the agents of Noailles, and by
+the day fixed for the Queen’s state procession to Westminster, the 30th
+of September, 1553, London was almost in a panic of fear. The Queen
+had come in with promises of toleration, and already the zeal of the
+Churchmen and her own had belied her people’s hope for religious peace.
+Parliament had been summoned for the 5th October, specially for the
+purpose of restoring England to the orthodox Church; Cardinal Pole was
+known to be coming to the land of his fathers as the Legate of the Pope
+to receive the submission of England to the Power which King Henry had
+flouted so contemptuously; and already the dungeons in the Tower were
+being filled by the prelates of the newer ritual.
+
+All the dazzling magnificence that accompanied the passage of the
+Queen through London from the Tower to Westminster, on the last day of
+September—all the official greetings, the frequent pageants at the street
+corners, and the wonder of the multitude at the rare show of sumptuous
+garb—could not banish the dread thought amidst the crowd that, perhaps,
+all this bravery was only a prelude to a Spanish domination over England.
+The nobles who rode in Mary’s train and filled the great Court offices
+in her household had most of them been enriched by the plunder of the
+monastic lands, and had their own reasons for dreading a return of the
+old order in its extreme form; though they did not know as yet that the
+Spanish Consort, whose advent they feared so much, would be the great
+modifying influence in their favour. Frenchmen and Venetians joined the
+alarmed Englishmen in their apprehensions of the coming change, but the
+few Spaniards in London were jubilant. One Spanish resident,[21] who
+described the splendid show for the benefit of a noble patron in Spain,
+thus writes with reference to the match: “If the Lord vouchsafed us to
+behold this glorious day, what great advantage would befall our Spain
+in holding the Frenchmen in check, by the union of these kingdoms with
+his Majesty’s dominions. And were it only to preserve the States of
+Flanders, surely the Emperor and son must greatly desire it, for, as your
+Lordship knows well, the day that the Emperor dies the Low Countries
+will be in peril of attack from the French or of a German invasion under
+French auspices, help from Spain being so remote, and Flanders itself
+not being free from suspicion of revolt on the ground of religion or
+from the disaffection of the people towards Spaniards. It would be most
+advantageous, too, to Spain, for should aught happen to the Prince’s son
+(Don Carlos), the son born here would be King of both countries, which
+would be a good thing for the English too.... All the Catholics here
+would lift up their hands to God, for they love their country and the
+Queen, and especially Spain, for the sake of the good Queen Katharine;
+and the goodly here are so many that there are a hundred Catholics for
+every four heretics.”
+
+With these mixed hopes and fears amidst the multitude, there went a
+general trust in, and affection for, the Queen personally. She had
+been ill-treated so long, as the people knew; she had grown faded and
+middle-aged under unjust oppression, and she was a true Royal Princess
+descended on both sides from kings of highest lineage. So when at the
+Abbey next day, 1st October, during the interminable ceremony of the
+coronation, Gardiner led the Queen, in her crimson velvet and ermine, to
+the four corners of the daïs and called in a loud voice, “Is this the
+true heir to this realm?” there was no hesitation, and all the lieges
+shouted as if with one voice, “Yea! yea! God save the Queen!”[22]
+
+Parliament met on the 5th October. The Catholics in the country were
+unquestionably in a majority, though not so great, probably, as in the
+ratio of twenty-five to one, as the Spaniards asserted; and Mary had
+no difficulty in obtaining the repeal of all the anti-Papal laws which
+severed England from Rome. Gardiner was willing enough to aid the Queen
+in this; but, prompted by Noailles, he managed dexterously to get the
+House of Commons to vote an Address to the Queen, praying her not to
+marry a foreigner. This, it is true, voiced a very general feeling in
+the country, but the Queen had now (November) quite made up her mind;
+for she had seen a portrait of Philip by Titian, and had fairly fallen
+in love with the young, fresh-coloured man with the curly, yellow beard
+who was asking for her hand. So in a rage, and after much delay, Mary
+received the deputation of the Commons led by the Speaker. “This is one
+of the Chancellor’s tricks,” she muttered, “and I will be equal with him
+for it.” Then haughtily addressing the deputation, she rebuked their
+presumption in attempting to dictate to her on such a matter, and said
+that if private persons were allowed to choose mates for themselves,
+surely sovereigns were not to be less privileged. This was the true Tudor
+attitude towards the representatives of the people; and the Queen, having
+legalised her religious changes, promptly dissolved Parliament.
+
+Watchful eyes followed Renard everywhere. The Queen’s Council, with the
+exception of Paget, Arundel, and Petre, looked askance at him; French
+and Venetian spies at Court reported his every movement; and his own
+colleagues were bitterly jealous of him, as the marriage negotiation
+had been kept exclusively in his hands. For many days he could obtain
+no private access to Mary for the purpose of giving her the Emperor’s
+message; but at last, by Paget’s management, on the 10th October, he
+was introduced secretly into the Queen’s presence at Westminster. The
+Emperor deplored, said Renard, that his age and infirmities prevented him
+from offering his own hand in marriage to his cousin, as he would have
+wished; but that being impossible, he begged her to accept his only and
+beloved son as her husband. To the chagrin of Renard, Mary was now full
+of hesitation. What would her people say, and how could her Council be
+persuaded? She feared that when Philip succeeded his father, his many
+other realms would occupy the whole of his time, and that he would never
+be able to stay in England. Was Renard, moreover, quite sure of his
+character? He could not be so wise as the Emperor, and he was very young
+for her. Of course she would obey her husband, but he must not think for
+a moment that she would allow him to rule her State, nor could she give
+any offices to foreigners; and she threw out a strong hint that perhaps
+Philip’s Austrian cousin, Maximilian, would be a better husband for her,
+as she was absolutely free, and she had heard the Archduke was considered
+wise. Besides, if Philip was voluptuous in his ideas, she had no desire
+for anything of the sort at her age.
+
+[Illustration: PHILIP II AT THE AGE OF 24
+
+FROM THE PAINTING BY TITIAN IN THE PRADO MUSEUM]
+
+All these objections were, no doubt, only a display of becoming maiden
+modesty, but they somewhat disturbed Renard. He painted to her in lurid
+colours the enmities by which she was surrounded, and the dangers that
+threatened her—the intrigues of the French with Courtenay and Elizabeth,
+the menacing attitude of the Protestant party in the provinces—and Mary
+answered as best she might, asking Renard at last to put in writing the
+arguments he urged in favour of her marriage with Philip. Four days later
+he saw her again, and this time her hesitation took a more personal form.
+With tears in her eyes she seized the ambassador’s hands and conjured
+him to tell her truly whether Philip was so moderate, settled, and
+well-behaved as he said. On his life and honour the ambassador protested
+that he was, but still the perplexed Queen was unconvinced. If she could
+only have seen the Prince first, she said, she would be better able to
+judge. That, the ambassador gently told her, was not possible; but a good
+portrait of him could be sent to her, and with this she was obliged to be
+content.[23]
+
+It was only after long hesitation and prayerful searching of heart that
+Mary finally decided to carry through her marriage, in the face of the
+almost universal opposition of her people. She undoubtedly yearned for
+the support of a husband in her difficult position, and naturally hoped
+for a son who should carry on her tradition of a Catholic England. She
+was of affectionate disposition, and for all her modest assurance to
+Renard that she had never felt the promptings of the flesh, there is
+nothing unbecoming in believing that the sight of her cousin’s portrait
+had lit up the feeling of love in her heart where natural affection had
+been suppressed for so long. But, withal, her principal desire for the
+match and her determination to effect it were mainly prompted by public
+considerations. The intrigues of the French with the Protestant elements
+in the country, and the almost open way in which Noailles was playing
+off Courtenay and Elizabeth against her, had convinced Mary that France
+was her enemy. The only force in Europe strong enough to resist France
+was the Emperor; and unless the Queen could depend absolutely upon his
+support, it was evident that sooner or later the Protestant element in
+England with French aid would oust her from the throne—probably in favour
+of the young Queen of Scots, her cousin, already betrothed to the heir of
+France.
+
+Motives personal, religious, and political, therefore all dictated to
+Mary the absolute necessity of her prompt marriage with Philip; and, as
+we have already seen, the motives of the Emperor and his son for the
+marriage were equally strong. Some of Mary’s Council—especially Arundel,
+Paget, and Petre—were first won over, for they were in the Emperor’s pay
+before; and when Gardiner saw that the tide was too strong for him to
+resist, he also accepted the inevitable with the best grace he could.
+But when he had to be consulted on the terms of the marriage treaty, he
+drove as hard a bargain as possible; for he, and, it is just to say, most
+of his colleagues also, were determined that the marriage should not
+mean the political subjugation of England by Spain. On the 31st October,
+Sunday evening, Mary summoned Renard to her oratory, where she received
+him, attended only by her devoted nurse, Mrs. Clarencius. Her eyes were
+red with weeping, and she told the ambassador that for days she had been
+sleepless, praying for guidance as to the choice of a husband. “My last
+resource in all my difficulties,” she said, “is the Holy Sacrament, and
+as it is even now displayed upon this altar, I will appeal to it for
+counsel.” Then kneeling, as did Renard and Mrs. Clarencius by her side,
+she recited with whispered fervour the _Veni Creator Spiritus_. After a
+short period of silent meditation she rose, calm and self-possessed, and
+told the ambassador that her mind was now made up: he, Renard, should
+be her father confessor. She had consulted some of her Councillors, and
+herself had pondered deeply upon the subject; and now, bearing in mind
+what she had been told of Philip’s good qualities, she prayed the Emperor
+to accept her as a daughter, to be indulgent with her, and to consent
+to the conditions which her Councillors declared would be necessary for
+the welfare of her realm. She hoped that henceforward the Emperor would
+be doubly a father to her, and Philip a good husband. Then with all
+solemnity she approached the altar and, with her hand upon the gospel
+before the Sacred Presence, swore to marry Philip of Spain and make him
+a good wife. God had now sent her light, she said, after she had wavered
+long. No man but Philip should be her husband.[24]
+
+Whilst Renard and the Council were fighting hard over every point of
+the marriage treaty, Noailles and the Venetian ambassadors were busy
+intriguing against it, entertaining Courtenay constantly, and doing their
+best to draw cautious Elizabeth into their plots. The muttering of coming
+trouble sounded on all sides—Mary, jealous and distrustful of Elizabeth,
+whose illegitimacy she was determined to assert; the Protestant elements
+in the Court and country already in a ferment, thanks largely to French
+incitement, and disaffection showing itself by partial disturbances
+in various parts of the country. Religious persecution, too, began to
+raise its head. Cranmer and Ridley were condemned to death, as were Lady
+Jane Grey and the three sons of Northumberland; whilst the Emperor,
+determined for his part to avoid exacerbating the evil, had, to the great
+indignation of the Pope and the Churchmen, almost violently forbidden
+Pole to go to England with his extreme Papal mission, at least until the
+ultimate control of it had passed into the Emperor’s own politic hands.
+
+At length, by the end of the year, the hard terms of the treaty were
+drafted. Renard had done his best, and so had the Imperial ministers in
+Flanders; but Gardiner had been firm, and the conditions were a bitter
+dose for Spanish pride to swallow; for, as they stood, they bade fair to
+deprive the bridegroom’s country of the only benefit to be derived from
+the marriage—namely, control of the policy and resources of England. The
+Consort was to have no rule in the country, and none of his countrymen
+were to hold office of any sort; the Queen was to receive a jointure of
+30,000 ducats a year from Flanders; and the issue of the marriage, if
+any, should, failing Philip’s only son Carlos, succeed to all his Crowns,
+as well as to England; whilst in the case of Mary’s death, the Consort
+was to have no hold whatever upon her country, nor was he to take the
+Queen or her children out of England without the consent of the Council.
+These and many similar provisions fenced round the authority of the
+Consort so completely as to deprive him of any direct political power in
+England; but Charles, confident in Mary’s secret promises to Renard that,
+notwithstanding the conditions, the will of the Emperor should prevail in
+England after the marriage,[25] determined to make the best of it, and to
+gain the stubborn islanders by his son’s charming, if they were not to be
+won by a diplomatic document.
+
+Noailles grew daily more bitter, and almost came to blows with Paget on
+the subject of the marriage, but it became clear even to him now that
+he had been beaten, and that in future England and the Emperor would
+make common cause against France. A pompous Flemish embassy, headed by
+the splendid young Count of Egmont, was known to be on its way across
+to ratify the marriage treaty in the name of the Emperor; and Noailles
+took care that all London should be in a fever of apprehension at their
+coming. On the 1st January a great retinue of servants with the baggage
+of the ambassadors rode through London to Durham House in the Strand,
+where Egmont and his suite were to be lodged. Thick snow lay upon the
+ground, and as the foreigners, with their long line of pack-horses,
+passed through the narrow lanes of the old city, the very street-boys
+pelted them with snowballs, “so hatfull was the sight of ther coming in
+to theym.”[26]
+
+The next day, at the Tower Stairs, a gallant company of courtiers, headed
+by Sir Anthony Browne, in the gorgeous garb he loved so well, awaited the
+coming of the Emperor’s representatives, whilst the guns on the Tower
+overhead boomed out their salutation. Egmont, the first of the Flemish
+nobles, was accompanied by Montmorenci, Sieur de Courrières, who had
+formerly come with Renard to England, as well as by several other high
+Imperial functionaries; and they were escorted by Lord William Howard,
+from Calais, and by Lord Cobham, from Dover, as Lieutenant of Kent. As
+the gallant embassy of eighty finely clad gentlemen pranced out of the
+Tower Gate, they were affectionately greeted by Courtenay, Hastings,
+and Strange on Tower Hill, and led through the City in state, though
+“the people,” we are told, “nothing rejoysing, helde downe their heddes
+sorrowfully.”[27] Nothing was left undone by Mary and her Court to
+show honour to the guests; and banquet followed banquet, whilst Egmont
+unsuccessfully strove to modify the terms of the treaty. Renard tells
+in a letter to the Emperor of a banquet given to the ambassadors by the
+Queen on the 6th January,[28] after which a little scene took place which
+well illustrates the free manners of the time. “And towards the end of
+the dinner the Lord Admiral [Howard], who had dined in an adjoining
+chamber, came in and stood before her [the Queen], who seemed pensive.
+He said something to her in English, and then turning to us, asked us
+whether we would like to know what he had said. Although her Majesty did
+her best to prevent him from translating it to us, he went on and said
+that he had wished that his Highness [Philip] had been seated there by
+her side, pointing to her right, in order to banish her melancholy. She
+blushed at this and asked why he said it, to which he replied that he
+was sure she was not cross and liked to hear it; whereupon the Queen and
+every one else laughed, and it all went off in good part.”
+
+The day after this entertainment (7th January, 1554), Egmont wrote an
+urgent letter to Prince Philip, praying him to hasten his coming to claim
+his bride. The treaty, he says, has now been agreed to with only a word
+or two changed, and will be signed in two days. It is clear from this
+letter that Egmont foresaw the trouble that was looming. The nobility,
+he said, had received them better than he had expected. “But as for the
+people, they are uncertain. We will advise the Queen to raise forces to
+prevent any hostile movement, which would not be extraordinary, for these
+people are very unstable.... It is of the utmost importance that your
+Highness should come without delay. I hear that the French are arming
+strongly in Normandy and Brittany.... I beseech you humbly to consider
+how urgent it is that you come hither at once, for many reasons which I
+hope to lay before you verbally soon. Besides this, I should like your
+Highness to know that the Emperor has not provided us with a sou to spend
+on necessary presents. More can be done here with money than anywhere
+else in the world.”[29]
+
+The hollow affectation of keeping the Queen’s marriage secret could
+not be continued after the treaty was signed, and on the 13th January
+Gardiner, with the best countenance he could command, made an oration in
+the Presence Chamber of the Palace of Westminster before the assembled
+lords and courtiers, declaring the Queen’s intention to marry the Prince
+of Spain “in most godly, lawful matrimonye: and further that she should
+have for her joynter xxxᵐⁱˡ duckets by the yere, with all the Lowe
+Countries of Flanders; and that the issue betweene them two lawfully
+begotten shoulde yf there be any, be heir as well to the Kingdom of
+Spayne as also to the sayde Lowe Country.” He declared, farther, that “we
+were much bounden to thancke God that so noble, worthye and famouse a
+prince would vouchsaff so to humble himself in this maryadge to take upon
+him rather as a subject than otherwise: and that the Quene should rule
+all things as nowe: and that there should be of the Council no Spanyard,
+nether should have rule or office in the quenes house or elsewhere in
+England nor have custody of any fortes or castells.”[30] Gardiner made
+the best of it; but the bare fact of the announcement being officially
+made set light to the tinder which Noailles and his allies had so
+carefully prepared. When, on the following day, Gardiner made a similar
+announcement to the Lord Mayor and Aldermen, Noailles had seen enough to
+justify him in sending off a special courier post-haste to his master in
+France. “The nobles and commonalty declare,” he wrote, “that they will
+never tolerate the Prince of Spain for their King. They would rather die
+fighting against him than obey him, and will defend their liberties by
+force before they will submit to such servitude. They are making ready to
+rise in arms any day and expel this Queen, who they now see is unworthy
+of the Crown and as she had twice broken her promise to them after they
+had raised her to the position she occupies. First, in changing the
+religion after she had promised them toleration; and, secondly, in taking
+a foreign husband although she had promised that she would not.”[31] In
+a few days the result of all this excitement was seen. Carew and his
+friends and kin in the west, depending upon poor feeble Courtenay’s
+open co-operation, rose in revolt. Rumours ran that French troops were
+on the way across to aid him. But Courtenay was a reed easily broken,
+and allowed Gardiner to frighten him into alarmed submission, whilst
+Elizabeth, closely watched at Ashridge, was too cunning to be drawn into
+open complicity by Noailles’s intrigues; though the Emperor and Renard
+were urging Mary to put her sister well out of harm’s way in prison.
+
+And then came the most perilous movement of all—that of the men of Kent
+under Wyatt. From the 26th January to the 3rd February Mary’s crown
+was not worth a day’s purchase; for, though the cry of the rebels was
+only against the Spanish marriage, the Queen knew full well that she
+must now stand or fall by that. And she stood manfully when many of her
+courtiers were distraught by fear and ready to desert her at a moment’s
+notice. Whilst Wyatt and his growing host swept triumphantly onward from
+Rochester Bridge to Blackheath, and so to Southwark, the Council were
+wrangling. Should the Queen retire to the Tower or should she fly to the
+country; should she believe what the friends of the French faction urged,
+that the only safe place for her was Calais, where she could claim the
+Emperor’s protection? Mary, almost alone, was undismayed. She sent word
+privately to Renard that for their own safety’s sake the other Imperial
+ambassadors should return home, but that she had no intention of backing
+out of the marriage or of leaving London, although she might temporise
+with Wyatt whilst she mustered her forces.[32] Riding to Guildhall, stern
+and sorrowful but unafraid, she made a stirring oration to the citizens;
+and although many were in favour of Wyatt, London Bridge was held
+firmly by the Queen’s friends, until the rebel force began to melt away
+discouraged at the delay.
+
+If Wyatt had struck promptly, he would probably have won; but loath to
+shed blood and to use arms openly against the Crown, he lingered in
+Bermondsey, hoping for the declaration of the citizens of London in his
+favour, until it was too late. Then came the ignominious march through
+the mire to Kingston Bridge, and the footsore, famished, and rain-soaked
+crew tramping through the night into London, to be beaten almost without
+effort by those who, if they had shown a fine front, would have joined
+them. Vengeance promptly fell upon the offenders. The scaffolds at the
+street corners with their dangling corpses taught the common people that
+treason was a dangerous game to play; the block in the Tower was soaked
+with the blood of Greys and Dudleys and many of their noble friends,
+and Elizabeth was no longer bidden courteously to join her sister at
+Court, but was sternly, if ceremoniously, brought to London, dangerously
+ill though she seemed to be (22nd February). And, as the young Princess
+passed through the silent, sorrowful crowd that greeted her, making, as
+she did, an appeal to their sympathies by her proud, pale face and her
+snow-white garments, the Londoners in their hearts felt that Elizabeth
+was their champion against the Spaniard, whose coming they feared so
+much. On the same day (Ash Wednesday, 7th February) that poor Wyatt’s
+draggled host toiled up to Ludgate, there to meet final failure and
+the gallows, Renard urged the Queen to make an end of Elizabeth and
+Courtenay; and the Count of Egmont was already hurrying to England with
+advice from the Emperor to the same effect; but Mary, who allowed herself
+to be drawn into extreme severity against those who had openly conspired
+against her crown, asserted her own will in the matter of her sister,
+whose countenance of the French ambassador’s intrigues was amply proved
+by Wyatt’s avowals and the seizure of Noailles’s letters at Gravesend.
+Thus whilst Courtenay once more found himself in the Tower a prisoner,
+Elizabeth was at first only secluded in her sister’s palace at Whitehall.
+
+A perusal of the letters of Renard and Noailles, and the evidence given
+by Wyatt himself, leaves no shadow of doubt that Elizabeth and Courtenay
+were accomplices in the series of risings that, with French support,
+were intended to frustrate the Spanish match; and, although Froude and
+other English historians have done their best to exonerate them, Mary’s
+clemency to her sister on this occasion is at least entitled to a word of
+praise, considering the great provocation she had suffered at her hands.
+When at last Elizabeth was sent to the Tower, in March, it was only
+because Mary was about to absent herself from the capital for a time;
+and it was, of course, impossible to leave the disaffected Princess,
+beloved as she was by the Londoners, practically at liberty in their
+midst. Thus the open enemies of the marriage were silenced; Wyatt and
+his accomplices, as well as the Greys and Dudleys, were dead or doomed,
+Noailles was found out and raging impotently, Courtenay and Elizabeth
+behind the bars, and the Carews and their West-country friends refugees
+in France.
+
+When, therefore, on the 2nd March, 1554, Egmont again arrived in London,
+with the Bulls, powers, and other formal documents necessary for the
+solemn betrothal, it seemed as if all would now run smoothly. Renard,
+it is true, always anxious to augment the importance of Philip, gravely
+raised the question before the Queen and Council whether it would be safe
+to bring the Prince to England in the circumstances; because, he said,
+if there was to be any risk to either the Queen or her betrothed, it
+might be better to abandon the match. But whilst Mary declared that for
+the world she would have no harm happen to Philip, “neither she nor her
+Council saw any means or danger that should cause the postponement of a
+marriage so beneficial and honourable. Thank God, the heretics and rebels
+were imprisoned, their conspiracy discovered and proved, and in a short
+time exemplary punishment would be inflicted upon them! For the future
+the Queen would see to it that the strong hand would be hers, and that
+she retained full authority over her subjects; so that they had no doubt
+whatever that his Highness might safely pass over to England, provided
+that he guarded himself against the French naval force which was being
+prepared to intercept him.”[33]
+
+A more private matter still had to be settled by Renard with the Queen.
+Which of her ministers and household should be pensioned and bribed
+by the Emperor, and to what extent, “as in order to gain them for his
+Highness [Philip] his Majesty had ordered us to be liberal to those she
+thought best”? and this question was gravely submitted to the Council
+for consideration. Charles, as usual, was dreadfully driven for money,
+but an extra turn of the screw could always be applied to long-suffering
+Castile; and when it was a question of gaining England, money had to
+be procured in plenty at any cost. As may be supposed, the list sent
+by the Council to Renard for presents to themselves and others did not
+err on the side of modesty; and four thousand crowns’ worth of gold
+shoulder-chains and as much ready money was promptly handed over to the
+itching palms of the English courtiers; whereupon “the Councillors gave
+us such a good response, that if the result corresponds with their words,
+we have no doubt that safety will attend the coming of his Highness to
+this country.”[34]
+
+The further to secure Philip from the attacks of the French, a fleet of
+twenty English ships was commissioned for his escort in the Channel; and
+when all this was arranged, a deputation of the Council on the 7th March
+came to lead Renard and Egmont to a chamber in Whitehall, where the Queen
+and her household awaited them. Upon an altar in the room the Blessed
+Host was exposed, and before it Mary and Egmont respectively swore that
+the conditions of the marriage treaty should be held binding. Mary was
+fervid and excited. Before taking the oath she spontaneously “fell upon
+her knees and cried to God to witness that the marriage she had agreed to
+had not been prompted by any carnal affection, by cupidity, or any other
+reason than the honour, welfare, and profit of her realm, the repose and
+tranquillity of her subjects; and that she had no other intention than
+to keep true to the marriage and oath that she had already made to her
+Crown; saying all this with such grace that the spectators were moved
+to tears.”[35] The ceremony ended with more devout prayer by the Queen
+on her knees; and then Egmont, handing to her the magnificent ring that
+had been sent by Philip as a token of his troth, bade her farewell and
+hurried off to Spain.[36]
+
+In the meanwhile Philip himself was busy with his great preparations.
+All Spain was impressed with the grandeur of the occasion. The marriage
+meant for Philip’s faithful lieges the final conquest over France and the
+bringing back into the Catholic fold of the rich realm of England; it
+meant, they believed, a cessation of the ruinous wars which had beggared
+the realms of Castile and reduced whole provinces to misery. But, though
+the Spaniards rejoiced at the great stroke of policy that in their view
+was to fasten another crown upon the brows of their beloved Prince, they
+were doubly enthusiastic at the noble self-sacrifice that he was making
+for their sake, and filled with regret at his leaving them. Endless
+preparations had to be made for the tremendous transport that would be
+necessary for the crowds of nobles, courtiers and servants who were to
+accompany the Prince to England. The absence was looked upon as being
+for an indefinite time, and only such persons as were able-bodied and
+fairly unencumbered were allowed to go. Indeed, a great assembly of
+members of the household was held in order that the Duke of Alba might
+announce that any of those who had good reason for not accompanying his
+Highness were free to stay behind. Those who elected to go—the great
+majority—were granted considerable sums of money for their outfit; and
+the nobles, too, were given leave to go to their own towns to prepare the
+gorgeous dresses and appointments they and their households were expected
+to take with them. It is curious to note that many of the servitors
+who were to undertake the journey sold all their property in Spain, in
+the belief that they were at once to settle and take possession of the
+land of England. We are told that the wife of one officer, expecting to
+obtain the approval of Philip, asked for his leave to sell all they had
+in order to follow him unencumbered. Philip’s answer was significant and
+characteristic. “I do not order you either to sell or not to sell your
+property, for know ye that I am not going to a marriage feast, but to a
+fight.”[37] This was the spirit in which all regarded the sacrifice he
+was making. He was going on a holy crusade, amidst many heretics, whom
+he was to win for the Church; the French were lying in wait to thwart or
+capture him; and all Spaniards felt that the Prince went to conquer and
+not to woo, though none doubted, nor did he, that victory would finally
+be his. Old servitors unable to make the journey were pensioned; the
+girl children of those who went were, at Philip’s expense, boarded and
+educated in their parents’ absence, the boys being similarly provided for
+at Alcalá de Henares.
+
+Whilst all Spain was thus busy providing the splendid stuffs and
+adornments by which the savage Englishmen were to be dazzled, news came
+to Philip at Valladolid that the English special ambassadors, the Earl
+of Bedford and Lord Fitzwalter, who were coming with greetings from his
+betrothed, might be expected any day at Laredo, on the Biscay coast, and
+his Steward, Gutierre Lopez de Padilla, hurried off to do them honour at
+the end of February, whilst Valladolid was hastily decked from end to
+end with bravery and lists erected for sports, bullfights, tourneys, and
+the like. But the news was premature, for it was the 13th March before
+Bedford and his colleagues left London on their embassy; and before they
+arrived in Spain the rejoicings prepared for their reception were turned
+into mourning by the news of the death of Philip’s brother-in-law and
+cousin, the Prince of Portugal.
+
+As soon as the tidings of Mary’s ratification of the treaty reached
+Philip, he, like the gallant suitor he intended to appear, despatched
+the Marquis de las Navas to England with a present to his bride truly
+magnificent in its richness. “A table diamond set as a rose, beautifully
+wrought and worth 50,000 ducats; a necklace of brilliant diamonds
+consisting of eighteen stones worth 30,000 ducats. A great diamond with
+a large pendant pearl, one of the most beautiful pieces ever seen in
+the world, worth 25,000 ducats; besides many jewels, necklaces, pearls,
+diamonds, emeralds, and rubies of inestimable value.” This list is given
+by one of Philip’s lackeys, attached to the service of Don Carlos. The
+sartorial splendour of velvets, silks, satins, and bullion, which the
+same authority sets forth for our admiration, as being in preparation for
+Philip and his Court, and the extravagant richness of the appointments,
+dresses, armour, saddlery, plate, and furniture, for the Prince’s service
+sent forward to Corunna, where he was to embark, reads like a fairy
+tale. Every noble’s dress and livery is described with the minuteness
+of a tailor’s bill, and the appearance of these proud hidalgos must
+have been sumptuous in the extreme.[38] Philip himself always preferred
+serious gravity in his dress; but he had been told that the English loved
+splendour, and he was determined on this occasion that they should have
+it to their hearts’ content. Some of his beautiful garments we shall have
+an opportunity of describing later, but here is one suit which must have
+been exceedingly gorgeous. A crimson velvet cape, covered with little
+chains made of silk twist, enclosing lozenges, and a sort of sprig with
+large leaves running between them, made of silver lace and filled in
+with silver fringe. The lining of this cape was smooth cloth of silver
+embroidered with the same sort of work; the trunks, doublet, and tunic
+were of smooth crimson velvet embroidered in the same way.
+
+All these elaborate preparations being completed, Philip, with the
+Dukes of Alba and Medini Celi, Egmont, Feria, Pescara, Ruy Gomez, and a
+score of the highest grandees of Spain and nearly a thousand horsemen
+glittering and flashing in the Castilian sun, rode out of Valladolid on
+the 14th May, 1554. The Prince’s Spanish and Teuton guards and his three
+hundred servants were all dressed in the gaudy red-and-yellow livery
+of Aragon, and each of the nobles was followed by a retinue which vied
+with that of the Prince in brilliance. The cavalcade had to make a long
+detour down to the Portuguese frontier to receive the grief-stricken
+young widow, Philip’s sister, who was to govern Spain in his absence, and
+again to Tordesillas for the Prince to take a last farewell of his mad
+grandmother, Jane the Crazy. At each town, too, especially at Benavente
+and Astorga, there were bullfights and tourneys, banquets and religious
+ceremonials, so that it was the 22nd June, the day before the Vigil of
+St. John, when the kneeling aldermen of Santiago de Compostela tendered
+to Philip the golden keys at the gates of their sainted city.
+
+As the Prince and his suite rode through the decorated streets to worship
+at the shrine of the Spanish patron Saint James, and thank him for his
+protection so far, a party of gentlemen at the upper window of a house
+looked on with faces shrouded in their cloaks. These were the English
+ambassadors—the Earl of Bedford, Lord Fitzwalter, and others—sent by Mary
+to pledge her troth to her new husband; and on the following morning they
+were brought by a crowd of Spanish hidalgos into the presence of the
+future King Consort of England. Philip received them smilingly, cap in
+hand, for even thus early he had taken to heart the injunctions of his
+father and of Renard that he would conciliate the English by changing
+his habitual grave aloofness for the gay amiability which he afterwards
+assumed in England. Bedford, Fitzwalter, Sidney, and the rest of them,
+bowed low and half bent the knee before him one by one;[39] and when the
+presentations were over, Bedford took from a secretary a copy of the
+capitulations and handed them to the Prince, who confirmed them by word
+of mouth without opening the paper. Bedford appears to have impressed
+the Spaniards favourably as “a great gentleman and a good Christian,”
+and both he and his colleagues did their errand in courtly fashion. When
+Philip had confirmed the capitulations, we are told, “they showed the
+greatest delight, from the highest to the lowest, kissing his Highness’s
+hands with great demonstration; and as they went out they said to each
+other in their own tongue, ‘Blessed be to God who has given us as good a
+king as this!’ This was said so quietly amongst themselves that it would
+not have been noticed, but that a Spanish gentleman who understood their
+tongue heard and repeated it.”[40] The next day the Englishmen attended
+pontifical Mass at the Cathedral with Philip, greatly, we are told, to
+their edification and devotion, “which God grant may continue, for they
+need it badly enough.” Before starting on his thirty-miles’ ride from
+Santiago to Corunna, Philip distributed costly presents to the English
+embassy, Bedford’s gift being “one of the finest pieces of gold plate
+ever seen, more than three feet in height, exquisitely and elaborately
+chased with classical and grotesque figures, the intrinsic value of the
+gold contained being six thousand ducats.”
+
+A brave show of ships awaited the arrival of Philip in Corunna, for
+many soldiers were to pass over with the Prince to defend him from the
+French on the way and reinforce the Emperor’s army in Flanders; and as
+the glittering cavalcade came in sight of the harbour, he was met “by
+six hundred seaman—lancers from the province of Guipuzcoa, smart men
+and prettily accoutred, who performed many evolutions, waving their
+lances joyously, with much playing of drums and fifes. Then the fleet
+and the fortress shot such a salute that in very truth it seemed as if
+town and fortress together were coming down, the people being in great
+fear and wonder to see the houses tremble thus as if by earthquake. All
+said that the human race had never witnessed such a discharge as this.
+The smoke was so great during the hour and a half that the firing lasted
+that neither earth nor heaven could be seen. After this there entered
+the harbour nine ships of the fleet, well supplied with everything and
+very smart, with a vast number of painted standards and 3,500 soldiers
+on board. These ships then took up the salute with their big guns, after
+which the infantry shot with their muskets for half an hour.”[41]
+
+On Philip’s return to his lodging, forty fishing sloops cast at his feet
+their fresh-caught harvest of the sea, and the next day he inspected the
+ship, _The Holy Ghost_, of Martin de Bertondona, in which it had just
+been arranged that he was to make the voyage to England. From end to end
+the ship was alive with scarlet silk streamers, and many-hued heraldic
+pennons waved aloft: the bulwarks and castles were hung with crimson
+damask, and the cabin destined for the Prince was a marvel of chased and
+chiselled gold and exotic woods. The great standard of crimson damask,
+painted with the Imperial arms and golden flames, was thirty yards long,
+and dozens of other standards rivalling it in size fluttered from every
+mast and spar. Three hundred sailors, garbed in scarlet liveries, manned
+this gallant craft. But all this splendour seems to have aroused some
+jealousy amongst the English, and when Philip went on board the ship
+that had brought the ambassadors to Spain to be bounteously entertained
+at dinner, Bedford urged him to trust himself to an English ship and
+English sailors. The Prince hesitated a while, but his councillors, and
+particularly the Duke of Alba, would not hear of it, for none knew as yet
+how far they might trust to the islanders so recently heretic. To please
+the English sailors, however, Philip allowed them to choose for him the
+Spanish ship they considered the safest; and at their recommendation he
+sailed in Bertondona’s vessel, instead of, as intended, in the galleon of
+the great sailor Alvaro de Bazan.
+
+To muster and ship six thousand soldiers as well as the great train
+of courtiers and servants that followed Philip took many days, whilst
+the Prince was being feasted and entertained by neighbouring nobles.
+During this time there entered Corunna the Spanish ship that had carried
+the Marquis of Las Navas to England with the presents for Mary, and
+marvellous stories had the mariners to tell of the eager preparations
+being made by the Queen and her people to receive the new King. How she
+was at Winchester with a thousand gentlemen, and how, amongst other
+fine things to welcome her bridegroom, she had collected two thousand
+fine horses for the Spaniards, believing that they would bring none by
+sea with them.[42] At length the fleet of nearly a hundred sail was
+ready. The gilding upon the towering stern and forecastles, with lines
+of shining lanterns, flashed back the summer sun, and the crowds of
+gaily clad soldiers and sailors played strange pranks in the rigging and
+amongst the gaudy flags to amuse grave Philip, whilst for two days the
+ships lay idle in Corunna harbour awaiting the fair wind that was to
+carry the Prince of Spain upon his mission of conquest.
+
+On Friday, 13th July, a soft breeze from the south enabled the fleet to
+sail, whilst a dense crowd upon the shore sent up fervent prayers for the
+safety of the Prince, who in a pure spirit of martyrdom was thus going to
+“our new realm of England for the exaltation of our holy faith and the
+good of Christendom.” Others there were on the shore who shouted insults,
+taunts, and challenges to all the Frenchmen alive; for with England at
+the bidding of the Emperor, the poorest beggar in Spain knew that France
+was powerless against him. The slight swell that at first somewhat upset
+unaccustomed stomachs, was succeeded on the morning of Saturday by a dead
+calm and a motionless sea, which, whilst it comforted the landsmen, made
+the seamen look blank; for, as they said, it might delay the fleet for a
+month. But the next day, Sunday, a delightful fair wind sprang up, and
+the long trail of vessels stretched across the tranquil Bay until Ushant,
+the land of the enemy, loomed up to starboard on Monday afternoon. On
+Wednesday morning in the Channel a fleet of galleons was sighted, which
+it was feared might be Frenchmen, but which turned out to be the Flemish
+escort sent by the Emperor, with several ships of the English navy. Thus
+accompanied, the Spaniards sailed up to Southampton Water on Thursday,
+19th July, and at four o’clock in the afternoon anchored amidst the royal
+salute from the thirty English and Flemish ships assembled to receive
+the Queen’s new Consort.[43]
+
+Things had not been going very smoothly in England in the meanwhile.
+Mary’s Council was profoundly disunited, Paget and the Chancellor, Bishop
+Gardiner of Winchester, being at bitter feud with each other; and Mary
+herself was angry and distrustful with Gardiner and his adherents, who,
+she feared, quite without reason, were secretly favouring Elizabeth
+and the Wyatt prisoners. On one occasion, late in March, a number of
+members of the Council, even Paget being amongst them out of enmity to
+Gardiner, took the bold course of entering the Queen’s oratory after
+vespers, and told her that it was now time for clemency, and that
+if any more noble blood was shed it would no longer be justice but
+cruelty. The bloody-minded advice, they said, of others should not be
+followed—meaning by this Gardiner, who was absent, and Renard, who was
+never tired of urging severity upon Mary. The Queen, taken by surprise,
+at once pardoned six of the gentlemen of Kent implicated in Wyatt’s
+rising who had been condemned to death. Poor Mary was beset on every
+side by warring counsels, with Renard telling her that for her own and
+her husband’s safety she must strike hard, and her Council in revolt
+at what they considered the cruelty inculcated by Gardiner, and at one
+time she consented to Renard’s plan for a _coup d’état_ which should
+practically make her supreme. The Lord Admiral (Howard), Pembroke, Derby,
+Shrewsbury, and Sussex were to be employed in distant parts of the realm;
+a reconciliation was to be effected between Gardiner and Paget, and the
+whole business of State was to be managed by them, with the assistance
+of Petre, the Earl of Arundel, and two others. Renard thought that
+this solution was the only one which offered any security for Philip’s
+safety, and when the Queen was induced by some of her Councillors to
+pardon on Good Friday the Marquis of Northampton and eight more prisoners
+implicated in the Wyatt rising, the Imperial ambassador roundly scolded
+her for her ill-timed clemency. It was not by any means certain, he said,
+that Philip would consent to come to England at all. The dissensions of
+her Councillors were very dangerous, and it behoved her to consider very
+carefully, since the security must be furnished by her, and the Prince
+could not come armed, what a scandal and calamity it would be if anything
+happened to him.[44] Mary wept at this, and said that “she would rather
+never have been born than that any outrage should be committed on his
+Highness, but she trusted to God that no such thing would occur. All her
+Councillors would do their duty in receiving the Prince, and are in great
+hopes of him. She would reform her Council and reduce it to six members;
+she would do her best to incline her subjects to his Highness’s favour;
+and she would take good care that the cases of Courtenay and Elizabeth
+were finished before the Prince arrived.”[45]
+
+[Illustration: WILLIAM LORD PAGET
+
+FROM A PAINTING IN THE NATIONAL PORTRAIT GALLERY]
+
+Noailles and the French sympathisers, too, were still at work stirring
+up alarm at the coming of the Spaniards. Here was a bridegroom, they
+sneered, who was coming to win a wife, with a great army intended to
+land on English soil and proclaim himself King in his own right, with
+all his swarm of priests, friars, and inquisitors to oppress the English
+people. Even the English sailors on Howard’s ships were so distrustful
+of the Spaniards that when the Flemish crews of the Emperor’s fleet set
+foot on shore during the time they awaited Philip’s arrival the visitors
+were hustled and insulted everywhere, whilst the Lord Admiral himself had
+openly mocked at their ships as mussel-shells.[46] Whether it be true,
+as was asserted, that Howard committed the grave discourtesy of throwing
+a shot across the bows of the Prince’s fleet to compel a salute to the
+English flag is doubtful, but it is certain that the feeling in the
+country amongst high and low as the time went on was as strongly against
+the Spanish bridegroom as ever.
+
+During the months that passed between the formal betrothal in March and
+the coming of Philip, Mary grew more and more impatient, railing at her
+quarrelling Councillors, worried almost daily by Renard to hasten the
+execution of Elizabeth and Courtenay, and a prey to frequent hysterical
+attacks of wounded pride at what she considered the ungallant lack of
+eagerness on the part of her new husband to join her. She grew more
+faded and older with her anxiety, and this increased her distress,[47]
+for Elizabeth was young and beautiful, and the Queen knew that the love
+of the people for her was growing with the dread of Spanish Catholic
+intolerance. And yet the majority of the Council, not to mention the
+Parliament that was sitting, would never sanction the sacrifice of the
+Princess at the instance of the Imperial ambassador; and even the Lord
+Admiral and his fleet were suspected of a design to declare against the
+Queen unless his cousin, Princess Elizabeth, was well treated. Renard’s
+letters of the time reflect the distracted condition of affairs from
+day to day, no man knowing in which direction future safety or ruin
+to him might be encountered. “The Queen is reduced to such a state of
+perplexity that she is at a loss whose advice to adopt, knowing well
+that all is being done in favour of Lady Elizabeth.” Scurrilous ballads
+were flung about in public places, even in the Queen’s palace, bitterly
+lampooning the unhappy Mary and her lagging Spanish bridegroom. To make
+matters worse, when the French ambassador, Noailles, who was known to
+be the principal fomenter of all this trouble, went to take leave of
+Mary at Whitehall the day before she set out on her gradual approach to
+the coast to meet Philip at the end of May, an open wrangle took place
+between them, and the ambassador in a rage threatened to leave England
+immediately—a threat not at all distasteful to the Imperialists, because
+it brought nearer what they aimed at before all things—the breaking out
+of hostilities between England and France.
+
+By slow stages Mary travelled through the latter half of June and early
+July from Richmond by Oatlands and Farnham to Winchester, where she
+arrived two days after Philip had landed at Southampton. As Philip had
+truly said, this was no romantic love voyage that he was making, but a
+deliberate sacrifice of all his personal tastes and wishes for the sake
+of overwhelming political expediency. No effort was to be spared to gain
+England to the side of Spain against France, and Philip deliberately laid
+himself out to please. On his famous voyage to stay with his father in
+Flanders some years before, his cold hauteur and lack of expansiveness
+had quite alienated the Germans and Flemings from him. His grave young
+face, his prim demeanour, his sober garments, his rigid abstemiousness
+in eating and drinking, and his distaste for the martial amusements of
+the time, were all foreign to the rough vitality of the Teutons; and
+Renard and the Emperor had warned the Prince that he must not repeat
+his mistake, but conform to English customs and learn at least some
+English words. The Spaniards of his train were enjoined also “to behave
+themselves according to English fashion, and to be modest in their
+bearing, trusting that your Highness, with your accustomed kindness,
+will make much of them.”[48] And the Emperor, desirous of avoiding all
+occasion for dissension, writes to his son (1st April, 1554): “They tell
+me that some married women are going with their husbands in your company.
+I think they will be more difficult to govern and keep friends with the
+English women than even soldiers would be. You had better see whether
+it would not be wiser to send them here [to Flanders] until affairs in
+England are more settled.”[49]
+
+Even Philip’s enemies, the Venetians, testified to the change of
+his demeanour during his stay in England; and Soriano, the outgoing
+ambassador, said that from that time forward, even in Spain, his gentle
+courtesy and kindness were continued habitually, whilst Michaeli, the
+new Venetian ambassador, who was the staunch ally of Noailles, was
+emphatic in his testimony of Philip’s affability in England, and says
+that his conduct towards his wife was such as to make any woman love
+him: “for in truth no one in the world could have been a better or more
+affectionate husband.” Yet another Venetian envoy, Damula, accredited
+to the Emperor, wrote that on disembarking in England the Prince was
+“remarked by everybody for his graciousness, without any stiffness or
+assumption of royal ceremony, mixing with the courtiers rather as a
+comrade than as a king.” Certain it is, with public opinion in England
+strongly unfavourable and in a perfect panic of apprehension, Philip’s
+tact and graciousness to a great extent overcame the prejudice against
+him, and he became in a few months personally quite popular, whilst he
+contrived almost immediately to gain his wife’s devoted affection. The
+over-coloured picture of Philip as a trembling, seasick creature,[50]
+in daily fear of poison, which Froude drew from the letters of Noailles
+and the account of the Venetian, Baoardo, needs much modification to be
+near the impartial truth; for though, as we have seen, Philip looked
+upon the marriage as a sacrifice to reasons of State, as undoubtedly it
+was, he bore his cross gaily and like a well-bred gentleman. If he had
+done otherwise, indeed, as he was quite clever enough to recognise, the
+sacrifice itself would have been useless.
+
+From the hour of his arrival in Southampton Water, two o’clock in the
+afternoon of Thursday, 19th July, until after breakfast the next day,
+Philip remained on board the _Espiritu Santo_ at anchor, whilst the
+salutes of the ships and forts thundered out their welcome; state barges
+brought the English and Flemish Lord Admirals to visit the Prince, and
+the Marquis of las Navas, Figueroa, the Emperor’s special ambassador, and
+several high English nobles, came to pay their respects to the new king.
+After breakfast on the 20th July, Howard’s state galley came alongside
+the _Espiritu Santo_, and from it climbed to the deck the Lord Admiral
+and a little group of English nobles—Arundel, Derby, and Shrewsbury—with
+Sir John Williams, to whom Philip at once handed the white wand of
+Chamberlain. The Prince stood upon the high deck, cap in hand and with
+smiling face, to receive them, and after they had been presented to
+the principal grandees the English nobles led the Prince to the barge,
+followed by the Duke of Alba, with his lean, dark face and long, grizzled
+beard; Count de Feria, with his raven hair and flashing eyes; Ruy Gomez,
+Philip’s dearest friend, suave and imperturbable; Pescara, Egmont, Horn,
+and a dozen other high courtiers, Spaniards and Flemings. No permission
+was given to the other courtiers to land until the Prince’s barge touched
+the shore, whilst no soldier or man-at-arms was allowed to land at all
+on pain of death, for Philip dared not offend English feeling in this
+matter, and he had learnt from his father that the fortune of war had
+been against him, and he needed every man-at-arms at once in Flanders.[51]
+
+As the gaily dressed oarsmen rapidly forced the great gilded galley
+through the smooth water to the shore, a little ceremony was performed
+under the stern canopy. The Earl of Arundel and Sir John Williams as a
+commission from the Queen besought permission to invest the Prince with
+the Order of the Garter; and Williams fastened the gilt ligature around
+his leg, whilst Arundel placed upon his breast a glittering pendant rose
+and George. As Philip stepped upon English soil for the first time,
+thirty nobles and gentlemen of the Queen’s Court did him reverence, and
+Sir Anthony Browne, leading a beautiful white hackney caparisoned in
+crimson velvet and gold, announced himself in a Latin speech as the new
+Consort’s master of the horse. The Prince thanked the new grand equerry,
+but replied that, as the distance was short, he would walk on foot to
+the house prepared for him. But this he was told was not in accordance
+with English etiquette, and without more ado Browne, lifting him up in
+his arms, placed him in the saddle, and then, humbly kissing the golden
+stirrups, walked bare-headed by his master’s side. With crowds of gaily
+clad English and Spanish courtiers preceding him, Philip passed thus
+through the curious townsfolk to the Church of Holy Rood. He must have
+looked an impressive figure, with his dapper, erect bearing, his yellow,
+curly beard and close-cropped fair head, dressed, as he was, in black
+velvet and silver, hung all about with massive gold chains and with
+glittering precious stones in his velvet cap, upon breast, neck, and
+wrists. Browne himself was no unworthy company for his Prince, for he too
+was garbed in a rich suit of black velvet entirely covered with fine gold
+embroidery, with a surcoat of the same, of which the long, hanging false
+sleeves were lined with cloth of silver.
+
+After a brief service of thanksgiving, Philip was taken to the house
+destined for his reception. The English guards and archers on duty
+and a crowd of English household servitors had been dressed by Mary’s
+directions in the red-and-yellow livery of Spain; and when Philip
+entered the rooms prepared for him, he found that here, too, his wife’s
+thoughtful prevision had been exercised; for the appointments and
+furniture were sumptuous, and upon the walls there hung royal draperies
+of gold-embroidered damask.[52] To the assembled English nobles Philip
+then delivered a dignified speech in Latin, saying that he had left
+his own land not to augment his possessions or his power, of which he
+had sufficient, but because God had called him to marry their Queen,
+with whom he intended to live here in harmony; and he promised his
+hearers that if they were faithful to her and to him, “he would be to
+them a right good and loving prince.” He was from the first all smiles
+and graciousness to the English, who were, indeed, agreeably surprised
+at his amiability when after his private supper he came out into the
+presence chamber and chatted unaffectedly and gaily with the gentlemen
+there. To bluff Lord Admiral Howard he said that he had come to England
+for his wedding unprovided with garb sufficiently sumptuous to do honour
+to their Queen, but he hoped that the velvet horse-cloth of the hackney
+the Queen had sent him might serve him to make a splendid vestment withal.
+
+The pledging of the company after supper in a draught of English
+beer, which the partial view of Froude presented as a repellant and
+unwilling concession, was a perfectly natural part of the whole of
+Philip’s behaviour. He had come to win the English by affability, and
+he was determined as much as possible to conform to English prejudices
+and to impress upon his Spanish followers the need for their doing
+likewise. Even the enemy, who records the action, does not hint at any
+demonstration of dislike or reluctance on the part of Philip to the
+politic course he took. So thoroughly, indeed, did he act up to his
+policy, that before he left Southampton his Spanish attendants were
+all scowling and grumbling in spite and jealousy that their Prince was
+preferring Englishmen to them, and that his service and safety were
+placed in the hands of foreigners to the exclusion of his own people.
+Though Philip had great ends to serve in drinking beer and sitting out
+gargantuan English feasts, at which his proud frugal countrymen scoffed,
+to the courtiers who accompanied him from Spain, it was as gall and
+wormwood to see the greatest Prince in Christendom thus curry favour
+with these rough islanders, whom they regarded as inferiors; and when,
+on Saturday, the Spaniards were all ordered to leave the church at
+Southampton before the service was over, in order that the Prince might
+come out attended only by Englishmen, they broke out into almost open
+protest, particularly when, as the rain was coming down in torrents and
+the Prince was without cape or hat, he borrowed the garments from an
+Englishman near him rather than from a Spaniard, to go the few yards from
+the church to his lodging.
+
+The three hundred houses of which Southampton consisted were already
+crammed to overflowing with Philip’s great train of courtiers and four
+hundred servants, but every hour the crowd in the little port grew as
+the neighbouring gentry, with their followers, rode in to honour their
+new King in accordance with Queen Mary’s orders. Nor was this all, for
+early on Saturday morning the Earl of Pembroke came with an escort for
+the Prince of two hundred English gentlemen in black velvet and gold
+chains, and three hundred more in scarlet, all splendidly mounted. In
+return for this, Philip sent Egmont to the Queen with thanks and loving
+messages. Half way to Winchester Egmont met a great train coming towards
+him, escorting the Lord Chancellor, Bishop Gardiner, bearing from his
+Sovereign a valuable ring to her spouse. Gardiner had done his best to
+prevent the match, and when that had proved impossible, he had cleverly
+minimised its disadvantages from an English point of view, so that he was
+far from being _persona grata_ to Renard and the Spaniards. But for weeks
+past he had been in hourly danger of ruin from the cabals against him
+and the distrust of the Queen; and he now sought safety in an apparent
+cordiality towards the Spanish marriage, an attitude which Philip repaid
+by treating him with almost excessive deference. The next day (Sunday),
+in the torrential rain, the favourite Ruy Gomez rode to Winchester with
+another beautiful ring for Mary, and the Lords of the Council and a
+host of other nobles came in to salute Philip, who, after rising late,
+dined and supped in public for the first time in England. To the rage
+of the Spaniards, his English household served him; though the proudest
+of his grandees, the Duke of Alba, was allowed unofficially to hand him
+the napkin.[53] “We are of no more use here, and are simply vagabonds.
+We should be better employed in serving in the war, for they make us
+pay here twenty times what a thing is worth,” grumbled one of Philip’s
+gentlemen-in-waiting, who fairly represented the general feeling amongst
+them, even on the first days of their arrival in England.
+
+Before Philip started on Monday afternoon for Winchester, better news
+came from the Emperor. The French had not followed up their victory at
+Marienburg, and the six hundred Spanish jennets which had come in the
+fleet, with Philip’s own horses, might now be landed.[54] The anxious
+Queen, nevertheless, continued to send fresh supplies of splendidly
+caparisoned horses for Philip’s use; and when, in a perfect deluge
+of rain, at two o’clock in the afternoon the Prince started out to
+join his bride in the ancient city seven miles away, a train of three
+thousand magnificently accoutred horsemen clattered in his train. With
+the exception of some fifteen of the highest Spanish nobles, who rode
+close around the Prince—Alba, Medina-Celi, Feria, and their like—Philip’s
+strong bodyguard was formed of English men-at-arms dressed in Spanish
+colours, much to the jealousy of the Spanish guard still cooped up in
+the pestilential ships. On the road six hundred more English gentlemen
+in black velvet and gold met the cavalcade and joined it. Then, nearer
+Winchester, six of the Queen’s pages, dressed in crimson brocade and
+cloth of gold, were encountered with a herald bringing for the Prince six
+more beautiful steeds as a present from their mistress. The malicious
+Venetian tells a story embellished by Froude of a breathless, galloping
+messenger from the Queen, whose haste threw Philip and his Spanish
+friends into a panic of fear; but everything that Baoardo wrote on
+the subject of the marriage is suspect and cannot be accepted without
+confirmation, of which in this case there is none.
+
+When the Prince started from Southampton, he wore a surcoat of black
+velvet adorned with diamonds, and doublet and trunks of white satin
+embroidered with gold. But this delicate finery, though covered by a
+thick red felt cloak, was wet through before he arrived at Winchester;
+and a halt was made at the beautiful hospital of Saint Cross to enable
+a change of garments to be donned, the fresh suit consisting of a
+black velvet surcoat trimmed with gold bugles, and under-garments of
+white velvet and gold. Thus bedizened he entered the ancient gateway,
+past kneeling mayor and aldermen, and through silent, gaping crowds of
+townsfolk, direct to the splendid cathedral, the shrine of England’s
+ancient Kings. A little group of mitred bishops stood before the great
+west door, crosses raised and censers swinging; and in solemn procession
+to the high altar they led beneath a velvet canopy this slim, erect,
+little man with fair face and yellow hair, whom they and their like
+regarded as God’s chosen instrument to undo the impious work of Henry and
+of Somerset.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III
+
+1554-1555
+
+    Philip’s first meeting with Mary—The marriage—Discontent
+    and disappointment of the Spaniards—Philip’s kindness
+    to his wife—Spanish descriptions of England—Philip in
+    London—Arrival of Pole—Philip’s religious policy in England—His
+    attempts to marry Elizabeth to Savoy—The Emperor’s war with
+    France—Departure of Philip from England
+
+
+Dusk was falling upon the gloomy day when Philip, having duly performed
+his devotions and admired the splendid fane of Winchester, found himself
+at ease in the Dean’s house, which had been prepared for his reception.
+The Queen’s maiden scruples had been respected, for it was not in
+accordance with etiquette that they should both sleep under the same roof
+before they became man and wife; so that whilst the Deanery sheltered the
+bridegroom, the bride was lodged in Bishop Gardiner’s castle adjoining.
+Philip supped, and when he was thinking of going to bed, it being ten
+o’clock at night, some English courtiers and the Mistress of the Robes
+came and said that the Queen wished him to visit her secretly in her
+closet, where she awaited him, but that he was to bring only a very few
+followers. Another beautiful dress had perforce to be assumed, consisting
+of a French surcoat embroidered in silver and gold, with doublet and
+trunks of white kid covered with gold embroidery; and then, accompanied
+by Alba, Medina-Celi, Feria, Aguilar, Egmont, Horn, and a half-dozen
+more grandees, the Prince was led by his English guides across the lane
+and still-existing little green to a garden gate, through which only the
+nobles chosen by Philip were allowed to enter. They found themselves in
+a delicious garden, and in the mysterious darkness threaded the leafy
+alleys, until they arrived at the great moated house, which they entered
+by a little back door, from which a private stair led direct to the
+Queen’s private apartment.
+
+When the English guide threw open the door at the head of the stair,
+Philip for the first time looked upon the woman who was to be his second
+wife. Mary was slowly pacing the long passage or gallery lined with
+tapestry, which constituted the room. Two gentlemen bore torches before
+her, and with her were Gardiner and three or four other aged men and some
+ladies-in-waiting. Philip hung back a few seconds whilst Egmont entered
+the room. He, being known to the Queen, was greeted by her graciously;
+and then, as she caught sight of the smart figure of her bridegroom, she
+walked rapidly towards him, and kissed her hand before she grasped his.
+Philip did the same, and, in the English fashion of the time, gallantly
+kissed his elderly bride upon her lips. Mary was, as usual, splendidly
+dressed, and her trim little figure must have looked stately enough in
+her black velvet gown, cut high at the neck, her petticoat of frosted
+silver, her coif of black velvet and gold, and wonderful girdle, collar,
+and pendants of flashing gems. Her complexion was of that peculiar
+transparency which usually accompanies red hair; her eyes, which were
+also of ruddy brown, were almost without eyebrows, as her father’s had
+been; and her somewhat austere face was wreathed now with smiles of
+welcome to the man for whose coming she had yearned.
+
+Leading him by the hand to a chair beside her own beneath the canopy,
+she replied in French to his Spanish compliments. Whilst they were thus
+seated in happy converse, the irrepressible Lord Admiral Howard broke in
+with some of his usual suggestive jokes, not in the best taste according
+to the ideas of to-day, but apparently accepted at that time as quite
+permissible. Then, one by one, the Spanish nobles were brought forward
+to kiss the Queen’s hand; and Philip, apparently finding the interview
+somewhat tedious, as his knowledge of French was not extensive, proposed
+that he should go into the adjoining apartment to greet the Queen’s
+ladies. Mary insisted upon accompanying him. The ladies, in pairs, were
+led forward to courtesy before the Prince, who, cap in hand, “in order
+not to violate the custom of the country, kissed each of them on the lips
+as they passed him.” The ceremony, probably, was not over-pleasant to
+Mary, for when, the kissing being at an end, Philip suggested that it was
+getting late and he had better retire, the Queen insisted upon leading
+him to the canopy again for another chat.
+
+Already the Spaniards began to nod and wink to each other to signify that
+the Queen had fallen in love with her husband thus soon at first sight,
+and it is quite probable that such was the case. Mary’s heart had been
+starved for love all her life. There was none of her kin now with whom
+she could unbend, and, with her crushing responsibility, it must have
+been for her like a glimpse of heaven to feel that this good-looking,
+wise, young man, fully her equal in rank, and her superior in power, was
+in future to be kinsman, husband, and upholder in one. At last the time
+came for parting, and in jesting mood grave Philip learnt of his bride
+how to say “Good-night” in English. But alas! before he could reach the
+ladies in the other room to say the newly learnt words to them, the
+outlandish sounds had slipped out of his mind, and with much laughter
+and smiles he had to go back and learn them again from the Queen.[55]
+In conversation with Philip, the Queen’s governess (Mrs. Clarencius?)
+expressed her joy at the coming union and thanks to God for letting her
+live to see the day, though she regretted that she had not reared a
+more beautiful bride for him;[56] and according to another eyewitness’s
+account the Queen herself modestly thanked Philip for accepting so old
+and ugly a wife. Generally speaking, however, Mary does not appear
+to have produced an unfavourable impression upon the Spaniards. They
+speak of her manner at this time as being gay and gracious, and her
+clear complexion was much admired. Certainly Philip played his part to
+perfection, whatever his private feelings may have been; and if Mary had
+been a budding beauty of twenty instead of a faded old maid of nearly
+forty, he could not have been a more gallant bridegroom in appearance
+than he was: although to his bosom friend, Ruy Gomez, he confided a few
+days after the wedding that he was prepared with resignation to drain the
+chalice to the end which his marriage presented to him, since, as his
+friend knew, he had not married for love, but to restore England to the
+Church; and such an object made him lose sight of the Queen’s lack of
+personal attractions.
+
+Philip slept late the morning after his arrival at Winchester, and as
+soon as he was out of bed the Queen’s tailor brought him two superb sets
+of garments—one made of very rich white brocade profusely embroidered
+with gold bugles and seed pearls, with diamonds for buttons, and the
+other a similar suit in crimson. Philip went that day, Tuesday, to Mass
+at the Cathedral, dressed in a purple velvet surcoat with silver fringe
+and white satin doublet and trunks; and then after his private dinner,
+went in great state to visit the Queen publicly. This time she received
+him in the great hall of the Bishop’s palace, surrounded by the whole of
+her Court and attended by fifty ladies—“none of them pretty”—dressed in
+purple velvet. Mary received the Prince at the foot of her daïs, amidst
+the fanfare of trumpets, and after kissing him affectionately led him
+to the seat at her side. She must have looked as magnificent as fine
+clothes could make her as she sat “in sweet converse” with him under her
+canopy; for we are told that her purple velvet robe and cloth-of-gold
+petticoat were all aglow with precious stones, and that coif, neck,
+breast, and wrists, were stiff with pearls and diamonds. There were
+special ambassadors, too, to receive and welcome: Figueroa, viceroy of
+Naples, from the Emperor, others from the King of the Romans and his son,
+from Venice, Florence, Poland, and Ferrara. But one was missing; for
+Noailles, the Frenchman, for whom this marriage was a dire defeat, had
+not been bidden to the feast; and in the intervals of his plotting to
+raise trouble was writing to his baffled master ill-natured and distorted
+reports, at second hand, of the proceedings.
+
+The next day, Wednesday, 25th July, was the Feast of St. James, the
+patron of Spain, and the noble cathedral of Winchester was aflame with
+glowing colour. The ancient nave can never have seen so gorgeous a
+company as was there assembled in the forenoon. All that pomp, skill, and
+lavish expenditure could produce was there to do honour to an event which
+all spectators felt was one of moving interest for the future of the
+world; because it meant, so far as men might see, the secure fastening
+upon the neck of England again of the yoke of the Papacy, which Henry
+VIII. had shaken off, the stifling of the Reformation in Europe, and the
+reduction of France to a secondary place amongst the nations. Philip,
+in the white satin suit the Queen had sent him and with a regal mantle
+of cloth of gold, led his dazzlingly clad bride up the lofty nave to an
+elevated platform in the centre; and there Gardiner, with three attendant
+Bishops, made them man and wife. To equalise their rank, it was announced
+that the Viceroy Figueroa had brought formal instruments from the
+Emperor, resigning to his son the Kingdoms of Naples and Jerusalem; and
+this proclamation having been made, the King and Queen, with swords of
+state borne before them by the Earls of Derby and Pembroke, descended to
+the high altar, followed by fifty ladies in cloth of gold, to hear Mass,
+during which, we are told, the Queen never removed her devout eyes from
+the crucifix.
+
+[Illustration: QUEEN MARY AT THE PERIOD OF HER MARRIAGE
+
+FROM THE PAINTING BY ANTONIO MOR IN THE PRADO MUSEUM]
+
+Rarely can a marriage have taken place prompted on both sides by such
+elevation of spirit as this. The objects in view may be condemned now,
+as they were condemned by many at the time, but there is no gainsaying
+that, so far as Philip and Mary were concerned, they both believed they
+were making private sacrifice for the public welfare. This feeling was
+evident through the whole of the marriage negotiations and afterwards,
+especially in Philip’s case, until it was seen that the plan had failed.
+It is true that the famished heart of Mary grew to love her husband for
+his own sake as time went on; but she loved him first and best because he
+personified the force that was to make England Catholic, whilst she to
+him meant the influence that was to enable him and his House to wield the
+power of England against their enemy.
+
+After the ceremony, the King and Queen walked in procession through an
+immense crowd to the Bishop’s palace, where in the great hall was laid
+the wedding banquet. All the courtly ceremony of saluting the royal
+dishes as they were brought in, the genuflexions to the throne, the
+trumpeting of minstrels, and the symbolic functions of the great officers
+of State, aroused the admiration of the form-loving Spaniards; but their
+hearts were raging with jealousy during the progress of the feast, for
+their wounded pride did not fail to notice that Mary took precedence of
+her husband everywhere, that she had a more stately seat, and that while
+she ate off gold plate he was served on silver. They comforted themselves
+with the idea that all this would be changed when the King had been
+crowned; but that their Prince, the Emperor’s son and heir, should take
+a second place to any one on earth filled them with anger, for they had
+already begun to realise that they were not to enter into possession of
+England as they had hoped. The richness and abundance they saw around
+them made their disappointment the more bitter. Such a show of plate
+on tables and sideboards as this they had never seen before.[57] All
+the platters and dishes were of silver, and great buffets loaded with
+plate stood at both ends of the great hall. The sideboard behind the
+high table, at which Philip and Mary sat, with Gardiner far off at the
+end, had upon it a hundred great pieces, “with a great gilt clock half
+as high as a man, and a marble fountain with a rim of gold.” Before the
+King and Queen stood Lords Pembroke and Strange with sword and mace;
+the four services of thirty dishes each, far too much for the 158 noble
+guests, were borne in to the sound of minstrelsy; and after the feast the
+Earl of Arundel presented the ewer of water for the King’s hands, whilst
+the Marquis of Winchester bore the napkin. The only Spaniard allowed to
+serve the King was the Duke of Infantado’s son, Don Iñigo de Mendoza, as
+cupbearer: “as for any of the Prince’s own stewards doing anything, such
+a thing was never thought of, and not one of us took a wand in our own
+hands, nor does it seem likely we ever shall, not even the controller.
+They had far better turn us all out as vagabonds.”[58]
+
+After the Queen had pledged her guests in a cup of wine, and a herald had
+proclaimed Philip’s new style as King of England, France, Naples, and
+Jerusalem, Prince of Spain, and Count of Flanders, the royal pair retired
+to another chamber, accompanied by the English and Spanish nobles, where
+the afternoon was passed in gallant conversation, though apparently with
+some difficulty to the Spaniards, who were desirous of showing their
+gallantry to the English ladies. “We had great trouble in making out
+their meaning, except those who spoke Latin; so we have all resolved not
+to give them any presents of gloves until we can understand them. The
+gentlemen who speak the language are mostly very glad to find that we
+Spaniards cannot do so.”
+
+At the ball that wound up the entertainments, the same difficulty arising
+from diverse customs stood in the way of intercourse, for the Spanish and
+English dances were different, and the courtiers of the two nations could
+not hit upon a common formula until Philip led his wife out to tread a
+measure in the German fashion, which was known to both.
+
+With every day that passed the discontent and jealousy grew. Philip
+himself was charming, treating his wife in lover-like fashion, and full
+of tactful affability to the English people. But the more conciliatory
+Philip showed himself, the more his Spanish courtiers chafed. They
+had found their position in England entirely different from what they
+had expected; and their hopes of easily dominating the country were
+fading rapidly. The men-at-arms and the bodyguard were still confined
+to their ships at Portsmouth and Southampton, forbidden to land under
+pain of death, and were becoming restive; the courtiers themselves and
+their servants were ridiculed in the streets of Winchester, and even
+waylaid and robbed if they ventured into the country; and yet they dared
+not complain. “After this weary voyage these people wish to subject
+us to some extent to their laws; for it is a new thing for them to
+have Spaniards in the country, and they wish to feel secure.”[59] “We
+Spaniards are miserable here, much worse than in Castile; and some say
+that they would rather be in the barest stubble field of Toledo than
+here in the groves of Amadis.” Another courtier writing from Winchester
+says, “Great rogues infest the roads, and have robbed some of us, amongst
+others, the chamberlain of Don Juan Pacheco, from whom they took 400
+crowns and all his jewelry and plate. No trace can be found of the
+property, nor of the four or five boxes missing from the King’s lodging;
+though the Council is scouring the country for it. As for the friars,
+they have had to be lodged in the college for their safety, and they
+bitterly repent having come.”
+
+It was difficult to please proud, disappointed people who were ready to
+disapprove of everything; and when the Duchess of Alba came, three days
+after the marriage, to join her husband, though Mary treated her with
+almost royal honours, the haughty dame and her kin were in a chronic
+state of indignation at the position she was obliged to occupy. An
+amusing account of her first visit to Mary on the third day after the
+wedding[60] does not suggest any lack of ceremony, though the lodgings
+assigned to her may not have been so sumptuous as she thought fit. The
+Duchess was conducted to the Bishop’s palace by the Countesses of
+Pembroke and Kildare and the Earl of Bedford, and the Queen advanced
+almost to the door of the presence chamber to meet her. The Duchess
+knelt, and the Queen, failing in her efforts to raise her, courtesied
+almost as low, and kissed her upon the mouth, which she usually did only
+to those of the blood royal. She then led the Duchess to the daïs, and
+seated herself upon the floor, inviting her guest to do likewise. But
+the latter refused to sit on the floor until the Queen sat upon a chair.
+This the Queen would not do, but sent for two stools as a compromise,
+upon one of which she sat and invited the Duchess to take the other,
+instead of which the Duchess then sat upon the floor, whereupon the
+Queen left her stool and also sat upon the floor; and after an almost
+interminable friendly wrangle, both ladies settled down on the stools,
+their conversation being interpreted by the Marquis de las Navas, as
+Mary, although she understood Spanish, did not speak it. When the Earl of
+Derby was presented to the Duchess, she was horrified at his offering to
+salute her in the usual English fashion by kissing her lips, and she drew
+back from him in hot indignation, though hardly in time to avoid contact.
+But as the lady haughtily expatiated to her own people afterwards upon
+the uncouth fashion, she declared that the Earl had only just managed to
+reach her cheek.
+
+By the last day of July most of the English gentry had gone home for
+the present, the Spaniards being distributed about Winchester and
+Southampton, whilst the troops were only awaiting a fair wind to carry
+them to Flanders. With a comparatively small suite the Queen and King set
+forth on the 31st July for Basing House, fifteen miles away, the seat of
+Lord Winchester, the Lord Treasurer, and so by short stages to Reading,
+Windsor, and Richmond, where they remained until the 17th August. In the
+meanwhile the impatience of the Spaniards at their position in England
+grew intolerable, and the Duke of Medina-Celi, the premier noble, and
+of royal descent, was the first to insist upon immediate release with
+permission to join the Emperor in Flanders. Within a few days eighty
+other hidalgos had demanded similar licence, and by the time Richmond
+was reached the only Spanish nobles in attendance upon Philip were Alba,
+Feria, Olivares, Pedro de Cordova, and three gentlemen, amongst whom was
+the indefatigable letter-writer, Pedro Enriquez, whose narrative of the
+events is so expressive of the lack of community between the two peoples.
+Not only were the manners of the English ladies and their dresses
+unbecoming in Spanish eyes, and the English food coarsely excessive, but
+the political institutions of the country appeared to them, used as they
+were to the absolute monarchy of Castile, to be almost Republican in
+their hard limitation of the power of the Sovereign.
+
+“Their Majesties” (writes Pedro Enriquez from Richmond) “are the happiest
+married couple in the world, and are more in love with each other
+than I can write here. The King never leaves her, and on the road he
+rides by her side, helping her to mount and dismount. They sometimes
+dine together in public, and on Feast days he accompanies her to Mass.
+Although the Queen is not at all beautiful, for she is little, and thin
+rather than stout, she is very red and white. She has no eyebrows,
+she is a perfect saint, but she dresses very badly. The ladies here
+all wear farthingales of coloured cloth, without silk, their outer
+garments being of coloured damask, satin, or velvet, but very badly
+made. Some of them wear velvet shoes, but most of them kid. They wear
+black stockings, and even show their legs, some of them up to the knees,
+at least whilst they are riding, for their skirts are not long enough.
+They look quite indelicate when they are travelling thus, and even when
+they are seated. They are not at all beautiful, nor are they graceful in
+dancing, which with them consists simply of prancing and trotting.[61]
+None of the Spanish gentlemen are in love with them or think anything
+of them, nor they of the Spaniards. They are not worth troubling about,
+or feasting much, or spending money upon, which is a good thing for the
+Spaniards. All the rejoicing here consists of eating and drinking. The
+Queen spends in food 300,000 ducats a year. The whole of the Lords of
+the Council—thirteen of them—feed in the palace, as do the Officers of
+State, the Lord Steward, the Lord Chamberlain, the Master of the Horse,
+and the King’s English household with all their wives. The ladies and
+their servants and the households of all the courtiers and two hundred
+guards all live in the palace as well. Each officer has a cook to look
+after his food in the Queen’s kitchens. There are eighteen kitchens, and
+there is such a hurly-burly in them that each one is a veritable hell.
+So that, notwithstanding the greatness of these palaces, ... and the
+smallest of the four we have seen has more rooms and better ones than
+the _Alcazar_ of Madrid, the crowds in them are so great as to be hardly
+contained.... The ordinary consumption in the palace every day is from
+eighty to a hundred sheep, with a dozen fat oxen and dozen and a half of
+calves, besides vast quantities of game, poultry, venison, wild boar, and
+rabbits; whilst, as for the beer, they drink more in the summer than the
+river would hold in Valladolid. The ladies and some of the gentlemen put
+sugar into their wine. The noise and bustle in the palace are dreadful.
+And notwithstanding the vast number of rooms, they have never given to
+the Duchess of Alba a chamber in the palace. They are the most ungrateful
+people ever seen. Not even in the villages where we stay—and each one has
+a village—do they give to the Duke and Duchess a house to themselves, or
+the best one. They have fine trouble over their lodgings, as if it were
+not enough to prevent them from serving in their offices without housing
+them badly.”
+
+Already the courtiers saw that the chance of Philip being allowed to
+dominate England in consequence of his marriage was a slender one, but
+the King himself, in his patient, prudent way, persevered. His personal
+influence over his wife grew stronger every day, and when later she
+gave him hopes of the birth of an heir, a new prospect for the future
+seemed to open to him. The Londoners were as yet still almost in a panic
+at the coming of the Spanish King, and the most exaggerated ideas with
+regard to the number of armed men he would bring with him prevailed,
+artfully fostered by Noailles and the Protestant party. On the eve of the
+state entry of the royal pair into London the appearance of affairs was
+unpromising enough, as may be seen by Pedro Enriquez’s letter dated on
+the 17th August.
+
+“The English cannot bear the sight of the Spaniards: they would rather
+see the devil. They rob us, even in the towns, and on the road none of
+us dare to stray for a couple of miles for fear of being robbed. A body
+of Englishmen on one occasion plundered and beat no less than fifty
+Spaniards. The Councillors know all about it, but they shut their eyes.
+The number of thieves in the country is quite incredible. They go about
+sometimes twenty together. There is neither justice nor fear of God....
+For us there is no justice at all. The King commands us to raise no
+questions, but whilst we are here to put up with everything and suffer
+all their spite without a word. So, of course, they treat us badly and
+despise us. When we have complained to Bribiesca (the magistrate) and to
+the ambassadors, they tell us that it is to his Majesty’s interest that
+we should overlook everything. This marriage will have been of small use
+if this Queen does not have a child, of which I am not at all sure. When
+we were in Castile they said that as soon as his Highness was King of
+England we should be masters of France. The opposite is the case, for the
+French are now stronger and more aggressive than ever in Flanders....
+Kings in this country do not command more than if they were subjects. The
+real rulers are the Councillors, who are not only masters of the country
+but masters of the King as well. They are all lords, some enriched by the
+plunder of the monasteries, some by inheritance, but they are much more
+feared and reverenced than the Sovereign. They say now that they will not
+let his Highness go unless the Queen and they please, as this realm is
+quite big enough for a King without any others. Seeing what they are, I
+should not wonder if they do it, ... for they know how hard pressed we
+are in Flanders and are glad of it; ... they would not care a farthing
+if Flanders were lost, and his Majesty with it. The King and Queen enter
+London to-morrow, and I am sure we ought not to do so, seeing the way
+they are treating the Spaniards already there. Not only do they not
+provide lodgings for them, insulting them as if they were savages, but
+they rob them in the inns. As for the friars who came with his Majesty,
+they had better have stayed at home, for these English are so wicked and
+godless that they even maltreat friars, and these dare not leave their
+lodgings. Don Pedro de Cordova and his nephew, Don Antonio, are knights,
+and the people wanted to strip them of their habits the other day, making
+fun of them and asking them why they wore those crosses on their coats.”
+
+On the day that this was written Philip and Mary and their Court in
+state barges rowed from Richmond to Southwark, where they landed at the
+Bishop of Winchester’s house, and after killing a fat buck in Southwark
+Park, slept at the palace which stood upon the site of the present
+London Bridge Station, in order to start betimes in the morning of the
+next day across London Bridge, and so through the capital to Whitehall.
+All the fifty gibbets in the streets upon which Wyatt’s men had hanged
+were cleared away; the heads of the noble malefactors on the spikes at
+the Bridge-foot were no longer to be seen. All that paint and gilt and
+pageantry and pleasant looks could do to make the dour Londoners think
+well of the Queen’s Consort was done. Gog and Magog in new suits stood
+at the drawbridge that spanned the space from London Bridge end to the
+Southwark shore. Triumphs stood at the street corners, one of the first,
+that in Gracechurch Street, containing the maladroit statue of Henry
+VIII. with the Bible labelled _Verbum Dei_ in his hand, that so much
+moved Bishop Gardiner’s wrath.[62] Past kneeling aldermen and velvet-clad
+guildsmen, and with a great train of splendid courtiers, Philip and his
+English wife rode through the silent crowds, whilst the guns of the
+White Tower thundered what was at the same time a salute to the King
+and a warning to the people. The official greetings were, as usual,
+extravagantly fulsome. That borne by Gog and Magog is thus translated—
+
+    “O Noble Prince, sole hope of Cæsar’s side,
+    By God appointed all the world to guide,
+    Right harteley welcome art thou to our land.
+    The archer Britayne yieldeth thee her hand;
+    And noble England openeth her bosom
+    Of hartie affection for to bid thee welcome:
+    But chiefly London doth her love vouchsafe,
+    Rejoicing that her Philip has come safe.
+    She seeith her citizens love thee on each side
+    And trusts they shall be happy of such a guide,
+    And al do thinke that thou art sent to their citie
+    By th’ only means of God’s paternal pitie,
+    So that their minde, voice, study, power and will,
+    Is only set to love thee, Philip, still”—[63]
+
+and from Gracechurch to Whitehall tributes in Latin verse even more
+eulogistic than this greeted the man whose very presence the great mass
+of the people had been taught to dread. All the Philips that ever lived
+were dwarfed, he was told, by such a paragon of excellence as himself;
+Orpheus had not such power to move as by his eloquence could this
+reticent, mumbling Philip, who spoke but little of any language but his
+own.
+
+    “In like case now, thy grace of speech so franke,
+    Doth comfort us whose minds afore were bleak
+    And therefore England giveth thee harty thanke
+    Whose chiefest joy is to hear thee Philip speke.”[64]
+
+Mary herself could see no evil in her husband, and we are told that she
+was highly gratified at all this dithyrambic praise of him. As they
+dismounted at Whitehall Gate, and she led him, all smiles, into the great
+presence chamber, Mary and Philip seemed to onlookers an ideally happy
+couple, notwithstanding the difference in their ages. Ruy Gomez, writing
+on the 24th August to Eraso in Spain, says: “The King entertains the
+Queen excellently, and well knows how to pass over what is not attractive
+in her for the sensibility of the flesh. He keeps her so pleased that
+verily when they were together the other day alone she almost made love
+to him and he answered in the same fashion. As for these gentlemen
+(_i.e._, the English nobles), his behaviour towards them is such that
+they themselves confess that they never yet had a King in England who so
+soon won the hearts of all men.”[65]
+
+Philip, indeed, had by his tact and amiability already begun to break
+down the hatred and distrust that had heralded his approach. At the
+period of the state entry into London, a diarist writing in the Tower
+of London no doubt only reflected the general feeling of apprehension
+when he wrote: “At this time there were so many Spaniards in London;
+that a man should have met in the street for one Englishman about four
+Spaniards, to the great discomfort of the English nation. The Halls
+(_i.e._, of the City companies) taken up for the Spaniards.”[66] In
+actual fact the number of Spanish servants and followers left to Philip
+at the time was very few—less than a dozen noblemen with their respective
+households, probably not more than two or three hundred people at
+most; and as time wore on, and it was seen that no attempt was made by
+Philip and his countrymen to interfere with the English, the influence
+of the King personally being recognised as invariably on the side of
+conciliation, a more equable frame of mind became general. News had come
+that the Emperor and his son had detained Cardinal Pole on the way to
+England, and had vetoed the extreme Papal policy with which he had at
+first been entrusted; and it was seen also that Mary herself, as well as
+her husband, assumed a desire to avoid drawing England into hostility
+with France, which was the great fear of the English people.
+
+Noailles had not been bidden to the marriage, and had only been coldly
+and tardily invited to the state entry, which invitation he refused.
+But on the 21st August, whilst the Queen was at Whitehall, the French
+ambassador could hardly avoid offering some form of congratulation, for
+it was of the highest importance that England should not be driven to
+espouse the Emperor’s war. Noailles was as grudging as possible in his
+felicitations, dryly commenting upon the fact that he had not been asked
+to the wedding, but hoped that it would not interfere with the friendship
+between England and France. Mary was most emphatic in her assurance that
+the peace would never be broken on her side, and as the ambassador left
+the Queen’s presence, somewhat reassured, he turned to Bishop Gardiner,
+who was conducting him, and said that if there was no objection he would
+like to salute Philip also. The Bishop was delighted, and conducted
+Noailles at once to the King, to whom the ambassador expressed a hope
+that the peace which had existed so long between England and France would
+not be imperilled by the coming of a Spanish Consort to England. He,
+for his part, would do his best to prevent any rupture. Philip called
+Gardiner to him and, speaking in Latin, told him to reply to Noailles,
+that although he understood French he did not speak it. “He had sworn,”
+he said, “both before and after his arrival in England, to maintain all
+the friendships and alliances existing between this and other countries,
+and he would keep his word faithfully. For his part the peace should not
+be broken so long it served the interests of England.”[67]
+
+Noailles partly suspected what to us now is clear, namely, that all this
+suavity and tolerance on the part of the Prince of the proudest nation
+on earth was only a part of the deep-laid plan of the Emperor to obtain
+for his son the full control of English policy that the marriage treaty
+had withheld from him. Mary probably suspected this as little as any one.
+Her position was extremely difficult. She was by this time really in
+love with her husband, and was deeply desirous of pleasing him; she was
+anxious for the aggrandisement of Spain, which would mean, she thought,
+the triumph of the Church over heresy in Europe, and the consolidation
+of her own throne. But she knew that her people dreaded above all things
+being dragged into a war with their nearest neighbour in a quarrel which
+did not concern them: she was an English Queen determined, so far as
+in her lay, to govern for the benefit of her country, and to her the
+only road to safety seemed to strive her hardest to bring about a peace
+between the two antagonists before England was involved in the war. Pole
+had also been entrusted by the Pope with the mission of pacifying the
+Emperor and Henry II., and was as earnest in his efforts to do so as was
+Mary herself. From Brussels, where he had been kept chafing impotently,
+he had gone to Paris on his mission of peace, but the French arms were
+on the whole in the ascendant at the time, and he returned to Flanders
+unsuccessful.[68]
+
+These efforts of Mary, Pole, and Gardiner, to reconcile France and Spain,
+received no active help from Philip and his father. The object of the
+Emperor was to cripple France by the aid of England, not to patch up
+another temporary peace with her, and the whole tendency of the Imperial
+policy was to obtain complete control over England as the first step
+to this principal object. The Emperor had always used religion when
+necessary as an instrument for political ends, and it is not surprising
+that the English Catholic Churchmen should regard his present attitude
+towards the Catholic party as inconsistent. Gardiner, Pole, Bonner, and
+the rest of them, who had never yearned for the Spanish connection,
+thought, perhaps correctly, that they could have restored England to
+the Church more speedily and safely if they had been unencumbered by
+the unpopular marriage. Mary, for whom the question was complicated by
+considerations of her personal maintenance upon the throne, thought
+otherwise, and wisely the Churchmen had made the best of the position.
+But they had no intention, if they could help it, of slackening in their
+own purpose, or of allowing the restoration of their faith in England to
+be retarded or imperilled for the political interests of the Emperor; and
+the harsh action of Bonner particularly, supported as it was by Gardiner,
+caused bitter complaints amongst the English people, and something
+approaching dismay in the Spanish party of Mary’s Council.
+
+Throughout the home and eastern countries, where Protestantism was
+strong, the action of the priests gave rise to constant brawls, the
+actors of which were unfortunately not proceeded against by the civil
+authorities but by ecclesiastics on the charge of heresy. Philip,
+by means of his friends on the Council, did his best to discourage
+these tactics, for which he saw he would unjustly have to suffer the
+unpopularity. Whilst Philip and his wife were living at Hampton Court, in
+September, there was a wild rumour in London that twelve thousand Spanish
+troops were on their way to land in England and seize the Crown,[69] and
+almost simultaneously people indignantly whispered that the Archbishopric
+of Canterbury was to be given to a Spanish friar. The most extravagant
+false news, too, was current that many leading noblemen and Councillors
+had been proclaimed traitors, amongst them Pembroke, Shrewsbury,
+Westmorland; that Dr. Petre had been dismissed from the Council; that the
+Marquis of Winchester had been forced to give Basing House to the Queen;
+that the King and Queen, in violation of the ordinary English traditions,
+had become inaccessible to the lieges;[70] and much else of the same
+sort, evidently designed to keep up the irritation against the Spanish
+Consort, who, for his part, was using every means to ingratiate himself
+with his poor faded wife[71] and her suspicious subjects.
+
+It is obvious that, so far as religion alone was concerned, the great
+majority of English people would have been ready without demur to
+accept Catholicism again if it had come without the foreign mark upon
+it, and the moderative policy of the Emperor was dictated solely by the
+political aim of conciliating the minority, who it was thought would
+be most strongly opposed to Spanish influence. For this the Churchmen
+cared nothing, whilst the Protestants and French party, instead of
+being conciliated by the King’s attitude, naturally seized upon the
+ecclesiastical prosecutions, which he deprecated, still further to
+discredit him. Pole in the meanwhile was growing restive. He was a man
+of high and unselfish aims, a true Catholic as well as a true Englishman,
+and he resented his exclusion from his own country at the bidding of a
+foreign potentate after his long exile for the cause of his faith. His
+letters of exhortation to Mary and to Philip are throughout inspired by
+the Churchman’s zeal, and not infrequently by scorn of the opportunist
+policy which was, in his view, hampering the prompt and complete return
+of his country to the Church.[72]
+
+Almost from Mary’s accession Cardinal Pole had been held back from his
+mission by the action of the Emperor, thanks mainly to the complaisancy
+of the new Pope Julius III. The great difficulty was the question of
+the restitution of the Church property which had been confiscated in
+the previous reigns. There were few noble courtly families in England
+which had not indeed been enriched from this source; and the Emperor
+expressed his opinion to Pole that the English people cared neither
+for one form of faith or the other, so long as they could keep their
+property.[73] “Pole,” said the Venetian ambassador at Brussels, “might
+beg for permission to go to England for ten thousand years without avail,
+unless he went with the briefs confirming the alienation of the Church
+properties: for if the Church insists upon reclaiming them disorder will
+prevail throughout the country.”
+
+At last the Cardinal had to accept the inevitable, not without some
+bitterness of heart,[74] and steps were taken in the Parliament, which
+met at Westminster early in November, to reverse the act of attainder
+against him. His coming was regarded in some sense by the country as
+that of a restraining force upon the dreaded Spanish influence in the
+English Councils. He was known to be single-minded in his attachment
+both to the Church and to England. He was not ambitious, and had nothing
+to gain by serving as a tool for anti-English forces, whilst his rank,
+his ability, and his good repute promised that his authority would be
+great, even if necessary, against the foreign King-Consort. On the 5th
+November, 1554, a deputation was despatched by Mary, consisting of Lords
+Paget and Hastings and Sir William Cecil, to invite Pole to England, not
+ostensibly as Legate, but as Cardinal and ambassador, on condition that
+the Pope would consent to the present owners of the ecclesiastical lands
+being left unmolested. Renard had already been sent over to Flanders to
+persuade Pole of the need for this proviso, and had returned successful.
+The Cardinal was ready, and rejoiced greatly when Sir John Mason, the
+English ambassador, told him the news; though, “Marry, quoth he, you know
+I am at this present, as it were, in another’s ward [keeping].—I must
+depart when it please the Emperor, who is not at all times to be spoken
+withal. I have already one sent to M. d’Arras (_i.e._, Granvelle) to be
+my mean to have access to his Majesty to take my leave.... Marry, the
+truth is that they have had as yet no news out of England of the Queen’s
+determination.”[75] Mason assured the Cardinal that it was all settled
+and that the embassy named had been despatched to fetch him.
+
+This news Mason also carried to the Emperor, who was better and brighter
+than he had been for years, for he knew that Pole would now go only to
+carry out his policy, so far as regarded restitution, and he was already
+full of hope that a child was to be born to Philip and Mary. That,
+indeed, would be to fix the hand of Spain upon England for at least long
+enough for his great purpose to be effected. In answer to an inquiry
+as to the Queen’s state, somewhat too coarsely worded to be quoted
+verbatim here, Mason was able on this occasion to inform the Emperor
+that: “I understand to my great joy and comfort that her garments wax
+very strait.” “I never doubted, quoth the Emperor, of the matter; but
+that God, who had for her wrought so many miracles, could make the same
+perfect by assisting nature to His good and most desired work. And I
+warrant it shall be, quoth he, a man child. Be it man or woman, quoth I,
+welcome shall it be: for by that shall we come to some certainty, to whom
+God shall appoint by succession the government of our State.... Doubt
+not, quoth he, God will provide both with fruit and otherwise: so as I
+trust to see yet that realm to return to a great piece of that surety and
+estimation that I have seen it in my time.”[76] Here, indeed, the wish
+was father to the thought. For some weeks past it had been whispered at
+Hampton Court that the Queen was with child, though Mary herself refused
+to confirm it or otherwise; but to the Spanish party such a fact was
+all-important, and the Emperor’s jubilation was heart-felt. Noailles,
+on the other hand, scoffed incredulously at what he asserted was only a
+conspiracy to cheat the English people into giving Philip greater power
+and importance in the country, and he quotes as an instance of the way in
+which the hope was regarded by English people, a scurrilous placard on
+the subject which, he says, was nailed to the door of Whitehall Palace.
+
+Cardinal Pole, already ailing and elderly, was carried in his litter
+with great ecclesiastical state from Brussels to Calais, and crossed the
+Channel as soon as news reached him that the Parliament at Westminster
+had reversed his attainder. Travelling by road, as usual, from Dover
+to Gravesend, he found awaiting him at the latter port King Philip’s
+own state barge to convey him to Westminster. On his way to London,
+on Saturday, 24th November, he was met by all the English Catholic
+Bishops and the Lords of the Council in their barges, and then, leading
+the imposing procession with uplifted crosier before him, the English
+Cardinal, in his rochet, tippet, and scarlet hat, passed up the London
+river to the palace of his royal ancestors.
+
+King Philip was at dinner at Whitehall when news came to him that the
+Cardinal’s barge had shot the dangerous rapids formed by the narrow
+arches of London Bridge. Rising from the table at once the King descended
+to the landing-stage of the Palace as the state barge was approaching
+it. With uncovered head and respectful mien Philip greeted the great
+English Churchman with more honour than he might have shown to any
+sovereign prince, leading him on his right hand through the alleys and
+galleries to the entrance to the hall, where at the head of the stairs
+stood Queen Mary. Making a profound obeisance to the huge uplifted cross
+which preceded her husband and Pole, she advanced to meet them, Pole
+kneeling at her approach. Curtseying low and kissing her kinsman the
+Queen assisted him to rise, and then between him and her husband she led
+the way to the canopy, where for half an hour in polyglot converse, for
+Pole had lost some of his English, and Philip knew little Italian, Mary
+must have been for once in her life happy.[77]
+
+Nothing could exceed the honour shown by the Sovereigns to Pole, for it
+was Philip’s policy to win him over entirely to his side, and Mary was
+overjoyed at the prospect of the full reconciliation of her country with
+the Papacy on conditions that seemed to promise general harmony. The
+people, too, who knew Pole’s history, welcomed him warmly. He, like Mary
+herself, had been unjustly used, and his family judicially murdered; he
+was virtuous, upright, and honest,[78] and above all, in the eyes of the
+populace, he represented an English force strong enough to champion the
+cause of his countrymen, if needs be, against the Spanish faction. Pole
+was lodged at Lambeth Palace, from which the unhappy Cranmer had been
+sent to the Tower, and on the day of the Cardinal’s arrival in London,
+Mary offered him the primacy, an offer which Pole for the moment put
+aside until, as he said, he had done his errand as papal ambassador.
+For the next three days Pole and the Sovereigns were closeted for hours
+together settling the preliminaries for the formal return of England to
+the papal fold, and Philip himself on one occasion, breaking through all
+the traditions of his house, crossed alone to Lambeth and remained with
+Pole for the entire afternoon.
+
+[Illustration: CARDINAL REGINALD POLE, PAPAL LEGATE AND ARCHBISHOP OF
+CANTERBURY
+
+AFTER A PAINTING BY SEBASTIANO DEL PIOMBO]
+
+At length, on Wednesday, 28th November, all was ready, and in the great
+hall of the Palace the assembled Lords and Commons were gathered in the
+presence of the Queen and King to receive the Pope’s representative.
+Outside the people were still saying—to the horror of the Spanish
+listeners—that the Pope was only a man, after all, and could do no more
+than other men[79]; but here, in Mary’s Parliament, no inharmonious note
+was sounded, as the Lord Chancellor, Bishop Gardiner, rose and introduced
+the Cardinal as the messenger from the Apostolic Pontiff. Pole, speaking
+from the second stage of the daïs just beyond the canopy, begged in
+Latin permission of the Queen to address the assembly in English; which
+granted, he spoke first feelingly of his long unjust exile and the
+persecution of his House, his attachment to the land of his birth through
+all his trouble, and then he launched into an eloquent appeal for the
+reunion of England to the Church. He praised the Emperor for his sturdy
+defence of orthodoxy; but said that for some inscrutable reason God had
+not allowed him to achieve his end. “But,” continued Pole, “I can well
+compare him [_i.e._, the Emperor] to David, whiche thoughe he were a
+manne elected of God, yet for that he was contaminate with bloode and war
+could not builde the temple of Jerusalem, but left the finishing thereof
+to his son Solomon, which was _Rex pacificus_. So may it be thoughte
+that the appeasing of controversies of religion in Christendom is not
+appointed to this Emperor but rather to his son who shal perfourme the
+building that his father hath begun.”[80]
+
+When the long and moving extempore speech was finished, the Queen desired
+Gardiner to express her thanks and congratulations to the Cardinal, and
+to desire Parliament to consider deeply his weighty words. On that very
+day, as Noailles insisted for the purpose of forwarding Pole’s mission,
+official letters were despatched in the Queen’s name ordering that
+thanksgiving and rogations should be offered in all the churches for her
+pregnancy, now openly acknowledged. Whatever the malicious Frenchman
+may have said, it is quite incredible that Mary herself did not believe
+the assertion of her condition, nor is it likely that Philip thought
+otherwise, seeing the assurances which, even in private letters, he gave
+to his father on the subject.[81] The Queen’s subjects, too, rejoiced
+exceedingly at the news, for a disputed succession seemed to portend
+if Mary died childless. But, in any case, the announcement was most
+opportune both for the success of Pole’s mission, and for another mission
+to be mentioned presently, which was nearer the Emperor’s heart, and he
+had entrusted secretly to Paget when he had gone to Flanders to escort
+Pole to England.
+
+On Thursday, 29th November, 1554, during the discussion of the
+ecclesiastical question in the House of Lords, the lay peers roundly
+blamed the Bishops for all the schism and trouble that had occurred. If
+they had not been poltroons, and had refused to humour King Henry in his
+repudiation of his wife[82] and his defiance of the Holy See all would
+have been well, said the laymen; but recriminations apart, both Lords and
+Commons promptly adopted, almost unanimously, a resolution repealing the
+acts that separated England from the Papacy, and authorising a commission
+of twenty-four members of both Houses to beg the Queen’s approval of the
+resolution, and to present to the papal ambassador the submission of the
+nation to the head of the universal Church, begging for absolution and
+readmittance to the fold. The next day, St. Andrew’s Day, 30th November,
+the formal ceremony was held in the Palace of Whitehall. That morning
+Philip had gone to Mass at Westminster Abbey in state with 100 German,
+100 Spanish, and English guards, all in new uniforms, 50 Flemish archers,
+and 150 smartly-clad pages, as if to mark the occasion as one of special
+significance, and at five o’clock in the afternoon the Cardinal in his
+pontifical vestments rowed across from Lambeth, the King receiving him at
+the foot of the Palace stairs. In the presence chamber the Commissioners
+of Parliament presented their petition to the Sovereigns through Lord
+Chancellor Gardiner. Then the King and Queen rose, and crossing to
+the Cardinal’s chair, in attitude of supplication asked him as the
+Pope’s ambassador to receive the submission of England; after which
+the Sovereigns, having returned to their thrones, Pole’s powers from
+the Pope were read, and the Cardinal in an English discourse heartily
+welcomed the strayed sheep into the fold again.[83] Kneeling, the whole
+assembly received absolution and the apostolic blessing, and England was
+recognised as a Catholic country again.
+
+To spectators of the scene, and especially to Spaniards, this seemed to
+be an occurrence which for importance surpassed all others of the time.
+Spain burst out into uncontrollable rejoicing, and Philip, the man who
+his countrymen thought had performed this miracle by God’s mercy, was
+more revered than ever. Now indeed, with the almost certainty of a son to
+be born and to succeed as King of a Catholic England in close union with
+Spain, the Frenchmen must rest content with a secondary place and the
+House of Burgundy-Habsburg must lead. This view, to some extent, was one
+that it suited Philip himself to promote in England, and he left no stone
+unturned to impress upon his wife’s subjects the profound significance of
+the formal reconciliation of the country to the Papacy; a power which,
+when it had suited his father and himself, they had flouted again and
+again, and which, within a year under the new Pope, Paul IV., was to
+denounce them both with invective more bitter than was applied to the
+worst of heretics.
+
+On the 2nd December, in great state, Philip rode along Fleet Street and
+up Ludgate Hill to St. Paul’s, accompanied by the whole Court. From
+Lambeth Pole had gone by water to Paul’s Wharf, and thence in procession
+with crosses, banners, and censers to the Cathedral, where he awaited
+the King’s coming with the Lord Mayor and Corporation of London. Side by
+side the King and Cardinal, with a glittering train, passed up the nave
+and out at the east end to St. Paul’s Cross, where, we are told, “with
+all the Lords of the Council and with such an audience of people as was
+never seen in that place before,”[84] fiery Gardiner preached a sermon
+upon the words of St. Paul, “Brethren, know ye, that it is time we arose
+from slumber”; in which he exhorted his hearers to shake off the evil
+dream of the past and salute the new dawn. But not exhortation alone
+occupied Gardiner’s oration, for he hinted that all the ruin and misery
+that England had suffered, “all the abominable heresies, synistrate and
+erroneous opinions, tumults and insurrections,” were owing to the “lack
+of restraint” that had permitted such evils without due punishment. For,
+once more into the hands of the priests, the rod had been delivered,
+and Gardiner had no mind that it should lie idle. The famous sermon was
+a threat to England, and the people who had spoken lightly of the Pope
+for the last twenty years looked askance not only at the Churchman who
+threatened, but at King Philip, whose furthest thought it was for the
+moment to light the fires of religious persecution in the country, the
+enmity and suspicion of which he was striving to lull to rest.
+
+We are told by Philip’s watchful gentleman-in-waiting that he enjoyed
+his dinner well after Gardiner’s sermon, but the gentleman-in-waiting
+saw the surface only. Philip was glad to have England back again
+within the fold, though that was not the end, but the means for him.
+Two days afterwards the long-delayed Spanish cane tourney, perhaps the
+only one ever held in England, was celebrated with great pomp in the
+tiltyard at Whitehall. For many weeks the bands of Spanish horsemen had
+been rehearsing the mimic battle, in which opposing forces dressed in
+splendid uniforms prance and caracol to within a few yards of each other
+at full speed, and then, launching cane javelins at their antagonists,
+wheel suddenly away. The Queen and her ladies were dressed in cloth of
+gold with solid sheet-gold coifs, all at the King’s expense, and the
+Queen must have been a blaze of magnificence in her rich brocade, her
+overgarment of crimson velvet lined with fur, and her dress covered
+entirely with precious stones and sheet gold spangles. Twelve thousand
+people, we are told, looked on, as band after band of Spaniards pranced
+into the arena, some in white velvet and gold, some in blue and silver,
+some in black and gold; and a great ball and supper wound up the
+entertainment.
+
+Three weeks later, the visit of Philip’s heroic young cousin, Emmanuel
+Philibert of Savoy, was an occasion for further festivities of the
+same sort, although the occasion of his coming was in itself far from
+a festive one. The Prince was in command of the Emperor’s army, but in
+the clash of great empires he feared that his own smaller interests were
+going to the wall, as indeed they were. The war had prevented him from
+accepting the invitation to Philip’s wedding; but in September, 1554, he
+had sent an embassy headed by Count Langosco to London to pray Philip to
+intercede with the Emperor for him. Much of his paternal territory was
+occupied by the French; he had no money even to pay the garrisons of
+Nice and the other fortresses that remained to him, and he foresaw the
+possibility that when France and the Emperor made peace Savoy might be
+left in the hands of the former. Philip was amiable but indefinite in his
+reception of Savoy’s embassy in London. A commission was sent to invest
+the Duke with the Order of the Garter, and kind assurances of regard were
+exchanged, but Savoy wanted more than that, and when his troops were in
+winter quarters he managed with difficulty to raise enough money to run
+over personally, in the last days of the year 1554, to see his cousin
+Philip and his English wife for the purpose of urging his own suit. It
+is usually assumed that the primary object of his visit was to offer his
+hand to Princess Elizabeth, but such was not the case.[85] His handsome
+presence and the fame of his military exploits made him an attractive
+guest at Mary’s Court, and both the King and Queen were very favourably
+impressed by him, Philip, indeed, to a great extent acceding to the
+demands that brought him to London.
+
+The idea of his marriage with Elizabeth appears first to have come
+from some of his Piedmontese subjects, naturally anxious that the
+succession to his ancient throne should be secured. Writing from
+London in September, 1554, one of his ambassadors says that if he were
+authorised to do so, he would propose the match to King Philip. In any
+case, some communication seemed to have passed between Philip and the
+Savoy ambassadors on the subject, and when Emmanuel Philibert arrived
+in London early in January, the question was further discussed. It was
+a match that would have suited Philip admirably, and he was prompt to
+adopt the idea. Emmanuel Philibert himself was in no mood for wooing, for
+the French had just captured another of his fortresses, Ivrea, and it
+seemed to him politic to keep himself free to marry a French princess,
+if necessary, as the price of his restoration to his domains. Nor were
+the obstacles in England to his marriage with Elizabeth slight. To begin
+with, the Queen was opposed to her sister’s marriage at all without
+the consent of Parliament, which would certainly refuse to authorise a
+foreign match for the Princess, and especially to a dispossessed Prince
+under the influence of the Emperor. Nor did the Queen wish to give to
+Elizabeth the additional importance and power which would accrue to
+her from her marriage with a sovereign. Philip, if we are to believe
+Michaeli, was somewhat afraid of his wife, and did not dare to press
+her too far in the matter “as she had a terrible and obstinate temper.”
+To the King’s Confessor, therefore, was entrusted the task of winning
+over Mary. After much trouble he persuaded her so far as to get her to
+promise to speak to the King about it the next evening. This she did
+not do, and it was believed that Pole had in the interval dissuaded
+her. The opposition from Elizabeth was even more decided. She was quite
+resolved, she said, neither to marry nor to leave England. On the part of
+Savoy also the terms proposed by Philip were held to be quite out of the
+question, including as they did the cession to Spain of the fortresses
+of Nice and Villafranca, in case any children were born to Emmanuel
+Philibert and Elizabeth. It will be seen, therefore, that at this time
+the match was never probable, and though Savoy was lodged in Elizabeth’s
+palace, Somerset House in the Strand, the Princess herself was not
+even brought from her seclusion at Woodstock to see him.[86] Emmanuel
+Philibert, impatient to be gone, left England, though not empty-handed,
+to resume his turbulent career after a three weeks’ stay.
+
+Philip had to a great extent overcome the personal unpopularity which
+at his first coming he had to face; but the fear of the people that,
+sooner or later, England would be dragged by the Imperialists into
+war with France was stronger than ever, and the Spanish followers of
+the King got on no better than before with the English. One of the
+gentlemen-in-waiting writes at this time, “We are in a pleasant land, but
+amongst the worst people in the world, at least of Christian nations,
+for these English people are terrible enemies of Spain. It is easy to
+see that by the many serious quarrels that take place between us and
+them. Hardly a day passes without a slashing match in the Palace between
+Englishmen and Spaniards, and many have been killed on both sides. Only
+last week, in consequence of a fight, they hanged three Englishmen and a
+Spaniard, and every day something of the sort happens.... We Spaniards
+go about amongst these English people like fools, for they are such
+barbarians that they do not understand what we say, nor we them. They
+will not crown our Prince, although he is a King now, nor will they
+acknowledge him as their superior. They say that he only came to help to
+rule the country and to beget a child, and that as soon as the Queen has
+children he can go back to Spain. God send that it may be soon, for he
+would be glad enough, and we infinitely more so, to get away from such
+barbarous folk.”[87] To add to the tribulation of these disappointed
+courtiers, they found prices in England ten times higher than those they
+were used to, and they were almost ruined by their necessary expenses,
+besides being robbed, even of their cloaks, if they ventured out after
+dark in London.
+
+To their chagrin, too, they saw great sums of Spanish money, sorely
+needed, they knew, for the Emperor’s wars, being squandered upon English
+purposes. Gresham had been allowed by the Emperor to borrow for Mary
+and export from Spain £100,000, an enormous sum in those days, and
+one which, Gresham wrote, was terribly wanted in the country itself.
+“I am not abell,” he wrote, “with my pen to set forthe unto you the
+greate scarsity that is now through all Spayne....” And he adds later,
+“I fere that I shall be the occasione they shuld all play bankrupt,”
+since one great bank had already suspended payment in consequence of
+his operations.[88] Apart from this, Philip’s own guard carried through
+London to the Tower 97 chests of silver, estimated to contain £50,000
+for his own expenditure,[89] whilst Eraso brought 250,000 crowns to
+England in January, 1555, and the gentleman-in-waiting says that not only
+had the King guaranteed a debt of the Queen’s of 250,000 ducats, but he
+had distributed in bribes and pensions to the Councillors and courtiers
+30,000 ducats a year.
+
+At length, with all these blandishments and preparations, the Emperor and
+Philip thought after the submission of Parliament to the Pope, that the
+time had come when they might endeavour to reap the harvest. Paget, in
+his interview with the Emperor in Brussels, had been urged to represent
+to his colleagues on the English Council that the co-operation of their
+country in his war against the French would be of immense benefit to
+Christendom, and in a long memorandum sent by Renard to Philip during
+the session of Parliament, he discussed the various pretexts upon which
+a war between England and France might be precipitated. But Bonner’s
+harsh and violent persecution disturbed men’s minds. A great conspiracy
+was discovered in the Eastern Counties in which some of the Councillors
+were suspected of being implicated, the main object being the marriage
+and elevation to the throne of Courtenay and Elizabeth; and although
+Parliament passed an Act recognising Philip as guardian of his expected
+heir in case of the Queen’s death, his own wish to be appointed Regent in
+the event of her death without children, and his present recognition and
+coronation as King, were seen to be unrealisable in the state of public
+feeling, and Parliament was dissolved on the 16th January Still less was
+it possible to urge seriously that England should declare war against
+France, and, thanks to the efforts of Mary and Pole, another attempt was
+made to bring about peace by means of a Congress meeting at Calais.
+
+So far from going to war for the Spaniards, the people, indeed, were
+increasingly inclined to war against them. King Philip’s countrymen,
+moreover, were far from sharing or even understanding his tolerant
+affability in the face of the unjust suspicion and insults to which they
+were daily subjected. Affrays between them and the Londoners were more
+frequent than ever, and although the hanging and mutilation of offenders
+against the peace, English and Spanish, was frequent, and Philip himself
+threatened dire punishment to any of his suite who drew a knife or shared
+in a brawl, the national hatred was so strong that no penalties could
+stop the disorders. In February, 1555, Renard wrote to the Emperor in an
+alarming strain. He prayed most earnestly to be allowed to return home
+when King Philip went to Flanders, which he then intended to do in a
+few weeks. He was certain, he said, that he (Renard) would be murdered
+the moment the King’s back was turned. The heretics were cursing him
+for having been the cause of bringing the Papists back to England, the
+French party were vowing vengeance against him for introducing the hated
+Spaniards to domineer over free Englishmen, the Earl of Arundel had
+sworn to be avenged upon him for frustrating his plan to marry his son
+to Princess Elizabeth, and the Duke of Northumberland’s sons had already
+hired four assassins to kill him.[90]
+
+In vain Philip urged moderation in the prosecution of heresy, and one
+of his chaplains, Alfonso de Castro, publicly in an outspoken sermon
+denounced the burning of heretics as opposed to the true spirit of
+Christ. But Bonner and Gardiner pursued their stern way, and most of the
+odium of their proceedings fell upon the King and his countrymen. The
+Queen, herself in a fool’s paradise of hope and joy, thought of nothing
+but the coming glory of maternity. The country itself was awaiting the
+event as one that was to decide, so far as could be seen, its future
+fate. Ominous mutterings of the fell bonfires that had already begun in
+Smithfield were common enough, and the factions in the Eastern Counties
+were as active as ever beneath the surface, notwithstanding their
+ruthless suppression. The English exiles in France were being made much
+of in the Court of Henry II., and loaded with favours, whilst Noailles
+in London kept in close touch with the elements of discontent at home.
+In the circumstances Philip’s intention to obey his father’s summons to
+Flanders soon after the dissolution of Parliament had to be postponed, at
+least until the expected confinement of the Queen in April had cleared
+the air and settled men’s minds.
+
+In the meanwhile Philip continued to do his best to maintain his
+popularity, counselling prudence to the zealous bishops, lavishing
+money on courtiers, interceding gently for Elizabeth and Courtenay, and
+taking active part in the showy military exercises which the English
+loved, but which for him had no attraction.[91] In March, Courtenay
+from his prison at Fotheringham wrote to Philip, saying that, as by the
+King’s intercession with the Queen so many persons had been released, he
+prayed for his mediation in his favour, very submissively beseeching his
+protection and that he would deign to accept his service. This happened
+at the very time that the new conspiracy was discovered, but Courtenay
+was almost as dangerous in an English prison as free, and, thanks to
+Pole’s support of Philip’s efforts, and on the understanding that he
+would accompany the English embassy to Flanders and Rome, Courtenay was
+summoned to Court and graciously received by the Queen and her husband.
+
+Much more important, and doubtless intended to be so by Philip, was his
+successful intercession for Elizabeth. The Princess, as we have seen,
+was not brought to London to receive the visit of her would-be suitor,
+the Duke of Savoy, in January; for her own resistance to the match, and
+Mary’s reluctance to restore her fully in blood, which would have been
+necessary if her marriage with Savoy was to serve Spanish ends, had
+nipped that plan in the bud. But now, in April, to the great delight and
+surprise of the people, the Queen’s sister was summoned with graciousness
+from her seclusion at Woodstock to the Palace of Whitehall. Michaeli,
+who was a keen observer, attributes her release and presence at Court
+before the expected confinement of the Queen to the fear of the Spanish
+party that in case of Mary’s death “the King’s safety would depend more
+upon her than upon any other person; not only from his hope of being
+able, with the help of the nobles here whom he has gained by rewards, to
+succeed to the Kingdom by marrying her, it being not improbable that she
+herself will incline that way, as she knows his behaviour and character;
+but even should she and the country refuse this, yet by her presence, she
+being in his power, he would be able to secure himself against any rising
+against him and his followers, and they might by her means get away
+safely.”[92]
+
+Elizabeth came very quietly to Hampton Court late in April, and was
+lodged in the apartment which the Duke of Alba had recently vacated.
+It is evident that her presence was desired by Philip more for his own
+security than for the sake of the Princess, as she only saw her sister
+and Philip in strict privacy on two or three occasions. Whilst in this
+close seclusion Elizabeth had at least one long private interview with
+Philip alone at the Queen’s request, his object evidently being to induce
+the Princess to confess her fault and throw herself upon her sister’s
+clemency. But Elizabeth was wary and would not commit herself. When a few
+weeks afterwards Gardiner on his knees urged the same advice upon her,
+she replied that she had not offended and asked no mercy of any one. A
+week later the Queen herself tried her hand upon her recalcitrant sister.
+She had not seen her since she sent her to the Tower two years before,
+and when the unexpected summons to the presence came to Elizabeth late
+at night the young Princess gave herself up for lost. “Pray for me,” she
+said to her attendants as she left the apartment, “for I know not whether
+you will ever see me more.” Across the dark garden Elizabeth was led
+between Sir Henry Bedingfield and Mistress Clarencius to the foot of a
+small back staircase to the Queen’s rooms. Leaving her attendant outside,
+the Princess was conducted by Clarencius alone to the Queen’s presence
+in the bedchamber. Kneeling, Elizabeth besought her sister to believe in
+her loyalty in spite of calumnies. “You will not confess your offence,
+but stand stoutly in your truth?” asked Mary sternly. “I pray God it
+may so fall out.” “If it doth not,” replied the Princess, “I request
+neither favour nor pardon at your Majesty’s hand.” The Queen drily
+suggested that her sister would probably say that she had been unjustly
+punished, but Elizabeth deftly turned the point by a fervent reiteration
+of her dutifulness and loyalty, and Mary, apparently somewhat mollified,
+dismissed her sister not unamiably.
+
+Foxe, who describes the scene,[93] says that it was believed that Philip
+listened behind the arras to what passed at the interview, and “that
+he showed himself a very friend in that matter.” Certain it is that on
+several occasions after Elizabeth had succeeded to the throne he claimed
+her gratitude or consideration for having on one occasion rescued her
+from grave peril, and it is probable that this may have been the occasion
+referred to. There were many reasons beyond the temporary one already
+mentioned that explain Philip’s solicitude for Elizabeth’s life. Failing
+Elizabeth, and any possible issue of the Queen, the next heir to the
+English throne by natural law was the young Queen of Scots, practically
+a French princess married to the heir of France. Better a thousand times
+for Philip and his House that England should be ruled even by a heretic
+friendly to him than by the staunchest Catholic under the control of
+the hereditary enemy of the House of Habsburg. It must have been clear
+to him, moreover, by this time that the Reformation in England had not
+been crushed by Mary’s advent, and that a large proportion of the people
+regarded France as a more desirable friend than Spain. Nor could he shut
+his eyes to Elizabeth’s popularity, and to the fact that the enemies of
+his faith and his House looked to the young Princess as their head. So
+sagacious a politician would naturally endeavour to gain the goodwill,
+even the disposal in marriage, of a person so potentially powerful as his
+young sister-in-law, who, in any case, was likely to outlive his wife,
+and might if well handled perpetuate the hold of Spain upon England, now
+depending upon so tenuous a thread.
+
+On the 30th April there came flying to London from Hampton Court the
+news that the nation’s prayers had been heard, and that at midnight of
+the 29th a male child had been born to the Queen, happily and well.
+Proclamation was made, joy bells rang, all business was suspended, and
+processions from every church perambulated the parishes with psalms
+of thanksgiving for so signal a mercy. Public tables were spread that
+all might freely eat and drink their fill, whilst bonfires blazed in
+broad daylight, and the people forgot for a moment the grim spectre of
+persecution that might be perpetuated if the news was true. But it was
+not true, and the sad disillusionment came whilst yet the rejoicings were
+in full swing. It was, said the Catholics, an invention of the enemy
+in order to cause trouble; but though this was possible, for Noailles
+had never ceased to sneer at the assurance of the Queen’s condition,
+the open and ostentatious preparations for the event that had been
+made at Court were of themselves sufficient reason for the rumour of
+the birth. The occurrence naturally distressed Mary, who kept her room
+thereafter for a time, and at once a flood of scurrilous literature
+was surreptitiously circulated in London, calumniating the Queen, her
+husband, and all their friends.[94]
+
+All through May the country stood on tiptoe of expectation for the birth
+of the prince whose coming meant so much apparently for the future of
+Christendom. Mary, still deceiving herself, was comforted by the sight
+of new-born babies brought to her whose mothers were, it was said, as
+old and as thin as she. Philip’s solicitude, too, knew no bounds. Every
+demonstration of affection was lavished upon his wife, and nothing was
+allowed to stand in the way of his anticipated joy. Although in deep
+mourning for his grandmother, Jane the Crazy, he ordered that the moment
+his expected son was born all signs of mourning were to be abandoned.
+His father was summoning him incessantly, and he was yearning furiously
+to get away, but he could not leave his wife whilst this event was still
+pending. At last, at the end of May, he gave permission for most of his
+Spanish suite and his guards to cross the Channel in advance of him. It
+was indeed time; for only a week before a regular pitched battle between
+five hundred armed Englishmen and a body of Spaniards took place at
+Hampton Court, many being killed and wounded on both sides;[95] and the
+fires of Smithfield were blazing freely now, to the almost open anger of
+the people, who unjustly cast all the blame upon the Spanish influence at
+Court.
+
+There were other things, too, which made it expedient for Philip to
+hurry to his father’s side. The Venetian ambassador went to see him at
+Richmond at the beginning of June, and on their way to chapel together
+Philip told Michaeli that he had that moment received news from Brussels
+that Cardinal Caraffa had been elected Pope. The ambassador noticed that
+the King was disturbed and unquiet at the news, as well he might be,
+for the Neapolitan, Caraffa, was the bitterest foe of Spain alive; and
+this meant that the peace which was being so painfully negotiated at
+Calais would be frustrated, or in any case be of short duration; for in
+future the Spanish champion of orthodoxy would have not only to contend
+against the “eldest son of the Church,” but against the head of the
+Church himself,[96] making common cause, “not only with France, but with
+the Turk, and if need be with the devil himself,” to dwarf the Spanish
+power in Italy and the Mediterranean. But, urgent though Philip’s
+presence elsewhere might be, it was more urgent still in England until
+safety came with the birth of his hoped for child. Writing in June to
+the Emperor, Renard says that everything hangs upon the happy issue of
+that event. He continues: “The doctors and ladies were two months out of
+their reckoning, and there is now no appearance of the affair happening
+for another ten days. If, by God’s mercy, she does well, matters here
+will take a better turn; but if not, I foresee trouble, and a great
+disturbance, so great, indeed, that the pen cannot express it. For it is
+certain that they have managed so ill with regard to the succession, that
+if anything untoward happens Lady Elizabeth will have the preference,
+heresy will take a new life and religion be overturned. She being French
+in her leanings, the nation will decline, the ecclesiastics will be
+persecuted, and revenge will be more rife than ever. I am not at all
+sure that the King and Court will be safe from the people, and the final
+tragedy will be calamitous. It is incredible to what extent this delay in
+the birth affords to the partisans of Elizabeth ground for the spread of
+false rumours. Some say the Queen is not pregnant at all, and that if a
+fitting child had been found there would not have been so much delay.”[97]
+
+In this critical condition affairs remained for many weeks longer,
+the Queen obstinately refusing to give up her hope, which her women
+and physicians had already pronounced delusive. Hampton Court was
+overcrowded by gossiping courtiers; but none were allowed to see the
+Queen except a few of her favourite ladies, and the whole of the routine
+work of the Sovereign was done by Philip. All this was, of course, known
+by the expectant people in London, who saw daily church processions for
+the Queen’s safe delivery month after month, until anxiety began to give
+place to ridicule. Sometimes rumours ran that the Queen was dead, and
+that the fact was being kept secret by Philip in order that he might work
+his will in England. Religious feeling grew more bitter than ever, with
+Bonner’s ruthless persecution on the one hand and fanatic sacrilege on
+the other. To make matters worse, the summer was the most inclement and
+the harvest the scantiest that had been seen in England for years, and
+discontent was everywhere. At length, after another disappointment in
+July, even poor, forlorn Mary herself was convinced that she had been
+mistaken, and early in August she dismissed the crowds of hangers-on from
+their attendance at Court and moved with a smaller following to Oatlands,
+where she gradually resumed her ordinary routine again.[98]
+
+Orders were given for the processions and rogations of the Church to be
+discontinued, and Philip was now faced with the fact that the splendid
+plot of his father to capture the control of England by marriage had
+practically failed, for Mary’s health was evidently bad, and her life
+promised to be a short one. With it would end the hold of Philip over
+England unless the Queen’s successor could be lured into the Spanish net.
+Little knew the Spaniards yet what a wily bird it was that they hoped
+to snare. But in the meanwhile it behoved Philip to make the most of his
+opportunities whilst his wife lived. He could delay his departure no
+longer, for his father was peremptory now, and the urgent need for his
+presence in England had passed. He was as imperturbable as ever, still an
+attentive and apparently an affectionate husband to the Queen, though his
+gallantries to other ladies began to be talked about somewhat openly. If
+the Queen were of a jealous disposition, wrote the Venetian ambassador,
+she would indeed be unhappy; to which the reply may be made that she
+was jealous and she was unhappy. Even now, on the very eve of Philip’s
+departure, she strove ardently to keep him by her side, or at least to
+extract a pledge from him that he would return to her within a month, a
+promise which at last he gave, though to his own Spanish confidants he
+said that if once he set foot in Spain again, he would never leave it on
+so poor an occasion.[99]
+
+By the 20th August it became impossible to hide any longer Philip’s
+approximate departure. Every day fresh parties of Spanish courtiers
+and attendants were starting on the road from Gravesend to Dover, and
+the rumour spread in London that, in order to get away quietly, and
+so escape the notice of the French, the King intended to go down the
+river in Lord Arundel’s barge and embark at Dover secretly. The news
+was untrue, for Philip and Mary went openly through London to Greenwich
+to make preparations for the voyage; though it was jealously noted by
+the people that, although Elizabeth was now at Court and on good terms
+with the Queen, she was sent to Greenwich by water, it was said in
+order that the people might not see and cheer her.[100] Mary was full
+of grief and inconsolable at losing her husband even for a month, and
+Philip, ostensibly full of solicitude, specially confided the care of
+her to Pole. Orders were given that the minutes of all the Privy Council
+meetings, translated into Latin, were to be sent to the King during his
+absence, and that no important resolution was to be adopted without his
+approval. Gardiner was already dying of jaundice and dropsy, and in no
+case would have been trusted by Philip; but Pole was wise and amiable,
+and it was hoped would prove a pliable instrument for Spanish ends,
+advocated as they would be by the Councillors already bribed in the
+Emperor’s interest.
+
+On the 26th August Philip and his wife left Hampton Court by water for
+Westminster, where they dined; and in the afternoon, with great and
+unaccustomed state, rode through London to Greenwich Palace. It had been
+generally believed at one time, and the fear still lingered, that Mary
+was really dead, and it was thought necessary on this occasion that
+all London should have an opportunity of seeing her. At the head of
+the cavalcade rode Philip with the Cardinal on his left hand, followed
+closely by the Queen in an open litter. But the French ambassador, who
+saw the procession, sneered at the distrust shown by Philip of the
+Londoners, for around him there were a hundred of his archers of the
+guard, armed to the teeth, with their morrions on their heads and their
+lances raised.[101] The joy of the people at seeing the Queen again was
+great, for she was still popular personally, though murmurs there were
+for the absence of Elizabeth. Three days afterwards, on the 29th August,
+1555, Philip tore himself away from his reluctant spouse. Mastering her
+grief in public by a great effort, but with tear-reddened eyes and drawn,
+pallid face, the Queen led her husband composedly through the long suites
+of rooms of the Palace of Greenwich; though when the members of Philip’s
+Spanish household who remained behind came one by one, and, kneeling,
+kissed his hand, Mary for a time failed to control her agitation: and
+she sobbed convulsively when the English ladies of the Court, copiously
+weeping, were kissed farewell in English fashion by the gallant young
+king. With a last embrace Mary’s husband left her to enter the barge,
+whilst she retired to her own apartment, where, leaning upon the sill
+of an open window, and thinking herself unobserved, she gave way to her
+sorrow unconstrained, whilst she watched the boat speed down the river,
+bearing away all she loved on earth.
+
+Philip played his part admirably to the last. Standing on the most
+conspicuous spot of the barge, he continued to raise his hat and waft
+affectionate salutations to the royal watcher at the window, until a
+bend in the river shut from his sight the Palace of Greenwich and its
+mistress. The bitterest disappointment must have been his. France was as
+far from being subdued as ever, the Emperor was weary of the struggle,
+old and sick at heart, and yearning to cast his burden upon his son.
+Peace was absolutely necessary at almost any terms that the French would
+grant, for it was now clear that England would not, even if she were
+able, throw her resources into another’s war at the bidding of the King
+Consort. But Philip showed no sign of defeat. Like a courteous high-bred
+gentleman, smiling and debonair, he bade a fond farewell for a month to
+his faded wife, whom, if he could have his way, he wished never more to
+see.[102]
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IV
+
+1555-1558
+
+    Religious persecution in England—Philip’s attempts to restrain
+    it—His efforts to keep control of English policy—Elizabeth
+    comes to Court—Return of Philip to England—French intrigues—The
+    English drawn into the war—St. Quentin—Loss of Calais—Penury
+    of the English treasury—Illness and death of Mary—Feria’s
+    approaches to Elizabeth
+
+
+Renard had been right in his prediction. The moment that the restraining
+presence of Philip was removed from England the ecclesiastics carried
+things with a higher hand than ever.[103] Not only did the fires to burn
+heretics increase in number, but proposals were made in the Council
+to resume possession for the Church of the alienated first-fruits and
+tithes, as well as the benefices in lay hands. The minutes of the
+discussion were sent to Philip in Flanders with the report of the
+publication of the Bull confirming the possession by private people of
+the confiscated monastery and Church lands. To the latter Philip gives
+his readiest acquiescence; but for the proposal to restore the dues
+to the possession of the Church he has nothing but doubt and evasion.
+The question, he says, should be maturely discussed by eight selected
+Councillors, who should report to him before anything decisive is done,
+and he warns them that in the forthcoming Parliament nothing must be
+proposed without his prior consent. So, also, in the matter of the
+English Navy. The Council reported to him that the ships were mostly
+unseaworthy and should be brought into the Thames for repair, whilst
+the few good vessels should be reinforced and stationed between Dover
+and Calais. There was nothing that Philip needed more than that the
+French should be held in check in the Channel, and he is emphatic in his
+endorsement of the Council’s suggestion. “England’s chief defence depends
+upon its Navy being always ready to defend the realm against invasion,
+so that it is right that the ships should not only be fit for sea but
+instantly available.... The vessels ought to be stationed at Portsmouth,
+where they can much more easily be brought into service.” That Philip had
+his own interests in mind quite as much as those of England in the matter
+is seen by what follows. “The King is the more inclined to this course,
+as the Emperor has decided to sail for Spain about the end of October ...
+and has expressed a wish that twelve or fourteen English ships should
+escort him beyond Ushant. This makes the King more anxious that these
+ships should be ready and in excellent order; so that, besides other
+necessary uses, they may go upon this service, which will be especially
+grateful to his Highness.”[104]
+
+Mary, it will be seen, counted for nothing. The sole object in view was
+Philip’s interests, and, although decently cloaked with his usual bland
+professions of his desire to serve England, everything he did at this
+time was directed to using the country for his ends whilst his wife
+lived. After that he would have to deal with a new state of affairs.
+Another instance of the postponement of English interests for his
+benefit is seen in the delay in summoning Parliament until after he had
+left England. The sole object of the session was to raise money. Mary’s
+Government was in the deepest penury. Extravagance, corruption, and
+demoralisation existed everywhere in the administration; but pressing as
+was the need for funds, Philip could not face the certain unpopularity
+that would have fallen upon him if the demand for large taxation before
+his departure had given a pretext to the suspicious English for the
+belief that the money was being raised for him.
+
+In great state Mary, with Pole by her side, proceeded from St. James’s
+Palace in a sort of throne-litter on the 21st October, 1555, to open
+Parliament at Westminster, and Gardiner as Lord Chancellor, now a dying
+man, appealed in the Queen’s name for liberal supplies to conduct the
+business of the nation. It was his last effort, and though Parliament
+voted a million crowns, to be paid in two years, the Chancellor took
+no further share in public business, dying three weeks after at
+Whitehall, whither he was carried from the Parliament Chamber. The
+death of Gardiner was an irreparable loss to Mary. The man had many
+faults; he was arrogant, unscrupulous, and violent, but he was a bold
+and experienced statesman, who kept his shifty, greedy colleagues in
+something approaching subjection; and he was determined to prevent, if
+he could, either of the great Continental rivals from obtaining control
+of English policy for their ends. He had opposed the Spanish match as
+long as opposition might have prevented it; but when it was effected
+he minimised its disadvantages and never allowed either the Queen or
+Philip to subordinate English interests to those of others. He was as
+unpopular with the French faction as he was with the Spanish, and his
+death left the greedy cliques of Councillors, of whom Paget was the
+most active and corrupt, most of them bribed by one or both rivals, to
+wrangle uncontrolled in the interests of their paymasters or their own,
+with little thought for England. Pole had lost touch of English politics,
+for he was, to all intents and purposes, an Italian ecclesiastic, with
+a first thought for his papal mission. He lived in the Palace during
+Philip’s absence, and every day solemnly prayed with Mary for the King’s
+safe return; but he had refused to act as leading political Councillor,
+and was only consulted, as the Queen was, on subjects of high importance
+or upon which the Councillors differed. He, like the Queen, undoubtedly
+meant well by England; but, like her also, his views were exalted and
+unpractical, and thenceforward there was little restraining power upon
+the Council, except such as could be exerted by Philip, far away in
+Flanders and overwhelmed with his own affairs.
+
+Philip had found his father in the last stage of mental and physical
+depression, and soon after the son arrived from England, on the 25th
+October, 1555, Charles V., in one of the most dramatic scenes in
+history, surrendered to him the sovereignty of the land of his birth, his
+beloved Flanders. This was soon followed by the abandonment of the rest
+of his crowns; and Philip, in January, 1556, found himself monarch of all
+the vast inheritance of Burgundy and Spain, whilst his uncle Ferdinand
+took the exalted but powerless crown of the Empire. Almost simultaneously
+with Philip’s accession to the Spanish Crown the Emperor, desirous above
+all things of leaving his son at peace, brought the long-drawn peace
+negotiations to an end by signing a five years’ truce at Vaucelles with
+his rival, France. England was thus for a short time relieved from the
+dread of being drawn into the war to please the King Consort.
+
+In the meanwhile, Mary had been fretting and pining for her absent
+husband. He had promised her faithfully to return in a month, but that,
+of course, was out of the question. Stories came to her, also, that he
+was enjoying himself there with ladies younger than herself, not wisely
+but too well for the faithful spouse of so saintly a wife. “This has
+so much upset her that in conversation with one of her most intimate
+friends she said that if it should so happen that the King never came
+back, notwithstanding all her efforts to recall him, she must put up
+with living the rest of her life without the company of a man, as she
+had done before her marriage, and with such patience as she could. This
+gives food for the reflection that in order to persuade him to return
+the sooner she will make incredible efforts in this Parliament in his
+favour.”[105] Philip’s revenge for his enforced good behaviour in
+England, indeed, almost alarmed the Emperor. For the only time in his
+life the King Consort now became dissipated, carrying on vulgar intrigues
+and scouring the streets of Brussels in disguise in search of adventure.
+News came to Mary that he had fallen ill, though there was nothing
+the matter with him but the effects of too much gaiety, and a special
+English courier sent by the anxious Queen to learn the truth with regard
+to his health was received by Philip in Brussels in December, 1555.
+The King sent reassuring news to his wife with affectionate greetings,
+and a faithful promise to go over to England at once, and the English
+messenger, overjoyed at the good tidings he bore, promised the Spanish
+courtiers that he would not damp the Queen’s delight by telling her of
+her husband’s high jinks, “as she was so easily upset, and was so anxious
+about him that it would afflict her too much.” For a few days after she
+got Philip’s message Mary lived in a heaven of anticipation, but, alas!
+orders came anon that the King’s Spanish household in England was to
+make ready to depart, and this cast her into despair, for she believed
+it portended Philip’s own return to Spain. The English people, unlike
+their Queen, were rejoiced at the departure of the Spaniards, and as they
+went on their way to Dover followed them with reviling and insults, for
+Philip’s new dignity had in no way increased the popularity of himself
+and his countrymen in Spain, because it was feared that when the war
+broke out again with France, as it evidently soon would, his position
+as King Consort of England and Sovereign of Flanders would make it
+impossible for the English to keep out of the conflict.
+
+One of Mary’s baits to draw Philip back to her was to persuade her
+Council to consent to his coronation in England. From the first both
+Philip and his father had laid great stress upon this, but the successive
+English Parliaments, and even the English Council, had vetoed it. Now
+that the strongest man who opposed it was dead, Philip urged his wife to
+press the proposal again, certain that she would do so, if possible, in
+order to bring him to London, if for no other reason; but Mary had to
+face for the first time a Parliament of some spirit and independence,
+consisting largely of gentry, and she wrote to her husband saying that
+she did not dare to propose his coronation yet, as so many disaffected
+members had been returned. Noailles was busy inciting opposition in
+Parliament, and he noted with glee that now that the King had gone people
+spoke more freely about him than ever. Another demand was repeated by
+Philip to his wife, namely, that she should join him in the war with
+France.[106] Mary, through an envoy of Cardinal Pole, was obliged to
+tell her husband that she was surrounded by people whom she could not
+trust, that the nation was already unquiet, if not disaffected, and that
+any attempt to draw England into the war at present might cost her her
+crown. But she ended with another earnest prayer that he would return
+to her, and all might then be well. Once more Philip promised to come
+immediately, and the English fleet was made ready to receive him at
+Calais; but the truce of Vaucelles, already mentioned, for the next few
+months made Philip’s need less pressing, and he came not.
+
+Gradually the centre of interest in English politics was changing from
+Mary to her sister Elizabeth. Notwithstanding the Queen’s continued
+assertion of hope that she yet might become a mother if Philip would
+return to England again, every one but the deluded lady herself had now
+abandoned such a hope. By the will of Henry VIII., which Mary did not
+dare to alter, Elizabeth was the next heir. The Princess was idolised by
+the people, and although she was to all appearance a devout Catholic,
+the Reform party and the friends of France looked towards her as their
+leader. Paget was more than suspected of intriguing in her favour, for he
+was now receiving French pay; her kinsman, Lord William Howard, treated
+her, to Mary’s anger, almost as a queen already; and other Councillors,
+uncertain of the future, were unblushingly hedging in her favour. When
+Philip left England he specially commended the Princess to the kindness
+of the Queen; and according to Noailles, his chamberlain in England, Don
+Diego de Geneda, with the other Spanish courtiers, paid marked attention
+to her, visiting her in her apartments at Greenwich during her stay there
+every day. Geneda appears, indeed, to have secretly offered to Elizabeth
+Philip’s ten-year-old son as a husband, but the Princess again took
+refuge behind her impenetrable reserve. She was determined, she said,
+neither to marry nor to leave the country.[107]
+
+The Spanish attempts to win Elizabeth were watched closely by Noailles,
+as were the suspected intentions of the Queen in her disfavour whilst
+Parliament was sitting. Mary, as we have seen, however, found the newly
+elected Commons so stout and outspoken that she was afraid to advance
+any of her dearly cherished designs to them, and hastened to dissolve
+them in December, clapping some of the bolder members into prison for
+speaking too freely. The group of English exiles still in France were
+continuing to demand fresh help to aid their disaffected brothers in
+England, and in the circumstances it is not surprising that Noailles and
+his master should consider the juncture a favourable one for making a
+clean sweep of Mary and the Spanish interest in England. Courtenay, in
+Italy, was secretly warned to hold himself in readiness, but this was
+only a matter of precaution, for poor Courtenay was in the hands of the
+enemy and already a dead force. The principal card by which Noailles
+hoped to win the game for France was Elizabeth, now living quietly
+and devoutly at Hatfield, surrounded by servants upon whom she could
+depend. Through a French agent named Bertheville Noailles approached a
+number of disaffected gentlemen, several of them members of the late
+Parliament, from Devonshire; and Sir Henry Dudley, Sir Anthony Kingston,
+Sir William Peckham, Ashton, Daniel, the two Tremaynes, and others,
+agreed to proclaim Elizabeth, expel or otherwise dispose of Mary, marry
+the new Queen to Courtenay, and free the country finally from the Spanish
+nightmare. The aid of France was, of course, a necessary condition
+of success; but when the moment for action came Henry II. had just
+signed the truce of Vaucelles, and he counselled prudence and a waiting
+policy, knowing that the blow might be more effectually dealt when the
+inevitable war recommenced. That Elizabeth was at least cognisant that
+something was afoot is evident from Montmorenci’s letter to Noailles
+of 7th February, 1556 (Ambassades, vol. v.), in which he says: “And,
+above all, prevent Madam Elizabeth from moving in the slightest degree
+to undertake what you say; for if she do it will spoil everything and
+prevent the fruition of their designs, which must be deferred until a
+good opportunity offers.”
+
+The French Embassy in London became the rallying-point for treason
+against Mary; crowds of disaffected Englishmen begged for means of
+joining Dudley, who had gone to France, and there with French aid to
+organise a descent upon England simultaneous with a rising at Court.
+Noailles himself was an eager conspirator, but the French Government
+advised delay, and the ambassador was obliged to temporise. The
+conspirators were in no mood now for half-measures, for the country
+was growing indignant at the religious persecutions and the unfounded
+belief that Mary was impoverishing her country by sending out money to
+her Spanish husband, and it was determined by the conspirators to act
+at once. Sir Anthony Kingston, with the Devonshire men, was to march
+to London, raising the country on the way; the Captain of the Isle of
+Wight, Uvedale, was to place the island at the disposal of the English
+refugees from France, whilst Heneage and other courtiers undertook to
+raise London, pillage the treasury, and proclaim Elizabeth Queen. Pole
+always distrusted Elizabeth, even in her most submissive and Catholic
+moods; and, thanks to a spy, he had already been informed of the whole
+plan of the conspirators; whilst Wotton, the English ambassador in
+France, had kept the English Council well informed of the movements
+and gossip of the English refugees. Just before the time fixed for the
+rising, therefore, the hand of the Council came down heavily upon the
+conspirators, and by the end of March all the principals found themselves
+behind the bars, most of them on the way to the scaffold.
+
+There was no direct evidence of Elizabeth’s guilt—she had taken good care
+of that; but Mary and Philip were well aware that she was the person
+to supplant them, and they determined, if possible, to remove her from
+future temptation. The idea at first was to send her to Flanders or
+Spain, with or without her consent; and this probably would have been
+done but for the efforts of Pole’s secretary, the Abbé of St. Salut, a
+Piedmontese, who had been gained over to the French side, and convinced
+the Cardinal of the danger to England of thus handing the heiress to the
+Crown to the keeping of Spaniards. As an alternative Mary determined
+to search Hatfield House, arrest her sister’s confidential servants,
+and place the Princess herself under arrest. Protestant books and
+seditious publications against the King and Queen were discovered in a
+hiding-place, and some of her household, when pressed in the Tower, gave
+evidence seriously implicating Elizabeth herself. Again her fate trembled
+in the balance. To carry her to the Tower or to deal with her as a rebel
+might precipitate a rising in London, where she was greatly beloved; to
+send her to Spain might be to perpetuate the hold of Philip upon the
+country, and not even Pole wished for that. So in her perplexity, whilst
+guarding Elizabeth straitly, Mary begged her absent husband’s direction.
+
+Philip’s need for England’s co-operation was greater than ever, for he
+was faced with a new formidable coalition of France, the Pope, and the
+Turk against him, sworn to crush him finally; and he knew that his wife
+was failing. To drive Elizabeth into the hands of the French now would
+be impolitic, and for him policy was everything. So Mary was enjoined to
+treat her sister gently, to release her from arrest, and to assure her
+of future favour. Two members of the Council went to Hatfield with the
+Queen’s message. Her Majesty did not believe the allegations against her
+sister, they said, and so long as the latter was obedient and loyal she
+would find that, very far from being distrusted, she would be beloved and
+esteemed; and this kind message was sealed by the gift of a costly ring.
+But blandishments had no more influence over Elizabeth than threats. She
+had begun to realise her power and importance, and declined to play the
+game of Spain by going to Court and allowing herself to be cajoled into a
+marriage to suit her brother-in-law.
+
+In the meanwhile the English refugees in France, led by Sir Henry
+Dudley, were more active than ever, and the reports of the spies with
+regard to the intention of Henry II. kept Mary in a state of constant
+alarm,[108] for invasion was threatened at a dozen distinct points on
+the English coast, and her navy was in a deplorable condition. Some
+check was afforded to the intrigues by the premature death of Courtenay
+in September, but this rendered more necessary than ever assurance of
+Elizabeth to the Spanish party. In response to a peremptory command
+Elizabeth was fain at last, in November, 1556, to travel from Hatfield
+to London. Attended by two hundred horsemen in her livery, her ride
+through the capital to her Palace of Somerset House was like a triumphal
+progress. Cheers and blessings resounded on all sides, for she knew
+well how to draw the affectionate greeting of the common people: but
+what was more surprising was that the courtiers and Councillors, even
+Cardinal Pole, who had previously refused even to see her, hastened
+to salute her, and on her appearance at her sister’s Court no honour
+was considered sufficient for her.[109] What could it mean, asked her
+French friends, this sudden favour? and perhaps the Princess herself was
+puzzled at first. She had not, however, many days to wait. Philip had
+written to Mary and the Council directing them to press urgently the
+suit of Emmanuel Philibert of Savoy for Elizabeth’s hand, and Mary left
+no effort untried to carry out her husband’s wishes.[110] Letter after
+letter came from the King in Flanders expressing his profound interest in
+the result, for the new Pope had united the enemies of Spain, Henry II.
+had broken the truce of Vaucelles, and, beset on all hands, Philip saw
+that unless he could depend upon England even after his wife’s death,
+his cause could never prevail. But Elizabeth was as adamant. To all the
+arguments and desires of her sister she would only give one reply: she
+was determined not to marry.
+
+In vain Mary, losing all patience, stormed and threatened. She would
+deprive her of the succession in favour of Mary of Scotland, she would
+have her proclaimed a bastard, she would send her to the Tower as a
+traitor, and much else of the same sort, said the angry Queen; and
+Elizabeth, alarmed at the violence, fell ill. She thought, too, of
+seeking safety by flight to France, though from this she was dissuaded
+by Noailles. But, ill and frightened though she was, she never wavered
+for a moment in her refusal to marry Emmanuel Philibert at the bidding of
+her brother-in-law; and after only five days’ stay in London she stolidly
+went in disgrace again under guard to Hatfield.[111]
+
+The intemperate violence of the Neapolitan Pope Paul IV. (Caraffa)
+against Philip and the Spaniards, and the war which the Pontiff had
+precipitated, made it more difficult than ever for Philip to persuade
+the English to join him in the fight: for to war against the Papacy
+seemed to Mary impious, and Pole, now in the place of the martyred
+Cranmer, Archbishop of Canterbury as well as Papal Legate, strongly
+discountenanced any such an attitude on the part of a country only just
+reconciled to the Holy See. The Lord Chancellor, Heath, Archbishop of
+York, and a devout Catholic, was shocked at the idea of entering into a
+war, and above all a war without any provocation, against the apostolic
+power; and Philip found now that not only were the common people in
+England against his adventure, but the principal advisers of his wife,
+and, for the first time, even his wife herself. She was willing, even
+eager, to make war upon France; for she had her own grudge against a
+Power which harboured her rebels and subsidised all the plots against
+her; but to go to war with Henry was now also to oppose Rome, and the
+main bone of contention was the Spanish dominion over Italy, which
+concerned England not at all. She was, moreover, in the deepest poverty,
+for, against Philip’s wish, she had insisted upon restoring to the Church
+all the ecclesiastical property in the hands of the Government; and the
+country itself was seething with discontent; so that, whatever her own
+wishes were, she was perfectly powerless to help Philip as he wished with
+men, arms, and ships for his purpose.
+
+Alba, whom Philip had sent from England to represent him in Italy, was no
+weakling, and, like his master, though a devout Catholic he looked upon
+the Papacy as a mere instrument for Spain’s exaltation, and he promptly
+answered Paul’s denunciations by marching in September, 1556, boldly
+upon Rome, submitting town after town in the Pope’s dominions. In vain
+Paul shrieked anathemas and flung defiance at the hated Spaniards, and
+threatened with instant death any one who dared to speak of peace with
+them. Guise with the French army hastened to relieve Rome from imminent
+capture; and in the hope of delaying matters until he could arrive,
+the Pope entered into negotiations with Alba for a forty days’ truce,
+leaving the Spaniards in possession of most of the papal fortresses.
+Guise and his army soon altered the aspect of affairs, and through the
+summer of 1557 Alba and Guise fought out the quarrel of Spain and France
+upon Italian papal soil, whilst on the frontiers of Flanders Emmanuel
+Philibert was at close grips with Henry II. himself.
+
+Now, if ever, was the time when the English connection might help Philip,
+but it was obvious that unless he could exert his personal influence upon
+Mary and her Councillors he could not hope to obtain it. So, at length,
+in February, 1557, Philip, sorely pressed though he was, announced to
+Mary his intention of visiting her again. The Queen’s joy at the news was
+pathetic in its intensity, though Pole warned her not to build too much
+upon a promise that had been broken so often before. She had been ill and
+disconsolate with hope deferred, but the news of Philip’s coming gave her
+new life, and she hurried to London from Hampton Court, visiting Pole at
+Lambeth on the way, exerting all her influence to win him to her side.
+Thenceforward for some weeks, whilst the King’s voyage was pending, the
+English Council sat nearly night and day, and couriers hastened backwards
+and forwards between London, Brussels, and Paris. The English refugees
+in France had treacherously given to Henry II. much information about
+the weakness and disaffection in the English fortresses of Calais and
+Guisnes; and at the first news of Philip’s fresh visit to England the
+French forces around Calais were increased, for it was evident now that
+Mary would be dragged into the war, and her most vulnerable point of
+attack was Calais.
+
+Philip landed at Dover on the 18th March, 1557, and took horse with all
+speed to Gravesend. At Canterbury he alighted to attend service at the
+cathedral; but so hurriedly that he did not wait to take off his spurs.
+This being against the rule, a young student was bold enough to claim
+the forfeit, or fine: and the King smilingly emptied his purse of gold
+in the youth’s cap before he rode on his way. Again his habitual haughty
+frigidity was changed for the genial _bonhomie_ that he found suited
+his purpose best in England. At every stage messengers from the Queen
+met him, one of whom galloped back to her immediately with news of his
+progress, and on his arrival at Greenwich poor forlorn Mary hailed him
+with love unutterable. For two days he remained with her alone, draining,
+as he formerly said, the chalice of his sacrifice to the dregs; and then
+they passed through London together once more, she borne in a litter,
+he riding by her side. His reception was not unfriendly by the people,
+whom he tried to gain by his affability and moderation, though the fear
+that war might be the result of his visit made them uneasy. So far as
+the Councillors were concerned, they were now but feeble folk to stand
+against him and the Queen; though Pole, the Pope’s legate, did not even
+officially greet one who was in arms against the Papacy, and the Cardinal
+departed as quickly as might be to his diocese, so as to be out of the
+way whilst Philip was at Court.
+
+But still, bribed though the Council was and however submissive the
+Queen, the state of feeling in England was such as to make a declaration
+of war against France a dangerous matter. A series of bad harvests, the
+depreciation of the coinage, and the enclosure of the commons and parks
+had reduced the country to a condition of the utmost misery. Money was
+extremely scarce, and the idea of squandering large sums upon a foreign
+war drove the distracted Council to despair, though Philip in the course
+of many conferences with them urged it incessantly. The Councillors
+admitted that, in accordance with the old treaty of 1543 between the
+Emperor and Henry VIII.,[112] England might be called upon to provide an
+armed contingent if Flanders were attacked by France: but Philip wanted
+more than that, and to some extent he was successful, notwithstanding
+that Archbishop Heath tearfully protested that the country was quite
+unable to meet the necessary expenditure. It was at last arranged that
+eight thousand English infantry should be raised for service and one
+thousand cavalry, three thousand of the former to reinforce the English
+fortresses in France, and the rest to be at Philip’s service for four
+months, under the command of Lord Pembroke, Sir Thomas Cheyne, Lord
+Bedford, and Lord Grey de Wilton, one-half the cost only to be borne by
+England. But there was also a promise on the part of the Council to fit
+out and man with six thousand soldiers the English fleet to hold the
+Channel against the French. Upon one point the Council was firm: these
+forces were simple auxiliaries contributed in accordance with the old
+treaty, and must not entail a national war between England and France.
+
+But this arrangement did not suit France better than it did her enemy.
+If England was to join Philip in the war, she must be open to counter
+attack and reprisals. But if England could strike indirectly so could
+France, and by such means a national rupture might be precipitated
+which would allow of a French invasion over the Scottish border and
+the siege of the English fortresses in France. So again the English
+Protestant exiles in France were feasted and made much of by Henry II.
+They were a turbulent lot of young gallants whose brawls and adventures
+had scandalised the French Court: but now they suddenly assumed a new
+importance. Thomas Stafford, the nephew of Cardinal Pole, a cadet of his
+family with no valid claims whatever, was the most hairbrained of the
+crew, and took it into his head to pose as the rightful pretender to the
+English Crown. Henry could not openly countenance such a pretension, but
+Stafford was allowed to recruit men for his attempt. Frenchmen, Scots,
+and discontented English, a motley rabble of lawless adventurers, flocked
+to his standard at Rouen, in ignorance of their exact destination.
+Sailing in two well-armed ships from Dieppe, he suddenly descended
+upon Scarborough. Affairs were in so critical a condition in England
+that anything might have happened, and Wotton, the English ambassador
+in France, believed that if Thomas Stafford once secured a footing in
+England he might draw to him all the discontented element, to Mary’s
+undoing. Stafford, however, was not of the stuff from which successful
+pretenders are made. He seized Scarborough Castle in April, whilst
+Philip was still in England, and at once announced that he came to claim
+the Crown and deliver the country from the yoke of the Spaniards, who
+intended to rule it by force. But in a day or two the Catholic Earl of
+Westmorland with his militia took him by surprise and Thomas Stafford’s
+bubble burst before it was well inflated, greatly to Noailles’ scorn and
+annoyance. The retribution for treason came swiftly, and before a month
+was out the heads of the principal rebels had fallen on the block on
+Tower Hill. But a gust of indignation passed over England at the attempt,
+prompted as it had been by the French, and suddenly the idea of war with
+France, the enemy of the Queen, became popular. Henry II. did his best
+to explain away his complicity;[113] but Mary, transported with rage,
+dismissed Noailles, and Philip was delighted to find that England was now
+ready to join him nationally in a war against France.
+
+On the 6th June heralds in London proclaimed hostilities, and Philip
+for the first time, even at this eleventh hour, saw some return for the
+sacrifice he had made in marrying the Queen of England. He hated war, and
+his methods were essentially peaceful and diplomatic; but he knew that
+his best chance of securing a durable peace was to exert his utmost power
+whilst his control of English resources lasted, which it was evident
+could not be very long, for the Queen’s declining health was plain now to
+every one but herself, though she clung still tenaciously to her pathetic
+dream of happy maternity. Satisfied with the results of his mission,
+Philip rode on the 1st July, 1557, from Gravesend through Canterbury to
+Dover. Mary would not leave him whilst he remained on English soil, and,
+weak and ailing but happy with her new fallacious hope, she was carried
+in a litter by her husband’s side to the coast. On the 3rd July she bade
+him a last farewell, as he stepped upon the barge that was to carry him
+to the waiting galleon, and then, with sorrow and satisfaction mingled,
+she turned her back upon the sea and was carried to her desolate palace
+at Greenwich.
+
+The gentry of England, at all events, were ready to welcome the war with
+France that gave them the taste of warlike adventure which they loved,
+and the contingent to fight in Flanders was soon made ready, whilst the
+Lord Admiral with his fleet of twenty-three ships held the Channel.
+Philip’s General-in-Chief was his young cousin Emmanuel Philibert of
+Savoy, who had an army of fifty thousand men under him ready for the
+autumn campaign; whilst the French on the Flemish frontier, under
+Constable Montmorenci, numbered less than half that strength, for the
+flower of the French troops were under Guise in Italy, with difficulty
+defending the Pope from the great Duke of Alba, and Emmanuel Philibert
+opened his campaign as soon as the English arrived. By a series of rapid
+and unexpected movements, which entirely misled the French, he suddenly
+concentrated his attack upon the rich and important city of St. Quintin,
+weakly garrisoned and in poor condition of defence. Montmorenci hurried
+with his main army to relieve the fortress, and on the 10th August was
+cleverly outflanked by Emmanuel Philibert; caught in a trap between a
+stronger enemy and a morass, the French were utterly routed with a loss
+of half their numbers, Montmorenci himself being captured, and the whole
+force dispersed. Coligny with his tiny garrison in St. Quintin heroically
+held out for a fortnight longer; but from the day of Montmorenci’s
+defeat there was no force to prevent Philip from marching upon Paris and
+crushing his enemy for good.[114] This was his chance, and he missed
+it, as he did every great opportunity in his long life by that “prudent”
+leaden foot of his which always lagged when it should have hastened. In
+vain Savoy begged his permission to march on, and was refused, to the
+indignant surprise of the old Emperor when he heard of it in his cloister
+at Yuste.
+
+Philip had been at Cambrai on the day of the battle, but when he saw
+the awful sack and sacrilege after the surrender of St. Quintin he was
+horrified at the sight. Te Deums were chanted, votive offerings of
+unheard of richness were promised,[115] joy bells were rung in Flanders,
+Spain, and England for the great victory; but Philip’s host moved no
+further onward towards Paris. The German Schwartzreiters, mercenary
+troops in Philip’s service, unpaid ruffians, held high revel in the
+ruined town, burning and ravaging unchecked. The Earl of Bedford, writing
+to Sir William Cecil from St. Quintin a few days after the surrender,
+says that these rascals, “being masters of the King’s whole army, used
+such force as well to the Spaniards, Italians, and other nations as unto
+us, that there were none could enjoy nothing but themselves. They have
+now shown such cruelty as the like hath not been seen for greediness.
+The town by them was set afire, and a great piece of it burnt. Divers
+were burnt in cellars, and were killed immediately; women and children
+gave such pitiful cries that it would grieve any Christian heart.”
+The Germans, discontented with their loot, quarrelled and deserted in
+thousands, for Philip’s fatal deliberation had left them idle; the
+English, sulky and unpaid, grumbled incessantly. Bedford reports that
+“they are pinched with scarcity and divers have fallen sick”; and,
+again, a month later: “Our General is sick of ague, our pay very slack,
+and people grudge for want. I trust we shall speedily be discharged.”
+The Spaniards asserted that the English had shown no stomach for the
+fight before St. Quintin, and certainly they did not shine in it. Their
+discontent at last became so pronounced that Philip, realising their
+uselessness, and being, as usual, short of money, acceded to their
+clamour to be allowed to return home at the end of the stipulated four
+months of their service. Much was made of the King’s victory in London.
+Mary and Pole congratulated him upon the signal mark of God’s favour.
+Bonfires, free feasts, and official rejoicings were provided; but London
+wanted to gain no victories for Spaniards, and refused to be glad.
+
+Whilst Philip’s army was melting away in idleness Guise, realising
+where the danger lay, quietly abandoned the Pope to the mercy of Alba,
+and by forced marches hurried to the Flemish frontier. The intemperate
+Pontiff was then obliged to make terms with Alba, who entered Rome, as
+a pretended penitent instead of a conqueror, and once more the two
+great antagonists were left to fight out their quarrel without papal
+interference. Henry II. had long had his eye upon England’s important
+foothold on France, the citadel and town of Calais. The English refugees
+had exposed to him the weak points in its defence, it had been starved
+and neglected both by Edward VI. and Mary; and the younger Noailles on
+his way home when Mary had dismissed him, carefully scrutinised the
+fortress and reported to the King that it might easily be captured.
+Guise, on his hurried return from Italy, directed himself straight
+towards the place and beleaguered it, capturing the Rysbank, the island
+fort defending the harbour, on the first days of January, 1558. Philip
+had long known that Calais was weakly held, and in many of his letters
+to the Queen and Council he had urged that it should be effectively
+reinforced. On Guise’s approach the King sent his favourite, the Count
+de Feria, hurriedly to England to say how desperate the condition now
+was with the Rysbank in the hands of Guise; but the preparations for
+the voyage of so important a person as Feria took much time, and the
+Queen in London learnt of the disaster immediately by a letter from Lord
+Wentworth, the Governor of Calais.
+
+Mary, still full of her renewed hope of maternity, which all but herself
+knew was piteously fallacious, received the news courageously and set to
+work to reinforce the town. Pembroke was ordered to raise five thousand
+men and cross at once to Philip’s harbour of Dunkirk, whence Calais might
+be reached by land. Unfortunately, the English town of Guisnes, near
+Calais, was in as perilous a condition as Calais itself, and Lord Grey de
+Wilton, the Commander, found himself, as he says, “clean cut off from
+all aid and relief. I have looked for both out of England and Calais,
+and know not how to have help by any means, either of men or victuals.
+There resteth now none other way for the succour of Calais, but a power
+of men out of England or from the King’s Majesty or both.”[116] Alas! the
+King’s Majesty himself had now few fit troops to meet Guise’s veterans.
+His demoralised army, scattered wide in winter quarters through Flanders,
+were difficult to collect rapidly, and Lords Wentworth and Grey de Wilton
+in vain sent daily beseeching letters to Philip to come to their aid, as
+Guise pressed Calais and Guisnes more closely. Calais particularly was
+crowded with traitors and enemies of the Spaniard, anxious to deliver
+the place to the French; and, although the English troops repulsed one
+attempt to storm the town on the 6th January, it cheerfully surrendered
+to the besiegers two days later; and Guisnes fell with but little more
+resistance directly afterwards.[117]
+
+The news fell like an aerolite upon the English Queen and nation. The
+possession of Calais had been regarded for centuries as the keystone to
+England’s commercial prosperity and political importance in Europe, and
+the surrender of the last foothold in France seemed a loss irreparable.
+That it should have been lost in a war undertaken on behalf of the
+Queen’s Spanish Consort, whilst he with a great though scattered force
+was in the immediate neighbourhood, added bitterness to the humiliation;
+and the Count de Feria, foreseeing the storm of anger that in England
+would greet the news, tarried a day or two in Dunkirk rather than
+cross the Channel with the sinister tidings. His first mission had
+been to induce the English Council to send forces to defend Calais and
+Guisnes, but he knew full well that behind this demand there was the
+need for English forces again to aid his master in the coming campaign;
+so, interpreting his instructions freely, he determined to proceed on
+his journey and turn his request into one for troops to recover the
+fortresses with the King’s help.
+
+Feria arrived in London on the 26th January, 1558, and to his surprise he
+found the people and the Queen quite changed in temper since he had left
+them with the King six months before. There was no despondency anywhere
+now; for though the blow had been a shrewd one it had aroused the spirit
+of the nation. The Queen was like a lioness; for she was fighting now, as
+she thought, poor soul, for the inheritance of her unborn offspring; and
+she threatened to have the head of any Councillor of hers who dared to
+talk of peace with France until she had recovered the towns her ancestors
+had held for centuries. She would win them again, she said; her son would
+be born, and she and Philip, triumphant and at peace, would live happily.
+It was a dream, but it was shared, so far as concerned the recovery of
+the English territory in France, by the nation at large, which was now
+on its mettle; and clergy, gentry, and merchants opened their coffers,
+melted their gold chains, and mortgaged their belongings to provide funds
+for avenging English honour and protecting the English soil against the
+foreigner.
+
+The moment the news of the peril of Calais had reached Mary she
+despatched the Earl of Sussex and her Controller, Sir R. Rochester, to
+assure Philip that she would send the forces to defend or recover Calais
+without loss of time. When both Calais and Guisnes had been surrendered,
+however, it seemed better to Philip to curb somewhat the Queen’s ardour
+in the matter. It was too early in the year for him to begin his regular
+campaign, and it was obvious that without his powerful co-operation the
+English troops alone would be unable to recapture the lost fortresses. So
+the first letter written by the King to Feria after the arrival of the
+latter in England was couched in the cool, prudent tone so characteristic
+of him. The ambassador was to thank the Queen heartily for her goodwill
+to send him the troops, even after Calais had been lost, but as his own
+territories were not in present danger, “I do not wish the Queen to begin
+yet to incur expense, especially as we shall have to spend a great deal
+later in attempting to recover the ancient English territory. You will
+therefore tell the Queen how highly I appreciate her affectionate regard
+for my interests; but as I have now sufficient forces to hold my own I
+hope she will countermand the sending of troops, and apply the money to
+defending the English coast, which is of the greatest importance.”[118]
+
+Before receiving this letter Feria saw Mary in the Palace of Greenwich on
+the day he arrived, 26th January, 1558, and found her, as usual, eager to
+serve Philip’s interests. Feria said he only wished that her Councillors
+were as willing as she. She would, she said, summon the Council at once
+that Feria might discuss matters with them; but as Parliament was sitting
+it was Friday, 28th, before Feria and the resident ambassador, Figueroa,
+met the Councillors in Cardinal Pole’s room. Feria had agreed with the
+Queen as to the tone he should adopt with the Council. It was being
+murmured in London, and even in the Council itself, that this misfortune
+had fallen upon the nation because Philip had dragged it into the war;
+and Mary urged upon Feria that he should anticipate any such talk as
+that by saying at once that as Calais had been lost during a war which
+the English had undertaken on Philip’s behalf, he considered it his duty
+to help them to recover the fortress. The first need, however, he said,
+was to ensure the coasts of England from attack. What did the Council
+propose to do in the matter? Heath, who was the spokesman, was apologetic
+and despondent. The nation was in dire danger and its resources were
+very low: they agreed that defence of England must precede recovery of
+the fortresses on the other side of the Channel, and thought it best not
+to send across the hasty levies already collected at Dover. Feria, who
+had seen the mob of recruits as he passed through Dover, quite agreed
+with them. They had only been sent, said the Councillors apologetically,
+because the Queen had insisted. As for the broad question of national
+defence, they asked for time to consider what they proposed; and although
+Feria and Mary urged expedition, three days passed before the Council,
+headed by Heath, came in a body to Feria’s lodging and laid before him
+their plan of campaign.
+
+In a harangue full of honied words for Philip the Chancellor set forth
+the poverty of the country, the need for a strong force on the Scottish
+border to defend the north from a French incursion, the undefended
+condition of Ireland, and, above all, the danger of the Isle of Wight
+and Portsmouth, now that eighty French ships were collected at Dieppe
+with, it was feared, hostile intent. What they proposed was to fit out
+a hundred English vessels with fifty victualling smacks for service in
+the Channel, carrying an army of some fifteen thousand soldiers, ready,
+if Philip needed it, to land upon any spot on the northern French coast
+as a diversion. They were in fear, too, of a league of Denmark and the
+Free Cities to attack the northern coast of England in the interests of
+France; and they knew of no other means of raising a force to defend that
+part of the country than to beg the King to choose for them some good
+German mercenary leader who would engage to come over in their service
+with some three thousand Germans, to embark in Amsterdam for Newcastle.
+When they had found the money for all this, they said, they did not see
+how they could do more even to recover Calais.
+
+These proposals, which had indeed been suggested first by the Queen and
+Philip, were exactly those which suited the latter. Under the guise of
+defending the English south coast a large English fleet and army would
+be practically at his orders, to alarm and divert the French wherever
+he needed. Lord William Howard,[119] the Lord Admiral, a great-uncle of
+Elizabeth’s, and little in Philip’s favour, was by Feria’s intrigues
+superseded by Clinton, who was his obedient servant. The great
+difficulty, of course, was money. Everyday Feria urged the need for
+raising large sums at once. Parliament was sitting, and it was believed
+would vote liberal supplies in view of the national danger; and Mary
+herself once complaisantly told Feria that she believed Parliament would
+vote her a larger amount than had ever been granted to her father. “That
+is not to the purpose,” replied Feria, “but to get all the money you want
+in the circumstances.” The Earl of Sussex when in Flanders had given
+the King an idea that the nobles in England might still be induced, as
+Spanish nobles were, to supply feudal contingents of mounted men on the
+Sovereign’s demand; but when Feria suggested this to the Queen she told
+him flatly that all the nobles of England together would not contribute a
+hundred horse.
+
+The loss of Calais was unquestionably a serious blow to the prestige
+of Mary. Already people were grumbling that this was what she and her
+Spanish husband had brought the nation to. Here was this haughty Count
+of Feria, too: what had he come over for but to carry some more English
+money out of the country to feed Philip’s armies? This, of course, had
+no foundation whatever in truth, but the mere whispering of it made
+people stay away from the Catholic churches, and frown more sourly at
+the persecutions than they had done before. So far from carrying English
+money out, except to pay for the recruiting of the German mercenaries,
+whom Philip all along, however, meant to use for his own purposes, the
+Councillors to a man began dunning Feria for their unpaid Spanish
+pensions;[120] for although the Spaniard scornfully complains of their
+unwillingness to serve Philip’s interests first, they were all anxious
+for his money. The fear of invasion, which was, in fact, very remote, was
+industriously promoted by Feria and the Spaniards in order to keep the
+English Council up to their determination in raising forces which might
+be, and were, subsequently used by Philip for his own purposes when his
+summer campaign opened. These forces, however, did not satisfy Philip,
+who was somewhat chagrined to find that the English Council was so ready
+to limit its efforts to the defence of the coasts, without insisting upon
+the recovery of Calais. He had counted upon using the national anger at
+the loss to bring when he most needed them a good English contingent
+across the Channel to join his army, though the hasty levies in January
+would have been worse than useless to him.
+
+Both the King and Feria were impatient at the cumbrous English
+constitutional way of raising money, and pestered poor Mary daily by word
+and letter to obtain resources by other means. This she knew, and said,
+was impossible in England, and might cost her her crown. One day Paget
+came to Feria with a great plan to raise the vast sum of 800,000 crowns,
+in addition to the parliamentary vote, and the Spaniards were all eager
+to put it into practice; but when the time to discuss it seriously came,
+Paget’s proposal, to Feria’s anger, reduced itself to a loan of £100,000
+to be raised by Gresham in Antwerp and £80,000 to be borrowed from the
+London bankers. All would have been well managed, grumbled Paget, if he
+had the direction of affairs; and the other Councillors thereupon fell to
+wrangling with him as to their responsibility. This was early in March,
+1558, and Feria had quite lost patience with what he considered the
+ineptitude of Mary’s advisers, which really meant their disinclination
+to subordinate English interests entirely to the wishes of Philip and
+his minister. From the sitting of the Council just referred to, Feria
+and his colleague Figueroa went off in a rage to the Queen to: “complain
+of the reply [about the money], and to warn her again of the danger in
+which the country and she herself are, her Councillors being so inept
+that, although they say that the country is not rich, they cannot devise
+means even to raise sufficient money to defend themselves and recover the
+prestige that has been lost. We dwelt much upon this, as much indeed as
+we could; for the Queen was not fully aware of the poor service rendered
+by the English contingent which you had with your army last year. She was
+not even yet undeceived as to their not having been the first to enter
+St. Quintin until yesterday, we told her amongst other things. She was
+much grieved and promised that she would press them again about the money
+at Greenwich, where she will go to-day. Her one thought is that your
+Majesty should come to her again. She seems still to believe that she
+is pregnant, though she does not say so openly. She promises me to send
+Gresham to Antwerp at once to borrow the £100,000 they say have arranged.
+I think if that be the case, it would be easy to get them to borrow
+another £100,000, though I have not pressed it until he is there.”[121]
+
+Gresham’s instructions are dated two days after this letter was written,
+12th March. He had previously been dismissed from his former post as
+royal financial agent at Antwerp, and his reappointment was probably
+owing to the fact that in the narrow condition of the national finances
+he alone had sufficient authority on the Continental money market to
+raise the funds required. He was to bargain for the loan of £100,000
+that had been offered through one Germayn Scholl for one year, and to
+ascertain what powder and other munitions of war could be obtained in
+Flanders for English use.[122] Scholl was Gresham’s kinsman by marriage,
+but the bargain does not seem to have been fully concluded, only £10,000
+being obtained from that source,[123] Gresham remaining in Flanders
+until the summer, spending much of the money he could raise in munitions
+of war. He had been instructed to present letters of recommendation to
+King Philip, and to acquaint him with all he did. But Gresham, who was
+no admirer of the Spanish faction, appears to have been somewhat remiss
+in paying court to the King, for he failed to mention anything about him
+in his letters. Mary, who was always hankering for news of her husband,
+began to get restive at the omission, and her Secretary, Boxall, writes
+a private letter to Gresham in April hinting to him that he will make
+things easier all round if he will pay more court to the King, as the
+Queen asked about him. Gresham promptly took the hint and wrote a long
+letter to Mary, saying that he had just seen King Philip at a monastery
+outside Brussels, where he had passed Easter, “who is in right good
+health as your Majestie’s own harte can desyre.”[124]
+
+Whilst Gresham in Flanders was thus borrowing and spending money, Feria
+was chafing at the lack of sympathetic activity in the Councillors in the
+direction he desired. Writing to Philip in March, he says: “Before God,
+I can do no more, Sire! I do not know what to make of these people. For,
+believe me, your Majesty, from morning to night and from night to morning
+they are changing their minds about everything, and do what I can it is
+impossible for me to make them understand what a state they are in—the
+worst, surely, that ever people were in before. If it were only for their
+own sakes, I should like to leave them to the mercy of those who would
+treat them as they deserve; but I am afraid that they will drag us after
+them, as your Majesty knows. The Queen does, and says, all she can, and
+she really has spirit and goodwill; but in all else there is nothing
+but trouble. As for the Cardinal, he is a dead man; and although he has
+plucked up a little with what they write to him every day from Italy
+since the loss of Calais, he is not so warm as I should have liked to see
+him. Of all the rest of them, I really do not know which is the worst
+disposed to your interest. But I know that those whom you have favoured
+most serve you the least.”[125]
+
+Feria noticed that Mary grew ever thinner and more despondent. She slept
+badly and was devoured with anxiety and yearning for her husband, whose
+letters came to her so rarely. Both she and Pole, indeed, were now almost
+negligible forces; and Feria began to plot with a few of the Councillors
+upon whom he could depend to take into his own hands practically the
+direction of affairs. How it was managed is well set forth in a letter
+of his to the King of 1st May, 1558. He has, he says, been able to hold
+a private conference with Privy Seal (Bedford) and the Admiral (Clinton)
+“about that enterprise they had proposed to me, and also to press them
+about the land armaments.” They were of opinion that they could raise a
+land army, and that the recovery of Calais would not be so difficult as
+people imagined. “They say that they could get together 12,000 English
+and German infantry, 3,000 horse (2,000 Germans and 1,000 English),
+2,000 English pioneers, and if your Majesty did not think well of the
+_enterprise_ they might be used for other purposes. I did not dwell so
+much upon this point as upon getting the force together. They think, and
+quite rightly, that it is useless to deal with this matter with more
+than four or five persons who will be in favour of it; and they propose
+besides themselves Jerningham, the Master of the Rolls, who was the
+Solicitor-General (Cordell), and the Controller (Rochester), although the
+latter is a man who always raises difficulties to everything. I think
+that these three will suit best for the purpose, as they are favoured by
+the Queen.
+
+“I know of no other way to remedy matters but this: that your Majesty
+should write to the Queen saying that on mature deliberation you have
+decided that the best course will be for her Majesty to raise these
+troops, beginning with the money voted by Parliament: for as soon as the
+people see your Majesties determined to avenge the loss of Calais you
+believe that they will favour the enterprise, since no prince ever begins
+a war with all the money in hand necessary to finish it. You might add
+that nothing should be said about spending the Parliament money, but
+that it should be entrusted to some person for the object in view. Paget
+thinks that Bacon would be a fit person for this, and the Queen would
+agree to him. Your Majesty should also write to her that the business
+should be discussed with nobody but the five persons mentioned. Paget,
+Clinton, myself, and Figueroa think that this is the last thing we can
+do. Paget thought lately that Rutland would be the best man to command
+this force, and we think that Clinton and the Vice-Admiral should conduct
+the fleet. The fleet is now ready and is costing money with no profit.
+Even if your Majesty does not think well to press the Queen about the
+foregoing business you might send her instructions at once as to what she
+is to do with this fleet.”[126]
+
+It will be seen by this that the plan was to use every atom of the force
+raised in England and with English money, not for the defence of the
+country itself, which had been the first pretext for raising it, but
+to send across the sea, either to aid in the recovery of Calais or,
+at Philip’s option, for any other purpose he might choose, and that
+similarly the fleet was to be placed at his disposal.[127] It is quite
+plain from the way in which Feria writes of her that Mary was simply to
+be told what to do by Philip, and that she was expected to do it without
+demur. How completely she hung upon Philip’s words, and subordinated
+everything to his wish, is seen in a paragraph in the same letter as
+that quoted above from Feria to the King. A Swedish envoy had arrived in
+England with an offer of marriage to Elizabeth from Prince Eric, the heir
+to the crown. He had been already several days in London and had not even
+asked audience of the Queen, though he had committed the gross breach of
+propriety of going down to Hatfield and delivering the Prince’s letter
+to Elizabeth before he saw Mary. The poor Queen was terribly upset at
+this; and hearing that Feria was despatching a courier to Antwerp, she
+feared that he was going to write to Philip about it. Sending for Feria
+she with tears and reproaches upbraided him for his supposed intention,
+and said that she herself was going to write to her husband telling him
+all about it. “When the ambassador from Sweden first came,” writes Feria,
+“she was in great trouble, fearing that your Majesty would blame her for
+not having carried through that affair last year [_i.e._, the marriage of
+Elizabeth with Savoy]. Since then, however, Madam Elizabeth has replied
+that she will not marry; and the Queen is more tranquil, but she is
+intensely impassioned in the matter; and one of the reasons for her grief
+at the pregnancy having turned out fallacious is the fear that it will
+cause you to press her in this other business [_i.e._, the marriage of
+Elizabeth]. Both Figueroa and I think that your Majesty ought to do so
+_apropos_ of the coming of this Swedish ambassador and the failure of
+the pregnancy. But it is necessary that such pressure should not come at
+the same time as the matter of the land armament, or it will upset the
+business altogether. In short, Sire, I believe that the Queen will not
+stand in the way of her [_i.e._, Elizabeth] being Queen if God does not
+send you children.”[128]
+
+Already Elizabeth’s sun was seen to be in the ascendant, and, regardless
+of the feelings of her sister the Queen, it suited Spanish policy to
+ensure her marriage, if possible, with a nominee dependent upon Philip.
+How anxious Philip personally was not to lose touch of Elizabeth at this
+juncture is seen in his reply at the end of May to a suggestion of Feria
+that the latter should go to Hatfield and pay his respects to her before
+he left England: “What you say about visiting Madam Elizabeth before you
+depart appears to me to be very wise, for the reasons you point out,
+and I am writing to the Queen, saying that I have ordered you to go.
+You will act accordingly; and I have no doubt that when the Queen sees
+the firmness with which I write on the subject she will consent.”[129]
+Philip’s fiery and impetuous ambassador Feria went considerably beyond
+his master in his high-handed dealing with the English Government; for
+Philip’s methods were diplomatic and far-seeing, and his object was not
+to ride roughshod over his wife’s country, as Feria would have done,
+but to use its resources for his ends, as if without design, and to
+perpetrate his hold upon it after his wife’s death.
+
+Mary, still suffering from her usual indispositions, persuaded herself
+in May that Philip was coming over to see her again. It was, as Feria
+said, unreasonable; for Philip was overweighted with business, arranging
+the summer campaigns and a thousand other things: but Mary, full of hope
+again, caused herself to be carried to St. James’s to be ready to receive
+her husband, and had horses and lodgings prepared for him from Dover to
+Gravesend and an escort of ships at Dover to convey him across. Feria
+told her blankly that the King was too busy to come, and again pressed
+her about raising the land army to reinforce Philip in Flanders. He found
+her less ready in the matter than he had hoped—“for the Cardinal and
+Council persuade her as they like”—and she wearily suggested that Clinton
+should go to Brussels to discuss the matter with the King. “This,” said
+Feria, “was only because they think that I push them too hard; and they
+believe they can deal more easily with your Majesty, their real object
+being to upset the scheme altogether;” and the ambassador continues by
+recommending the King when Clinton arrived in Brussels to deal with him
+high-handedly, blaming the Council angrily for their slackness in the
+past. Clinton was evidently the most pliant tool of all; and yet, even of
+him, Feria writes: “Nothing that he says will be true, unless he thinks
+it will be investigated. I have had no end of trouble about this, for
+they do nothing but lie and prevaricate.”
+
+All this haughty pressure on the part of Feria, and the servile
+compliance of Paget and the rest of the Spanish clique, in order to bully
+the English into raising a large force to join Philip’s army on the
+pretext of recovering Calais, was seen by the politic King to be unwise.
+The English fleet, with its seven thousand soldiers on board, might be
+useful for him in many ways, and he made much of Clinton when he saw
+him in Brussels, urging him to have the fleet provisioned and ready for
+service whenever ordered from June to September; but the raising of a
+land army of Englishmen did not suit him: in the first place because it
+would pledge him to a regular campaign against the French in Calais for
+the ultimate benefit of England alone, to the neglect of the Flemish
+frontier that concerned him most, and secondly, as he says, because “the
+English, as they would arm unwillingly, however much they were pressed
+and encouraged, would not be of much use. I can even see that they
+might cause more inconvenience than otherwise. Either they might come
+so badly organised and weak as to be easily defeated, which would be
+most injurious, or they might force me to go to their rescue, and upset
+my own plans.” The King was of opinion that the English had much better
+concentrate their land strength on the Scottish frontier and in Ireland,
+so long as he was allowed to do as he liked with the English fleet.
+
+The meaning of this is made abundantly clear, and Philip’s own foresight
+vindicated by the sequel. If the English Council were encouraged to
+employ all their own forces on the Scottish Border it was foreseen that
+they would not need the three thousand or more German auxiliaries which
+were now mustering on the Rhine under the leader Wallerdun, much of the
+money for them having been already disbursed by the English special
+agents in Flanders, Sir William Pickering and others. Feria, in his
+letter of 18th May to the King, says: “I understand that these people
+already repent of having asked for the three thousand Germans, for their
+view now is only to defend their own shores, and the Scots will not
+trouble them. They have said nothing to me about it yet, but I know that
+what I say is true.... If they do not want to bring these 3,000 Germans
+over, your Majesty might consider whether you will ask for them for
+yourself.” This, although it was exactly what Philip himself desired and
+intended, was only effected after much wrangling about the money spent
+and the responsibility incurred by the English Council. Philip, writing
+on the 10th June, instructs Feria cunningly to manage so that the Council
+may be got to propose that the German mercenaries might be taken off
+their hands as a favour; but if they could not be got to see it in this
+light that the Queen should be told in confidence that the King needed
+the Germans very much. The Council proved recalcitrant; for, as they
+said, they had spent already a large sum upon the mercenaries, and might
+need them; but they had to give way before the pressure of the Queen and
+Feria, insisting ultimately, however, that Philip should pay the sum of
+£2,000 for which Gresham had made himself responsible but had not paid
+for the arms supplied. The recruiting money of the Germans and first
+month’s pay was lost.
+
+Relations between the imperious Feria and the English Council became
+daily more strained, every unimportant point was made a question of
+dignity by the ambassador,[130] and the sick, disconsolate Queen between
+the jarring elements, wishing to conciliate both sides, was rendered
+doubly unhappy. From Feria’s contemptuous and insulting references to
+Pole it is evident that the Cardinal declined to become an instrument for
+purely Spanish ends; whilst all the rest of the Councillors are dismissed
+by the ambassador in his letters to the King as lying rascals intent
+only upon plunder. Looking beyond Feria’s intemperate, angry words,
+the principal sin of the Councillors in his eyes seems to have been a
+disinclination to squander money of which the nation was so sorely in
+need upon raising forces without some assurance that they would be used
+for English ends. Already people were grumbling that the powerful fleet
+under Clinton was to be merely an auxiliary of Philip in the war, at his
+entire disposal, and the continued bad fortune that followed the Spanish
+arms increased the anger in England at being thus tied to the tail of
+Philip in the war, without any attempt being made by him to recover the
+lost English fortresses.
+
+So far from doing this, indeed, news came early in July that Dunkirk, one
+of the most useful of his ports, within a few miles of Calais, had been
+captured by the French, as well as Thionville, an important fortress.
+Mary was panic-stricken at the news, and summoned Feria from Durham House
+to say that she must at once send off a courier to Philip to know the
+truth. Feria made light of the news, and said it was not worth while
+to send in such haste, and the overburdened Queen broke out in angry
+reproaches at his indifference. How could her merchants send their wool
+to Flanders, she asked, if Dunkirk was in French hands? and yet Feria
+treated the matter as of no importance. But when the ambassador suggested
+that the English fleets in Plymouth and Dover should at once sail to
+Dunkirk to help the King, Mary eagerly assented, though the Council at
+once vetoed it; for, said they, the French have also captured Alderney,
+and it behoved the admiral to go there first. “And really, to tell your
+Majesty the truth,” wrote Feria, “I did not dare to contradict them,
+for I saw that if but four French ships were to land their companies in
+England they would overturn everything.” This was written in July, and
+shortly afterwards Feria, having hectored the English Queen and Council
+thus into placing the English fleet almost entirely at Philip’s disposal,
+and having raised and paid three thousand German mercenaries which he had
+appropriated, took his leave and returned to Flanders, first visiting
+Elizabeth at Hatfield, much, he says, to her and his pleasure: “for
+reasons which I will tell your Majesty when I see you.”
+
+Mary now was a mere shadow. The cruel persecutions and the loss of Calais
+together had completely destroyed the belief of the people in her power
+to rule England for its own benefit. Her father and grandfather, and
+even the greatly inferior Northumberland, had managed to maintain the
+balance of power between the two great Continental rivals upon which
+the importance of England depended. Mary from the first day of her
+accession, as we have seen, had neglected this essential point in English
+policy, and had ended by becoming a mere satellite of the Spanish
+King, involving her country thus in a ruinous war, in which it had lost
+much and had nothing to gain. The Council, against which Feria raged so
+savagely, was, it is true, after the death of Gardiner, composed of men
+of no commanding ability; but it had done its best to prevent the utter
+subjection of England to Philip’s aims. The success of its efforts was
+not great; for as Feria’s correspondence shows the most active members
+of the Council were bought body and soul by Spain, and Mary was in
+most cases ready to back up Feria’s arrogant hectoring with her royal
+authority. For her, in her forlorn condition, the first consideration
+was to please her husband and prevent the Catholic power, upon which she
+increasingly depended, from collapse.
+
+Her great hope was that Philip might be lured back again to her side
+to live in prosperity and peace. Again and again her fond hopes were
+disappointed, and, a prey to a constitutional disorder, she sank deeper
+and deeper in despondency. After Feria left her in July she continued
+ailing, whilst those around her, seeing the approach of the inevitable
+change, busied themselves in plans which might, if they were fortunate,
+save them from disaster in the future. For men of all opinions recognised
+that it was not alone a woman who was dying, but a political and
+religious system that had failed; and vengeance was sharpening its knife,
+whilst those who had thus made England the servant of a foreigner and a
+prey to the bigots were trembling for the wrath to come.
+
+Early in September a fever came to add to the Queen’s ailments, and this,
+being an unusual symptom with her, caused grave anxiety; but Philip’s
+Flemish councillor Dassonleville, who was in London to inquire whether
+any league was being negotiated between England, Sweden, and Denmark,
+wrote early in October that both the Queen and Cardinal Pole were better
+than they had been since the beginning of their maladies. Parliament met
+at Westminster on the 5th November, and in it resounded loud complaints,
+bold and unsuppressed now, of the cost and damage to England caused by
+the war undertaken to please King Philip, and suggestions were made that
+the peace negotiations already in progress should be actively pushed.
+The great question, moreover, that was occupying all minds was that of
+the succession to the Crown when the Queen should die. “If your Majesty
+could have been present it would have been of the greatest importance in
+moving the Parliament to your desires,” wrote Dassonleville. “But if that
+be impossible, and important affairs should detain you in Flanders, the
+coming of the Count de Feria, who is much liked here,[131] would serve,
+nevertheless, to direct affairs so far as the time will allow. Many of
+the Council are beginning to understand how necessary the alliance of
+Flanders is to this realm, the salvation of which depends upon it, as
+England cannot alone withstand for long the efforts of its old enemies,
+the French and Scots, without the aid of your Majesty. The common people
+do not understand it yet, and talk of allying the Lady Elizabeth with the
+Earls of Westmorland or Arundel, and sometimes with a Prince of Sweden or
+Denmark, so inconstant are they.”[132]
+
+It is quite evident that when Dassonleville speaks of the impossibility
+of England holding its own without Philip’s aid he meant under the
+existing system. In this, of course, he was right; but he overlooked
+the fact that if the country freed itself from the Spanish connection,
+which had dragged it down, and once more dexterously held the balance
+between the two Powers, neither would attack it, because neither would
+be benefited by weakening a possible useful ally. But the English
+people were quite awake to the alternative if Dassonleville was not,
+and were looking anxiously away from the sad sufferer who had failed
+as a Queen and was awaiting extinction in St. James’s, to the demure,
+self-controlled young woman who bided her time so patiently and so
+confidently at Hatfield. She knew now she would not have to wait long.
+“Sire,” continued Dassonleville, “the Queen has had some good intervals
+since her grave malady; and for some days past has been quieter from her
+paroxysms. The issue of her illness is as yet uncertain. The people make
+her out to be worse than the doctors say, and rumour says that a change
+is so imminent that it will cause the enemy to be the more obstinate
+about the restoration of Calais. Nevertheless, if your Majesty insists
+upon not making peace without it, they will have to put up with it.”[133]
+
+This was written on the 6th November; but before the letter was
+despatched Dassonleville heard from Paget that the Queen’s malady
+being recognised as grave, the Council had requested her to make some
+pronouncement with regard to the succession. Mary, feeling the hand of
+death upon her, consented to a deputation of the Council waiting upon
+the Princess at Hatfield on the morrow, to tell her that the Queen was
+willing that she should succeed when she (Mary) should die, only begging
+two things of her—one to maintain the old religion, and the other to pay
+the debts she (Mary) had incurred. It was known by this that the gravest
+anticipations of the people were justified. Ten days before this Philip
+had learnt that his wife was not likely to live, and he had at once
+instructed Feria to start for England, for the special purpose of pushing
+forward urgently the question of Elizabeth’s marriage, which was now seen
+to be the only means by which he might still hold England. As has been
+already explained in previous pages, Mary had on each former occasion
+when the matter had been urged firmly stood out against it, as well as
+Elizabeth herself. Once the Queen had been won over for a day to the
+Savoy project, but Cardinal Pole had changed her mind, and nothing had
+been done. The bold offer of the Swedish prince had shown to Mary as well
+as to Philip the danger of Elizabeth’s accepting a Protestant marriage;
+and even at this late hour Philip determined to make a desperate effort
+through Feria to win Elizabeth for a nominee who would suit him. Suriano,
+the Venetian ambassador with Philip, writes[134] with regard to Feria’s
+mission: “The Count’s instructions are that he is to try and dispose the
+Queen to consent to Lady Elizabeth’s marriage as her sister, and with the
+prospect of succeeding to the Crown. This negotiation is being conducted
+with the utmost secrecy, as they suspect that were the French to learn
+of it they would easily find means to thwart the project, as the greater
+part of England is opposed to the Queen and most hostile to King Philip
+and his party, whilst strongly inclined to Lady Elizabeth, who was always
+attached to the French faction rather than the other.” Feria tarried a
+few days in Flanders when the news came that Mary was somewhat better;
+but Dassonleville’s and Cordova’s letters, foreshadowing, as they did,
+Mary’s rapid passing, sent him hurrying across to England in order to
+perform his mission before she should die. The great obstacle to the
+marriage with Savoy—apart, of course, from Elizabeth’s own reluctance—had
+now disappeared, for Mary had recognised her sister as her successor,
+without which her marriage would have been useless to Philip.
+
+Feria arrived in London on the 9th November, and he found England in a
+turmoil. Whispers spread every few days that the Queen was indeed dead,
+and that her Council only kept back the news until King Philip should
+come with the strong hand. “Every man’s mynde was then travayled with a
+strange confusione,” says Hayward, who lived through the crisis, “all
+things being immoderately eyther dreaded or desired. Every report was
+greedily both inquired and received, all truthes suspected, diverse tales
+believed, many improbable conjectures hatched and nourished. Invasion
+of strangers, civil dissentions, the doubtfull dispositione of the
+succeeding prince, were cast in every man’s conceite as present perills;
+but noe man did buysy his witts in contriving remedyes.” Whilst her
+people were anxiously looking to the future, some with dread and some
+with hope, the Queen lay in anguish waiting for the end. It was only five
+years since, full of faith and belief in her system, she had passed over
+ruined ambitions amidst the acclamations of the people to the throne of
+her fathers. In that short time, with the best of intentions, she had
+sapped the basis of England’s international importance, she had opened
+wide the doors of religious persecution, and, so far as she could, had
+laid the resources of her country at the feet of her foreign husband.
+She was leaving England poorer in possessions, in power and in spirit,
+than it had been at any time since her grandfather brought to an end
+the civil strife of a century. She had sacrificed her people’s welfare
+and happiness, as well as her own popularity, by obstinately ignoring
+accomplished facts and leaning upon a foreign Power to enable her to
+restore a state of things that was dead.
+
+The Queen was only partially conscious and unable to read Philip’s letter
+when Feria came to bring her a message from her husband, and he lost no
+time in travelling to Hatfield on his principal mission. Elizabeth had
+been so wary and diplomatic in her difficult circumstances that she was
+as yet an unknown quantity; and doubtless the crafty men of the world who
+proposed to win her for Spain anticipated no great difficulty from this
+reticent young woman of five-and-twenty, who had accepted Catholicism
+so readily. The country was profoundly divided, and it was thought that
+the new Queen—as Dassonleville wrote, in good faith—would be unable to
+establish her authority without help from abroad. It was therefore, on
+the face of it, not an extravagant presumption that she might prefer to
+follow her sister’s lead and adhere to the traditional policy of England
+in allying herself with the sovereign of Spain and Flanders.
+
+When Feria arrived at Hatfield he received his first surprise. Before
+starting from London he had summoned the Council, and in Philip’s name
+had approved of Elizabeth as the heir to the Crown. Believing that this
+would enable him to claim Elizabeth’s thanks, he began at Hatfield to
+enlarge upon the service Philip had done her in thus securing to her
+the succession. So long as high-flown compliment had been the staple of
+conversation Elizabeth had given Feria as good as he had brought; but
+the moment he bespoke her gratitude she stopped him, and said that she
+would owe her Crown to no one but her people; and when he broadly hinted
+at the advantage to her of a marriage with her Spanish brother-in-law or
+a nominee of his she evaded the suggestion dexterously.[135] All through
+the interview she showed a determination to resist any attempts to place
+her in the tutelage of Philip. She answered Feria, indeed, somewhat
+tartly at one point, that her sister had lost her people’s love by
+marrying a foreigner; and the ambassador left her already convinced that
+she would be no docile instrument in his master’s hands, as her sister
+had been.
+
+Mary and Pole lay dying at the same time, fortified by the rites of
+their Church, whose services were celebrated ceaselessly before their
+weary eyes. With the Queen there were few now to do her reverence,
+for most of her courtiers and Councillors were flocking to Hatfield
+to worship the rising sun; but Mrs. Clarencius, the Countess of Feria
+(Jane Dormer, Mary’s favourite maid of honour), and a few other faithful
+friends stood by her to the last. On the morning of the 16th November
+the Council assembled in her room, and Cordell, the Master of the Rolls,
+read aloud the Queen’s will, although Mary was unconscious at the time.
+Feria asserts that when the reader reached the bequests to her personal
+attendants the Council desired him to omit that portion. In any case,
+little attention was afterwards paid to the Queen’s testament, for there
+were none who loved or mourned the forlorn woman. Before dawn on the
+17th November Mass was celebrated in the dying chamber in the Palace of
+St. James. Like her mother on her death-bed in similar circumstances,
+Mary followed the sacred office devoutly, in the full possession now
+of her faculties, making the responses audibly and fervently. When the
+celebrant appealed to “the Lamb of God who took upon Himself the sins of
+the world,” Mary answered clearly “_Miserere nobis, Miserere nobis, Dona
+nobis pacem_.”[136] These cries for mercy, for mercy and peace, were the
+last words of unhappy Mary Tudor. A few moments afterwards, as the priest
+held up before her the Sacramental Host, her eyes flushed with tears, and
+then closed for ever. Philip had no longer any footing in England. He
+must win one again by force or favour, unless Spain was to surrender her
+proud supremacy and Catholicism cease to rule the world.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER V
+
+1558-1565
+
+    Accession of Elizabeth—The beginning of the long duel—Feria
+    urges Philip to use force—Philip’s many difficulties—He offers
+    his hand to Elizabeth—The Peace of Cateau Cambresis—The
+    Franco-Spanish Alliance—Fears of a Catholic League—Philip
+    marries a French Princess—English Catholics appeal to
+    Philip—Mary Stuart claims the Crown of England—War with
+    Scotland—Philip’s efforts to effect a reconciliation—Bishop
+    Quadra—His relations with Leicester—Intrigue for a Catholic
+    reaction in England—Mary Stuart approaches Philip—Disgrace
+    and death of Quadra—A war of tariffs—Guzman de Silva,
+    ambassador—The interviews of Bayonne—Failure of the Catholic
+    League
+
+
+Though Mary’s death had long been foreseen, Feria was distracted when
+it came, for change was on all sides, and each change unfavourable to
+Spanish interests. “It is very early,” he wrote, “to talk about marriage
+yet; but the confusion and instability of these people in all their
+affairs make it necessary for us to be the more alert, so as not to
+lose the opportunities that may offer, and especially in the matter of
+marriage.... The new Queen and the people hold themselves free from your
+Majesty, and will listen to any ambassadors who may come to treat of
+marriage. Your Majesty understands better than I how important it is that
+this affair should go through your hands, which will be difficult except
+with great negotiations and expenditure.” He continues by urging Philip
+not to allow the Emperor Ferdinand to offer the hand of either of his
+sons to Elizabeth, and opines that the English would not favour Savoy,
+whilst, he says, the nobles recognise that it would be impossible for the
+Queen to marry an Englishman. This was, of course, preliminary to the
+suggestion of Feria that Philip should marry Elizabeth himself. “The more
+I think of this business the more certain I am that everything depends
+upon the husband this woman may take. If he be a suitable one, religious
+matters will go on well, and the realm will remain friendly with your
+Majesty; but if not, all will be spoilt. If she decides to marry out of
+the country she will at once fix her eyes upon your Majesty, although
+some of them here will be sure to pitch upon the Archduke Ferdinand.”[137]
+
+Feria, who had lorded over Mary’s Council, found the members now sorely
+changed. They had mostly been bribed heavily by him, and the ambassador
+roundly abuses them for their ingratitude. They were indeed, such of
+them as were included in Elizabeth’s Council, too anxious to clear
+themselves from the odium of the past to smile upon the unpopular Spanish
+connection; though secretly Lord William Howard, Clinton, and Paget
+promised their services to Feria. As for the people at large, the death
+of Mary was to them as if a crushing weight had been lifted from their
+hearts. Even as she lay dying, the sacred things—the images, relics, and
+the like—of which she had enforced the veneration, were openly slighted;
+and Feria wrote a few days after her death: “The people are wagging their
+tongues a good deal about the Queen’s having sent great sums of money to
+your Majesty, and that I have sent you 200,000 ducats since I came. They
+say that it is through your Majesty that the country is in such want, and
+that Calais was lost; and also that through your not coming to see the
+Queen she died of grief.”
+
+Under Cecil’s guidance Elizabeth’s first steps were prudent and wise
+in the extreme. The religious burnings were at once stopped, and those
+persons who were imprisoned on the charge of heresy were enlarged on
+their own recognisances; but most of the members of Mary’s Catholic
+Council were retained, though reinforced by seven new Protestant
+Councillors, Cecil and Parry being given the most influential duties.
+But, moderate though the new rulers were, the Catholics, and especially
+the Spanish party, were in dismay. Only a week after the Queen’s
+accession Feria wrote to Philip: “The kingdom is entirely in the hands
+of young folks, heretics, and traitors, and the Queen favours no man who
+served her sister. The old people and the Catholics are dissatisfied, but
+dare not open their lips. The Queen seems to me incomparably more feared
+than her sister was, and gives her orders as absolutely as her father
+did.”
+
+In the meanwhile the new Queen heard Mass, and made no change in
+religious observance, but she turned her back upon Bonner when he went to
+greet her with the other Bishops, and took care to show that, Catholic or
+Protestant, she was not going to be the submissive tool of either Spain
+or France, though she professed a desire to be friendly with both. “These
+people,” wrote Feria, “try to make it known everywhere that your Majesty
+will have no more influence here than if you had not married the late
+Queen, and they persuade the present Queen not to be intimate with me. As
+she is much taken up with the people, she does as they wish her to do,
+and treats foreigners slightingly. I have therefore decided to go slowly
+until things settle down and I see who takes the lead. Up to the present
+nothing is certain, and every one talks as his wishes lead him. I wonder
+they have not sent me crazy. The whole point is the husband she chooses,
+and we must try by money arrangements that he shall be one agreeable to
+your Majesty.”
+
+Elizabeth declined to receive personally either Feria or Dassonleville
+until she approached London, though Feria sent her an amiable message by
+Lady Clinton when she arrived at the Charter House, and a splendid ring
+from Philip by Controller Parry. At the Charter House on the following
+day the ambassador first saluted the Queen. He was a gallant, handsome
+gentleman, one of the first nobles in Spain; and Elizabeth was most
+gracious to him, taking off her glove as soon as he entered the room,
+in order that he might kiss her hand. The chamber was crowded with
+people, and it was, of course, no time for political business. He was
+only in England, he assured her, in order to serve her and let her royal
+brother-in-law know how best he might gratify her wishes, so as to help
+forward the good understanding already existing. Feria ventured to touch
+lightly upon religion, hoping that she would be careful on that point;
+but to this she gave a broad reply, which Feria thought equivocal. When
+he left her she had almost allayed his fears, so fine was her diplomacy,
+and he sent her that day by Lady Clinton two more rings that had belonged
+to Mary—“as I saw she was so fond of her jewels, and I thought best to
+give her even the poorest of them.”
+
+He saw her again three days afterwards at Somerset House, where she was
+staying, and told her that a truce had been settled between France and
+Spain during the peace negotiations. She showed her suspicions in a
+moment, thinking that the intention was to isolate her and leave her at
+hostilities with France. By means of Cecil, however, Feria persuaded her
+that her fears were unfounded; and in another conversation she exerted
+all her blandishments upon him to convince him that her leanings were
+not towards the French, whilst he further delighted her by telling her
+that he had at Whitehall and at her disposal a casket of jewels that
+had belonged to her sister. In this sort of intercourse Elizabeth was a
+match for any one living. It was not until Feria tried to pledge her to
+anything that he found out his powerlessness. He had occupied the royal
+residence called Durham Place, in the Strand, as a dwelling house, but he
+had also apartments at Whitehall, and he tried hard to obtain a renewal
+of these, “although I am much afraid they will not give it to me. I have
+little chance of talking to people unless I am inside the Palace, and
+they are so suspicious of me that, as the late Chancellor (Heath) plainly
+told me, nobody dares to speak to me.... They are very glad to be free of
+your Majesty, as though you had done them harm instead of good. Although
+in several of my letters to your Majesty I have said how small a party
+you have here, I am never satisfied that I have said enough to describe
+things as they really are. I am so isolated from them that I am much
+embarrassed and puzzled to get the means of discovering what is going on;
+for truly they run away from me as if I were the devil. The best way will
+be for me to get my foot into the Palace, so as to speak oftener with the
+Queen, as she is a woman very fond of argument.”
+
+The great question for the Spaniards was Elizabeth’s marriage. If she
+married a Protestant or a man open to French influence, the effect upon
+Spanish interests might be disastrous. The gossip on the subject at
+Court shifted from day to day—sometimes an English suitor, sometimes
+Prince Eric, sometimes one of the Archdukes, Philip’s cousins, being the
+favourite. Savoy was always rejected by public voice, because of the fear
+that he might drag England into war with France to recover his dominions.
+None of the suitors mentioned except Savoy would have suited Spanish
+ends. The Archdukes, if they would accept the absolute dictation of their
+cousin Philip, would have been the least objectionable of the foreign
+Princes: but Philip was not on very good terms with the Austrian branch
+of his family at this time; for he was still sore about the succession to
+the Empire, and the Archdukes were too much dependent upon the Lutherans
+to please him. So the conviction grew in Feria’s mind that the only
+satisfactory solution would be for Philip to marry Elizabeth himself. He
+proposed to appeal to her pride, and to suggest that it would be beneath
+her to match less splendidly than her sister. Little did either he or his
+master understand the subtle mind with which they had to deal. Elizabeth
+was, of course, anxious to keep on good terms with them, and indeed to
+restore England to its former position as the balancing power, but, smile
+and coquette as she might, she would never allow herself to be drawn into
+a position from which she could not retreat.
+
+Feria—impatient, scornful, and proud—began to tire of this inconclusive
+dallying, especially as he saw, both at Court and outside, that the
+Protestants were growing bolder, and the Queen herself was relaxing her
+orthodox observance. He complained bitterly to Philip that everything was
+hidden from him, and that he could learn nothing, though the Queen said
+that he knew too much about English affairs; that he was proud, and that
+she would be glad if he were recalled. “I am afraid,” he wrote, “that one
+fine day we shall find this woman married, and I shall be the last man to
+learn anything about it.... I overlook many things and try not to take
+offence or to appear inquisitive; but their enmity and evil consciences
+make them so suspicious of me that they think I know everything, and in
+return for all my efforts to please, I believe that they would like to
+see me thrown into the river—that is to say, the Queen and her friends
+would—for the Catholics and goodly people are glad that your Majesty
+should gain ground here.”
+
+The fear that Elizabeth would slip through their fingers was accentuated
+for the Spaniards by the idea that her proceedings in religion might
+induce the Pope to listen to French prompting and excommunicate her,
+declaring her throne forfeit to the next Catholic heir, Mary of Scotland,
+Dauphiness of France. Anything would have suited Philip better than that,
+and it appears to have been this consideration which finally moved him
+to dazzle the new Queen, and cut out all the other suitors by proposing
+formally to become her husband himself. Elizabeth had, of course, in her
+two previous conversations with Feria, understood his veiled allusions
+to the subject; and when he had pressed his demand for rooms in the
+Palace of Whitehall, Elizabeth, with prudish modesty, sent word by Cecil
+that, as she was unmarried and Feria might be her suitor, it would be
+improper for him to sleep under the same roof. Feria, recognising the
+absurdity of the alleged reason, believed that the refusal was owing to
+French intrigue, and urged his master to act promptly. “Your Majesty must
+get the affair into your own grasp. We must look to it at once that the
+King of France does not get in and spoil the crop that your Majesty has
+sown here.” Thus abjured, Philip took the plunge, once more in a pure
+spirit of martyrdom—not this time on account of disparity of age or lack
+of attraction on the part of his bride-elect, but rather because of her
+doubtful orthodoxy.
+
+It is difficult to understand how so sagacious a man as Philip can
+have been so blind to the character of his sister-in-law as to have
+believed that an offer made in the spirit displayed in his letter to
+his ambassador could have been accepted by her. On 10th January, 1559,
+the King wrote thus to Feria: “I highly approve of the course you have
+adopted in persuading her and the Council that it is not to her interest
+to marry a subject. As regards myself, if she should broach the subject
+to you, you should treat it in such a way as neither to accept nor reject
+the suggestion entirely. In a matter of such grave importance it was
+necessary for me to take counsel and consider it maturely in all its
+bearings, before I sent you my decision. Many great obstacles present
+themselves, and it is difficult for me to reconcile my conscience to it,
+as I am obliged to reside in my other dominions, and consequently could
+not be much in England, which, apparently, is what they fear; and also
+because the Queen has not been sound in religion, and it would not look
+well for me to marry her unless she were a Catholic. Besides this, such
+a marriage would appear like entering upon a perpetual war with France,
+seeing the claims that the Queen of Scots has to the English Crown. The
+urgent need for my presence in Spain, which is greater than I can say
+here, and the heavy expense I should be put to in England by reason of
+the costly entertainment necessary to the people there, together with
+the fact that my Treasury is so utterly exhausted as to be unable to
+meet the most pressing ordinary expenditure, much less new and onerous
+burdens: bearing in mind these and many other difficulties no less
+grave, ... I nevertheless cannot lose sight of the enormous importance
+of such a match to Christianity and the preservation of religion, which
+has been restored in England by the help of God. Seeing the importance
+that the country should not relapse into its former errors, which would
+cause to our neighbouring dominions serious dangers and difficulties, I
+have decided to put aside all other considerations which might be urged
+against it, and am resolved to render this service to God, and offer
+to marry the Queen of England; and I will use every possible effort to
+effect this, if it can be done on the conditions that will be explained
+to you. The first and most important is that you should satisfy yourself
+that the Queen will profess the same religion that I do, the same that I
+ever shall hold, and that she will persevere in the same and uphold it
+in the country, doing with that end all that may appear necessary to me.
+She will have to obtain secret absolution from the Pope and the necessary
+dispensation, so that when I marry her she will be a Catholic, which she
+has not hitherto been. In this way it is evident and manifest that I am
+serving the Lord in marrying her, and that she has been converted by my
+act. You will not propose any conditions until you see how the Queen is
+disposed towards the matter itself; and mark well that you must first
+broach the subject alone, as she has already opened the door to such an
+approach.”[138] Later Philip mentions that the clause in his marriage
+treaty with Mary granting Flanders to the issue of the marriage could not
+be conceded in the case of Elizabeth.
+
+There are few letters extant that reveal so clearly as this does
+the character of Philip. As he points out in his long preamble, the
+objections to the match are numerous and grave. Elizabeth was of doubtful
+orthodoxy, excommunicate and officially declared a bastard, the daughter
+of a woman whom Catholic Spaniards looked upon as the personification of
+evil, and yet to marry her the proudest monarch on earth and the champion
+of the Church omnipotent was ready to salve his conscience, sacrifice
+personal desires and lavish upon a people he loathed the money wrung
+painfully from the Castilian subjects that he loved. The talk of his
+sacrifice to God no doubt was sincerely uttered and believed by himself,
+because he ever identified his political aims with the cause of the
+Almighty; but the real reason for his willingness to marry Elizabeth in
+spite of everything was primarily to prevent England from slipping away
+from his grasp to the irreparable injury of his cause. If England became
+a Protestant power under Elizabeth, he foresaw that it would reinforce
+the elements in his own dominions with which his great struggle was even
+now visible on the horizon; if it became Catholic under Mary Stuart,
+matters would be still worse for him, because his great rival France
+would then hold the whip hand over him for ever from across the Channel.
+It was a dire predicament for a proud, devout monarch to find himself in,
+and of the two great evils that threatened, Philip proposed to choose the
+lesser in marrying Elizabeth “for the greater glory of God.”
+
+But it takes two persons to make a marriage, and Elizabeth, unlike her
+sister, had no notion of allowing herself and England to be made the
+tools of another’s ambitions, for she had ambitions of her own, and in
+most cases they were not identical with those of her brother-in-law. In
+one particular alone they coincided, namely, in the need for excluding
+the French from gaining control of England by means of Mary Stuart or
+otherwise, and this was the point that restrained Philip from proceeding
+to extremities with Elizabeth for thirty years of provocation. Feria,
+who was in closer touch with the progress of affairs in England than his
+master, must have seen the impracticability of proposing for Elizabeth’s
+hand in the spirit of his instructions, and, although he saw her in the
+little chamber at Whitehall on the eve of the opening of Parliament
+on the 25th January, where she chatted very affably with him, he did
+not venture to mention the question of marriage, as he had been told
+that Parliament would press her to choose a husband, and thought that
+he had better wait until then. But Philip was impatient, the English
+Peace Commissioners at Cateau Cambresis, who had now been joined by Lord
+William Howard, were standing out firmly for the restoration of Calais
+as a condition of the general peace.[139] If Elizabeth showed herself
+ready to become Philip’s wife and the obedient tool of his policy, he
+was willing to make a stand too on the subject of Calais; but he was
+determined not to be kept at war for the sake of the English if Elizabeth
+persevered in her proposed Parliamentary action with regard to religious
+reform, and he peremptorily instructed Feria to remonstrate earnestly
+with her on the subject, and to tell her from him, “as a good and true
+brother, who really wishes her well, both on account of our relationship
+and because I wish to see her firmly established on the throne, that
+I warn her to ponder deeply the evils which may result to England,
+particularly so early in her reign, from any change in religion.... You
+will enforce this by all the good arguments and persuasions that you
+can employ, ... but if you can obtain no success in that way you will
+consider whether it will be well to press the Queen by saying that if
+this change is made, all idea of my marriage with her must be broken off.
+If she has any thoughts that way this may be effective.”[140]
+
+[Illustration: QUEEN ELIZABETH
+
+FROM A PAINTING BY ZUCCHERO IN THE NATIONAL PORTRAIT GALLERY]
+
+Feria was in a quandary, for he knew how impossible it was, seeing
+Elizabeth’s temper, to deal with her in this way. After two or three
+inconclusive interviews with the Queen, in which the question of the
+religious changes was pressed and the marriage broadly hinted at, Feria
+came to close quarters with her. She began with her usual professions
+of disinclination to marry at all, and was proceeding, as he feared, to
+decline her brother-in-law’s proposal, when the ambassador stopped her
+and said he did not want an answer then. After some coquettish verbal
+fencing she promised him that she would give him a good answer if she
+gave him one at all. And then came the serious part of the business.
+Howard had written to her that Alba had said that they (the Spaniards)
+could not stand out for Calais any longer, but must make peace in any
+case.[141]
+
+Elizabeth worked herself up into a rage about this, and began to storm
+about Mary of Scotland’s claims upon England. She was not so poor that
+she could not get what money and soldiers she needed to hold her own,
+she said. Her people were all grumbling, she declared, at the waste of
+money upon the fleet for Philip’s service and other heavy expenditure
+the late Queen had incurred for him; and Feria had much ado to enforce
+his view that England owed a deep debt of gratitude to Philip, and the
+unreasonableness of expecting that he would keep at war with France for
+the sake of a single town like Calais. He was afraid even to speak about
+the religious point for fear of exacerbating their relations: “Yet,
+although I plainly see her going to perdition, it seems to me that if
+the marriage can be carried through, the rest will soon be arranged in
+accordance with the glory of God and the wishes of your Majesty. If the
+marriage do not take place, all I could say to the Queen about religion
+would be of little avail, as she is so badly advised by the heretics who
+surround her, and it might even prejudice the principal matter” (_i.e._,
+the marriage).
+
+Events thereafter moved apace. To the Queen’s indignation she was
+forced to consent to a peace with France, postponing the restitution of
+Calais for eight years, to be followed by a peace with Scotland. The
+Act of Supremacy and the Act of Uniformity were passed; and every day,
+notwithstanding Elizabeth’s diplomatic professions of attachment to Spain
+and its King, the hold of the latter over England became less powerful.
+Philip had to make up his mind rapidly after the religious changes in the
+English Parliament had been made. It was clear to him then that Elizabeth
+would be no fit instrument to his ends. Feria was telling him hotly that
+“the only way to deal with these heretics is sword in hand,” and Alba,
+in Flanders, was for coercing Elizabeth before she grew strong enough to
+resist Spain and the English Catholics combined.
+
+But Philip hated war, and had a supreme belief in his own diplomatic
+methods. He was face to face, moreover, with a new development. Always
+before France had been the insatiable rival of his house, and France had
+been a solid instrument in the hands of its King. But the Reformation
+was already confusing the traditional boundaries. Henry II. was growing
+apprehensive of the increasing spread of Calvinism in his own dominions,
+and a solution after Philip’s own heart was devised by the Churchmen that
+drew the Catholic rivals together to face the new danger of Protestantism
+throughout Europe. England was no longer to be the balancing power
+between them, but the enemy of both, so long as she remained Protestant.
+To cement this hopeful attempt to combine Europe politically on new
+lines Philip was to marry the eldest daughter of France, the Princess
+Elizabeth of Valois, who, so long as he had hopes of marrying Elizabeth,
+had been destined for his only son Don Carlos.
+
+The close union of France and Spain caused, as usual, a wave of alarm
+to pass over England. Paget and the Spanish party in Elizabeth’s Court
+were for continuing the war against France at any cost and clinging to
+Philip as the sole chance of safety[142]; and, although the Queen and
+Cecil would not go so far as that, they did their best to mollify Feria
+and his master. When the ambassador saw the Queen on the 7th April, 1559
+(the day that the news of the signing of the peace of Cateau Cambresis
+came to London) she was pouting and coquettishly aggrieved that Philip
+should have engaged himself to be married to any one but her, as she had
+given him no answer yet. Feria retorted crossly that the King could not
+wait four months for her answer, and when Cecil told him that they were
+quite willing to continue the war against France if Philip liked, the
+ambassador answered him rudely, and “I left them that day as bitter as
+gall.” Again and again the angry ambassador complained and remonstrated
+with the Queen about the religious changes and the licence now taken by
+the people. But she outwitted him at every point, kept up an elaborate
+pretence of negotiations to marry one of the Austrian Archdukes, who
+would depend entirely on Philip, and personally assured Feria that she
+was as good a Catholic as her father, the only point upon which she
+differed from the Spaniards being the supremacy of the Pope.
+
+Thus England freed herself from Spanish tutelage within six months
+of Elizabeth’s accession. Feria said she “was a daughter of the devil
+and her chief ministers the greatest scoundrels and heretics in the
+land,” and when he went back to join his master in Flanders he breathed
+fire and slaughter against England and the Queen, whose diplomacy had
+stultified all his efforts. He had done his best to persuade Philip to
+pluck a quarrel with England that should give him an excuse for armed
+intervention, the deposition of Elizabeth by the Pope, and the patronage
+of Catharine Grey as a pretender for Elizabeth’s throne with the aid
+of the English Catholics, who, he assured Philip, were all in his
+favour.[143] But Philip thought that he had found a better way than by
+war and rejected the advice of his fiery councillors. To represent him in
+England there remained at Elizabeth’s Court the best possible instrument
+that could have been selected in the circumstances, the Bishop of Aquila,
+Alvaro de la Quadra, a supple, patient, unscrupulous old ecclesiastic,
+who had lived long in Italy and was an adept at sly, stealthy diplomacy,
+which so cleverly used religion as the stalking-horse of politics. Bishop
+Jewel calls him “a clever, crafty, old fox”; and he needed all his
+cunning, for his task for the next five years until it broke his heart
+was to keep Elizabeth, heretic though she might be, from joining either
+the Protestants or the French against Philip.
+
+For even before the ink was dry that ratified the peace of Cateau
+Cambresis, before the pompous ceremonies in England, France, and Spain
+that celebrated it were finished, a stroke of Fate had rendered the
+union between the two great Catholic Powers unstable, and old political
+traditions were reasserting themselves. I have told elsewhere[144] of
+the ill-fated feast in Paris, when stern Alba wedded in June, 1559, as
+proxy for his master, the beautiful Valois Princess of fourteen. How
+her father, the gallant Henry, was stricken down mortally at the joust
+that followed, and how the rise of his long-neglected wife, Catharine
+de Medici, able and ambitious, soon made the Catholic League a hollow
+pretence. She needed not the dominance of the Guises and their Catholic
+friends, but so nicely to balance them against the Huguenots that she
+herself might hold the scale. She did not send her sweet daughter to
+Spain as a pledge for the extirpation of Protestantism root and branch,
+as had been intended, but to cajole Philip into helping her personally to
+hold her own as ruler of France, whichever faction was paramount, and to
+win, if possible, the heir of Spain for her younger daughter, so that her
+hold over the country might be perpetuated.
+
+The accession also of young Francis II. and Mary Stuart to the throne of
+France, under the dominion of their ambitious Guise uncles, had driven
+a great wedge into the unity of the Catholic League. The Guises, who
+led the Catholic party in France, were now for a short time masters, on
+behalf of the young King and his wife, of the national resources, and
+were prepared to use them in furthering their Scottish niece’s claims
+to the English throne. This naturally drew Philip more to the side of
+Elizabeth, however perverse she might be, and, from the very first,
+rendered abortive the Catholic League secretly cemented by the treaty of
+Cateau Cambresis. When the death of Francis II., after his short reign,
+threw the Guises into the background and made Catharine de Medici Regent
+of France, matters were hardly improved. Philip was always a bad hand at
+playing another’s game, and though his young French wife lived happily
+with him, for he was a good husband, the purpose of her going to Spain
+was never achieved, and Philip was as anxious after his French marriage
+as before it to prevent his mother-in-law and his English sister-in-law
+from making common cause against him. They, knowing this as well as he,
+could, and did, always checkmate or paralyse him when they pleased by
+simulating friendship with each other, either by marriage talk or by a
+pretence of common interest. Whilst Catharine de Medici lived this was
+the problem of Europe, and to Philip it proved an insoluble one.
+
+Feria and Alba were for ever advocating the high hand with Elizabeth, but
+Philip knew that his hollow union with France had drawn all Protestants
+together, so that if he aided the English Catholics to depose Elizabeth
+and crush Protestantism in her country, not only would Catholic France
+be against him, but the Lutheran Germans would be disturbed, and perhaps
+he might let loose the storm, of which the mutterings were already
+audible, over his own Netherlands. So, in spite of the Bishop of Aquila’s
+soft hints and Feria’s warlike advice, Philip decided, notwithstanding
+Elizabeth’s religious recalcitrancy, upon a policy of palliation and
+suavity in England. “You must,” he instructed his ambassador, “keep
+mainly in view by all means to avoid a rupture. I have already pointed
+out the importance of this, but it is so great that I cannot be satisfied
+without repeating it many times.” But yet he was ready even thus early
+if Elizabeth’s subjects attacked her for her religious measures to take
+full advantage of the opportunity for his own advantage, and so to
+prevent the French from establishing themselves in England. With these
+pacific instructions, therefore, he sent the great sum of 60,000 crowns
+“to gain friends,” and says, “I have also ordered, in case of need, that
+money shall be raised to fit out a fleet at short notice, so that it may
+be ready to carry men over to England if required.”
+
+The difference between Feria’s arrogant methods and the Bishop’s
+blandness was soon seen in his intercourse with the Queen. Of her and her
+advisers in his letters to Philip he has nothing but violent abuse; but
+he was all tolerant kindness when he was with her, and got quite friendly
+with the “heretic” Cecil. He was lodged in Durham Place, as Feria had
+been, and was in close touch with Lady Mary Sidney and her brother, Lord
+Robert Dudley, who was soon to be created Earl of Leicester. During all
+the comedy of pretended marriage negotiations with the Archduke Charles
+the Bishop dexterously aided or hindered the progress as the interests of
+Philip seemed to dictate. If the Archduke was to come as a thoroughgoing
+Catholic and obedient servant of Spain well and good, but the moment
+there was any talk of his making religious concessions or appearing under
+Lutheran auspices, then the wily Bishop smiled upon the perennial second
+string of Lord Robert Dudley. In the meanwhile he was hand in glove with
+the discontented and dismayed English Catholics, gaining friends amongst
+them by money promises and blandishments, whilst his spies were busy
+discovering the weak points on the East Coast towards Flanders, making
+lists of the Catholic and disaffected English gentry, and whispering to
+them of the armed aid that in case of need would be sent by the Catholic
+King. To Philip the Bishop wrote often with affected humility, but with
+studied significance, saying how surprised the English Catholics were
+that he made no move to help them. “Your Majesty,” he wrote, “is the only
+hope of the godly and the dread of the wicked, if the latter are not to
+be allowed time to combat and weaken the Catholic party.”[145]
+
+But Philip was powerless to stir a finger to help them, much as they
+might cry to him. The death of Henry II. and the accession of Mary
+Stuart’s husband, as has been pointed out, had suddenly changed the
+situation. The claims of the Queen of Scots to the English throne, and
+the despatch of a strong French force to Leith to succour the Regent
+Mary of Lorraine, hardly pressed as she was by the rebels subsidised by
+Elizabeth, precipitated the eventuality that Philip dreaded most—a war
+in Scotland between France and the Queen of England. If in such a war
+the latter were beaten by the Guises, then farewell to Spanish influence
+in England, however Catholic the country might become. Yet Philip dared
+not fight on the behalf of heresy against the Catholic French element
+and the Guises, or the Huguenots would become all-powerful; whilst if he
+interfered in England at all to Elizabeth’s detriment his action would
+draw together in close unity the powerful Protestant party in England,
+the majority of the Scots who were Reformers, the Huguenots of France,
+who were panting for revenge on the Guises, and the Lutherans of Germany
+and Holland. With such a combination as this behind her Elizabeth might
+adopt a stronger anti-Catholic attitude than ever.
+
+But what Philip dreaded even more than this was the encouragement that
+such a strong combination of Protestants would give to the Flemings,
+who were already straining in the leash to escape from the Spanish
+religious system. Philip sent envoys to England and France to urge,
+both by persuasion and threats, that the peace should be kept (March,
+1560), but, as usual, his step was too late to prevent hostilities. The
+Bishop of Aquila, in his private letters to Feria, was scornful of his
+master’s methods. “If these envoys from his Majesty are only coming to
+talk, they will do more harm than good, as the Catholics here expect much
+more than that.... The Queen is greatly alarmed, and this is the time to
+do what ought to have been done before; but if we are always to be on
+the defensive and to palliate everything, I can only pray for patience,
+though I well know we shall never have such an opportunity again. All
+here are with us, and the very heretics are sick of it.”[146] The Bishop
+dared not write in this strain to Philip, though he said as much as he
+could; but the King saw, if his advisers did not, that he could not take
+up arms against Elizabeth without playing the French game, and it was
+equally impossible for him to fight his Catholic French allies on behalf
+of the heretic Queen. All he could do, therefore, was talk.
+
+The result of the short war in Scotland was favourable to Elizabeth, and
+the pressing danger passed; but Philip’s threat to aid the French if she
+insisted upon continuing the hostilities brought home to Elizabeth and
+her minister that the Catholic League was still a danger to them. An
+attempt was made to persuade the Spaniards that the Queen would really
+marry the Archduke at once and follow Philip’s advice, the object being
+to weaken the friendship between Spain and France; but Lord Robert
+Dudley’s philandering was now so open, and Elizabeth so obviously
+fond of him, that the new pretence about the Archduke and her sudden
+Catholic professions deceived nobody.[147] Even Cecil lost heart at the
+difficulties created by this infatuation of the Queen for Dudley, and the
+Spanish ambassador chuckled with delight that the “heretics” were falling
+out amongst themselves and the Catholic cause was looking brighter.
+
+As soon as the death of Dudley’s wife set him free he made an attempt,
+which for a time hoodwinked Bishop Quadra, to gain the support of Spain
+for his suit, and even wily Philip believed that England was going to
+fall under his sway again by means of the Queen’s lover, a belief that
+proved that he still failed to gauge Elizabeth’s true character. The
+intermediary in this case was Sir Henry Sidney, who, being a kinsman
+of the English Countess of Feria and the husband of Robert Dudley’s
+sister, was _persona grata_ at Durham House. He came to Bishop Quadra
+late in January, 1561, and after much circumlocution remarked that he was
+surprised that it had not been suggested to Philip that the opportunity
+offered “for gaining over Lord Robert by extending a hand to him now in
+the matter of his marriage with the Queen, and he would thereafter serve
+and obey your Majesty like one of your own vassals.” The Bishop was cool
+about it, for Dudley’s character was bad, and many evil tales were afloat
+about his wife’s recent death. The King of Spain, said the Bishop, had
+no need to win the Queen of England’s goodwill. She had not, moreover,
+shown herself very ready hitherto to take his advice upon anything, and
+it was not sure that she would do so in the matter of her marriage with
+Lord Robert. Sidney admitted that the rumours about the foul play upon
+Amy Robsart were generally believed, but he said they were untrue. The
+Queen, however, was really in love with Robert, and was most anxious to
+settle the religious question by the help of him as her husband. Yes,
+said the Bishop, that no doubt is very praiseworthy and necessary; but he
+did not see why the religious matter should be mixed up with so mundane
+a business as marrying Dudley. It ought to be undertaken whether the
+Queen was married or single. Sidney quite agreed. Matters in the country
+were in a bad way, he admitted, but the Queen and Robert were anxious
+to put things right, and he swore most solemnly that they intended to
+restore the Catholic religion in England by means of a General Council of
+the Church, in which England would join if King Philip would patronise
+the bridegroom and urge Elizabeth to marry him. The Bishop reminded
+Sidney that he had been led astray several times before by such talk
+when the Queen wanted for her own ends to appear friendly to Spain. It
+was, moreover, very improper to make religion the excuse. If Lord Robert
+repented of his heresy and wanted to recant there was nothing to prevent
+him from doing so without bargaining about it, and the interview ended
+by Sidney’s promising to bring Lord Robert himself to Durham House to
+satisfy the Bishop of his _bonâ fides_.
+
+In his letter to the King the Churchman expresses himself as being much
+shocked at the barefacedness of the proposal; but he goes on to say
+that he believes that it is only by this means that the Queen can be
+brought round to the Spanish side. The gossip about her and Dudley, he
+says, is so scandalous that she will not dare to marry him without some
+strong support; and there was no price she would not pay to obtain it.
+Such a tendency as that shown in Sidney’s proposal would, of course, be
+strenuously opposed by most of Elizabeth’s advisers; and Paget, with
+Cecil and his friends, attempted a diversion by strongly advocating a
+close alliance with France, where the young King Francis II. had recently
+died, and Catharine de Medici had become supreme. The Dudley intrigue
+with Spain, however, went on, though probably, as we see now, without
+the full knowledge of the Queen. Lord Robert at length came with Sidney
+to see the Bishop on the 13th February, and professed his readiness to
+be the humble servant of King Philip if he would recommend the Queen to
+marry him. Quadra was cautious. He had no special instructions, he said,
+and the King was now in Spain, a long way off; but he would promise
+Dudley that he would, the next time he saw the Queen, urge her to marry;
+and if she mentioned any particular person he (the Bishop) would enlarge
+upon Lord Robert’s good qualities and King Philip’s affection for him.
+
+Two days later the smooth-tongued old Bishop found himself alone with the
+Queen, and ventured to say how glad he was to hear that her marriage was
+seriously under discussion at last. If she wished to consult the King
+of Spain on the matter the Bishop was very much at her service, though
+no instructions from Spain had been sent to him. The Queen talked wide
+of the subject for some time; but she said at last that she knew she was
+no angel, and would make the Bishop her confessor. She would not deny
+that she had some affection for Lord Robert for his good qualities, but
+had not decided to marry him or any one else. But she saw every day the
+necessity for her marriage, and that to satisfy the English humour it was
+desirable that she should marry an Englishman. What would the King of
+Spain think, she asked, if she married one of her servants? The Bishop
+said he did not know, but would ask if she directed him to do so; and
+then he launched out into warm praise of Dudley. Elizabeth promised to do
+nothing without Philip’s advice, and told the Bishop that when the time
+came she would speak to him on the subject. The Bishop, in relating the
+interview, says that he humoured her thus “because he saw the heretics so
+busy forming combinations with England, France, Scotland, and Germany,
+and, above all, because your Majesty’s neighbouring States are so pressed
+that a perverse decision of this woman might prejudice them, though she
+herself were ruined by it.”[148]
+
+The Bishop, for all his sanctimonious horror that religion should be
+used in political bargaining, was really quite willing to carry through
+the deal and to patronise the marriage of Elizabeth and Dudley if he
+were assured of the payment. That Dudley was ready to promise anything
+and everything is also certain, but it is more than doubtful whether
+Elizabeth was aware of what he was promising. It suited her at the
+moment to meet the Catholic league between France and Spain, hollow as
+it was, by threatening combinations of Protestants; whilst at the same
+time, as a second string to her bow, cajoling the Spaniards into the idea
+that she was willing to be reconciled to them, and had Catholic leanings.
+When Bishop Quadra saw Dudley the next day Lord Robert was profuse in
+his thanks, for he knew from the Queen word for word what had passed. It
+had only been timidity that had prevented the Queen from deciding on the
+spot, he said, and he begged the Bishop to revert to the subject when he
+saw her again. His promises knew no bounds. Everything in England, even
+religion, he said, should be put into the hands of King Philip; and if
+the sending of a representative to the Council of the Church were not
+enough he would go himself. To this the Bishop replied that he would do
+his best to forward matters, but again, in shocked tones, he begged Lord
+Robert not to mention religion in the matter on any account. What the
+Queen and Dudley did about _that_ concerned their own consciences. Of
+course the Catholic King would be delighted to see all these religious
+dissensions settled, but it should not be a matter of bargain. “I am thus
+cautious with these people, because if they are playing false, which is
+quite possible, I do not wish to give them the opportunity of saying that
+we offered them your Majesty’s favour in return for their changing their
+religion.”
+
+At the same time the Bishop urged upon his master that the moment had now
+come for action: either this bargain must be struck with Dudley, or help
+must be given to the enemies of the existing _régime_ to revolutionise
+England. “To let these affairs drift at the mercy of chance neither
+secures England to us nor punishes evil, and must end in disadvantage
+to your Majesty.” Philip was just as sanctimonious in profession and as
+pliable in practice as his ambassador. “Our principal aim,” he wrote
+in reply, “is directed to the service of our Lord, the maintenance of
+religion, and the settlement and pacification of England, and, as we see
+that Sidney’s proposals tend to this, and further bearing in mind that
+God if He wills can extract good from evil, we have decided that the
+negotiation suggested by Sidney should be listened to.” Dudley was to
+be helped to marry the Queen, but “the bargain and its payment must be
+clearly set forth in writing signed by Elizabeth herself, and she must
+give some earnest of her sincerity by liberating the Catholics she has
+in prison, she must undertake to send Catholic bishops and ambassadors
+to the Council of the Church, and submit herself unconditionally to
+its decisions. And, besides all this, she must begin by giving full
+toleration to Catholic worship.”
+
+This, again, shows that Philip was utterly at sea as regards the real
+condition of England at the time, and was still ignorant of Elizabeth’s
+character and position. Such demands as those he formulated as a
+preliminary were utterly out of the question, even as a final concession.
+Before this letter was received in London the insincerity of Elizabeth
+in the matter began to appear. The Earl of Bedford was sent to France,
+ostensibly to condole with Catharine for the death of Francis II.; but
+also to suggest that the French bishops—and especially those of Huguenot
+leaning—should join her in sending representatives to the Council, but
+not at Trent, as had been agreed, but somewhere else on this side
+of the Alps. The cleverness of this move is apparent. Catharine and
+Elizabeth would in such case seem to be making common cause, which
+would paralyse Philip; and at the same time the Catholics in England
+would be tranquillised with the idea that a Council of the Church would
+settle matters to their liking. Catharine, however, did not jump at the
+bait, as just then in the first days of her Regency she did not wish to
+quarrel with her Spanish son-in-law, or to drive the Catholic Guises to
+desperation by seeming to join with Elizabeth against them.
+
+As soon as this became evident the English Queen grew cool about the
+Council, much to Dudley’s annoyance, who still tried to keep her up to
+the mark. She sent Cecil to the Spanish Bishop, asking him to move Philip
+to write to her recommending her to marry an Englishman, hinting at the
+same time that this was in Philip’s interest, as she might otherwise
+marry a foreign enemy of his. Cecil said that her idea was to bring
+Philip’s letter before a committee of peers, prelates, and commoners,
+all friends of Dudley, and they would recommend the marriage. This was
+all very well, said the Bishop, but how about Lord Robert’s religious
+pledges? But Cecil had no intention, nor probably had the Queen, of
+carrying out any such promises; and this new proposal was really intended
+to upset Dudley’s plan. So, gradually, a barrier of limitations and
+conditions was introduced by Cecil, which made the affair impossible. The
+Anglican and Lutheran bishops were to sit in the Council; certain points
+of doctrine must be settled beforehand; the Pope or his legate might be
+President but not ruler of the Council; and the place of meeting must
+be mutually agreed upon by all the princes. Dudley alternately fumed
+and sulked at this diversion by his opponents, and tried desperately to
+keep the Spanish Bishop in hand. It had, of course, been evident to the
+latter at once that Philip’s attitude as shown in his instructions was
+impossible. “Elizabeth,” he said, “had not entered into the business so
+humbly and submissively that he could lay down the law to her and insist
+upon her pledging herself in writing”; besides, it would be most unwise
+to give the “heretics” the opportunity, if they were playing false, of
+proving that they had got Philip to bargain for his political help in
+return for religious concessions.
+
+[Illustration: ROBERT DUDLEY, EARL OF LEICESTER
+
+FROM A PAINTING AT THE NATIONAL PORTRAIT GALLERY]
+
+In the meanwhile, encouraged by this philandering, a Papal Nuncio was
+hurrying across Europe to be ready at a moment’s notice to sail from
+Flanders to England and invite the representatives of Elizabeth to the
+Council of Trent. This Nuncio, the Abbé Martinengo, was to be received at
+Greenwich privately, and not to go through the streets of London, which
+it was thought would not be safe. Dudley was again in the seventh heaven
+of blissful anticipation, and ready, if he was the Queen’s husband, to
+lay England and the faith he had professed at Philip’s feet. He would
+restore the Catholic Church, he promised, the Queen should give a good
+answer to the Nuncio about the Council of the Church, and some of the
+Protestant bishops even, he said, were beginning to waver. But Cecil saw
+which way matters were tending, and promptly stepped in with another
+diversion. Protestant feeling in England was already becoming excited
+at the rumour that a Papal Nuncio was on his way to see the Queen, and
+Bishop Quadra found himself a prey to intense unpopularity for having, it
+was said, plotted to bring about a Catholic revolution. The Nuncio was
+informed that he would not be allowed to land in England (April, 1561),
+Sidney was hurried off to his post in Wales, Dudley retired before the
+storm, and Cecil, triumphant, had the satisfaction of knowing that he had
+prevented England from being dragged into Philip’s clutches again by the
+ambition of a worthless courtier, aided by the Queen’s momentary weakness.
+
+Bishop Quadra was deeply mortified by the way in which he had been
+misled, and became more desirous than ever that strong measures should
+be taken to aid the Catholics to rebel against Elizabeth. After
+unsuccessfully approaching the French Huguenots to obtain help from them
+for his marriage with the Queen, Dudley had the impudence, in January,
+1562, to approach Quadra again and offer his servile obedience to Spain
+in return for the aid of King Philip towards his marriage; but the bait
+was stale, for, as the Bishop wrote, the Catholics thoroughly distrusted
+Dudley now, and he was of no use any longer as a Spanish instrument.
+
+Though Philip had failed again to secure England as a satellite, the
+need for his doing so was as urgent as ever, for the Netherlands were
+seething in discontent, the Huguenots in France were being supported for
+the time by the Regent Catharine, and it looked as if the stronger coming
+combination in Europe would not be Catholic but Protestant. To counteract
+this threatening state of affairs it was necessary for Philip to try a
+new tack. The massacre of Vassy had precipitated the opening of the first
+war of religion in France (March, 1562), and this made it expedient for
+him to strengthen the Guises. So a proposal, upon which, when Cardinal
+Lorraine had made it a year before, he had looked upon coldly, was now
+regarded with favour. This was no less than the marriage of the widowed
+Mary Stuart, now in Scotland, and on ill terms with Catharine, with
+Philip’s heir, Don Carlos. It was not such a match as the Spanish King in
+ordinary circumstances would have considered adequate for his son; but
+as Mary was the Catholic heiress of England, and might by a turn of the
+wheel become Queen of Britain she was a useful countercheck to Protestant
+combinations.
+
+As soon as the project got wind Elizabeth, Catharine de Medici, and the
+Scottish Protestants, led by the Earl of Murray, sought an antidote to
+the threatened evil. The Darnley match was positively patronised both by
+Elizabeth and Catharine, and Lethington posted off to London eager to
+negotiate a friendly understanding between England and Scotland before
+his Catholic mistress should fall into the marriage net of Spain. But the
+war between Catholics and Protestants in France was now blazing fiercely,
+and the Guises were fighting for their lives, unable to help their niece
+or interfere in any way with Elizabeth’s game in Scotland. This made
+her for the time the mistress of the situation, and she could afford to
+deal high-handedly with the Queen of Scots, especially after the Duke
+of Guise himself had been assassinated before Orleans (February, 1563).
+She threw all her power on the Huguenot side in the struggle, allowing
+English contingents to join in the fight and subsiding Condé with money.
+Mary Stuart’s Protestant advisers had tried hard to negotiate an alliance
+between England and Scotland on Protestant lines in conjunction with
+the recognition of Mary as Elizabeth’s heiress under the same auspices;
+and once more Lethington went to London, in February, 1563, to urge his
+point. He found the Queen coolly evasive, for she had nothing to fear
+from Mary or her French kinsmen now, and she knew that Philip would
+not dare to attack her or interfere forcibly in Scotland whilst the
+Protestants in France were in the ascendant.
+
+Lethington, of course with Mary’s acquiescence, then shifted his ground.
+He and Murray had always been strong partisans of England, with the idea
+of securing the succession to Mary of a Protestant Britain; but, out of
+patience at last with this new rebuff from Elizabeth, they determined
+to throw over England and Protestantism, and marry Mary to a nominee of
+Philip and defy Elizabeth to do her worst. So, at dead of night, again
+and again, Lethington, the Scottish minister, landed from his boat at
+the dark stairs of Durham House, and remained for hours closeted with
+Bishop Quadra. The Bishop himself was daily growing more bitter against
+Elizabeth. She had now openly aided the French Protestants against the
+Catholics. She had treated him personally with marked contumely, raiding
+his house on the pretext that people other than his own servants attended
+Mass there, for she knew she could do all this now with impunity, because
+Philip could not afford to quarrel with her whilst the Catholics in
+France were in a bad way. So the Bishop listened eagerly as the Scot told
+him how the Queen of England had deceived his mistress, and now again
+had evaded the question of her succession; how she had artfully stepped
+in by intrigue, and had rendered abortive all the negotiations for the
+marriage of Mary with a fitting foreign prince, and had tried to drive
+her into some unworthy marriage. “Had she not better accept any marriage
+that the Queen of England proposes for her?” asked Quadra, as a feeler,
+“if in return she obtains her recognition as the heiress of the English
+Crown?” No, replied Lethington, emphatically. They had made up their mind
+that the only way was to force Elizabeth, by marrying Mary to a powerful
+Catholic prince, with sufficient force behind him to maintain the rights
+of the Queen of Scots. And then, after a little fencing on both sides,
+he proposed that Don Carlos should become King Consort of Scotland, and
+afterwards of Great Britain, with Mary for his wife. Mary was, he said,
+quite resolved never to marry a Protestant or to accept any husband on
+the bidding of the Queen of England, and if her approaches to Spain were
+not well received she would offer to marry her young brother-in-law,
+Charles IX.
+
+This latter declaration, we may well suppose, was only for the purpose of
+forcing the hand of Philip, for the match would certainly not have been
+allowed by Catharine de Medici. The old Bishop, aware of this, passed it
+over with a smile, and said that there was nothing the Queen of England
+dreaded more than a marriage between Mary Stuart and a friend of Spain.
+She had been at infinite pains lately to make them believe that she was
+a Catholic, but now that her friends the Huguenots were in the ascendant
+she had become less anxious to conciliate them. But were not the Scots
+Protestants too? he asked. Lethington, Protestant and friend of Knox
+though he was, minimised the difference between the creed of Scotland and
+Spain. Religion, he assured the Spaniard, was not really at the bottom of
+their trouble in Scotland. Both Elizabeth and Catharine, he said, were in
+mortal fear of the marriage of Don Carlos and Mary of Scotland, as well
+they might be; for not only would the Prince thus win the most chaste
+and beautiful bride in the world, “but he would also succeed to almost
+universal monarchy by adding to the dominions already possessed by your
+Majesty two entire islands, this and Ireland, the possession of which
+would give no trouble whatever, having regard to the attachment which the
+Catholics bear to this marriage and the union of England and Scotland.”
+
+Bishop Quadra, well aware of the vast importance of such a declaration
+from one of the leaders of the Scottish Protestants, tried to extract
+precise religious pledges from him. But Lethington had said all he
+wished to say in the four hours’ conference, and the Bishop, full of
+encouragement, promised to obtain promptly the King’s answer to the
+proposal. Lethington’s next move was to approach the discontented
+English Catholic nobles, already in a ferment at Dudley’s insolence and
+Cecil’s religious policy. Almost to a man they assured the Scot of their
+enthusiastic support of a Spanish marriage for Mary and the acceptance
+of the revolutionary changes that such a marriage would produce in
+England. “Only let her marry the heir of Spain and we will salute her as
+our leader,” they said. This could only mean that with Spanish aid Mary
+and Carlos were to be placed upon the throne of a united Britain, and
+that Philip would regain the paramountcy he had lost. Elizabeth’s spies
+soon got wind of all this, and her counter move was a most extraordinary
+one—no other, indeed, than to offer Dudley as Mary’s husband, with the
+assurance of her succession to the English Crown after Elizabeth’s
+death without issue. It was a mere feint and never meant seriously by
+Elizabeth, but it divided Scottish opinion and unsettled poor Mary
+herself, and shows how much more than a match Elizabeth was for Philip in
+diplomacy.
+
+Whilst she, with consummate skill and daring, was ready with such
+a diversion as this, the Spanish King was pondering, considering,
+discussing, and receiving reports upon every phase of the Scottish offer.
+The opportunity was a supreme one for him, and if he had been prompt
+and bold to seize the chance he might have won England and Scotland by
+this means. It is true that Don Carlos was a weak, half-witted boy of
+degenerate type, though this was not generally known at the time, but it
+would have been sufficient to betroth him to Mary for his father to have
+gained a right to interfere in Scotland. The Catholics of England were
+on the alert for any such opportunity, and the Scots, as we have seen by
+Lethington’s action, were ready to welcome any power strong enough to
+defend their country from the intrigues by which Elizabeth sought to sap
+the independence of their ancient realm.
+
+But promptitude was impossible where Philip was concerned. It took him
+three months to answer the important letter of Bishop Quadra telling
+him of Lethington’s offer, and when the reply came to London, in June,
+1563, it was thoroughly characteristic of the writer. As usual, he wanted
+to pledge everybody else up to the hilt, whilst himself remaining free
+behind bland generalities. His greatest praise was for the Bishop’s
+prudence in hearing what Lethington had said without giving him any
+plain answer. “And seeing that the bringing about of this marriage
+may perhaps be the beginning of a reformation in religious matters in
+England, I have decided to entertain the negotiation You will have it
+conducted in the same way that it has been commenced if you consider
+that safe and secret, telling them [the Scots] to inform you of all the
+engagements and understandings they have in England; and you, who know
+how valuable such knowledge will be to me, will keep me fully informed
+of everything. You will advise me step by step of all that happens, but
+without settling anything except to discover the particulars referred to
+above, until I send you instructions. You may tell them of my intentions,
+but urge them above all to use the utmost secrecy in the business and all
+connected with it, as all the benefit to be derived depends absolutely
+upon nothing being heard of it until it is an accomplished fact. If it
+becomes known that I am concerned in any such negotiations, the French
+will be greatly alarmed and will spare no efforts to frustrate them—or
+at least to counteract any profitable result that may arise. As for that
+Queen of England and her heretics, they are so deeply concerned that it
+is easy to judge what they would do if they heard of it; so, as I say,
+it is absolutely necessary that you should keep secret and urge secrecy
+upon all persons with whom you treat.” Philip knew that Cardinal Lorraine
+was now pressing his niece to marry the Archduke Charles, Elizabeth’s
+former suitor; but Lethington had scouted him as being useless for their
+purpose, as being poor and powerless, and Philip was willing to cut
+out his own close kinsman if he could thus gain England and Scotland
+for his son, or rather for himself,[149] and above all avoid another
+French domination of Scotland, which was threatened by Mary’s pretended
+willingness to marry the King of France.
+
+When Philip’s letter arrived in London the old Bishop was under a cloud.
+He was accused of holding communication with Arthur Pole in the Tower. It
+was known that he had been receiving in Durham House emissaries of the
+Irish Catholics; and Cecil’s spies reported that suspicious boats came
+often at night to the water gate. To make matters worse, one day in May a
+hanger-on of the Bishop’s household, an Italian serving lad, had shot at
+from the back gate of Durham House a Huguenot captain who was swaggering
+down the Strand towards Whitehall. The would-be assassin had taken refuge
+in the house, and had sought sanctuary in the Bishop’s own chamber,
+whence he was smuggled away by boat by the servants and escaped. Search
+and violation of diplomatic domicile by the officers of the law followed.
+The Bishop’s servants were interrogated, the house itself placed in the
+custody of an officer of the Queen, and the old Bishop, with bitterness
+in his heart, found himself shunned by all and powerless.[150]
+
+So when Philip’s impossible instructions reached the Bishop, affairs
+had changed. Lethington had been plainly told by Elizabeth that she was
+well aware that he was plotting to marry his mistress to Don Carlos or
+the Archduke, but that if she married either she must face her enmity,
+whereas if she married a friend of England she would make her the heir
+to her throne. Lethington and the Scots were therefore already wavering,
+for the fear was that if Mary wedded a Spanish nominee, Elizabeth would
+make Darnley her heir. The Catholics, too, not unnaturally, seeing the
+Countess of Lennox, Darnley’s mother, suddenly taken into high favour
+with Elizabeth, were thinking what an ideal arrangement it would be to
+marry Mary and her cousin Darnley with Elizabeth’s blessing, and the
+assured joint succession to her crown. The Bishop knew all this, and had
+well nigh lost heart when Philip’s letter arrived. He saw how impossible
+his master’s methods were in the face of Elizabeth’s rapid changes of
+policy and fertility of resource; for how could he keep the English
+Catholics in hand and learn all their combinations, or even get them to
+make any, on vague secret encouragement which might mean nothing? To
+the Duke of Alba he wrote: “The remedy is a weak one for so dangerous
+a malady. When they see that instead of giving them a firm reply we
+come only with halting proposals and inquiries, I know not what they
+will think. It is useless to ask them to give me information as to the
+amount of support the Queen of Scots can rely upon in England for the
+information of his Majesty. Lethington knows well that all this has been
+done long ago, for, of course, I could not hide my communications from
+him. We have been approached by the same people about the marriage ...
+and they have given to Lethington lists of the Catholics and others who
+would raise troops for the Queen of Scots.”
+
+Almost hopeless of success, therefore, the Bishop sent one of his
+most confidential servants to Scotland to tell Mary verbally that the
+ambassador had a very important communication for her if she would send
+a trustworthy agent to London to receive it. This messenger, Luis de
+Paz, left London in the middle of July, 1563, and eventually reached
+Mary whilst she was travelling in the Western Highlands. She had been
+ardently expecting Philip’s answer, and had with difficulty held off the
+other suitors, the Archduke Charles and Eric of Sweden, until it arrived.
+She gave to Quadra’s messenger a favourable verbal reply, but before
+he reached Langley, in Buckinghamshire, where the Bishop was staying,
+the old Spanish Churchman was dying. He had plaintively written to Alba
+shortly before that it was impossible to conduct affairs in England on
+Philip’s lines. He had done his best but had been beaten. The English
+scorned and contemned him. He had been expelled from the Queen’s house;
+he saw his master’s cause daily waning in England, and he knew that only
+bold, prompt action would regain the lost ground. The hopelessness of
+moving Philip to such action broke the old man’s heart. Luis de Paz had
+just time to whisper Mary’s message to him, and the dying man grieved
+sorely, he said, that he should thus drop just when he might hope to have
+succeeded. “I can do no more,” he sighed, just before he passed away,
+and Spanish influence in England was cast further into the background
+by his death; for Durham Place during his residence there had been the
+secret trysting-place of all those who hated Elizabeth’s rule. In the
+absence of any diplomatic channel through which Mary might work the great
+combination that she dreamed was to give her the crown of Britain under
+Philip’s protection, the clever, strong diplomacy of Elizabeth carried
+all before it. Dudley and Darnley were alternately dangled before Mary’s
+eyes and then withdrawn, until at length came the Lennox _coup d’état_
+and the marriage of the Queen of Scots with her cousin Darnley, which for
+a time took her out of the market.
+
+In the meanwhile every day that passed made it more difficult, and
+yet more necessary, for the King of Spain to gain the friendship or
+control of England. Affairs were going worse and worse with him in the
+Netherlands, where the struggle was assuming the character of a duel
+to the death between the old traditions of Flemish self-government and
+the newer absolutism which had already been fixed upon Castile and now
+threatened the ancient patrimony of Burgundy under Philip. The Reformed
+religion, or, indeed, any assertion of the lay right of judgment in
+matters of faith, was to Philip the embodiment of a rebellious spirit
+against the absolute centralised authority which was the essence of
+his system of government, and as such had to be crushed at any cost
+or sacrifice. Almost openly the English Protestants were sympathising
+with their Flemish brethren, and many Protestant refugees were flocking
+into England to establish their industries and seek security under a
+Protestant Queen. Boldness and good fortune had enabled Elizabeth, on
+the other hand, to take advantage of the jealousy of her neighbours and
+to gather around her the growing Protestant party which welcomed the
+national independence she had attained in so few years, whilst Philip’s
+hesitancy had succeeded entirely in disheartening the English Catholics,
+who had at first looked upon him as their champion.
+
+The attitude of Elizabeth throughout her intercourse with the Spanish
+ambassadors had been such, that she had been able to beguile them
+when it suited her, and to checkmate them at pleasure; for whilst
+they had to wait for tardy instructions, which when they came always
+enjoined impracticable conditions, Elizabeth was opportunist and able
+to change her tack at an hour’s notice, to the utter confusion of her
+slow antagonist. The hard treatment of Catholics in England and the
+welcome accorded to the Flemish Protestant refugees had been met by
+Philip by the cruel persecution in Spain of Englishmen, upon the barest
+suspicion of heterodoxy; and this had been resented by the recrudescence
+of the pillage of Spanish and Flemish ships at sea by English rovers.
+Not content with this, Elizabeth attempted to foster the new Flemish
+industries in England by imposing restrictions upon the entrance into her
+ports of certain manufactured goods coming from Flanders. In retaliation
+the Spanish rulers began a regular war of tariffs against England; and
+this, by the middle of 1564, had resulted in a general prohibition being
+issued on both sides, which practically forbade commercial intercourse
+altogether. Envoys went backwards and forwards for months, trying
+unsuccessfully to arrange matters; and in these efforts the Flemings were
+much more anxious than the English; for the latter had secured a good
+inlet for their cloths to the Continent through Embden, and Elizabeth
+had given permission for unrestricted export to all other countries but
+Flanders and Spain.
+
+The Flemish merchants, on the other hand, were almost bankrupt by the
+loss of the English trade, and were clamorous to Philip to remedy the
+matter.[151] Elizabeth could afford to stand firm and resist all attempts
+to force her into an inferior position in the negotiations. She had taken
+Philip’s measure by this time, and knew that whilst his own Netherlands
+were seething in revolt, and the Catholic party in France were held in
+check by the Huguenots, he dared not seriously injure her. So at last it
+was not the Queen of England, but Philip, who had to speak humbly; and in
+June, 1564, there arrived in London a Spanish ambassador of rank, a canon
+of Toledo, Diego Guzman de Silva, on a new errand. His instructions were
+precise, and his position was quite distinct from that formerly held by
+haughty Feria and of Bishop Quadra. They had both had for their mission
+the forcing of a policy upon a new unstable Queen, whilst Guzman was
+sent to seek a redress of grievances, and by diplomacy and moderation to
+compass what threats and retaliation had failed to accomplish. Philip’s
+hands, indeed, were then too full of his own troubles, both in the
+Mediterranean and Flanders, for him to hope to rule other countries,
+and bitter as it must have been for him, and still more bitter for the
+statesmen of the Alba school, he was forced to speak mildly through his
+new ambassador to the heretic Queen to prevent the ruin of his Catholic
+Flemish subjects. To this pass had he been brought in six years from the
+time when in the days of Mary he had worked his will in England almost
+unchecked.
+
+Guzman was instructed to make vigorous remonstrance to the English
+Government with regard to the grievances inflicted on Spanish and Flemish
+trade in many ways; but he was warned that when he saw Queen Elizabeth
+he was “to compliment her with the fairest words you can use.” “You will
+tell her, as I write to her, that I send you to reside near her as my
+ordinary ambassador, with orders to try to please her in all things,
+as, in effect, we wish you to do, using every possible effort to that
+end, and to strive to preserve her friendship towards us, and our mutual
+alliance. You will assure her that nothing will be wanting on my part to
+this end, as she well knows by the acts we have hitherto done, and the
+offers we have made to her.” The ambassador was instructed to win over
+Lord Robert Dudley, “who is so great a favourite of the Queen, and can
+influence her to the extent you have been informed. With kindness you
+will try to gain him, and will also strive to make the friendship of
+the Queen’s Councillors and officers through whose hands affairs pass,
+so that you may the more readily guide them in the way desired.” His
+mission was primarily concerned with securing the restoration of Flemish
+trade and the reopening of the ports on both sides, though he was also to
+watch closely the coming and going of “heretics” between England and the
+Netherlands, to persuade Elizabeth, if possible, to extend toleration to
+the Catholic worship in England,[152] and he was to spy out the Spanish
+Protestants who had sought refuge there.
+
+But, although he said nothing to his new ambassador, it is evident
+that Philip was not inclined to accept as permanent his present state
+of powerlessness in England, and was patiently biding his time until
+circumstances allowed him to obtain control once more. This is seen by
+the stress laid upon the importance of gaining Leicester to the Spanish
+cause, and still more by the instruction that Guzman was stealthily to
+encourage the hopes of the English Catholics, “with such dissimulation
+and dexterity as to give no cause for suspicion to the Queen or her
+advisers, as it is evident that much evil might follow if the contrary
+were the case.” Guzman was an amiable, easy-going Churchman in favour of
+peace, and very soon managed to get affairs upon a more friendly footing.
+The marriage juggle, by which Elizabeth balanced her own supposed
+marriage against that of Mary Stuart; the prospective bridegrooms,
+the Archduke Charles, Don Carlos, Don Juan of Austria, the boy King
+of France, with Leicester always in reserve, being often changed or
+transferred from one Queen to the other, were looked upon by Guzman with
+somewhat scornful amusement. He quite understood that these ever-varying
+phases of advance and recession obeyed the passing political need of
+Elizabeth and Catharine de Medici, and he was never greatly perturbed by
+them.
+
+Elizabeth was all graciousness when she received Guzman’s first visit at
+Richmond on the 22nd June, 1564. He had had no need to seek Dudley, who
+had begun to cultivate his friendship as soon as he arrived, for what
+purpose we shall see presently; and the more to do him honour, on the
+arrival of the ambassador at the palace landing-stage, young Darnley,
+of the blood royal, was awaiting him, to lead him to the Queen. She was
+standing, listening to a keyed instrument, when he entered the presence
+chamber, led by Lord Chamberlain Howard; and as soon as she saw him she
+came forward and embraced him warmly. Speaking at first in Italian and
+later in Latin, she expressed her delight at his coming: “As there were
+some friendly countries trying to make her believe that your Majesty
+would never again have a representative here, and she was glad that
+they had turned out false prophets. She said I should be treated and
+considered commensurately with the deep interest which for many reasons
+she took in your Majesty’s affairs.” Then, as a diversion, she displayed
+much curiosity about the mental and physical qualities of young Don
+Carlos, and talked some prurient nonsense about Philip’s widowed sister,
+Juana, whom she said she might marry, she (Elizabeth) being the husband
+and Juana the wife. To impress the ambassador the more with her desire
+to be friendly, and to attract attention, as usual, to her own charms,
+she said that the King, her good brother, “had seen her when she was
+sorrowful, distressed, ill-treated, imprisoned, and afflicted, and that
+she had grown greatly since then, and even gave me to understand that
+she had greatly changed in appearance.” She promised the ambassador
+a prompt settlement of all grievances, and affectionately embracing
+him again, handed the somewhat dazzled cleric over to the hospitable
+care of her courtiers. Dudley, Pembroke, Northampton, Clinton, Howard,
+and Cecil “came separately and embraced me, congratulating me on my
+arrival, and expressing their pleasure at my coming;” and so, with much
+suave compliment, Guzman, surprised at the warmth of his reception, was
+conducted by Darnley to his barge again.
+
+All this new-born delight in Spaniards on the part of Elizabeth and her
+courtiers was, of course, not without its reason. The fact is that, after
+all her aid to Condé and his Huguenots, peace had been made in France
+upon terms which gave predominance to the Catholics; and she considered
+that Condé had betrayed her in this, as, indeed, he had. Cardinal
+Lorraine, the bitter enemy of Elizabeth, was now Catharine de Medici’s
+henchman, and was busy negotiating a renewal of the Catholic League,
+which boded ill for England and Protestantism if it succeeded. A meeting
+was to take place between Catharine and her daughter, Elizabeth, Philip’s
+wife, with Alba and Lorraine in the background, to settle an accord
+between France and Spain for the utter extermination of Protestantism
+throughout the world; and even the Bourbon Huguenot princes of France
+had been temporarily silenced. In the circumstances Elizabeth naturally
+wooed Spain violently, and before Guzman had been in England a week
+he found himself in the centre of a real or feigned conspiracy of the
+unprincipled Dudley, to introduce Catholicism into England under Spanish
+protection, and depose Elizabeth’s Protestant minister, Cecil. On the
+pretext that Cecil had helped in the production of a book by John Hales
+in favour of Catharine Grey’s claim to the succession, Dudley’s friends
+secretly urged Guzman to recommend Elizabeth to dismiss and punish Cecil,
+“as if he were out of the way, the affairs of your Majesty would be more
+favourably dealt with, and religious questions as well, because Cecil
+and his friends are those who persecute the Catholics and dislike your
+Majesty, whereas the other man is regarded as faithful, and the rest of
+the Catholics so consider him, and have adopted him as their instrument.”
+
+Dudley again was willing to become the humble servant of Philip if Cecil
+could be got out of the way by Guzman’s aid. He hoped still, he told
+Guzman, to marry the Queen; “he had an understanding already with the
+Pope, and a person was in Rome to represent him.” When, however, Guzman
+asked for details of exactly what Lord Robert promised to do with regard
+to religion, the answers were vague, and the example of Bishop Quadra,
+moreover, was not lost on his successor. The ambassador knew that Philip
+was not ready to attack the English Protestants yet, or on the shifty
+word of Dudley, but he prepared the ground cleverly for future action.
+The first thing, he told the conspirators, was to bring the Queen into
+close friendship with the King of Spain, and with the Catholics through
+him, as otherwise she would not dare to dismiss her Protestant ministers.
+“All people think,” he wrote to the King, “that the only remedy for the
+religious trouble is to get these people turned out of power, as they are
+the mainstay of the heretics, Lord Robert having the Catholics all on his
+side; and I tell them that they must take these things [_i.e._, the need
+for fortifying Elizabeth by the friendship of Spain] into consideration
+when they are seeking a remedy, and that plenty of opportunities will
+offer themselves, if needed later, to raise war or stop trade.[153] The
+Catholics are much disturbed, and as they have no other idea than this
+they will not abandon it until they see some way of gaining their point.
+Certainly, from what I hear, they are very numerous if they dared to
+show, or had a leader.”
+
+But desirous as the Queen was to curry favour with the Catholic-Spanish
+party, and infatuated as she might be with Dudley, she could not
+dispense with Cecil’s services, and Dudley’s hopes again decreased,
+notwithstanding Philip’s sympathy expressed through Guzman, who was
+instructed to offer him all the aid he sought; but only on a distinct
+promise fully to restore the Catholic religion in England in the event
+of his marriage.[154] This Dudley could not do, though by innuendo he
+promised much, and thus Cecil remained unmolested. Elizabeth on this
+occasion was probably a party to Dudley’s action, for she carried matters
+almost as far with Guzman herself. She went out of her way several
+times to hint broadly at her desire to enter into negotiations for her
+marriage with Don Carlos, without the slightest intention, of course, of
+ever doing so, even if the health of the Prince had made such a match
+possible. She assured Guzman that she was really a Catholic at heart,
+“although she had concealed her real feelings in order to prevail with
+her subjects.”[155] Some weeks later she ordered a crucifix and ornaments
+to be placed upon the altar in her chapel, and Guzman told her that the
+preachers were slandering her for it, whereupon she said that she would
+order crosses to be placed in all the churches in the realm.[156]
+
+[Illustration: WILLIAM CECIL, LORD BURGHLEY
+
+FROM THE PAINTING BY MARC GHEERAEDTS IN THE NATIONAL PORTRAIT GALLERY]
+
+Elizabeth, indeed, was seriously alarmed at the impending Catholic
+League, and in addition to redressing the Spanish trade grievances and
+lavishing endless blandishments upon Guzman, she made a desperate bid
+to draw Catharine de Medici to her side by opening negotiations for her
+own marriage with the boy King of France—negotiations as insincere,
+doubtless, as the rest, but directed to the same end, namely, the
+diversion of France and Spain from their threatening friendship, as
+were also the attempts to revive the now almost outworn subject of the
+Queens match with the Austrian Archduke. The constant changes perfectly
+bewildered Guzman, who found Dudley (now created Earl of Leicester)
+blowing hot and cold. The Catholics, on the one hand, were smiled upon by
+the Queen, and on the other strong measures were being proposed by Cecil
+and his friends to stay the growth of “papistry.” But though Philip wrote
+on behalf of the Catholic English bishops in prison, and Guzman urged for
+the toleration of Catholic worship, no practical concessions could be
+obtained from Elizabeth, much as she might smile and suggest to Guzman,
+with whom she had grown personally very intimate.
+
+In the meanwhile the elaborate preparations for the settlement of the
+Catholic League by the meeting of the Queens of France and Spain at
+Bayonne went on, and rumours came to England which caused Elizabeth
+additional alarm late in 1564, that Philip himself was coming to Flanders
+in the following year to bring his Flemish subjects into due subjection.
+Elizabeth’s amiability then grew more intense than ever. “How much she
+wished her dear brother could stay in one of her ports, that she might
+regale him!” and Guzman was the object of her constant affectionate
+solicitude at the numerous balls, feasts, and tourneys to which she
+invited him, often deploring that his master was not there, too, to
+enjoy the fun. It must be confessed that, to judge by the relations
+between Guzman and the French ambassador in England (de Foix), the
+coming national alliance between their respective countries did not look
+promising. De Foix had Huguenot leanings, and Guzman always resented
+his presence at Court at the same time as himself, Elizabeth on several
+occasions having the greatest difficulty in keeping the peace between
+them, when by some inadvertence they met in her presence. Indeed, as was
+soon afterwards proved, the national jealousy of France and Spain and the
+personal interests of Catharine overrode the Catholic religious object of
+the League so perseveringly promoted by Cardinal Lorraine and Alba.
+
+On Ash Wednesday, 1565, Elizabeth listened to an open-air sermon preached
+by Dr. Nowell, Dean of Saint Paul’s, an ardent Reformer, who probably was
+not a politician. In the course of his sermon he condemned the veneration
+of images, and Elizabeth angrily told him not to talk upon that subject.
+Nowell either did not hear her or did not choose to regard the rebuke,
+and continued, when the Queen again raised her voice and peremptorily
+commanded him to pass to another subject, as that one was worn out. Soon
+afterwards de Foix, in conversation with Guzman, remarked that the Queen
+might have avoided so public and marked an interruption of the preacher.
+The Spaniard was of another opinion. “I think quite differently,” he
+said. “Those who sin publicly must be publicly rebuked; and as this Queen
+does, so might your most Christian King do it: when he gets older he
+will, I fear, be likely to make more account of the heretics.”
+
+The much feared interview of Bayonne, which the warlike party in Spain
+hoped would result in the crushing of Protestantism and the eventual
+submission of England to Spanish dictation, took place in these not very
+encouraging circumstances in May, 1565. Elizabeth, as a diversion, had
+been for months negotiating with Catharine for a French marriage, and
+the Queen Regent of France was taken aback when she saw at Bayonne the
+articles which she was expected to sign. The total extermination of
+Protestantism in France and the world over would have meant her personal
+political extinction, and probably that of her son’s realm; for Philip
+in that case would have been paramount. What she wanted was not this,
+but to be able to play the Guises off against the Bourbons, and keep
+Elizabeth always as a potential ally when the Catholics grew too strong
+to suit her. At Bayonne, therefore, whilst she ostensibly acceded to
+everything dictated by Alba and Lorraine, and led her devoutly Catholic
+and hispanolised daughter to believe that France with all its national
+power would support her husband’s objects, Catharine no sooner turned her
+face towards Paris than she began to introduce all sorts of conditions
+and limitations which stultified the whole plan of the Catholic League,
+whilst she became more warmly interested than ever in the talk of
+Elizabeth’s marriage with one of her sons.
+
+The result of the much discussed conferences of Bayonne, in which Philip
+personally had never been very sanguine, finally disillusioned him as to
+the practicability of a league with his artful mother-in-law which should
+make him master of Europe. He had thenceforward no other policy open
+to him than to revert to the traditional national affinities that had
+obtained before the religious changes in Europe. He must win England to
+his side by fair means or foul. For seven years he had tried to isolate
+her by means of a Catholic league and he had failed: he had spoken
+arrogantly through Feria, he had tried subtlety through Bishop Quadra,
+and he had essayed friendly cordiality by means of Guzman. Elizabeth,
+when it suited her, had been amiability itself, she had languished for
+a Spanish husband, she had pretended more than once to be a Catholic,
+she had smiled, pouted, or frowned, as her aims for the moment required;
+but, notwithstanding all this, the English Catholic bishops were still in
+durance, Catholic worship was still proscribed, and Philip was further
+off than ever he had been from controlling English statecraft for his own
+ends.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VI
+
+1565-1569
+
+    Mary Stuart marries Darnley—Their intrigues with Philip through
+    Guzman—Plan to promote revolution in England in favour of
+    Mary—Expulsion of the English ambassador from Spain—Recall of
+    Guzman—Don Gerau de Spes ambassador—His character—Commences
+    conspiring at once—His turbulent behaviour—Seizure of Philip’s
+    treasure in England—Indignation of de Spes—His imprudent and
+    disastrous action—Alba stops trade—Strained relations—Proposed
+    declaration of war against England—The views of Philip and
+    Alba—The Norfolk plot—The Northern rebellion
+
+
+In July, 1565, Mary Stuart had been swept by her passion along the rapids
+that led to her marriage with Darnley and her ruin. Up to this period
+her policy had been consistent and sagacious, directed mainly to the
+recognition of her present or prospective right to succeed to the throne
+of England. She had tried to attain the end alternately by the only two
+means open to her, by seeking marriage with a Catholic prince strong
+enough to enforce her claims, and by winning Elizabeth’s acknowledgment
+of them by submission to her will. So long as she was under the influence
+of Cardinal Lorraine, and the Guises were powerful, her main efforts
+had been in the first direction, but after her arrival in Scotland the
+influence of Murray and Lethington had led her into the second course.
+In a former chapter it has been related how, despairing of obtaining
+recognition from Elizabeth, Mary and her Protestant Anglophil advisers
+had on one occasion, in 1563, reverted to her earlier plans, and had
+attempted to secure Philip’s aid through her marriage with Don Carlos.
+She had never since quite abandoned this hope—her only one in this
+direction, since Guise was dead and Catharine de Medici was her deadly
+enemy. It is true that she had satisfied herself before Darnley arrived
+in Scotland that Don Carlos was unlikely or unfit to be a husband for
+her,[157] but prudence would have dictated delay in her marriage in order
+that Philip might have provided her with another Consort who would take
+with him the support of Spain. But Mary lost her head, if not her heart,
+when she saw “the long lad” Darnley, and took the step which made it, at
+first sight, appear the more difficult for Philip to help her, and which
+yet alienated from her Murray and the Protestants and brought her into
+open enmity with the Queen of England. On the other hand, the wedding
+of both the Catholic claimants to the Crown of England consolidated
+the Catholic elements in the north, making Elizabeth’s position more
+dangerous than at any time since her accession, and Mary had undoubtedly
+not lost sight of this feature, which she saw might yet enable her to
+obtain Spanish support when the time for action came.
+
+On the 24th March, 1565, four months before the Darnley marriage, though
+the prospective bridegroom was already in Scotland, a servant of the
+Lennoxes, named Fowler, came to Guzman in London with a letter from Mary
+Queen of Scots. He had been sent from Scotland, he said, by the Queen,
+ostensibly to obtain from Elizabeth a passport for Secretary Lethington
+to visit England, but really to ask the Spanish ambassador whether he had
+instructions to discuss with her a certain business that had formerly
+been broached to King Philip through his predecessor, Bishop Quadra,
+as if so she would send Lethington to see him. Guzman did not know
+Mary’s handwriting and was suspicious, especially as he was aware that
+Don Carlos could on no account marry Mary; so that Fowler, who said he
+could not return to Scotland without an answer, proposed to prove his
+_bonâ fides_ by showing his mistress’s letter to Luis de Paz, a Spanish
+merchant, who knew her handwriting. On the morrow Guzman was satisfied
+of Fowler’s honesty, and as he heard alarming news of a plan to marry
+Mary to her French brother-in-law, he hesitated no longer but sent the
+messenger Fowler back to Scotland with a letter for Mary, asking her to
+send Lethington to confer with him.
+
+A few days afterwards Guzman got a further hint from Darnley’s mother,
+the Countess of Lennox, of what was really in the wind. She sent to
+tell him how kind Mary was to her son in Scotland, and that the French
+ambassador had come to her promising all French help and support to
+Darnley if the Queen of Scots married him. The Countess in her message
+to Guzman affected to distrust this French offer, which probably she
+herself had invented, “as she knows the French way of dealing,” and said
+“that she and her children had no other refuge but the King of Spain, to
+whom she and they will ever remain faithful. She begs me to address your
+Majesty in their favour, so that in case the Queen of Scots should open
+negotiations about Lord Darnley, or in the event of this Queen’s death,
+they may look to your Majesty for support.” A week or two later the
+Countess of Lennox returned to the charge. She prayed Guzman to assure
+Lethington, when he arrived in London, “that your Majesty desired to
+favour her, as she believes that it would help her son’s business very
+much. She thinks he may marry the Queen of Scots, who rests her claim to
+this country more on the support of your Majesty than on anything else,
+especially as the Queen-mother of France is very much against her.” This
+seemed to Guzman important, and he did his best to assure Lady Lennox by
+hints of the sympathy that Mary and Darnley might expect from Spain. “As
+I have said on many occasions,” he continued in his letter to Philip,
+“it should be borne in mind that, in addition to the Queen of Scotland’s
+great claims to this realm, she has certainly here a very strong party,
+and it is highly desirable in many respects that she should be reckoned
+with in the interest of affairs that so deeply concern us. The English
+ports are necessary for the passage of trade between Spain and Flanders,
+&c.; and, besides this, these English are beginning to navigate largely,
+and may interfere with us in the Indies, upon which they look greedily,
+unless they are prevented from sailing.”
+
+Even mild, conciliatory Guzman was thus already joining those who looked
+eagerly for the ejection of Elizabeth and the substitution of Mary Stuart
+as Queen of a Catholic Britain under Spanish control. When Lethington
+arrived in London, therefore, on the 24th April, 1565, Guzman was quite
+prepared for the approaches he knew would be made. The two first met at
+some formal occasion at the French Embassy, and as they went along the
+road together on their way home, Lethington tried to arouse the fears of
+the Spaniard by hinting that Elizabeth was fishing for a French husband;
+but Guzman parried that by saying that in such case it would go hard with
+the Queen of Scots, who would then be on bad terms with both England
+and France. The next day, 25th April, the Scottish Secretary of State
+unmasked his batteries. Closeted secretly with Guzman at Paget House in
+the Strand, he explained how Mary had always desired to lean upon Spanish
+support alone, how she had bidden for the hand of Don Carlos, and had
+waited two years for Philip’s answer. Now there were thoughts of the
+Countess of Lennox’s son, since the King of Spain, it was feared, might
+have other views for Don Carlos. Lord Darnley had many advantages, but if
+the King of Spain gave her any hopes of Don Carlos the Queen would not
+conclude the proposed marriage with Darnley. Guzman replied that the King
+had not pursued the negotiations for Don Carlos because he had heard that
+Cardinal Lorraine had practically arranged with the Emperor for Mary to
+wed the Archduke Charles. After much conversation and explanation on this
+point, in which Cardinal Lorraine’s betrayal of his niece was made clear,
+Guzman cautiously expressed approval of Darnley, as he says, “trying to
+keep them in a good humour in view of eventualities.”
+
+But this was not enough for Lethington. Setting forth the enmity that
+the Darnley match might draw upon Mary from the Queen of England, he
+continued, “All this would cause grave evil, but could be remedied by
+the King of Spain taking my Queen and her affairs under his protection,
+in the assurance that at all times and in every matter they shall be
+considered as his own.... Such an arrangement would have to be treated
+with the utmost secrecy until the opportune moment arrived. There is
+no doubt whatever that the majority of the [English] gentry and common
+people are attached to my Queen, and I can promise positively that she
+will follow the wishes of your master in everything.” Lethington then
+suggested that, as the despatch of an ambassador from Scotland to Spain
+might alarm Elizabeth, the King of Spain might authorise Guzman to
+conclude a secret agreement by which Mary and her future husband should
+be bound absolutely to Spain in return for Philip’s support, or otherwise
+that the affair might be carried through by Mary’s ambassador in Paris
+(Beton, Archbishop of Glasgow) and the Spanish representative there.
+
+Once again we see here that the exigencies of the position had driven
+the Protestant Lethington to place Scotland and, if possible, England,
+under the tutelage of the King of Spain, if no other way could be found
+to enforce the claim of Mary to the English Crown. The course he took
+was dictated by the highest diplomacy, whatever might be said for its
+religious consistency. Failing Don Carlos and the King of France, who are
+now out of the question, Darnley was, in fact, the only man who could
+unite the English Catholics in Mary’s cause and attract foreign support
+to her claims. Lethington and Mary knew that Philip’s vital political
+need was a submissive England, and that Scotland was only interesting
+to him as contributing to that end. If Philip, by means of Mary and
+the Lennoxes, could obtain command of the powerful Catholic elements
+in England united in favour of the two legitimate heirs to the Crown,
+with the added advantage of a permanent base of operations in Scotland,
+he might find himself by the death or deposition of Elizabeth, which
+might be brought about at any time, the virtual master of Great Britain.
+No wonder, therefore, that Guzman smiled upon Lethington’s important
+mission, and promised to send post haste to Spain for the King’s decision.
+
+Whilst Elizabeth was making frantic efforts to prevent Mary’s marriage,
+and to keep up an appearance of negotiating for her own union with Don
+Carlos or the Archduke, and Leicester was again trying to win Spanish
+support for his suit by Catholic professions, Philip recognised that the
+offer made by Lethington to Guzman at last gave him a real opportunity
+of carrying through his plans for subjugating England by means of a
+subsidised Catholic rising in favour of Mary and Darnley. The suggestion
+was one after his own heart, and he accepted it with alacrity. Although
+cautiously, he was gradually coming round to the view that had been urged
+by Feria in the first days of Elizabeth’s reign, that England would have
+to be dealt with by force, only now, and for years afterwards, he wanted
+it to be the force of others wielded for his benefit. The King’s answer
+to Guzman was unusually decided and emphatic for him: “Your news has
+been very pleasing to me, and on the assumption that the marriage of the
+Queen and Darnley has really gone so far as they say, the bridegroom and
+his parents being such good Catholics and our affectionate servitors,
+and having in view the Queen’s good claims to the Crown of England, to
+which Darnley also pretends, we have decided that, the marriage is one
+favourable to our interests, and should be promoted and supported to the
+full extent of our power. We have thought well to assure the Queen of
+Scotland and Lord Darnley’s party, which we believe is a large one in the
+country, that this is our will and determination, and that if they will
+be ruled by our advice, and will not be precipitate, but will patiently
+await a favourable juncture, when any attempt to frustrate their plans
+would be useless, I will then assist and aid them in the object they have
+in view. I have instructed the Duke of Alba to write to this effect to
+the Scottish ambassador in Paris; but I think well to advise you also
+that you may know my views and keep them quite secret from the Queen
+of England and her friends, seeing the great danger that would result
+to this business and all our affairs if it were known. You may assure
+Lady Margaret of the sympathy and goodwill I bear to her son and towards
+the successful accomplishment of the project, in order that they may
+be satisfied, and know that they may depend upon me, and so be able to
+entertain and encourage the Catholics and their party in England.”[158]
+
+Philip foresaw the danger of Elizabeth’s being driven by the fear of
+a Catholic coalition against her to adopt Catharine Grey, or some
+other Protestant, as her successor, and he enforced upon Guzman, the
+Lennoxes, and the Scottish and English Catholics, the closest secrecy,
+and especially that every means should be employed to prevent a rival
+successor being brought forward. At the same time there is in the King’s
+letter to his ambassador no concealment of the intention to use this
+union of Mary Stuart and Darnley to foment a Catholic revolt in England
+which shall sweep Elizabeth aside. “You will,” he writes, “keep in good
+intelligence with their party in England and with the Catholics, which
+is the same thing, and try by all means in your power to animate and
+encourage them to carry the business into effect, promising them what I
+have said. But it must all be done so dexterously and adroitly that it
+shall not become public or reach the Queen’s ears, or evil results will
+ensue.”
+
+Anxious as Philip might be for secrecy, it was difficult to attain where
+so many people were concerned. Already Murray and the Scottish Protestant
+nobles had fallen away from Mary on the mere rumour of a Catholic Darnley
+match, and were looking askance at the Queen’s new Catholic friends. The
+Lennoxes, even the Earl himself, retorted foolishly by boasting of the
+support of the King of Spain,[159] which made matters infinitely worse
+and gave rise to alarming whispers in Scotland that religious persecution
+at the point, mayhap, of Spanish pikes might be the outcome of this
+godless wooing. Darnley, who was still ill in bed, was as imprudent as
+his father; threatened to break the Duke of Chatelherault’s head as soon
+as he could get up, and vapoured about his coming greatness under foreign
+auspices that would enable him to snap his fingers even at the Queen
+of England. Nor was Mary herself much more cautious in her utterances,
+and the English agent, Randolph, attributed her new-born pride and
+indifference to the effects of some devilish enchantment.
+
+But though she was deeply infatuated with “the young fool,” Mary would
+not marry him until she had received a reply to her advances to Philip.
+The match with Darnley was to give her, she hoped, the English Crown, but
+it could only be done with the aid of Spain. So, tired almost of waiting,
+she seized upon a hollow pretext to send James Hay, of Balmerino, to
+London to see Guzman, and learn if he had any news for her. On the
+very day that Hay first saw the Spanish ambassador Philip’s important
+letter had arrived in London. The Scot had just been violently snubbed
+by Elizabeth, and all his requests refused contumeliously, as no doubt
+he had foreseen they would be; his real reason for coming south at all,
+indeed, being to obtain the sanction not of the Queen of England but the
+King of Spain to Mary’s marriage with Darnley. The reply from Philip that
+Guzman gave to Balmerino was indeed a welcome one. “He appeared delighted
+with it, and said that his Queen desired nothing so much as that she
+should follow your Majesty’s orders in all things, without swerving a
+hair’s breadth, and that you should take her under your protection. I
+urged him to try to get his Queen to manage her affairs prudently, and
+not to strike until a good opportunity presented itself.”
+
+Hay only stayed in London one day longer, for he knew that the great
+wish of Mary’s heart was now to be granted; and though to the English
+partisans and the Protestants in Scotland he deplored “the evil success
+of his long journey,” it must have been with a merry heart beneath his
+doublet that he carried his welcome message to Holyrood on the 7th
+July, 1565. Two days afterwards Mary was secretly married to Darnley,
+though the public wedding was deferred until the 29th; and the great
+conspiracy against Elizabeth and Protestantism was then complete. Mary
+was so infatuated with Darnley at the time that she would probably have
+married him in any case, but her caprice for him and her determination to
+supplant Elizabeth had thus led her to promise the submission of herself
+and her realms to the dictation of a foreign monarch, the traditional
+foe of France that she pretended to love so well; a monarch whose first
+object was to gain command of the policy and resources of Scotland and
+England by exterminating the religion of a large proportion of the
+people. It was a triumph for her that her marriage with the man for whom
+she was temporarily crazy should be instrumental in gaining what she had
+striven so hard for since she left France, namely, the support of Spain;
+but indoctrinated though she was by the cynical teaching of her uncle,
+Cardinal Lorraine, she can hardly have realised the turpitude of the act
+of treachery she was committing. She had been cherished and beloved even
+by her Protestant subjects, and yet the step she was taking would lead,
+if she were successful in her object, to the employment of the hideous
+methods of Spanish religious coercion to crush their religious liberty,
+to the subordination of the land of her birth, and of England over which
+she aspired to rule, to the interests of a foreign nation, and would
+involve the ruin or death of another Queen closely related to her.
+
+On the other hand, it must be allowed on Mary’s behalf that her
+circumstances were exceptionally difficult. The political system of
+Catharine de Medici had deprived Scotland of the strong ally that for
+centuries had been its main protection against the aggression of England,
+whilst the spread of Protestantism in Scotland had created a new bond
+of union between the country and Elizabeth’s government. In order to be
+able to rule Scotland peacefully in these circumstances it was necessary
+either that the sovereign should accept frankly the Reformed doctrines
+and become more or less a vassal of England, or else make common cause
+with the great enemy of the Reformation, submit to the dictation of Spain
+with all it involved, and restore the lost balance of power in Europe to
+Philip’s advantage by uniting England and Scotland under Catholic rule.
+The effect would have been to reduce France to a secondary position, to
+secure supremacy for the papal Church, and to place Europe at the bidding
+of Philip II. Between these two alternatives Mary chose that to which her
+Guisan and Catholic traditions led her, and, reprehensible as her choice
+may seem to the political ethics of to-day, it was in the circumstances
+the most natural course for her to take.
+
+There was no hesitation or weakness in Mary’s attitude as soon as she
+had taken the step and married Darnley with the blessing of Philip. Knox
+thundered his denunciations from the pulpit, but whimpered and “longed to
+depart” when the guns of Edinburgh Castle began to speak; Murray, with
+his 1,200 men-at-arms, meaning mischief, waxed lachrymose when he found
+that the burgesses shrank from open disloyalty to the Queen, and that
+Elizabeth dared not help him now to rebel against the friend and ally of
+Spain. Mary, on the other hand, was confident and energetic. Keeping the
+saddle through the foulest weather, and over execrable paths, she rode
+almost alone, armed, and eager to meet her rebellious brother and his
+supporters. This was the eventuality which she had foreseen when she had
+ensured Catholic support from abroad on her marriage with Darnley, and
+she lost no time in claiming it.
+
+All the North of England was on the alert and ready for action in her
+favour if success were assured by the aid they looked for from Philip;
+and to the Pope Mary appealed even before her marriage was publicly
+celebrated. The Protestants, she wrote, were in arms against her, the
+Queen of England was in desperation: if his Holiness would send a force
+of 12,000 men to Scotland for six months the religion of Rome might be
+restored permanently. It was too much for the Pope to do without Philip’s
+connivance, so he put off Mary’s envoy with fair words until the reply
+could come from Spain.[160] To Philip himself she also wrote shortly
+before her public marriage (24th July, 1565): “I have given notice to
+your ambassador of all that has taken place, on the assurance that in the
+event of my urgently needing your succour and assistance, which I do,
+your Majesty will grant them to me in order to maintain the faith, with
+which object you raise such great forces against the Turk. I can truly
+say that no war is more dangerous to Christianity nor more pernicious to
+the obedience due to princes than that moved by these new evangelists
+(God grant that you may never be troubled with them in your dominions),
+and I therefore beg your Majesty, for this reason, and in consideration
+of the desire I have and always have had to bind myself to you against
+all the world, to instruct your ambassador to uphold the rights of the
+Earl of Lennox’s son and my own in England, and to order him to declare
+to the Queen of England that you will not allow anything to be done to
+our disadvantage.”[161]
+
+There is no doubt that a vast Catholic conspiracy, especially in the
+North of England, was in existence at this time, full of hope, encouraged
+by the agents of the Countess of Lennox, that the aid of Philip sent
+to Mary would enable them to shake off the yoke of Elizabeth and her
+Protestant ministers. The constant injunctions of the King of Spain
+that everything must be kept inviolably secret, and no move made until
+success was ensured, had been powerless, as usual, to close the mouths
+of elated people who thought that their days of tribulation were soon
+to end. Before Mary’s public marriage the eager English Catholics also
+sent their own emissary to the Spanish Regent of Flanders, Philip’s
+sister, the Duchess of Parma, to confer with her, and thence to proceed
+to Scotland. The man they chose was one Francis Yaxley, who had filled
+several bureaucratic posts in the English Court, especially that of Clerk
+of the Signet during Philip’s stay in England. He had been a friend of
+Bishop Quadra and a follower of Cecil, but at this time was a professed
+Catholic attached to the Lennox party. He knew foreign countries, and had
+even been in Spain; so that he was considered to be a good instrument
+for bringing into accord the English Catholics, the Scottish Queen, and
+King Philip. Guzman, giving notice to the King of his going to Flanders,
+says that “he is a person well acquainted with affairs here and will
+be able to give the Queen of Scotland a great deal of information. They
+(_i.e._, the English Catholics) say that he is a devoted servant of your
+Majesty.”[162]
+
+Exactly what this man arranged in Flanders before proceeding to Scotland
+is not known, but when he arrived, in August, at Leith, Randolph, the
+English agent in Edinburgh, knew enough to suspect him. “His errand
+I yet know not,” he wrote to Cecil, “and would I knew what might be
+said to such ‘gestes’ who come for little good.”[163] Whatever message
+Yaxley brought it was a welcome one to Mary and her husband, Darnley
+particularly “rejoicing and imparting all his affairs to him.” Yaxley is
+represented by the English agent as imposing upon Darnley and his “yong
+company,” by his boastful talk, “as a fit man to send abroad, as he
+knew so well the Courts of Spain and England, besides his acquaintance
+in Flanders and at Brussels, that he doubted not to accomplish any
+commission. So he is to pass secretly to the Duchess of Aerschot [Mary’s
+aunt], who shall procure him audience of the Regent, to whom he shall
+declare that this Queen ... will commit herself, her husband, and her
+country to his [King Philip’s] protection, and, seeing the Queen of
+England disposed to marry the French King, the rather to maintain her
+[Mary’s] estate she and her husband will remit all her titles to England
+to the King of Spain’s judgment; and if the Duchess of Parma thought
+meet he is to pass with these offers to Spain.... He [Yaxley] told his
+secret friends the names of many noblemen and gentlemen of good power in
+England ready to follow the King of Spain’s directions for the alteration
+of religion.”[164]
+
+Before Yaxley left again—not, as this letter says, to Flanders, but
+direct to Spain from Dumbarton—he renounced his English citizenship to
+become a Scotsman. “The Queen and her husband,” wrote Randolph, “have
+sent him ambassador to Spain; he embarked three days past [_i.e._, 17th
+September]. It passes my power to know his commission, but it is for
+little good.”[165] What Randolph could not fathom is to some extent
+divulged to us by the letter Mary wrote to Philip by Yaxley; although, of
+course, his verbal message was more precise as to what was required and
+intended. “Monsieur mon bon frère,” she writes from Glasgow on the 10th
+September, “the earnestness you have always displayed in the maintenance
+of our Catholic faith has caused me previously to crave your favours
+and aid, foreseeing that which has now happened in this realm of mine,
+tending to the entire ruin of the Catholics and the establishment of
+these unhappy errors. In resisting them my husband and myself will be in
+peril of losing our Crown, and by the same means our claims elsewhere,
+unless we have the help of one of the great Christian princes. Bearing
+this in mind, and seeing the energy with which you have proceeded in your
+own States, and especially the firmness with which you have upheld those
+who have depended upon your favour, we have thought well to address you,
+in preference to any others, to ask for your counsel, and for your help
+and support. With this end we have sent this gentleman, an Englishman
+and a faithful servant of my husband and myself, with ample charge to
+render to you an account of the condition of our affairs, of which he has
+full knowledge; praying you to give credit to his words as if they were
+our own, and to send him back with all speed, as the case is so pressing
+as to touch both our Crown and the liberty of the Church for ever. To
+maintain this we will spare neither life nor estate, with your support
+and counsel.”[166]
+
+Elizabeth’s Government were fully informed through their spies of the
+grave purport of Yaxley’s mission; and Catharine, who was almost as
+apprehensive of a Spanish domination of Scotland and England as Elizabeth
+herself, made an attempt by means of a special ambassador (Castelnau
+de la Mauvissière) to win Mary away from dependence upon Philip by new
+professions of friendship towards her. Mary, however, was in no humble
+frame of mind now, and would brook no interference either from her
+mother-in-law in France or her cousin in England, with both of whom
+she had long scores to settle. She would listen to no suggestions of
+a reconciliation with Murray, and she plainly threatened the French
+ambassador that if his King did not at once help her to punish the
+rebels she would invoke the aid of the King of Spain. The position was a
+triumphant one for Mary so long as she depended upon Spanish help; and
+if Philip had been prompt and such armed aid had been sent to Scotland
+before Murray succumbed, Elizabeth might have been deposed and Philip
+have obtained the control of Britain.
+
+Elizabeth for once was really alarmed. There was the confident talk
+now of Philip’s coming with a great fleet and army to Flanders, which
+pessimists in England thought might be used against this country. So
+whilst Mary of Scotland, in full hope of Philip’s support, was defying
+England, Elizabeth was afraid of stirring a finger to help Murray and
+the Protestants ostensibly, for fear of bringing Spaniards or French
+Catholics, or both, into North Britain; in which case her own crown would
+have been in dire danger. Guzman saw Elizabeth on the 16th September, and
+found her full of complaints of the ingratitude of the Queen of Scots and
+the Lennoxes, to whom she had been so kind and meant so well. The present
+rebellion in Scotland was not really about religion at all, she said, and
+Mary only pretended that it was, in order to enlist the help of foreign
+princes. “Well, that may be,” replied Guzman drily, “but in any case it
+is very inexpedient, and sets a bad example to help rebellious subjects
+in their disobedience.” “Oh,” cried Elizabeth, quite shocked at the
+idea, “God forbid that _I_ should ever help disobedient subjects, unless
+I saw very good reason why they should not be made to suffer without a
+hearing!” Elizabeth, indeed, who was sending money secretly to Murray,
+and throwing the blame for everything upon the Lennoxes and Darnley, was
+now quite apologetic at the attitude into which she was forced by events
+and by Mary’s appeal to Spain. So powerless was she at this juncture that
+she had to sit idly by whilst Murray and his adherents fled across the
+Border (13th October, 1565) before Mary’s threatened vengeance, and she
+was even forced to feign anger and indignation at his rebellion when he
+sought audience in England of the Queen whose stalking-horse he had been.
+
+Ignorant, of course, of Murray’s collapse, Yaxley duly arrived at
+Segovia, where Philip was, on the 23rd October, 1565, and gave his letter
+and verbal message to the King. Fortunately Philip repeated this message
+to Guzman in his letter to him, written on the following day, and we are
+thus able to understand exactly how far Mary was willing to go in her
+ambitious plans. “The first thing,” writes Philip, “was to assure us in
+fair words of the great hope and confidence they reposed in me, desiring
+to govern themselves by my direction alone, and to do nothing without my
+consent and pleasure: for this reason they wish to inform me of the need
+in which they are, and assure us of their zealous desire to establish
+their realm anew under the Christian religion, and to join other
+Christian princes with that object. Not having sufficient forces of their
+own they begged me to aid them as a Christian monarch; and, in order to
+induce me to do so, the envoy set forth the danger in which the Queen
+and King of Scotland were, by reason of the heretics, stimulated and
+favoured by the English with men and money; so that the said sovereigns
+might easily fall into the hands of the rebels, and be conveyed abroad,
+leaving the State unprotected, unless I, in whom after God they put their
+trust, aided them with money and troops. If I would consent to do this it
+would not only be the means of destroying the rebels, but would confirm
+the King and Queen in their hope of succeeding to the English throne,
+and would banish their fear that the heretics would oust them, the
+real heirs, and elect some heretic instead. They promised that if they
+obtained the succession of the Crown by my means they would renew more
+closely the alliance and league between England and our house against
+the world, and leave all other friends for us. They also begged us to
+write urgent letters to the Queen of England, first asking her to release
+Lady Margaret (Lennox), and secondly to desist from aiding the Scottish
+rebels.”[167] Yaxley also asked that an accredited Spanish ambassador
+might be sent to Scotland to arrange a binding treaty and to advise Mary
+and her husband as to their proceedings.
+
+Philip was not ready yet for heroic measures in Great Britain, for he
+was busy planning the deadly blow he hoped to deal upon his disaffected
+Flemings. But he sent back by Yaxley cordial letters to Mary and Darnley,
+and told them to consult either Guzman or the Spanish ambassador in Paris
+when they were in doubt how to proceed. What advice was to be given to
+them in such case is seen in the King’s instructions to Guzman. “They
+should confine themselves for the present to punishing the rebels and
+pacifying the kingdom. When they have done this, and affairs have settled
+down, they could look further ahead than at present.” Philip was equally
+cautious in other directions. He did not want to tie himself openly or
+formally to Mary until he was quite sure that she would be a fit and
+obedient instrument for him to obtain command of England. She must, with
+her husband, for this purpose be able to command the united support
+of the English Catholic party, and Philip must be quite sure that her
+French relatives were not to influence her in any way. So he declined to
+negotiate a formal treaty or to write to Elizabeth about Lady Lennox,
+and even confined his present assistance to a sum of money, no less than
+20,000 crowns, which was to be secretly handed to Yaxley by a Spanish
+banker, who himself did not know its destination, outside Antwerp.
+
+With this answer Yaxley travelled post-haste to Flanders, and duly took
+ship in Antwerp bound for the port of Leith with this large sum of
+money on his person. This was about the 20th November, 1565. The season
+was a terribly tempestuous one, and at some time in December, from the
+wreck of a Flemish ship, there was cast up by the sea upon the coast of
+Northumberland the drowned body of Yaxley with his treasure upon him.
+Guzman was alarmed when he heard of it, more for the letters and papers
+from Philip that the man bore than for the money, as they would divulge
+the whole plot; but if the letters were found, which it is probable they
+were, they were not delivered to Elizabeth. The Earl of Northumberland
+was a Catholic noble and secretly an adherent of Mary’s, as will be seen
+later; but, although his attachment to her might prompt him to keep or
+destroy letters compromising her, it was not proof against his claiming
+the money upon the dead man, which he seized in virtue of his territorial
+rights; although he had angry disputes and lawsuits with the Lord
+Admiral on the subject, who also claimed the salvage. Mary herself sent
+Melville to ask Northumberland for the delivery of the money intended for
+her. “But all my entreaties were ineffectual; he altogether refused to
+give any part thereof to the Queen (of Scots), albeit he was himself a
+Catholic and professed secretly to be her friend.”[168]
+
+At about the same time the Pope sent to Mary, by Philip’s permission,
+a similar sum of 20,000 crowns, and promised a subsidy of 4,000 crowns
+a month to pay troops to suppress the rebellion. But Murray was in
+England and the revolt practically at an end by this time. Elizabeth
+was protesting with injured innocence that nothing was further from her
+thoughts than subsidising trouble in her dear sister’s realm; whilst
+Mary, taking Philip’s advice to heart, was diplomatically biding her time
+for the great blow to be struck that would give her the Crown of England.
+She once more turned a smiling face upon Randolph, and readily agreed
+now to receive special ambassadors from Elizabeth to settle all disputes
+between them. The rebels, all but Murray and Kirkaldy of Grange, were
+received into favour again, and to please and lull Elizabeth into false
+security, Darnley was ostentatiously neglected by his wife. Kirkaldy,
+dour and unbending, warned the English that Mary was fooling them. “Send
+as many ambassadors as ye please to our Queen, they shall receive proud
+answers, for she thinks to have a force ready as soon as ye do, besides
+her hope of friendship [of the Catholics] in England, of which she brags
+not a little, so driving time is to her advantage.”[169] Kirkaldy was
+right, as events proved. Mary was temporising as Philip advised her to
+do, counting upon the aid of Spain, the Pope, and the English Catholics
+when the hour should strike. But for her the hour never did strike. Her
+evil star led her along the path which ended in England and martyrdom.
+
+The tragedy of Rizzio, the vicious foolishness of Darnley, the levity
+of Mary, and the falsity of Murray and Morton, destroyed for a time the
+great dream, once so promising in appearance, that the Queen of Scots
+would mount the Catholic throne of Britain by the aid of Spain. When Mary
+was in Lochleven and her infant son had been adopted as their King by
+the nobles, Elizabeth and Catharine vied with each other in their loud
+expressions of sympathy with a Queen thus contemned by her subjects,
+the object in both cases being to obtain, if possible, either through
+Mary or her persecutors, a pretext to interfere in Scotland, and thus
+to frustrate the Spanish combination. Murray, who was not in Scotland
+when Darnley was murdered, found himself assiduously courted, by the
+French especially, on his way home, and had a long friendly interview
+even with Guzman in London. After the first shock of dismay caused to
+the Catholics by the marriage of Mary to Bothwell—a divorced man and a
+Protestant—public opinion on their part agreed to regard her as innocent
+of the crimes laid to her charge; and when, on the unhappy 16th May,
+1568, Mary, weeping with grief and bitter disappointment, bade a last
+farewell to the land of her fathers to claim the hospitality of her
+bitterest enemy, her party in the north still founded their hopes upon
+her, notwithstanding the black suspicion that hung over her, whilst she
+was unsubdued and full of plans for future triumph over her enemies.
+
+In her first letter to Elizabeth she struck a high but unwise note,
+claiming admission to the Queen’s presence and English aid to subdue her
+rebel subjects, failing which she demanded leave to go to France or Spain
+and obtain assistance there. Elizabeth refused both requests, for whilst
+she was kept in England the unhappy Mary had nothing to offer in return;
+but Knollys, who took the message, warned the Queen of England that the
+Catholic gentry were flocking to salute the fugitive, whose presence in
+the north was a danger, and Mary sent indignant and imprudent messages
+by Lord Herries to Elizabeth threatening to appeal to her great Catholic
+friends on the Continent. This attitude sealed Mary’s fate and determined
+her imprisonment. Lord Herries talked openly, even in Elizabeth’s palace,
+of his plans for claiming Catholic aid for his mistress; and although
+Guzman used all his deft persuasions to soften the English Queen,
+Elizabeth explained to him quite cogently again and again that she dared
+not allow Mary to bring foreign Catholic forces into Britain, nor from a
+safe refuge on the Continent to organise disaffection in England.
+
+Elizabeth, with ample reason, was at the time in a panic at Philip’s
+action in Flanders. For many months the pretence had been kept up that
+the King himself was coming to the Netherlands to pacify discontent.
+Great forces had been raised in Italy, Spain, and Germany, and a strong
+fleet fitted out, to the great alarm of the English, who feared that at
+last the time for Philip’s vengeance had arrived, although Elizabeth
+had tremblingly tried to keep up the pretence to Guzman that she was
+delighted at “her good brother’s” coming. At last when all was ready,
+in the autumn of 1567, vast sums of money collected, and the troops
+under arms, no longer a royal escort but a strong avenging army, Philip
+announced that he would not go to Flanders himself but would send the
+terrible Duke of Alba. Then all the world knew what was meant—war to
+the knife until Protestantism and political liberty were crushed in the
+Netherlands. It was clear to Huguenots, Lutherans, and Anglicans that the
+time of trial and struggle was at hand, and mutual messages and promises
+of support crossed from one to the other, for they all knew that if the
+King of Spain were victorious over dissent in his own land the turn of
+the others would come. Elizabeth’s retort to Alba’s proceedings was, as
+usual, both bold and diplomatic. She once more made strenuous efforts
+to reopen the negotiations for her marriage with the Archduke, she
+cajoled Guzman again into the belief that she was not in accord with the
+proceedings of her Reformed bishops; and whilst all England was thrilling
+with sympathy for the oppressed Flemings she made the most elaborate
+protestations to the Spanish ambassador that she had not helped and would
+not help them in their resistance.[170] But at the same time Elizabeth,
+by a policy of alternate severity and leniency towards them, convinced
+the English Catholic party that their future treatment depended alone
+upon their gaining her goodwill.
+
+The first suppression of revolt in Flanders effected by Alba on his
+arrival coincided with a change in Philip’s policy towards England,
+probably under the influence of the warlike party now dominant in his
+counsels. Guzman, as we have seen, had always spoken fair to Elizabeth
+and Cecil, though he often complained to his master of having to deal
+with “heretics” thus. But from Madrid now a harsher note was struck. The
+English spies in Spain reported that all the talk now was of the coming
+conquest of England, and of Catholic combinations to overthrow the Queen;
+and in February Elizabeth learnt from a messenger sent by her ambassador
+in Spain, Dr. Man, Dean of Gloucester, to inform her of the imprisonment
+of Don Carlos, that the household of her ambassador had not been allowed
+to celebrate Protestant worship in the embassy building. Dr. Man was a
+notoriously foolish, babbling person, and, as Philip averred, had openly
+scoffed at a religious procession, and had spoken at dinner before
+Spaniards disrespectfully of the Catholic faith. The Duke of Feria had
+been sent to warn him, which we may be sure he did haughtily enough,[171]
+and Philip, on Man’s first arrival in Madrid, appears to have told him
+harshly “that he must conduct himself as his predecessors had done.” The
+Inquisition had, so Philip declared, complained of him, and he was said
+to have acted “simply as a perverse dogmatiser.”
+
+However this may have been, the prohibition of his own national worship
+within the embassy walls was a violation of diplomatic privilege, though
+Philip said that other English ambassadors (meaning Challoner) had put up
+with it; and when Elizabeth heard of it she was violently angry. Cecil
+went to Guzman and told him heatedly that unless the English ambassador
+in Madrid had the same privileges conceded to him as those that Guzman
+enjoyed in London, he would immediately be withdrawn. Philip, said
+Elizabeth, might do as he liked with his own subjects, but he should not
+persecute hers. The complaint, of course, went to Madrid, and at the
+same time a letter to Dr. Man from the irate Elizabeth ordering him to
+demand immediate satisfaction from the King. Philip was ready for it and
+gave him no opportunity. In a violent letter to Guzman, entirely unlike
+his previous tone towards England, he tells his ambassador that he has
+banished Man from Madrid, and refused to have any more intercourse with
+him. He had, says the King, even tried to proselytise in Spain; and if
+he had not been an ambassador the Inquisition would have made short work
+of him. If Elizabeth did not recall him at once, he would be expelled
+from Spain. When Guzman waited upon Elizabeth early in May, 1568, with
+this message and handed her his new letter of credence, he watched her
+face closely. “When she came to the latter part about the ambassador she
+changed colour and seemed annoyed, asking me what it meant.” Guzman, as
+gently as he could, gave her the rough message, and said that a gentleman
+was on the way from Spain to explain matters. In the meanwhile, amongst
+other things, he might tell her that this precious ambassador of hers
+had publicly called the Pope a “canting little monk!” “Oh! there is
+nothing in that,” said the Queen, but Guzman thought otherwise. She had
+not dealt with Bishop Quadra so harshly, she said, although she found
+he was positively plotting against her. “She therefore grieved that her
+ambassador should be treated as he had been, especially as at this time
+suspicions and comments would arise therefrom. This way of treating
+ambassadors was a forerunner of greater unpleasantness, particularly
+coming as it did on the top of the news of the Catholic league against
+her, and I should hear next day what would be said in London about it.”
+
+A week or so after this came the news that Man had been expelled from
+Madrid with every circumstance of insult, and Guzman, anxious to hear
+what the English would think of it, called upon Cecil. He found the
+minister in a furious passion at the outrage upon international courtesy.
+Such a thing, he said, had never been heard of before unless a pretext
+for war was sought, and it was a great piece of disrespect and an insult
+to the Queen, showing a desire to pick a quarrel with her, as had already
+been stated in certain quarters, and it now behoved the Queen to be
+prepared. It is certain that this incident, almost coinciding as it did
+with Mary Stuart’s arrival in England and her open threats to appeal to
+the Catholic Powers for aid, greatly perturbed and alarmed Elizabeth. The
+war of religion in France was again in full swing, and her friends the
+Huguenots had their hands full and could not help her, the Flemings were
+temporarily crushed under the iron heel of Alba, and the Catholics of the
+North of England were in a ferment at the coming of the Queen of Scots.
+
+In spite, therefore, of Guzman’s remonstrances, the flail fell upon the
+backs of the English Catholics, and for the first time Guzman himself
+was treated with harshness. Cecil told him “that the Council regarded him
+with suspicion, and the Queen did the same.” The ambassador was gentler
+and more conciliatory than ever; but in the new situation created he was
+not the man for the place. In February, 1568, he had earnestly begged the
+King to recall him on the pretext of ill-health and lack of means. At
+that time, before Mary Stuart’s arrival in England, the relations between
+England and Spain were not abnormally strained, for Mary, being deposed
+and imprisoned, was powerless. Philip sent no answer to the ambassador’s
+request for several months; but in May, when the prospect was no longer
+“quiet and friendly,” he sent to Guzman his letter of dismissal. The King
+at this time needed a rough, overbearing man to support his strong action
+with regard to the English ambassador. The communications that had passed
+between Philip and Mary Stuart, and the reports he had received as to
+the attitude of the English Catholics of the north from the Lennoxes and
+others, had convinced him that an opportunity offered for dealing his
+blow. Guzman had continued gently to encourage the Queen of Scotland’s
+agent, Fleming, but neither his instructions nor his disposition allowed
+him to go beyond bare expressions of sympathy. “I have shown him great
+goodwill, and have in general terms assured him of your Majesty’s sincere
+affection for his Queen, as I am letting the Catholics, her friends,
+understand.”[172] But Guzman went no further than this.
+
+Philip always chose his instruments carefully, with a view for the
+precise task he confided to them. He had sent Guzman to London to
+tranquillise Elizabeth by cordiality and a show of simple frankness,
+at a time when trade was suspended and she was deeply irritated at the
+intrigues of Bishop Quadra. The ambassador had done his work admirably,
+but now another phase had to be dealt with, and a different man was
+required. To some extent, perhaps, Guzman’s recall may have been
+influenced by his own remark that Catholics are exposed to much danger
+to the purity of their faith by living so long amongst heretics, in
+answer to which the King told him that he was not to join in religious
+discussions with enemies of the Church; but the choice of his successor
+was certainly made with a view to an alteration in the attitude in
+future to be adopted towards Elizabeth by her brother-in-law. All hope
+of bringing her round to a Catholic policy was now quite abandoned. To
+invade and conquer her country, as Feria had proposed, when it might have
+been done, in the first days of her reign, was not at present in Philip’s
+power. But he had a famous general and a powerful army a few hours only
+from her shores, and she might be frightened into a humble and tolerant
+mood, perhaps, by a rough-tongued bully with such a force to threaten
+with. Besides, reports had told the King that the Catholics of the North
+of England were yearning for his coming to liberate their country from
+the yoke of heresy, and a bold zealot was needed to organise them into a
+fit instrument for Philip’s future purpose.
+
+Such a man, though without the subtlety and secrecy required, was found
+in Don Gerau de Spes, a haughty Catalan knight of the Alba school, as
+intolerant as Feria himself. It was no part of Philip’s intention yet to
+quarrel openly with Elizabeth, and the instructions he gave to his new
+ambassador were, as will be seen presently, entirely pacific; but the
+King was really in great trepidation as to the way in which the Queen
+would take the expulsion of her ambassador, and de Spes’s first task was
+to frighten her into humility, and into desisting from countenancing the
+open aid that was flowing over from England to the Flemish rebels. When
+Guzman went to Hatfield to announce to the Queen his recall he found her
+troubled and suspicious at the rumours that had reached her as to the
+reasons for the change. “She showed more sorrow than I expected, and,
+changing colour, told me that she was grieved to the bottom of her heart
+that there should be any change, as she was so greatly pleased with my
+procedure. She said she had always shown me how pleased she was with me,
+and hoped to God there was no mystery behind this change.”
+
+The supple ambassador tranquillised her. She knew, he said, what poor
+health he had, and how badly the English climate suited him. There was no
+other mystery behind his going than that. She was coquettishly aggrieved,
+too, at his wanting to leave her, as they had been such friends; and
+besides, there was all this talk about a Catholic league against her!
+Guzman again reassured her; but when he got back to London he found Cecil
+less easy to calm. He had been told alarming stories by his spies, most
+of which we now know were untrue, and after assuring Guzman of the grief
+that his recall would cause to the Queen, he continued that “it confirmed
+what he had heard from various quarters, that Cardinal Lorraine had
+arranged a treaty with the Duke of Alba respecting this country and the
+Queen of Scots, which had been negotiated through me [_i.e._, Guzman] as
+they could not trust the French ambassador. It was said, also, that the
+Queen of Scots herself was in communication with me and sent me letters
+for your Majesty. It was asserted that, now that I had arranged it all,
+I wished to leave in order that my successor, and not myself, should
+witness the carrying out of the plan.”[173] Guzman knew that a letter to
+him enclosing one from Mary to Philip had fallen into Cecil’s hands, so
+he had to be dexterous in his management of the situation. He affected
+to laugh at such assertions as absurd;[174] and the interview ended by
+the highest praise being bestowed upon Guzman, who, said Cecil, had
+absolutely gained the Queen’s confidence; and many dubious questions were
+put by Cecil as to what sort of a person Don Gerau de Spes was.
+
+Don Gerau soon showed this for himself. He was instructed by Philip
+to explain to Elizabeth the misdeeds of Dr. Man that had led to his
+expulsion, and to exonerate the Duke and Duchess of Feria, and especially
+the English relatives of the latter, from any blame in the matter. He
+was also to watch the introduction of warlike stores into England and
+keep in touch with the Duke of Alba in Flanders; but he is emphatically
+enjoined “to serve and gratify the Queen on every possible occasion,
+trying to keep her on good terms, and assuring her from me that I will
+always return her friendship as her good neighbour and brother.” De Spes,
+however, must have carried secret instructions in addition to this,
+because when he was passing through Paris, Mary Stuarts ambassador, the
+Archbishop of Glasgow, recommended to him the care of the imprisoned
+Queen’s affairs, “as she founded all her hopes on your Majesty’s favour,”
+and, in reply, de Spes said that he had orders to do everything he could
+for her. There is no such clause in his public instructions, and it is
+most unlikely that any ambassador of Philip would have dared to plunge
+without instructions into conspiracies against the Government to which he
+was accredited, as de Spes did immediately after his arrival in England.
+
+Before crossing the Channel, de Spes had a conference with the Duke
+of Alba at Utrecht, where a long list of Philip’s grievances against
+Elizabeth were discussed. The indictment was a grave one, the injuries
+said to be inflicted by the English upon Spaniards and Flemings amounting
+in value, it was computed, to 300,000 ducats a year; and it is certain
+that at this interview between the two fiery Spaniards plans for
+revenging and amending this state of things were canvassed and agreed
+upon. In England at the time there resided a Spanish merchant, ambitious
+to fill a diplomatic _rôle_, and, although he had lived in London for
+thirty years at least, he was as zealous and intolerant in religious
+affairs as de Spes, or even Philip himself. This man, of whom we shall
+hear much presently, Antonio de Guaras, anxious to ingratiate himself,
+had sent to de Spes in Flanders two broadsheets that had just been
+published in England attacking Philip’s system and the communications
+that it was known passed between the English Catholics and the King of
+Spain. Such papers, of course, had been published in Guzman’s time, but
+he had wisely passed them by or minimised their importance. To de Spes
+they served as a spark to the tinder of his passion, and he arrived in
+England fuming with rage at the insolence of the heretics.
+
+As de Spes rode from Dover towards London, with a long train of Spanish
+residents in England at his heels, early in September, 1568, he was
+overtaken by a Scottish gentleman (probably James Beton) on his way
+from Paris in the service of the imprisoned Mary, with whom he was
+going to seek an interview. De Spes listened eagerly to his story of
+the ill-treatment of Mary by the “heretics,” and told him that he had
+letters in London from King Philip to her. He had enough prudence to
+tell the Scot when, after their arrival in the capital, he came for the
+King’s letter to take to Mary that it would be wise that he, as Spanish
+ambassador, should not be seen too prominently in her interests; but he
+associated himself at once in all the Scottish Queen’s plans to escape
+from her bondage, and sent her warm messages of encouragement. Almost
+at the same time (15th September) Philip himself was writing from the
+Escorial an important letter to the Duke of Alba. The Queen of Scots, he
+said, had written praying for his help to extricate her from Elizabeth’s
+hands, and professing her readiness to die in defence of the faith.[175]
+“I have refrained from arriving at any decision or answering her
+autograph letter ... until you tell me what you think of the business,
+and in what way and to what extent I should assist her. I beg you to
+write to me by the first opportunity on the matter, and in the meanwhile
+to encourage the Queen the best you can to persevere firmly in her
+saintly purpose; for whilst she does so God will not abandon her.”[176]
+It is obvious from this that Philip had not decided yet to help Mary,
+but only to encourage her until affairs appeared to him propitious, and
+we shall be able to judge, therefore, to what extent the zeal of de Spes
+precipitated matters.
+
+Elizabeth was making a progress through Hampshire, and Guzman presented
+his successor to her at Newbury on the 12th September, 1568. To the
+scornful anger of de Spes, Cardinal Chatillon, the Huguenot brother
+of Coligny, was also seeking audience of the Queen, and being feasted
+and made much of in the interval by Sir Thomas Gresham at his house in
+London. That a Cardinal, a prince of the Catholic Church, followed by a
+wife and family and with several bishops at his side as unorthodox as
+he, should be ruffling about the streets of London in cape and sword and
+jewelled cap, shocked de Spes gravely; but that he should be asking,
+and obtaining, arms from the Tower of London and money and English
+volunteers to fight against the Catholics and the King in France made the
+Spaniard more bitter than anything else. The new ambassador had not been
+installed in Paget House[177] a fortnight before Mary Stuart’s emissaries
+were in close conference with him. One of them came to him early in
+October disguised as a merchant, saying that he was bearing letters from
+her to the Duke of Alba in Flanders. The Conference of York, which had
+been summoned to decide Mary’s guilt or innocence of the murder of her
+husband, was already gathering, and the Scottish Queen herself was at
+Bolton. How eager de Spes was even thus early to engage in plots in her
+favour is seen in the letter he wrote to the King on the 9th October
+giving him this news. “Where she is the Catholics are more numerous than
+in any part of the country. She knows how to ingratiate herself with her
+keepers, and has many sympathisers on her side. It will not be difficult
+to release her, and even to raise a great revolt against this Queen; but
+it will be more prudent that your Majesty should not appear in this,
+and I will do nothing until I receive orders from your Majesty or the
+Duke.”[178]
+
+All this foregathering with Scottish agents on the part of de Spes was
+not lost upon the English Government, whose spies reported everything. De
+Spes says that Cecil sneeringly asked Beton (the nephew of the Archbishop
+of Glasgow, who was in London on his way from Paris to see Mary) “whether
+he had been with his complaints to the new Spanish ambassador yet, and
+how often he went to Paget House.” In these circumstances it is not
+surprising that relations grew rapidly acrimonious between Philip’s
+ambassador and Elizabeth’s ministers. He pressed with boldness and
+persistence the claims of the Spanish shipmasters for the depredations
+committed by English rovers, and by the Huguenots and Dutch rebels
+who took shelter in English ports; and to these claims Cecil retorted
+by bringing up the old grievance of Dr. Man’s expulsion, and certain
+insulting references to the Queen of England contained in a recently
+published Spanish book by Dr. Illescas on Pontifical History. To make
+matters worse, de Spes did not confine himself to the redress of Spanish
+grievances, but made himself the champion of Catholics generally. A
+Portuguese envoy, Dr. Alvarez, was in London to ask Elizabeth to forbid
+English ships to go to the coast of Guinea, where Hawkins had been
+slave-trading, and suddenly one morning the Bishop of London’s men
+appeared before the house in which Alvarez lived and demanded that
+certain Englishmen then attending Mass there should be delivered to them
+for punishment. The Portuguese refused to surrender them, and the house
+was soon surrounded by a threatening crowd. Word was carried to de Spes,
+who immediately sent off one of his household to demand of the Lord Mayor
+(Sir Roger Martin) the dispersal of the mob. “What is the cause of the
+gathering?” asked the chief magistrate, and when the Spaniard told him
+that it was a question of Catholic worship, Sir Roger burst out in a rage
+that he would rather send his men to reinforce the mob than to disperse
+it in such a case.
+
+The presence of such a firebrand ambassador as this in London, in
+constant communication, as Elizabeth’s ministers knew, with all the
+elements of disaffection in England, and in close correspondence with the
+terrible Duke of Alba in Flanders, convinced the English Government that
+evil plans were brewing. It was known that Philip’s principal difficulty
+was money. The expense of the campaigns in Flanders and the constant wars
+in the Mediterranean had exhausted the resources of Castile, and Philip’s
+credit was as bad as could be. Alba’s troops were unpaid and growing
+mutinous, committing outrage and depredations upon Catholics as much as
+upon Protestants. The Duke had pressed, again and again, for money from
+Spain, and the English spies in Flanders had continued to send alarmist
+reports, all premature as we see now, but then believed to be true, of
+the hostile intentions of Alba against England as soon as he had crushed
+the Dutchmen and obtained the needed resources from Spain.
+
+Chance threw into Elizabeth’s way a means of paralysing Alba for a time
+and rendering impossible the plans to injure her that she knew were
+hatching. Philip had, with infinite difficulty, managed to contract,
+at usurious rates, a loan of money from Genoese bankers, and, with his
+characteristic caution, he had stipulated that the money should be
+delivered by the lenders to the agents of the Duke of Alba in Antwerp.
+The Channel was infested with Huguenot privateers and pirates of all
+sorts on the look out for ships flying the Spanish flag, and the Dutch
+“Beggars” blockaded the Belgian coast. The ships, six or seven of them,
+which were bringing Philip’s borrowed treasure were known to have sailed
+late in November, and the rovers were all on the alert for them when they
+came. Finding themselves chased, the treasure ships ran into English
+ports, some into Plymouth, some to Falmouth, and the largest of them into
+Southampton, in order to escape their pursuers and claim official English
+protection. Even in port the privateers threatened the fugitives, and two
+of the treasure ships, swift Biscay cutters, fearing that the heretics
+on shore were as dangerous as their colleagues afloat, boldly ran the
+blockade of pirates and escaped, eventually arriving safely in Antwerp.
+But the others, and especially the big ship in Southampton with £31,000
+in money on board, could only cling desperately to the English port
+authorities, whilst they sent swift messengers to Benedict Spinola, the
+famous Genoese banker in London, the agent and partner of the lenders,
+praying him to obtain safety for them.
+
+Spinola, being, of course, interested in the treasure, went at once to
+de Spes, and asked him to request officially of the Queen’s Council that
+the money should be protected effectively in the English ports, and,
+if necessary, landed and conveyed overland to Dover for transmission
+to Antwerp under English convoy. De Spes lost no time, and on the 29th
+November saw the Queen, who readily promised him a passport to carry the
+money overland, or, if the Genoese preferred it, she would have the ships
+convoyed to their destination. Satisfied with this, de Spes wrote to Alba
+for instructions as to which course to follow. In the meanwhile Admiral
+Wynter was leaving the Thames with an English squadron to relieve the
+Huguenots besieged by the King of France in Rochelle, and on the way he
+looked into the Channel ports to ensure the safety of the treasure ships.
+Before Wynter sailed finally from England Spinola, who was interested,
+as great financiers are to-day, in many enterprises, wrote to him that
+he had just received word that rumours were current in Spain of a great
+disaster having happened on the coast of Mexico to Captain John Hawkins,
+the bold English sailor who had on more than one occasion braved the
+Spanish prohibition and had conducted successful trading expeditions to
+the Spanish colonies. De Spes had been bitterly complaining of this, and
+it was feared, said Spinola, that the Hawkins expedition, in which he had
+an interest, had been attacked and annihilated by the Spanish authorities.
+
+When Wynter received Spinola’s news on the 2nd December he was in
+Plymouth, assuring himself of the safety of the Spanish treasure ships
+there. Wynter naturally told the evil news he had learned from Spinola
+to William Hawkins, the brother of John, who lived in Plymouth, and
+William at once wrote to Cecil, who was also interested in the venture,
+suggesting that Spinola should be questioned, and if it turned out that
+the Spaniards had attacked the English trading expedition, the money
+in the ships now being protected by English guns should be seized in
+reprisal. This letter was written on the 3rd December, the day after
+the safe conduct had been signed by Elizabeth for bringing the treasure
+overland to Dover, and before Cecil can have received it this safe
+conduct was on its way in the hands of de Spes’s agents to Southampton,
+and so to Plymouth and Falmouth. Cecil’s messengers, however, were not
+far behind, and, in spite of the protest of the Spanish captain, Horsey,
+the Governor of the Isle of Wight, by Cecil’s secret orders, landed the
+treasure from the ship at Southampton and placed it in the keeping of the
+mayor of the town. Similar action was taken with the treasure at Plymouth
+and Falmouth, and when the news reached de Spes in London he at once
+jumped at the conclusion that the rumours were true that he had heard at
+Court to the effect that some of the Queen’s Council and her Huguenot
+friends had been urging her to keep the treasure for her own purposes.
+
+Spinola, a resident in London, dependent largely upon Elizabeth’s
+goodwill and Cecil’s friendship, had, indeed, let out in conversation
+not only what he had heard about the Spanish attack upon John Hawkins’s
+expedition in Mexico, but also that the Genoese financiers were
+responsible for the money advanced to Philip until it was handed to the
+Spanish authorities in Flanders. “In that case,” said Elizabeth, “I can
+borrow it myself; for my credit is quite as good as that of the King of
+Spain.” Rash de Spes, however, did not wait for any such public avowal.
+To his intemperate and insolent protests Cecil and the other Councillors
+would only say that the money was quite safe, and for the present no
+other answer with regard to it could be given to him. This was on the
+21st December and the ambassador at once sent a special courier to Alba
+with a letter praying, in burning indignation, that all English property
+and that of Spinola on Spanish soil should be seized.[179] Nothing more
+unwise than this can be conceived; for no sooner had Alba made the
+confiscatory proclamation than Elizabeth not only justified thereby her
+seizure of the money, now openly avowed, but at once confiscated all
+Spanish and Flemish property in England, including the ships that had
+brought the money.
+
+De Spes had been saying for weeks past that the best way to bring the
+Queen to her knees, and to force her into the arms of Spain, would be to
+stop all English trade; and when he had sent to Alba the unwise advice
+to make the seizure of English property he still believed that such a
+measure would dismay the “heretic” Government. So far from doing that it
+placed Elizabeth technically in the right; for up to that point she had
+not openly avowed her intention of keeping the loan money; and the value
+of Spanish-Flemish property in England was immensely greater than that of
+English property in Philip’s dominions. The news of the seizure of the
+loan money fell upon Alba and his master like a death sentence. Without
+this money to pay his troops Alba was almost in despair, and Philip had
+exhausted his last rag of credit in raising the loan. In vain de Spes
+raged and fumed. Cecil and his mistress were perfectly cool about it; for
+they saw that the impetuousness of their opponents had put them in the
+right, and the large sum of ready money they had seized strengthened them
+as it proportionately weakened Philip. De Spes’s house was placed under
+guard; and a threatening mob in the City of London breathed vengeance
+upon the foreigners, and especially Spaniards, most of whom had fled
+into hiding. To make matters worse, a cipher letter from de Spes to Alba
+was intercepted and deciphered, full of violent and insulting references
+to Cecil, and other letters to Spanish friends in Flanders containing
+foolish abuse of the Queen herself.[180] Called upon peremptorily for
+explanation of these references, the ambassador could only palliate,
+disavow, and explain that he did not mean what he said; and he himself
+was placed under arrest and forbidden access to the Court.
+
+Even then, when the dire consequences of his imprudence must have been
+patent to him, he was in close cipher correspondence with Mary Stuart,
+who sent him news, which he took care to exaggerate, of Protestant
+plots being formed to murder King Philip. Writing to the King on the 8th
+January, 1569, he says, after pressing him to foment dissatisfaction in
+England by stopping all trade: “In the meanwhile means will be found
+to bring this country to its senses and subdue it to the Catholic
+faith. Those who have spoken to me about a rising for the Queen of
+Scots will not fail to return to the subject,[181] and I will inform
+the Duke [Alba], as your Majesty orders. Pray do not consider me or my
+safety, but take the best course for your Majesty’s interests.... These
+heretic knaves of the Council are going headlong to perdition, incited
+by Cecil, who is indescribably crazy in his zeal for heresy.” Later
+in the same letter de Spes tells how his own prediction came true and
+the conspirators did seek him. “The Earl of Northumberland came to see
+me disguised at four o’clock this morning, and is ready to serve your
+Majesty. I sent a post yesterday to the Duke by an Englishman who has
+secret communication with Flanders.... At midnight last night the Bishop
+of Ross came to offer the goodwill of his mistress [_i.e._, Mary Stuart]
+and of many gentlemen of this country, and I have reported this to the
+Duke [of Alba]. The Queen of Scotland told my servant to convey to me
+the following words: ‘Tell the ambassador that if his master will help
+me I shall be Queen of England in three months, and Mass shall be said
+throughout the land.’”[182]
+
+It will be seen that before de Spes had been in England four months
+he had forced King Philip into a position of hardly veiled hostility
+towards England, at the very period when his lack of resources and the
+recrudescence of the war in the Netherlands made it impossible for
+him to attempt coercion upon Elizabeth. Alba himself was dismayed at
+the unexpectedly bold action of the English Government in seizing the
+treasure and embargoing all Spanish-Flemish property in England. The
+Flemish burghers, already sorely distressed by the civil war, were almost
+in open revolt at this stoppage of the rich English trade and the embargo
+of their property in England, and Alba, hard as he might be, was forced
+to make an attempt to reason with Elizabeth by means of some more pliable
+instrument than de Spes. The person chosen was the garrulous Flemish
+lawyer, Dassonleville, who had come to England just before Queen Mary
+Tudor’s death, but he found himself more contemptuously treated even than
+de Spes. Who was he, the Council asked, that he should seek audience of
+a Queen with a letter of credence from a person who, so far as she knew,
+was not a sovereign? Nothing wounded proud Alba so much as this slight,
+and poor Dassonleville was denied audience, and was placed under arrest
+in the house of the Sheriff of London.
+
+By this time no less than 700,000 ducats worth of Flemish ships and
+property had been seized in England, besides Philip’s treasure of a
+million; and the Spaniards, especially Alba, were bitterly regretting
+the deplorable diplomacy of de Spes. Philip, who hated to come to
+prompt decisions, was now face to face with a crisis. In obedience to
+the clamours of his ambassador he had stopped all trade between his
+dominions and England; by which, instead of its bringing Elizabeth to her
+knees, his subjects suffered much more than the English. It was evident,
+however, that this state of things could not continue indefinitely,
+and he was driven by these circumstances, at the very time when he was
+more hardly pressed than ever, to consider whether he could now conquer
+England by means of the English Catholics and Mary Stuart. For such a
+conquest to be of use to him it was necessary to be quite sure that
+Mary should be free from French influence, and that the new Catholic
+Government should look to him alone for orders.
+
+When, therefore, he received news from Alba and de Spes of the seizures
+he wrote to the former: “Don Gerau urges the opportunity which now
+presents itself to remedy religious affairs in that country by deposing
+the present Queen and giving the crown to the Queen of Scots, who
+will immediately be joined by all the Catholics. Please inquire what
+foundation there is for this, and what success would probably attend
+such a plan; as if there is anything in it, I should be glad to carry
+it out. It appears to me that, after my special obligation to maintain
+my own dominions in our holy faith, I am bound to make every effort to
+restore and preserve it in England, as in former times. If there is any
+good grounds for the suggestion, no time more opportune than the present
+could be found ... and in order not to miss the chance, I have thought
+well to refer the decision to you. If you think the opportunity will be
+lost by waiting to consult me you may at once take the steps you may see
+fitting.” It was not often that Philip went so far as this in a prompt
+decision, and to de Spes he was equally decided. “If what you suggest
+about taking the crown away from the Queen were successful, it would
+certainly be of great moment, and I would help it most willingly, in
+order to redress religion, and shelter and console the Catholics, who, I
+am convinced, are very numerous. You will learn all you can about this
+thoroughly and advise me and the Duke of Alba fully.”[183]
+
+In the meanwhile the conspiracy, by far the most dangerous that Elizabeth
+ever had to face, was developing in London. Cecil, who, in fact, was the
+most pacific of ministers, is represented by the Spanish party as the
+firebrand, determined to precipitate a war with Spain. This was certainly
+not the case. He, with his cool head, understood how far he might go now
+that Philip was powerless to attack England. The seizure of the money
+destined to pay Alba’s troops had made all the difference, and Cecil
+and his mistress knew that they might for the present defy Spain with
+impunity. The news of the attack upon Hawkins’s expedition at San Juan
+de Lua was now confirmed and added to the determination of the English
+Protestant party to get even with a Power which, for the time at all
+events, was disabled for harm. But the conservative elements, the old
+English nobility, with their strong Catholic leanings, their traditions
+of awed regard for the alliance of the House of Burgundy and Spain, and
+with their long-standing jealousy of Cecil, saw in his present action a
+dangerous provocation to a Power they dreaded, and a possible opportunity
+of supplanting him and his party in the counsels of the Queen.
+
+On several occasions the nobles of this party had expressed to de Spes
+their annoyance at the seizure of the treasure; and we have seen that
+the Earl of Northumberland, the powerful Catholic head of the House of
+Percy, had sought him out secretly in the dead of night to make disloyal
+offers to him. The Duke of Norfolk, unhappily for himself, had also
+been drawn into these questionable intrigues by his father-in-law, the
+Earl of Arundel. Late in February, 1569, Norfolk and Arundel sent a
+Florentine banker in London, one Ridolfi, a great friend of de Spes and
+the Pope’s agent in England, to tell the Spanish ambassador that they had
+put up with Cecil’s impertinences and violence in seizing the treasure
+so far because they were not strong enough to resist him. “But they are
+gathering their friends, and letting the public know what is going on,
+in the hope and belief that they will be able to turn out the present
+accursed Government and raise a Catholic one, bringing the Queen to
+consent thereto. They think you [_i.e._, the Duke of Alba] will support
+them in this, and that the country will not lose the friendship of our
+King.” The object of this conspiracy was to capture (and probably kill)
+Cecil; and, although the nobles euphemistically professed to believe
+that Elizabeth would consent to a entire revolution in her religion and
+policy, it is evident that the intention of the majority was to depose
+her in favour of Mary Stuart. On the 2nd April de Spes writes: “The Duke
+of Norfolk and the Earl of Arundel wish to serve your Majesty. They have
+many friends and adherents in the country, and when they hear that your
+Majesty will accept their goodwill, they will declare themselves more
+openly at a convenient opportunity. The Duke of Alba ... orders me to
+entertain and caress them on your Majesty’s behalf, and says that he
+expects shortly your Majesty’s decision as to what is to be done....
+If your Majesty orders measures to be taken for the conversion of the
+kingdom and the punishment of these insolent heretics and barefaced
+thieves, I do not think it will be difficult to bring them to subjection,
+or at least to change the Government and religion.... Many Catholics
+write to me secretly, saying that the moment they see your Majesty’s
+standard raised in this country they will all rise to serve you.”
+
+But Cecil was too wary to be caught by such weaklings as Norfolk and
+Arundel, and by pretending to fall into their views for a time about the
+reconciliation and concessions to the Spaniards, he managed a few weeks
+after the above letter was written to throw the plans of the conspirators
+into confusion by dividing their counsels. In the meanwhile Alba (on the
+10th March) had to tell Philip some unpleasant truths in answer to his
+suggestion that English affairs should be taken in hand and settled on
+the impracticable lines suggested by feather-headed de Spes. “I know
+not,” Alba wrote to the King, “whether an open rupture with England at
+the present time will be advantageous, considering the condition of your
+treasury, and these States being so exhausted with the war and late
+disturbances, and so lacking of ships and many other things necessary
+for a fresh war; and it would certainly be a grave loss of dignity, with
+your Majesty’s power, to return to the old negotiations. All things
+considered, I think it would be best to adopt a gentle course, writing
+to the Queen that, seeing the close friendship and alliance that have
+so long existed between the two countries, particularly between her
+father and the Emperor, and your brotherly affection for her, even though
+she should desire to quarrel, you will not consent to do so, and that
+it shall never be said that the tie that binds you together has been
+loosened.”
+
+To this lame and impotent conclusion had even warlike Alba been brought
+by the inevitable logic of events. Elizabeth had seized the treasure,
+imprisoned two ambassadors, embargoed all Spanish property in her realms;
+she had at the time hundreds of Spanish sailors and others in gaol, and
+she rejected with contumely all attempts of the Spaniards to reconcile
+her on the basis of mutual concessions. The Dutch and the Huguenots
+depended now largely upon her support, and the English Catholics were
+made to feel more painfully than ever that appeals to their powerful
+friends upon the Continent could not protect them from the hard rule of
+their own Sovereign. And yet, withal, Alba had to confess that the only
+course now open to him was to speak fair, until at some future time a
+safe opportunity for injuring Elizabeth might arrive.
+
+Up to this time since Philip had faced the necessity for winning England
+by other means than moral suasion, the projects for doing so had always
+run upon the lines of subsidising and supporting the revolt of the
+Catholic party in the interests of the Queen of Scots; and in this
+direction, but later with an ominous addition to the programme, the
+next attempts developed. During the sitting of the Conference of York
+in October, 1568, to investigate the charges against Mary relative to
+the murder of Darnley, the Duke of Norfolk had suggested to Lethington
+the desirability of hushing up the ugly business as against the Queen of
+Scots; and on the following day he had a long, private conversation with
+Murray to the same effect. Thomas Howard, fourth Duke of Norfolk, son of
+the martyred Surrey, was the greatest noble in England, a kinsman of the
+Queen, and up to this time ostensibly a Protestant. Personally, he was
+popular, for his manners were kindly and his possessions great, but, as
+events proved, he was as weak and unstable as he was ambitious. At this
+time he was about thirty-three years of age, and his wife, the daughter
+of the Earl of Arundel, and widow of Lord Dacre, had died. Such a man,
+with his personal prestige and his powerful name, was a fit instrument
+for stronger spirits than himself. In conversation with Murray at York,
+Norfolk said that Queen Elizabeth herself would not consider the subject
+of the succession, but it was necessary for the nobles of England to look
+ahead. “What could be Murray’s motive,” he asked, “in coming to England
+to blacken Queen Mary’s character and thus injuring her chances of the
+English succession?”
+
+As a consequence of these efforts of Norfolk, it was agreed with Murray
+and Lethington to make the Conference of York abortive, and Mary was
+informed of this by a letter from Norfolk.[184] In the course of the
+subsequent negotiations a few days afterwards, Lethington remarked that
+as Norfolk showed himself so much in favour of Mary, the whisper he had
+heard about the possibility of his marriage to her was probably true,
+and, according to Norfolk, earnestly advocated the match.[185] Norfolk
+listened, for the prospect of the matrimonial Crown of England was a
+tempting one, and his sister, Lady Scrope, who was with Mary at Bolton,
+had no difficulty in obtaining the Scottish Queen’s acceptance of a
+suggestion which seemed to secure for her cause the higher nobility
+of England, who were anxious to overthrow the Cecils, and Bacons, and
+Hunsdons, and other new men, who now ruled England. De Spes was very soon
+approached, and, of course, warmly approved of the plan to marry Norfolk
+to the Queen of Scots, whilst a close and affectionate correspondence
+was carried on between Mary and her new suitor. For a time the plan was
+frustrated by the alarm of Leicester, when he suspected the real object
+of it, and by the dexterity of Cecil, as has already been described.
+
+Norfolk and Arundel had, however, never lost touch of de Spes, both of
+them constantly importuning him for money in return for their efforts
+in favour of the Spaniards in the seizure dispute. The Bishop of Ross,
+Mary’s busy agent, also kept the matter alive with de Spes. Norfolk,
+Arundel, Lumley, Northumberland, Cumberland, Montagu, Dacre, Morley, and
+many other Catholic nobles, de Spes wrote to Alba, were ready to join
+in the conspiracy to release Mary and place England under the control of
+King Philip, if some armed demonstration were made on their behalf from
+Flanders. But Alba, as he plaintively assured King Philip, was powerless
+to assail, or even to offend, Elizabeth further, until she could be
+persuaded to surrender the vast quantity of Spanish-Flemish property she
+now held. Until then, he said, they must speak fair and softly to her,
+though the English and other Protestant privateers were capturing and
+plundering every Spanish ship they came across.
+
+In the meanwhile de Spes, still in disgrace and forbidden from Court,
+could only plot impotently through the Bishop of Ross and Italian
+intermediaries, many of them spies. The coming and going of such folk
+and the constant news sent by de Spes of the progress of the conspiracy,
+fairly alarmed Alba, who was now chiefly concerned in getting some of
+the confiscated property restored and trade reopened. In July he sent
+to de Spes, though he could ill spare it, the six thousand crowns bribe
+demanded by Norfolk, Arundel, and Lumley for their efforts in favour
+of the Spanish claims, and for the first time he spoke firmly to de
+Spes about his constant plotting. “I must again repeat,” he said, “to
+you, most emphatically, that you are not, on any account, to entertain
+approaches to you against the Queen or her Councillors, or anything
+touching them. On the contrary, if people come to you with such talk, you
+must be so reticent that they may never be able to say that any minister
+of the King has given ear to it.” At this very time the imprudent
+ambassador was almost daily or nightly closeted with some agent of the
+conspirators, and was warmly seconding their plans. But as pacific,
+almost humble, representations by other agents came from Alba to the
+English Government, in hope of some arrangement for the restitution,
+Elizabeth assumed a gentler attitude; though she gave up not an atom of
+her plunder, and she partially released de Spes from his imprisonment.
+
+In the comparative remoteness of Winchester House, in Southwark, which
+he now rented, the Spanish ambassador, as imprudent as ever, found it
+easier than before to carry on his plots for the subjection of England;
+and, regardless of Alba’s stern injunction quoted above, he became more
+active and mischievous than ever. On the 25th July, 1569, he wrote to the
+King that the Bishop of Ross had been to see him at three o’clock that
+morning “to assure me of the wish of the Duke of Norfolk to serve your
+Majesty. He said he was a Catholic, and has the support, even in London,
+of many merchants and aldermen. I will report everything to the Duke of
+Alba and follow his instructions.” Shortly before this, Mary herself, in
+one of her many affectionate letters to Norfolk, had intimated that she
+was in communication with the Duke of Alba; and de Spes followed up the
+letter by an assurance that everything was almost ready for the great
+_coup_. Whilst Norfolk was thus playing the game of Spain and pretending
+to be a Catholic, he was full of Protestant professions to Murray, and
+to the French ambassador, La Mothe Fénélon, and he avowed himself at the
+same time the devoted servant of Catharine de Medici. A majority of the
+English Council had met in caucus and had decided in favour of Norfolk’s
+marriage with Mary; and although it is probable that most of the members
+were not aware of the plot behind the match, it is certain that neither
+Mary nor her intended husband deceived themselves with regard to the
+ultimate aim. Nor was there any concealment on the part of the Spaniards.
+Alba sent Mary a subsidy of 10,000 ducats in August (she had asked for
+30,000 or 40,000), and at the same date de Spes wrote to the King: “I
+believe some great event will happen here soon, as the people are much
+dissatisfied and distressed for want of trade, and these gentlemen of
+Nonsuch have some new imaginations in their heads.”[186]
+
+The “new imaginations,” whatever they were, hardly suited Philip. He had
+through life a distinct repugnance to associating himself with the French
+in any of his plans with regard to England. Norfolk and his friends,
+doubtless in good faith, desired by means of Mary Stuart to change the
+government and religion of England, with or without the deposition of
+Elizabeth, and in order to do so they were glad to obtain support from
+any quarter they could. They had primarily no desire to hand England,
+bound hard and fast, to Spain, which was alone what Philip wanted. It is
+certain that Mary herself was willing to do so, because she knew that
+no effective armed aid could come to her from France, divided as that
+country was religiously and with her enemy Catharine dominant. Whilst
+Norfolk and his friends, therefore, were bidding for support on all
+sides and obtaining it, Mary was endeavouring with her might to keep the
+Spaniards, upon whom alone she depended, from slipping away from her. By
+the Bishop of Ross she begged de Spes to obtain Philip’s consent to her
+marriage with Norfolk, and the ambassador, in relating this to the King,
+wrote: “The business is so far forward that it will be difficult now to
+prevent it, and if it is to be done I think it had better be with your
+Majesty’s consent, which cannot fail to be of great advantage to them,
+and will bind them more closely to your Majesty’s service. The Queen
+of Scots says that if she were at liberty, or could get such help as
+would enable her to bring her country into submission, she would deliver
+herself and her son entirely into your Majesty’s hands; but that now she
+is obliged to sail with the wind, though she will never depart from your
+Majesty’s wishes.”
+
+Philip, indeed, was growing doubtful of the way the affair was
+progressing, and of de Spes’s management of it. “If the marriage of the
+Duke of Norfolk and the Queen of Scots,” he wrote, “is effected in the
+way, and with the objects you are informed, there is no doubt that it
+would be of great importance for the restoration of our true Faith in
+England, and would console the good Catholics now so oppressed. I desire
+these objects warmly, as you know; but they [the conspirators] must be
+very careful how they undertake the business, for if they make a mistake
+they will all be ruined. You did well in referring them to the Duke of
+Alba. You will limit yourself to this, in accordance with your orders,
+which you will not exceed.” Philip distrusted Norfolk, who up to that
+time had been a Protestant, and the Duke’s approaches to the French
+completed the King’s coolness towards him. But before this letter of
+Philip’s reached London the miserable Norfolk had collapsed. Leicester,
+who had been a party to the plan, again took fright when he began to
+understand the object behind it, and this time made a clean breast of it
+to the Queen herself.
+
+Suddenly the blow fell. Mary Stuart’s prison was made closer, and Norfolk
+and the conservative lords were peremptorily summoned before the Queen
+at Windsor. The Duke, protesting his unalterable loyalty to Elizabeth,
+travelled in deadly fear as far as London, and on the day of his arrival
+at Howard House a messenger from the Earl of Northumberland came secretly
+to de Spes. Making a private sign, which had been agreed upon as a
+proof of genuineness, he said “that the Earl of Northumberland and his
+friends in the North had agreed to liberate the Queen of Scotland and
+establish the Catholic religion, returning to the amity and alliance with
+your Majesty which they so much desire. The Earl wished to know if your
+Majesty would approve of this, as he would undertake nothing that was
+not in your interest.” To this de Spes dared not say more than that he
+would write to the Duke of Alba about it. “The Duke of Norfolk,” he adds,
+“is here preparing all his friends.” So far from doing this, Norfolk
+was malingering in a panic, and two days later fled to Kenninghall,
+whimpering in a pitiable letter to Elizabeth that he never meant any
+harm. On his honour, he never dealt with the Queen of Scots further
+than he declared to the Queen and some of her Council. Such lying and
+prevarication was scorned by the irate Elizabeth. Ill or well, she wrote
+in a rage, Norfolk must come to her instantly, and, trembling with
+fear, the poor wretch went as slow as he dared to Windsor, there with
+lachrymose repentance to be ordered into arrest with Arundel, Lumley,
+Pembroke, and all the rest of his accomplices who were within Elizabeth’s
+reach.
+
+It is clear that notwithstanding de Spes’s constant predictions of
+immediate coming success, and his repeated assurances that Elizabeth
+and her friends would be swept aside as a consequence of this plan,
+Philip was never greatly deceived by it. Alba had told him that he was
+powerless for the present, and he knew England sufficiently well to see
+that unless a large and well-organised force was used at the critical
+moment by him, an attempt to revolutionise England in his interests would
+fail. The trail of deadly deliberation, moreover, palsied every act
+of his life. At some time in August, 1569, when Mary Stuart’s appeals
+were reaching him, he instructed Alba to obtain full particulars of the
+military possibilities of the situation in England, in order that any
+action he might decide to take later should be effectual. A half-dozen
+or more envoys of various sorts, official and unofficial, had been
+sent over one after the other to try by some means to effect a mutual
+restitution of the seizures—Genoese financiers, Flemish diplomatists,
+and even Protestant merchants—but all without effect. On receiving the
+King’s orders, however, Alba instructed another embassy, surely the
+strangest for such a purpose ever seen, to go to England and endeavour
+to make terms with Elizabeth or bribe her advisers. The leader was
+one of Alba’s most trusted Italian generals, Ciappino Vitelli, and he
+was to be accompanied by fifty experienced military officers, with
+a couple of official secretaries for appearance’ sake. That their
+mission was not that which ostensibly appeared is clear from the fact
+that at the same time Alba sent another unofficial envoy—the Genoese
+merchant mariner Fiesco—to attempt to gain a restitution by the private
+bribery of Leicester and Cecil. Cecil and the Queen laughed at the
+idea of such an embassy as that of this fire-eating Ciappino coming
+to settle a commercial dispute, and when the party arrived at Calais
+for embarkation for England, Cobham, the Governor of Dover Castle,
+sent word that only Ciappino Vitelli himself and a small suite would
+be received. A still smaller number was allowed to proceed beyond
+Dover, and another detachment was stayed at Canterbury; so that by the
+time the gouty, obese, old Italian general was received by the Queen
+at Kingston-on-Thames, not even de Spes being allowed to accompany
+him to the presence, the military object of the mission was cleverly
+frustrated. The plague was raging in London, and Ciappino never entered
+the capital; and his interview with the Queen was mainly taken up by her
+angry complaint of the insolence of the Duke of Alba. After many days
+of quibbling, he was told that his powers were insufficient, and was
+politely invited to get out of the country as quickly as possible, his
+despatches to Alba being intercepted and read at Dover.
+
+It was indeed time that so dangerous a guest should be promptly asked
+to depart; for this was the most critical juncture of Elizabeth’s reign
+and her Crown trembled in the balance. All the lords were not so
+pusillanimous as Norfolk. Both Dacre and Northumberland had formally
+notified to de Spes that they were ready to take up arms in Philip’s
+service. For many months the imprudent ambassador had been going beyond
+his instructions and encouraging these nobles to expect effective aid
+from Philip. If only a small number of arquebusiers were sent to them
+from Flanders, said Northumberland and Westmorland, they would undertake
+to release Mary, subdue the North of England, restore Catholic worship,
+and make friends with Spain. “I feel sure,” wrote de Spes, “that they
+will attempt the task; and it will be better effected by them than by the
+Duke of Norfolk, as they are better fitted for it, and the Queen of Scots
+will have greater freedom in the choice of a husband.”
+
+The questionable attitude of Westmorland and Northumberland caused
+Elizabeth to summon them to her presence. They disobeyed and, raising
+their standard, marched into Durham in force on the 14th November.
+Destroying the communion table in the cathedral, they caused Mass to
+be solemnly celebrated; and then pushing rapidly onward towards Ripon,
+Wetherby and Tadcaster, they finally assembled on Clifford Moor. The Earl
+of Sussex, the Queen’s Lieutenant in York, was for a time reduced to act
+on the defensive; and now, if Alba had been prompt and Philip ready, it
+is possible that the die might have been cast a winning number; and Mary
+Stuart, rescued from Tutbury, whither she had been rapidly carried, might
+have been made Queen of a Catholic Britain, under Spanish protection.
+When news came to de Spes of the southward march of the lords and their
+renewed prayers for aid from Flanders, he wrote to the King: “I have
+on several occasions written to your Majesty of the goodwill of these
+nobles, and I have given a letter in cipher to the gentleman they are
+sending to the Duke of Alba to ask for aid. They beg for prompt reply,
+as communications will soon be stopped.... It is certain that there has
+never been so good an opportunity either of punishing those who have so
+grievously opposed your Majesty’s interests, or of restoring the Catholic
+religion, in which consists the maintenance of our old alliance and
+friendship with this country.” To Alba de Spes wrote in jubilant strain
+on the 1st December. “The rebels,” he said, “were twelve thousand strong
+and were marching to release Mary and give battle to the Queen’s forces;”
+but he ominously adds that none of their confederates have yet risen.
+Ciappino Vitelli was still lingering at Colebrook, near Windsor, on the
+pretext of gout, though messages were being sent to him from the Queen
+that she considered his continued stay in England highly suspicious, as
+indeed it was, considering that he told de Spes, who doubtless conveyed
+it to the rebels, that they ought to march straight to London, where
+nothing could withstand them, seeing the confusion at Court, whilst their
+other friends would have a greater chance of moving.
+
+And de Spes, the man who, before all others, had led these unfortunate
+lords to believe that Spanish aid would not fail them, was obliged,
+now that the crisis had come, to assure the Duke of Alba that he would
+“do nothing without orders from your Excellency.” The northern lords
+could not wait for Philip’s leaden pondering, nor upon Alba’s need,
+and, disheartened at the lack of response, they fell into disunion and
+wasted the precious time besieging Barnard Castle until the approach of
+Sussex with a newly organised army struck them with panic and they fled
+to Scotland—Northumberland to be sold basely to the English and to the
+scaffold; Westmorland, more unfortunate still, to seek lifelong exile
+in Spanish lands—a pathetic, poverty-stricken pensioner upon Philip’s
+irregular bounty, striving to earn his poor living by joining in plots
+to hand his native country over to the King of Spain. The rebellion
+in the North, for a time so threatening, was begun, as we have seen,
+without due preparation and conducted without ability to an inglorious
+termination.[187] But not a little of the blame for the miserable fiasco
+must be laid at the door of de Spes, who for months had been holding out
+hopes—as we see now, without authority—that an armed Spanish force from
+Flanders would be ready to support the rising. Alas! English Catholics,
+even after this first hard lesson, had yet to learn that Philip’s aid was
+not so lightly given, or given at all, without ample assurance that he
+alone should reap the harvest of success without incurring the penalties
+of failure.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VII
+
+1570-1578
+
+    Desperation of Alba—Fresh Catholic conspiracies—De Spes’s
+    complicity—Alba and the Ridolfi plot—Discovery—The
+    revenge of John Hawkins—De Spes outwitted—His expulsion
+    from England—Guaras appointed Spanish Agent—Reopening of
+    trade—Guaras’ intrigues with Mary Stuart and Don Juan of
+    Austria—The plot discovered—Imprisonment of Guaras—Fall of Don
+    Juan—Bernardino de Mendoza appointed ambassador in England
+
+
+Alba was driven well nigh to desperation by the contemptuous treatment
+extended to Ciappino in England and the evident determination of
+Elizabeth to hold her ground with regard to the property she had seized.
+Something must be done, and that quickly, he wrote to the King. If they
+exclude our ships from English ports, even for shelter, intercourse by
+sea between Spain and Flanders must cease, and we shall be absolutely
+obliged to commence hostilities. “Your Majesty’s present urgent needs are
+better known to you than to any one, and here the pressure is very great.
+The past wars, the emigration of the people, the stoppage of trade, and
+the general want of confidence here, all convince me that a rupture with
+England at present would be most inopportune; but if the English force it
+upon us, we cannot avoid it;” and the grim Duke, who had drowned Flanders
+in blood, had tamely to propose to his master, as the only way now open
+to them, that Elizabeth should be more mildly treated than ever, in the
+hope that at least she would allow Spanish ships to shelter in her ports,
+whilst the plundered Flemish merchants were allowed to go over to England
+unofficially and make the best terms they individually could to rescue
+their property.
+
+Nor was Philip much more stout-hearted than his general. Whilst the
+northern nobles were yet in arms in Yorkshire, he wrote to Alba thus:
+“English affairs are going on in a way that may make it necessary, after
+all, to bring that Queen to do by force what she refuses to reason. Her
+duty is so plain that doubtless God causes her to ignore it, in order
+that by these means His holy religion may be restored in England and
+the Catholics and good Christians rescued from the thraldom in which
+they live. In case her obstinacy and hardness of heart should continue,
+therefore, you will consider the best direction to be given to our
+action. We here think that the best course will be to encourage with
+money and secret favour the Catholics of the North, and to help those
+in Ireland to take up arms against the heretics, to deliver the crown
+to the Queen of Scots to whom it belongs by succession.... This is only
+mentioned at present that you may know what is passing in our minds
+here [_i.e._, in Spain], and that with your great prudence and a full
+consideration of affairs in general, you may ponder what is best to be
+done. What you say is very true; we are beginning to lose prestige by
+delaying so long to provide a remedy for the great grievance done by this
+woman to us.”[188]
+
+Mary Stuart, closely watched and in prison, alone never lost heart or
+courage. Norfolk’s weak poltroonery, the disastrous collapse of the
+northern lords, the slow hesitancy of Philip, were all met by her with
+confident predictions of coming success, if only the King of Spain would
+take her cause in hand. Letter after letter went from her and from the
+restless Bishop of Ross in her name to Philip and Alba. “The Queen is
+in good heart,” the Bishop of Ross assured de Spes, “and the principal
+Catholics of this country have sent me word not to desist from the first
+intention, for that, as soon as they learn that they will have foreign
+help, and arrangements are made for it to reach them, they will rise and
+stand out until this country is Catholic and the succession assured to
+Queen Mary.” This was soon after the flight of the northern lords (18th
+January, 1570), and at the same time a warm love correspondence was
+passing between Mary and Norfolk, she with honeyed words, and at serious
+risk to herself, urging him not to abandon the great plan that was to
+make them both free and great,[189] though he was still a prisoner in the
+Tower.
+
+Meanwhile the dangerous attempt at a Catholic rebellion in England and
+the known confidence of the Queen of Scots had drawn the Protestants
+of Europe together: a close union existed between Elizabeth and the
+Lutheran Princes of Germany, whilst Hans Casimir and other mercenary
+leaders were raising troops subsidised by England and the Huguenots
+to renew the religious war in France. The privateers in the Channel
+were more aggressive than ever, and Cardinal Chatillon still flaunted
+his unecclesiastical equipment at the English Court. Hardly a letter
+was written by de Spes at the time (1570) that does not contain some
+suggestion for striking at Elizabeth’s power. The Queen of Scots might
+be captured by a _coup de main_ and carried off to Spain, as she herself
+suggested; the Bishop of Ross assures him that a few Spanish troops
+landed in Scotland might easily overturn the new Regent Lennox;[190] a
+small force sent to aid the Irish rebels would enable them to expel the
+English; “and it looks as if the enterprise might be effected in both
+islands at the same time, for in Ireland most of the nation will rise
+as soon as they see your Majesty’s flag on the coast, and no resistance
+would be made except in Dublin and the fortresses.”
+
+To all these suggestions of his intemperate ambassador Philip had still
+no answer but to enjoin prudence and secrecy. Information, pledges,
+assurances without end were requested, whilst Philip pondered and
+considered. Everything was referred to the Duke of Alba for decision, and
+Alba would not move without specific orders; whilst in this deadlock the
+Spanish commerce was swept from the seas and the legendary power of the
+Catholic King was made a mock and derision of the heretics. Once Philip’s
+hands were nearly forced by the impatience of Mary’s friends. The more
+extreme school of English and Scottish Catholics had been urging for
+some time that a Papal Bull of Deprivation against Elizabeth should be
+obtained, in order that Mary’s immediate claim to the Crown of England
+might be regularised. Philip had gently put aside all such requests or
+left them unanswered. He was not yet ready for Elizabeth’s forcible
+deposition; for, as we have seen, his cumbrous methods forbade prompt
+action, and he had no intention of ousting Elizabeth until he had made
+himself quite certain that he, and he alone, would be master of England
+under her successor. But the action of the Scottish and Guisan Catholics
+in Rome, greatly to Philip’s annoyance, procured the Bull from the Pope
+over Philip’s head; and de Spes’s chaplain, Father Berga, doubtless with
+the full connivance of the ambassador, who was apparently incapable of
+understanding high politics, persuaded John Felton to court martyrdom by
+fixing the Pope’s Bull on the Bishop of London’s door on Corpus Christi
+Day late in May, 1570. De Spes, in the innocence of his heart, wrote
+off in jubilant strain to Philip, recording the event and foretelling
+all sorts of great consequences from it. But the King had nothing but
+condemnation and annoyance that his plans should thus be interfered with
+by the meddling of priests, and de Spes had to read some very plain talk
+from his master, whilst the share of his fugitive chaplain in the outrage
+still further brought the ambassador and his master into the black books
+of Elizabeth.
+
+The bold action of Felton, however, frightened the Government into a
+milder attitude towards the moderate English Catholics, and the mustering
+of a strong fleet in Spanish Flanders, for the purpose of conveying
+to Spain Philip’s fourth wife, Anna of Austria, heightened the alarm.
+Elizabeth was so much perturbed that she kept her room for days together,
+bewailing the vengeance that she thought at last was about to fall upon
+her for all her provocations of her brother-in-law. Cecil (now Lord
+Burghley) appears to have been the great object of his mistress’s wrath.
+To him, she cried, alone was due the trouble in which she found herself.
+Here, thanks to Cecil’s policy, she said, was a great army and fleet
+ready to attack her in the Channel, and Philip was causing another force
+to be mustered in Spain under the traitor Stukeley to invade Ireland.
+But this was only a momentary weakness, which even steadfast Burghley
+himself shared to the extremity of preparing for timely flight with
+such portable property as he could gather.[191] The unwonted fit of
+despair did not last long. English forces were got together rapidly, the
+English conservative and moderate Catholics were conciliated, and the
+Duke of Norfolk was released from the Tower to only nominal arrest in
+his own house; for if the conservative nobles of his party considered
+themselves absolved by the Pope’s Bull from their oath of allegiance to
+the Queen, then, indeed, might Elizabeth tremble. This was on the 4th
+August, and, on the 23rd June previous, the Duke of Norfolk had made
+in writing the most abject submission to the Queen, pledging himself
+“freely, voluntarily, and absolutely, by my allegiance to your Majesty,
+my Sovereign Lady, never to offend your Highness, but do utterly renounce
+and revoke all that which on my part any wise hath passed, with a full
+intention never to deal in that cause of marriage with the Queen of
+Scots, nor in any other cause belonging to her.”[192] Even Mary herself
+was now smiled upon by Elizabeth, and negotiations for a reconciliation
+were opened with her; for the Spanish fleet was still in English waters,
+and a peace between the warring parties had been patched up in France.
+
+With these numerous signs of yielding on the part of the Protestants, it
+is not surprising that the Spanish partisans should pluck up courage. De
+Spes, raging with wounded pride at the indignities continually heaped
+upon him,[193] all of which, Philip told him, he must bear patiently,
+never ceased to plot with the Bishop of Ross and Mary Stuart. On the 2nd
+September he wrote to Philip details of another dangerous conspiracy
+that had been broached to him by Mary through the Bishop of Ross. The
+Catholics, he said, feeling themselves now absolved from their allegiance
+to Elizabeth by the Pope’s Bull, were willing to rise. The sons of
+the Earl of Derby and the gentry of Lancashire were ready to release
+Mary—one of the Earl of Shrewsbury’s sons having also been brought into
+the plan, which would make it easy, as Mary was in Shrewsbury’s keeping.
+This combination looked askance at Norfolk as a doubtful Catholic and
+a backslider, though it was joined by his kinsmen Arundel and Lumley,
+as well as by the thoroughgoing Catholics, Southampton, Worcester, and
+Montagu (Sir Anthony Browne). The plan now advanced was for a Spanish
+fleet to go to the Stanley country, the Isle of Man, or the Lancashire
+coast, and carry Mary Stuart thence to safety. The scheme, however, was
+thrown away by the kidnapping and forcible abduction to England of Dr.
+Story, the English Catholic Agent in Antwerp, who upon the rack had
+torn from him all he knew, which was not much, of the communications on
+the subject that had passed between Mary Stuart’s friends and the Duke
+of Alba. The ostentatious but insincere negotiations going on between
+Elizabeth and the Queen of Scots, and the redoubled vigilance of Cecil’s
+Government, completed the impracticability of this scheme, and then once
+more Norfolk took the lead.
+
+On the 15th October de Spes wrote to the King that approaches were being
+made by the French to marry the young Duke of Anjou to Mary, this, of
+course, being one of Catharine’s tricks to frustrate the Spanish attempts
+to dominate Britain through the Queen of Scots. “It may be,” says de
+Spes, “that the Queen [Mary] will consent, but it will not please the
+majority of the English people, and it certainly does not please me. The
+Catholics are not very much in favour of the marriage with the Duke of
+Norfolk, as they are uncertain about his orthodoxy, although Arundel and
+Lumley assert that he will be obedient to the Church. His desire to reign
+may well lead him from bad paths to good ones. The Duke [of Norfolk]
+himself has been very cool about this marriage, but he now seems to wish
+to renew the project, particularly as he expects shortly to be quite at
+liberty, in accordance with the Queen’s promise to him. If your Majesty’s
+wishes are to be represented ... the Bishop of Ross will be a good
+negotiator, and I could conduct the matter with him or with Ridolfi, who
+has been in communication with them; and if it should be necessary for
+the Duke of Norfolk to bind himself separately to other conditions, steps
+may be taken at once in the matter. Pray your Majesty send me orders, for
+it is certain that the release and marriage of the Queen of Scots carries
+with it the tranquillisation of Flanders and the restoration of religion
+in this country.”
+
+Philip, in answer to this and many similar hints, had nothing but vague
+expressions of sympathy to send in reply, with fresh orders to his
+ambassador to follow strictly the instructions of the Duke of Alba. For
+months, until the Spanish fleet had passed harmlessly down Channel, the
+hollow negotiations between Elizabeth and Mary went on, and a similar
+pretence of conferences with regard to the reopening of trade with the
+Duke of Alba, whilst Elizabeth checkmated the French advances to Mary
+Stuart by herself suddenly displaying a desire to marry the boy Duke of
+Anjou. “They think,” wrote de Spes early in February, 1571, “that with
+this talk about the marriage of the Queen [Elizabeth] with the Duke
+of Anjou we shall be afraid to offend them, and the pirates are more
+welcomed than ever, whilst the Queen of Scot’s business is being delayed.
+It is true that so far as the Catholics are concerned matters were never
+more favourable than now. I did not dare to accept their offers, in the
+face of the Duke of Alba’s instructions; but whenever his Majesty wishes,
+a great service can be done to God, and at the same time the safety of
+the Netherlands secured and the throne of Spain aggrandised. The position
+of the King’s ambassador here does not add much to his dignity.... I
+have suffered more than can be imagined.”[194] De Spes had his personal
+grudge as well as his Catholic zeal now to spur him on to vengeance. The
+irresponsiveness of his master and of Alba to the repeated suggestions
+that armed aid should be sent to the English Catholics suggested for the
+first time a viler method by which Elizabeth, the main obstacle to the
+Anglo-Spanish alliance, might be removed. The above letter is different
+from any that had preceded it, and was written privately, not to the
+King, as usual, but to his Secretary, Zayas. A “great service might be
+done to God whenever his Majesty wished.” It was no longer dependent,
+apparently, upon the ability of Philip to send large armed forces, though
+they might be needed later to hold the conquest.
+
+We will see from other sources what this new feature in the plan was. Two
+days after de Spes wrote the above letter, on the 8th February, 1571,
+Mary, who had learnt that the ambassador could do nothing, as he says,
+but refer the conspirators to the Duke of Alba, wrote as follows to the
+Bishop of Ross.[195] After saying that she would, as soon as she was
+released, go to Spain and throw herself entirely upon the protection of
+Philip, she proceeds: “I would advise to send some faithful man towards
+the King of Spain whom he might trust, to make him understand the state
+of my realm, and also of the friends I have here, their deliberations
+and the means they may have to set themselves to the fields and saist
+[_i.e._, obtain possession] them of me, if the said King of Spain will
+embrace and sustain my cause and theirs. I think Ridolfi may best acquit
+himself of this charge securely ... under colour of his own traffic.”
+She continues by saying that Philip’s fears of Norfolk’s orthodoxy must
+be banished. “I see no other means but to assure them of the Duke, for
+that is the knot of the matter. My whole hope is in the Catholics of this
+realm.” When the Bishop of Ross transmitted this proposal to Norfolk the
+latter at once acquiesced in the despatch of Ridolfi to Flanders, Spain,
+and Rome,[196] for the purpose of demanding aid to seize and depose
+Elizabeth; and on the 10th March de Spes wrote to the King, “The Queen
+of Scotland, the Duke of Norfolk, and the Catholic leaders have wisely
+resolved to send a gentleman to your Majesty, who will see the Duke of
+Alba first, but without the knowledge of the French. I have, after much
+difficulty, obtained a copy of his instructions, and send them herewith.”
+
+On the 25th March Ridolfi was ready to start, and de Spes wrote to
+Philip: “The Queen of Scots and the Duke of Norfolk, in the names of
+many other lords and gentlemen attached to your Majesty’s interests,
+and the promotion of the Catholic faith, are sending Rodolfo Ridolfi,
+a Florentine gentleman, to offer their services to your Majesty, and
+to represent to you that the time is now ripe to take a step of great
+benefit to Christendom, as Ridolfi will set forth to your Majesty. The
+letter of credence from the Duke [of Norfolk] is written in the cipher
+that I sent Zayas, in case the letter is intercepted ...;” whilst to
+Secretary Zayas, de Spes wrote at the same time: “The bearer is Rodolfo
+Ridolfi, whom the Queen of Scots and the Duke of Norfolk are sending to
+his Majesty.... It is necessary that he should have audience of his
+Majesty with the utmost secrecy, as you will be able to arrange, on so
+important a matter as this.”[197] Almost simultaneously Henry Cobham was
+sent to Spain by Elizabeth in order ostensibly to negotiate direct about
+the seizures, but really to ascertain how far Philip was helping the
+Irish rebels, and de Spes does not conceal his glee that “these thieves
+and pirates” will find, “though they send ambassadors and play their old
+tricks,” and he (de Spes) “is still mixing his words with honey,” “all
+this will not hinder what his Majesty will decide to do.”[198]
+
+Ridolfi arrived in Brussels at the beginning of April, and his mission
+was discussed exhaustively by Alba and his Council. The long report which
+Alba thereupon sent to Philip is a State paper of the highest interest,
+because it not only sets forth fully the whole position, but for the
+first time formulates clearly the plan of murdering Elizabeth as a
+political measure. We have traced in previous pages how the provocation
+had grown, how the powerlessness of the Spaniards to vindicate their
+prestige and their interests had embittered them. In all the previous
+suggestions for the substitution of Mary Stuart for Elizabeth on the
+English throne, it is true that there could have been little doubt as
+to what would have been the fate of the deposed Queen at the hands of
+the victors; but in Alba’s minute to Philip the killing of Elizabeth
+as a preliminary measure is recommended as a condition of Spanish
+support. Alba sets forth with great prolixity the pros and cons of the
+position, the saintly character of the objects, the liberation of the
+captive Mary, and the restoration of the faith in England. Norfolk, he
+says, will undertake to rise and hold his own country for forty days
+after liberating the Queen of Scots if Philip will promise before the
+expiration of that time to send him 6,000 arquebusiers. He has means, he
+says, to seize the Tower of London and secure the person of Elizabeth,
+and he and Mary will look alone to the King of Spain for guidance. Alba,
+as usual, is full of doubts, limitations, and misgivings. Suppose after
+the Spanish aid had been sent the enterprise were to fail! Not only
+would the Queen of Scots and Norfolk lose their heads, but the Catholic
+religion would be utterly crushed thenceforward in England, and Elizabeth
+would throw herself entirely into the hands of France. Ridolfi, too,
+seemed to Alba rather a talkative person for such a mission. He had to
+pass through France: what if he opened his mouth too wide there, or in
+Rome? Besides, the Pope himself was rather too fond of consulting French
+Cardinals....
+
+[Illustration: FERNANDO ALVAREZ DE TOLEDO, THIRD DUKE OF ALBA]
+
+And so on, and so forth, until at last Alba gives to Philip his final
+recommendation. Ridolfi was to be warned that the French must have
+nothing whatever to do with the affair, and he was to be sent on his
+way to Rome and Madrid. The King is recommended to embark the 6,000
+men required for England in the fleet being prepared in Spain to bring
+out the new Governor of Flanders, Medina Celi; but that on no account
+should the aid be sent to England on the conditions proposed by Norfolk
+and Mary, for fear of failure. “But in case that the Queen of England
+should first have died, _either of natural death or otherwise_, or the
+confederates had seized and secured her person without your Majesty
+having had anything to do with it, then I should find no objection
+whatever to it, for the affair would be quite on another footing.”
+“Everything,” added Alba, “should be prepared secretly in Flanders,
+but no move should be made until Elizabeth was dead, _naturally or
+otherwise_. As soon as _that_ happened your Majesty ought not to miss
+such a fine opportunity to attain the end desired—the restoration of our
+holy Catholic faith and the future tranquillity of your dominions.”[199]
+
+Whilst Ridolfi, duly warned to be secret, went on his way to Rome, where
+the Pope heartily blessed his mission, and thence to Madrid, where
+he arrived in the last days of June, evil fell upon the project in
+England. The Flemish Secretary of the Bishop of Ross, Charles Bailly,
+had accompanied Ridolfi to Flanders, in order to bring back news of the
+reception of Norfolk’s proposals by Alba. The latter had, of course,
+not gone beyond general approval in his intercourse with Ridolfi, the
+murder condition being reserved for Philip’s own consideration; but he
+had said enough to prove conclusively that he regarded with sympathy,
+and hoped to aid, a project intended to depose Elizabeth in favour of
+Mary and Norfolk. Bailly wrote letters in cipher at Ridolfi’s dictation,
+giving Alba’s provisional answers to the Bishop of Ross and two other
+correspondents identified by numbers only. Bailly, who had been closely
+watched by Cecil’s spies in Flanders, carried the letters to England
+himself, and on the 15th April de Spes reports to the King that this man
+had been stopped at Dover and his packets taken from him. The letters
+he bore were in cipher, which of itself was suspicious; but in addition
+to this, every movement of Ridolfi in Brussels was known to Elizabeth’s
+Government, and the Secretary’s coming had been looked for. The packet of
+letters was given into the custody of Lord Cobham, the Governor of Dover
+Castle, until the Council in London should send instructions, whilst the
+unhappy youth, Bailly, was sent to the Marshalsea in Southwark pending
+inquiries.
+
+The Cobhams belonged to the party of conservative nobles, ready to turn
+against Elizabeth the moment she was in danger, and by a trick of one of
+the younger brothers, Thomas—they were notoriously a turbulent lot—the
+precious packet of letters was spirited away to the Spanish ambassador in
+London and a dummy packet substituted for it. When this was opened with
+great anticipation before the Queen’s Council in London, to their dismay
+they found nothing but a confused jumble written in the same cipher. But
+they were not to be baulked. At least they had Charles Bailly safe under
+lock and bars, and the rack might induce him to talk. He began by making
+a grave mistake, writing letters—of course intercepted—to the Bishop
+of Ross that, now that the real letters had reached their destination
+without being deciphered, they had nothing to fear; that though they
+tore him to pieces on the rack he would confess nothing; and he begged
+the Bishop to tell him what answers he should give to his examiners.
+The Bishop, claiming ecclesiastical and diplomatic immunity, was just
+as imprudent as his secretary, urging him to stand firm and defy the
+English and gain the lasting gratitude of Mary. The poor wretch knew
+little of the details of Ridolfi’s mission, but he had written the cipher
+letters he bore; and gradually the agony of torture wrung from him all
+he knew.[200] Every day he sent fresh appealing letters to the Bishop of
+Ross, with the only result at length of lodging the Bishop himself in the
+Tower, threatened with the rack, notwithstanding his mitre and diplomatic
+position. Bailly deposed that Alba had received Ridolfi favourably, and
+had sent him on to Rome and Madrid to demand armed help in England for
+the two persons whose identity had been concealed by numbers.
+
+For some time the authorities could get no further than this. Of course
+they knew that the two persons unnamed were Mary and Norfolk, but they
+needed legal proof, and gradually Cecil’s net was widened and swept into
+gaol one after the other of the confidants and tools of the plotters.
+In August a false follower of Norfolk brought to the Council a bag of
+£600 with a cipher letter that had been entrusted to him by Norfolk’s
+secretary to forward to Lord Herries, the leader of Mary’s Catholic
+friends in Scotland. Curiously enough this sum of money had been received
+from the French ambassador, so it is clear that Mary and Norfolk were
+playing false and doing what Alba dreaded most, namely, bringing the
+French into the business. But this fact made matters no better from
+the point of view of the English Council, and suddenly the Duke of
+Norfolk, the first noble in England, found himself in prison with all
+his confidential servants. The torture did its fell work promptly, and
+the secrets of the underlings were drawn from them, implicating the Duke
+beyond redemption. The Bishop of Ross, seeing his most secret papers
+deciphered, became almost loquacious in his fright, and went out of his
+way to vituperate his unhappy mistress.
+
+Norfolk collapsed as abjectly as before. He had hoped at first, he said,
+to wed Mary by Elizabeth’s permission. He was sorry and repentant for
+having acted so falsely after he had promised not to do so, and would
+never do it again. He had not really been a Catholic, he said, and now
+submitted himself entirely to her Majesty’s mercy. He had never, he
+solemnly avowed, intended to bring foreign troops into England, or to
+touch the sacred person of his revered sovereign. It was all the fault
+of the Bishop of Ross, of Mary, of anybody but himself, ... and so, with
+such sorry lies as this, the most beloved and highest noble in England
+whined for mercy and his bare life. Elizabeth was loath to sacrifice him,
+for he was her cousin and the head of a powerful group of Englishmen, but
+at length the Protestant influences around her were too strong for her to
+resist, and Norfolk’s head fell on Tower Hill on the 2nd June, 1572.
+
+Before this happened, Philip’s Council in Madrid had exhaustively
+discussed Alba’s recommendation that the murder of Elizabeth should
+precede the sending of Spanish forces to England. They not only approved
+fully of it, but laid down that the act should be committed, not in
+London, but whilst the Queen was on a progress. Much sanctimonious talk
+there was in the Council about the sacredness of the cause excusing the
+means, and even the Pope’s Nuncio smiled upon the nefarious plan and
+called it righteous. As for Philip himself, he was perfectly willing,
+and said that the whole thing now turned upon the ability to get the
+money together for the purpose, “and it would be a great pity to miss so
+important a matter or so small an amount, as later it would cost so much
+more.”[201] It is probably true, as was urged for them, that neither Mary
+nor Norfolk consented in so many words to this openly avowed condition of
+the Spaniards to make the prior murder of Elizabeth a condition of armed
+aid being sent from Flanders. The proposal was certainly not contained
+in the instructions carried by Ridolfi from Norfolk, though it is, in
+my opinion, indicated in the letter from de Spes to Zayas of 25th March
+quoted on an earlier page. It is first put clearly in black and white by
+Alba himself, and warmly adopted by Philip and his Council. But though
+Mary and Norfolk were not therefore necessarily parties to the proposed
+crime, there can be no doubt in the mind of any reasonable person what
+would have befallen Elizabeth if success had attended the attempt, and
+Norfolk had carried out the pledge he gave to Alba to seize the Tower of
+London and secure the person of the Queen.
+
+We have here, however, not to deal with the culpability of the English
+actors so much as with that of the Catholic King, so full of saintly
+professions and so devoutly pious himself, who in his helplessness
+and desperation was willing at last, in order to extricate himself
+from a political impasse, to consent to treason and murder as a means
+to righteousness. In the letter Philip wrote to de Spes (4th August,
+1571)—in ignorance, of course, of the collapse of the plot—he conveys
+his intention to patronise the murder of Elizabeth in the following
+characteristic words: “After carrying the whole question before
+Almighty God, whose cause it is, and in whom we trust for the guidance
+and direction of the affair better than human prudence can effect or
+understand, since the object is entirely, purely, and simply directed
+to His glory and service and the exaltation of His holy faith, I have
+resolved to adopt the course which you will learn from the Duke of Alba,
+to whom I write about it at great length. In conformity therewith and
+the orders he will give to you, you will act in the business with the
+discretion, dexterity, suavity and prudence which we expect of you,
+keeping in close communication with the Duke (of Alba) and carrying out
+his orders explicitly.”[202]
+
+As the damning facts were gradually wrung out of the miserable
+accomplices in the plot, during the summer and autumn of 1571 the
+position of de Spes became daily more impossible in England. His name
+was constantly cropping up in the depositions, and every deponent had
+some evidence to give of his activity in forwarding this conspiracy
+to overturn the Government to which he was accredited. Even then,
+semi-prisoner as he was, and himself in danger of punishment or
+ignominious expulsion, he never ceased to plot; and his eagerness made
+him and his master an easy prey to an amusing piece of successful
+mystification that any person less blinded by hate than he would have
+seen through at once. It will be recollected that John Hawkins’s trading
+expedition to Central America had been treacherously attacked by a
+superior Spanish force at St. Juan de Lua, Mexico, in October, 1568,
+Hawkins with difficulty escaping with only two tiny ships. Property of
+great value and over a hundred men had been captured by the Spaniards
+and sent to Seville, the unfortunate sailors being delivered to the
+Inquisition and condemned to slavery. John Hawkins was the last man in
+the world to reconcile himself tamely to such a loss; and through a
+Catholic friend of his, George Fitzwilliam, a kinsman of the Duchess of
+Feria, he opened negotiations in Spain for the release of his sailors and
+the return of his property, on condition that he deserted the English
+service with the Queen’s fleet of fourteen armed ships, and joined that
+of the King of Spain for the invasion of England in favour of Mary Stuart.
+
+Poor Mary, as usual, was easily hoodwinked, as indeed was Fitzwilliam
+himself at first, and the Ferias eagerly listened to the suggestion of
+apostasy of such a man as John Hawkins. Fitzwilliam returned to London
+from Spain with an encouraging answer and tokens for the Queen of Scots,
+in order that she might be asked to assure the Ferias and Philip of the
+genuineness of Hawkins’s offer. Cecil, who was behind Hawkins in the
+whole negotiation and enjoyed the position almost as much as the great
+sailor, smoothed over the difficulties of access to Mary, who, only
+too ready to believe in the honesty of others, sent him back to Spain
+with all sorts of assurances, letters for Philip and the Ferias, and a
+beautiful missal bound in gold for the Duchess of Feria, wherein she
+had written “_Absit nobis gloriari nisi in cruce Domini nostri Jesu
+Christi.—Marie R._” When Fitzwilliam came to him, de Spes was easily
+drawn into the plan, and became enthusiastically certain of the _bonâ
+fides_ of Hawkins. The more he sees of him, he says, the more convinced
+he is of his honesty. He is a Catholic, and very ambitious; and only
+once, and then but for a moment, did the gullible ambassador somewhat
+distrust Cecil’s complaisancy in allowing Fitzwilliam easy access to Mary
+Stuart, and to run backwards and forwards unimpeded between England and
+the coast of Spain.
+
+Fitzwilliam again returned early in September to England entirely
+successful in his mission, and Hawkins wrote full of glee to Lord
+Burghley. The King and the Duke of Feria had jumped at Hawkins’s offer,
+his sailors had all been released and embarked for England, and the
+agreement between Hawkins and the Spaniards with orders for a great
+sum of money to be paid to Hawkins had been sent to de Spes, who was
+to forward the enterprise with all diligence. “The design is,” wrote
+Hawkins, “that my power should join with the Duke of Alba’s power, which
+he doth secretly provide in Flanders, as well as with the power which
+cometh with the Duke of Medina from Spain, and so all together to invade
+this realm and set up the Queen of Scots. They have practised with us for
+the burning of Her Majesty’s ships; therefore there should be some good
+care had of them; but not so as to appear that anything is discovered....
+The King hath sent a ruby of good price to the Queen of Scots, with
+letters also, which in my judgment were good to be delivered. The letters
+be of no importance, but his message by word is to comfort her and say
+that he hath now none other care than to place her in her own. It were
+good, also, that the ambassador (de Spes) did make request unto your
+Lordship that Fitzwilliam may have access to the Queen of Scots to render
+thanks to her for the delivery of our prisoners [_i.e._, in Spain] now at
+liberty. It will be a good colour for your Lordship to confer with him
+more largely. I have sent your Lordship a copy of my _pardon_ from the
+King of Spain, in the very order and manner I have it. The Duke of Medina
+and the Duke of Alba hath, each, one of the same _pardons_ more amplified
+to present to me; although this be large enough! with very great titles
+and honours from the King: from which God deliver me!... Their practices
+be very mischievous, and they be never idle. But God I hope will confound
+them and turn their devices upon their own necks.”[203]
+
+There was no limit to the credulity of de Spes. The great sum of money
+passed from him to Hawkins, but though the fourteen ships that the latter
+had promised to the King of Spain came not, for the discovery of the
+Ridolfi treason upset for the time the whole plan of murder and invasion,
+the ambassador never lost faith in Hawkins and Fitzwilliam. Norfolk was
+condemned to death, Mary Stuart, herself in closer confinement than ever,
+was in dire danger of the block, de Spes threatened and insulted hourly,
+and his henchman, Luis de Paz, haled to prison, and Antonio de Guaras,
+his close friend, not daring to leave his house for many months together,
+and yet de Spes firmly believed that John Hawkins, an Englishman if
+ever there was one, was only waiting the signal from the King of Spain
+to desert with the English fleet and join his country’s enemies. At
+length, on the 14th December, Elizabeth determined she would have no more
+of de Spes. His complicity in the Ridolfi plot had been made absolutely
+clear; his pernicious activity had been watched for three years, and
+every effort had been made to drive him out of England without avail.
+So, on the 14th December, 1571, the Lords of the Council summoned him to
+Westminster. Lord Burghley spoke and told him that repeated requests had
+been made to the King of Spain to withdraw him, and now the Queen wished
+to know when he was going, as she did not want him in England. De Spes
+replied defiantly that he knew nothing about her wants. When he received
+proper instructions from his own Sovereign to go he would go, and not
+before.
+
+A long statement of all his misdeeds in England was then read to him in
+Spanish, to which he replied that much of it was false, and he desired
+to send an answer to it. “Oh no!” quoth Cecil, “your King would have no
+reply from Dr. Man, and our Queen will have none from you.” Then, after
+a few more heated words, the ambassador was told roughly that he would
+have to leave England in three days, and in the meanwhile he would be
+in charge of Henry Knollys. Could he send a courier to his King? he
+asked. No; that would take too long, he was told. To the Duke of Alba,
+then? Certainly not; they cared nothing for the Duke of Alba, replied
+Burghley. “It was impossible to leave,” objected de Spes, “until I send
+and get money from Antwerp to pay my debts.” “We will lend you the money
+you need,” replied Cecil; and at last de Spes had to make the best of
+it. Lagging on the road as long as he could upon all sorts of pretexts,
+his servants imprisoned and he himself threatened and insulted at every
+step, the ambassador of Spain was at last hustled out of England, fuming
+with rage and full of hare-brained projects by which, with the help of
+Hawkins, the King of Spain might be avenged on the heretic Queen and
+become the master of England.
+
+The Huguenots were now in unrestrained power in France, and Elizabeth,
+as usual when she was in fear of Spain, was carrying on a desperate
+flirtation with the Duke of Anjou, and surpassing herself in her
+blandishment to Catharine de Medici. Simultaneously with the expulsion
+of de Spes from England, the Spanish ambassador in Paris, Don Francés
+de Alava, found France similarly uncongenial to him; for he had been
+plotting against the Huguenots as de Spes had plotted against the
+Protestants, and had fled in disguise to Flanders, so that Philip
+found himself alienated both from England and France at the same time,
+a position that always made him uneasy, especially now that not only
+a marriage but a national alliance was in full negotiation between
+Elizabeth and Catharine.[204] For the next six months the farcical
+political courtship of the young Duke of Alençon, the boy brother of
+Anjou and the King of France, was carried on furiously by the middle-aged
+Queen of England as an antidote for the unappeasable anger of Spain. But
+with her usual diplomacy, now that she had worked her will in everything,
+Elizabeth thought best not to drive Philip into violent courses against
+her. She had seized his million ducats and all the property of his
+subjects in England, she had unmasked all his plots, had expelled his
+ambassador, flouted his great viceroy Alba, her subjects had harried
+Spanish ships on every sea, and helped unchecked the Dutch rebels who
+defied him; but she did not wish to go to war with him if she could help
+it, especially if she could gain all she wanted without doing so.
+
+When the Spanish ambassador in Paris was about to escape, Walsingham, the
+English ambassador, had gone and congratulated him upon the great naval
+victory over the Turks in the Mediterranean that King Philip’s brother,
+Don Juan, had just gained at Lepanto; and then, after asking many curious
+questions about Don Juan, Walsingham had said to Don Francés, as if in
+joke, “This sounds like a marriage, does it not?” The Spaniard retorted
+in the same tone, “Yes; let you and I manage it together.” With this
+opening Walsingham became serious, and enlarged upon Elizabeth’s personal
+obligations and liking for her Spanish brother-in-law, and the turpitude
+of certain ministers in sowing discord between them. If it were not for
+the obstacle of religion, he continued, the marriage hinted at might take
+place. It was, of course, mere talk, and was intended to be no more; but
+Walsingham spoke with a purpose, and knew that his mistress thought it
+time to repair some of the broken ties that held her country to Spain.
+
+More marked and authoritative approaches were made simultaneously in
+England itself. The man who had been instructed by Alba to keep an eye
+on Spanish affairs unofficially when de Spes left England was Antonio de
+Guaras, an Aragonese merchant living on Dowgate Hill, Thames Street. He
+had been established in London for many years as a prosperous importer
+of Spanish produce, and had a perfect craze for writing descriptions of
+public events and taking part in public affairs; a zealous busybody,
+whose flamboyant patriotism and Catholicism had made him the friend and
+companion of successive Spanish ambassadors, especially of de Spes. In
+the anti-Catholic excitement in May, 1569, his house had been raided by
+the officers of the law deputed to destroy superstitious images, and a
+considerable stock of church ornaments of this description seized. One
+half of the stock was piled into a heap before Guaras’ door and burnt,
+the other half being similarly treated by the Standard in Cheapside;
+whilst the people, who only a dozen years before, under Mary, had been so
+devoutly Catholic, cried in derision that they were burning the Spanish
+gods.[205] Since that time, as Guaras had been the principal importer of
+such wares from Spain, he had shown himself as little as possible in the
+streets to avoid unpleasantness, though of course he, like so many other
+Spaniards interested, had tried his hand again and again to make some
+private arrangement for the ransom of the Spanish commercial property
+seized by the English.
+
+The Flemish noble Zweveghem, and the Genoese merchant Fiesco, who had
+both been negotiating in London about the seizures, were packed off at
+the same time as de Spes, for Elizabeth and Cecil were bent upon making
+the demonstration as political and public as possible; but though it did
+not suit the economical Queen to disgorge what she had taken, she had
+no wish to drive Philip to extremities, and the stoppage of the great
+English cloth trade with Flanders and of the importation of Spanish
+produce into England was causing serious distress in the country. So,
+having thoroughly humbled the Spaniards, whose hands were fuller than
+ever now with the capture of Brille by the Beggars and the rising of all
+Zeeland, supported by ample English aid, Elizabeth thought that the time
+had come for her to unbend a little to her sorely pressed brother-in-law.
+Walsingham’s half joking colloquy with Alava in Paris, in January, 1572,
+had been a straw cast into the air; the warning of the Dutch privateer
+fleet out of Dover, though ostensibly to satisfy the remonstrances of the
+Hamburg merchants, was another; and in March Guaras, a mere merchant,
+hitherto so unpopular, suddenly found himself made much of by emissaries
+from the Court. Friends of Cecil told him that the Queen was only too
+willing to come to an amicable arrangement about trade, and any person
+who brought it about would be doing a great service to God and to both
+countries. What a pity it was that there was no person accredited in
+London who could undertake it! Would Guaras convey these expressions to
+Alba? If so, the interlocutor would approach Lord Burghley.
+
+After many hints of this sort Burghley himself sent for Guaras, and told
+him that they were anxious to settle matters. “He spoke of your Majesty’s
+person with due reverence, confessing to me that they had always hitherto
+feared and suspected greatly that the Duke of Alba, being a declared
+enemy, might oppose a settlement, but they had lately been informed that
+the evil did not arise with him entirely, but from certain persons in
+your Majesty’s Court, mentioning the late Duke of Feria, who, he said,
+though ostensibly a good friend of the Queen, was in matters of State
+her enemy.” Guaras, who loved to play the statesman, boasted somewhat
+of his master’s greatness and of the benefit his friendship would bring
+to England, but, of course, in diplomacy he was no match for Cecil,
+who firmly put him into his place. Thenceforward for weeks the game
+of advance and retire on the part of Cecil went on. Sometimes Guaras
+would go home to Thames Street in the seventh heaven of delight, with
+the idea that he was settling great national affairs where professional
+diplomatists had failed; at other times he would stand for hours in
+Cecil’s anterooms of Whitehall, only to be passed by silently with a cold
+nod when the Minister came out.
+
+When at last it was agreed (8th April) that Zweveghem, the Flemish
+Councillor, should come again to England and settle matters, Guaras,
+much pleased at his success, entered his barge from Whitehall stairs to
+return home with the friend who served as his intermediary with Lord
+Burghley. As the boat pushed off into the stream, he says, “I saw the
+Queen approaching the landing-place of the Palace in her barge, in which,
+the day being fine, she had been taking the air in company with my Lord
+of Leicester and many other gentlemen, and followed by a large number of
+boats filled with people who wished to see her Majesty. We, being amongst
+the press of people, stayed our boat to look upon her, and when I made my
+bow like the rest, the Queen, as usual, saluted the people, and noticing
+me, either because she recognised me or because I was a foreigner or some
+one told her my name, to the surprise of every one, I being such a humble
+person, she, calling out to me in Italian, my boat being somewhat distant
+from hers out of respect to her, asked me very gaily and graciously if
+I was coming from the Court and had seen Lord Burghley I knelt, as was
+my duty, and replied, ‘Yes, Madam, at your Majesty’s service.’ As the
+boats approached the landing-place her Majesty’s barge was delayed a
+moment, when she smilingly seemed to desire to say something more to me,
+whereupon I endeavoured to bring my boat alongside the Queen’s barge, and
+she turned towards me and asked, ‘When were you with Lord Burghley?’ to
+which I replied, ‘Madam, I have just left him,’ whereupon she waved her
+hand several times, apparently with great pleasure, and said, ‘That is
+all right,’ and her barge then proceeded, she bidding me farewell with so
+many signs of pleasure and favour that people noticed it much, and I was
+more surprised than any one to receive these favours from the Queen, to
+whom I have never rendered any service.”[206]
+
+Elizabeth had no intention, however, of allowing the Spaniards, and
+particularly Alba, to assume any airs of superiority on the strength of
+her willingness to negotiate about trade. When Zweveghem saw her a few
+days afterwards, sent by Alba to discuss terms, she thought that his
+tone was too haughty, and that he seemed to assume that she was pleading
+for an arrangement. Guaras, of course, had to bear the blame. It was
+at once said that he had misrepresented matters to Alba, and there was
+nothing but black looks for him. “Tell Guaras,” said Burghley, “that if
+he wants to come and see me let him come, or stay away, as he likes....
+If the Duke of Alba, through Guaras, pretends to be willing for peace and
+concord, whilst on the other hand through Zweveghem he treats the matter
+in a different spirit, it is clear that, however good our intentions may
+be, theirs are not equally so.” Alba was in no melting mood now, for
+English men and arms were being poured into Zeeland, and the Huguenots
+also were helping the Netherlanders against him. The Dutch privateers
+were still sheltered in English ports, whilst Constable Montmorenci, and
+one of the most splendid embassies that ever represented France, was in
+England for the ratification of the offensive and defensive alliance of
+the two countries that had been signed at Blois on the 12th April. By it
+the Spanish Netherlands were to be partitioned, the ancient rivals were
+never to quarrel again, the Huguenot Navarre was to marry the King of
+France’s sister. Elizabeth might, perhaps, marry young Alençon, but in
+any case she and Catharine, with the Huguenots, were bound together for
+ever to resist the arrogance of Spain. All this was gall and wormwood
+to Alba, and, busy as he was with his bloody work, it is no wonder
+that he was now in no hurry to respond to the English approaches for a
+settlement, and Guaras for a time found himself cold-shouldered.
+
+The affection between the French and English, however, was too pronounced
+to last very long. The offensive and defensive alliance against Spain
+had given to the Huguenots more power than quite suited Catharine, and
+the Colignys and their friends of the “religion” were speaking too
+boldly to please her. The Emperor (whose daughter the young King Charles
+IX. had married), the Pope, and the Doge of Venice sent to remonstrate
+with the Most Christian King for thus joining rebels and heretics
+against good Catholics, whilst the Gondis, Biragos, and Guises were
+whispering to Catharine that she was provoking Philip too far. So, as
+the summer of 1572 wore on, the messages sent from France to England
+grew cooler, and Charles IX. began to cry off the bargain for the joint
+action with Elizabeth in the Spanish Netherlands. But still Catharine
+pushed industriously the love-making of her favourite boy Alençon with
+Elizabeth, in order that England and the Huguenots might not be driven
+into open opposition to her. A pretty lad named La Mole, one of the
+_mignons_, was sent to England in July, ostensibly to do the vicarious
+love-making for Alençon, but really to discourage the idea of any act of
+overt hostility on the part of France in the Spanish States,[207] and
+thus practically to withdraw from the much-lauded treaty of alliance, of
+which the ink was hardly dry.
+
+La Mole performed the philandering part of his mission entirely to
+Elizabeth’s satisfaction. She was on her progress to Kenilworth, and
+carried the young French gallant along with her from place to place,
+exerting all her mature witcheries upon him, but keenly alive and not a
+little apprehensive at the way in which she had been thrown over with
+regard to the alliance. The danger to her was great, for she had been
+drawn into a position of open hostility to the Spaniards in Flanders on
+the strength of the alliance with France, and now found herself alone.
+So she told everybody, and most people believed her this time, that she
+meant to marry the French prince without fail, and when she bade goodbye
+to La Mole at Kenilworth, he went on his homeward way loaded with sweet
+messages for the Prince and rich presents for himself.
+
+He arrived in London on the 27th August on his way to France; and on the
+same day there landed at Rye two couriers from Paris, one with letters
+from Walsingham to the Queen, the other with official despatches to
+the French ambassador. The latter were seized by the port authorities
+and sent in haste to the Queen at Kenilworth; but secret though they
+were kept, ill tidings fly fast, and soon there sped through England,
+none knew how or whence, the dread news that the Papists had banded
+together to slaughter Protestants throughout the world. On the fated day
+of Navarre’s wedding in Paris—the day of Saint Bartholomew—the storm
+had burst. Hounded on by the King himself and by his mother, slaughter
+unchecked had swept across the capital. The noble Coligny had fallen
+first, and then every citizen but those who wore the badge of Guise was
+hounded to his death. Through France the tale of horror ran, across the
+Channel to Protestant England fled thousands of Huguenots, dreading
+the general massacre that portended; and when Elizabeth suspended her
+pastime at Kenilworth to read the despatch that brought the news, her
+brow clouded and her heart sank; for it seemed now that, at last, all her
+clever tricks had failed and catastrophe loomed over her and England. For
+the league of Bayonne had produced its baleful fruit at last.[208] The
+alliance and friendship just so ostentatiously concluded with France was
+but a fraud and a blind, the marriage talk with Alençon was all a lie:
+Catharine and her son, after all, had made common cause with Philip and
+the Guises, and England stood alone opposed to united Catholicism pledged
+to wholesale massacre.
+
+In a day the orgy of St. Bartholomew had changed the political aspect.
+The French, lately so caressed in England, were now regarded as monsters
+of falsity. Elizabeth, in deep mourning, after long delay received the
+French ambassador coldly, and contemptuously listened to his palliations
+and explanations; for she knew that the Guises were now paramount in
+France, and from them she had nothing but enmity to expect. But dismay
+was not allowed to dominate the counsels of Elizabeth for very long.
+When such a combination as this existed between the ancient enemies
+Spain and France, England’s safety depended upon sowing discord between
+them. This was never very difficult, for their interests nationally were
+always antagonistic, and their antipathies were stronger than their
+affinities.[209] At the first flush of the news Philip and the Spaniards
+were overjoyed that so many heretics should be butchered, and Guaras from
+London, writing to the Duke of Alba on the 30th August says: “God grant
+that it may be true, and that these rebel heretics may have met with this
+bad end”; and the national consequences were not lost upon him, even thus
+early, for though he was but a meddling merchant, he had far clearer
+ideas of policy than had de Spes. “Since the news came we hear no more of
+English soldiers going over to Flanders. This last affair, indeed, will
+give them something else to think about. If the news from Paris be true,
+the league between these people [_i.e._, the English] and the French will
+probably come to nothing, as the people are already murmuring that they
+cannot trust Frenchmen.”
+
+Elizabeth, indeed, had been badly betrayed by the French. She had been
+drawn into hostility to Philip in Flanders, and had been left in the
+lurch. To her alone now could the Prince of Orange look for help, since
+the French had deserted him; and though she had no intention of allowing
+the Dutch Protestants to be crushed by Alba, Elizabeth saw that in future
+all she did to help them must be done without an open national rupture
+between England and Spain. Immediately, therefore, her tone changed.
+Not only were the Dutch rebels ostentatiously disavowed by her, but the
+somewhat bewildered Guaras found himself once more a _persona grata_
+at Court.[210] Early in October the Duke of Alba sent him his cool and
+tardy reply with regard to the proposed negotiations for reopening trade.
+When Guaras appeared at Windsor with the despatch he found Burghley all
+smiles. “On that very day, he said, and on many other previous occasions
+the Queen had said to him she wondered why Guaras did not come to Court
+with the reply. They were much surprised to have received no answer to
+the offer made by the Queen to withdraw the Englishmen from Flanders,
+who, he said, only went there to resist the Frenchmen, who might try
+to gain a footing.... When I told him I had a letter for the Queen he
+seemed greatly delighted and asked me to show it to him. When he read
+the superscripture he said, ‘Although it comes tardily and the Queen is
+unwell, I will take it to her at once, because I know how pleased she
+will be to know that you have come with the message.’”[211]
+
+Thenceforward for a time no one was more welcome at Court than Guaras. A
+fortnight after the above letter was written the French ambassador, La
+Mothe, remarked: “Guaras ... the Spaniard, is much better attended to
+and more favourably received at this Court than he used to be. He has
+great hopes of getting them to withdraw all the English from Flushing
+and Flanders, as well as of arranging the disputes about commercial
+intercourse.”[212] All was not plain sailing yet, for Alba was hard
+and Elizabeth stood out firmly for religious toleration for Englishmen
+in Spain, which claim from the first was scouted as preposterous by
+the Spaniards, and in the end was almost the only point upon which the
+English had to give way. But the constant more or less covert aid in
+men and money sent from England to support Orange, and the fear that
+if driven too far Elizabeth might at last yield to the arguments and
+persuasions of the Dutch that she would assume the protection of Holland
+and Zeeland, brought down even Alba’s pride; and early in the spring of
+1573 trade was reopened, on terms greatly in favour of Elizabeth, since
+her subjects again obtained an open market for their cloths, whilst she
+kept practically the greater part of the property she had seized.
+
+Gradually Guaras, though in somewhat more humble fashion than de Spes,
+immersed himself in intrigues on behalf of Spain, many of them doubtless
+proposed to him in good faith, but others, as we know now, mere traps set
+for him by Lord Burghley’s contrivance, into which he easily fell to his
+own ultimate undoing. Several English captains were in close negotiation
+with him for months for the betrayal to the Spaniards of Flushing,
+Caunfer, and other strong places, for the murder of the Prince of Orange,
+and other schemes. But it is evident that these advances through him
+were received with doubt and caution by Philip and Alba, who probably
+doubted his discretion, for when a group of English captains had to be
+finally negotiated with for the capture of Flushing a special envoy, a
+merchant seaman named Zubiaur, was sent to England for the purpose with
+strict orders that Guaras should know nothing whatever of it; and even
+whilst Guaras was acting as _chargé d’affaires_ of Spain a Portuguese spy
+(Fogaza) in Spanish pay reported all his movements to the authorities at
+Madrid.
+
+By the end of 1573 it was patent to all the world that Alba’s reign
+of blood had failed. The stern old chief had been beaten indeed by
+Elizabeth’s seizure of the treasure, and he never recovered from the
+blow. Forced to raise money somehow, for Philip was bankrupt both in
+credit and in means, Alba imposed upon rich Flanders and Brabant the
+“tenth penny” that had ruined Castile. Then all the Netherlanders rose.
+It was no longer a question of local government or even of faith, but of
+moneybags; and Catholic and Protestant alike rebelled against spoliation
+and the destruction of Flemish prosperity. Indignant remonstrances
+went to Philip, and the Spanish Council even angrily condemned Alba’s
+measure. “Neither the heads smitten off nor the privileges abolished have
+aroused so much resistance as this,” wrote Alba: but he needed money for
+the King’s service, and money he must have. Thus he found himself face
+to face, not with a faction in revolt, but with an outraged and united
+nation, and through 1572 the grim old Duke stuck to his guns. First he
+crushed the south, sweeping the Huguenot auxiliaries aside and submitting
+all those who raised the slightest protest to ruthless slaughter.
+
+Brabant and Flanders, bloodless, could fight against him no more,
+but Holland and Zeeland were made of sterner stuff. Money and men in
+abundance came to them from England, and all the silver ducats scattered
+by Guaras and all Elizabeth’s protestations of friendship for her dear
+brother in Spain could not stop them; until at last Philip grew angry
+and impatient at the useless slaughter, and Alba, heartbroken, went
+into disgrace, whilst a viceroy of widely different type came with the
+olive-branch in hand to win back at least Catholic Brabant and Flanders
+to Philip’s rule again by almost any concessions. There was, indeed, no
+other way for Philip now, for he had come to the end of his resources,
+and his troubles were not confined to the Protestant Netherlands.
+
+His brilliant young brother, Don Juan of Austria, in command of the
+combined Christian fleet, had sailed from Messina in September, 1571, and
+had broken the Moslem power in the Mediterranean that had for so long
+been a thorn in the side of Spain. All Catholic Christendom lost its
+head over Don Juan: his enthusiasm, his gallantry, his personal beauty
+made him in the eyes of his contemporaries a very paladin of the Cross.
+Philip, religious though he might be, was cold and reticent, appealing
+little to the imagination of men. But this young Prince, his brother,
+splendid beyond words and with some of the military ability of his father
+the Emperor, might be the man destined by God for the final victory of
+the Cross over all its enemies. Don Juan not only carried away others,
+but was carried away himself. To follow up his victory by the conquest of
+Constantinople and the Holy Land, and to become a new Constantine, seemed
+to him and to the Catholics, who idolised him, an easily realisable
+vision. If not that, then why not Christianise Africa, re-establish the
+empire of Carthage with Don Juan as its sovereign?
+
+But all this meant vast sums of money, and to such suggestions Philip
+turned an irresponsive ear. Clamour as Don Juan and his friends might,
+no assistance could be got from Spain for his wild schemes; for King
+Philip had other things to do than conquer vast new empires for his base
+brother, whilst his own Netherlands were slipping from his grasp and
+Elizabeth of England openly defied him. Then Don Juan, disobeying orders,
+seized and fortified Tunis on his own account. All appeals for support to
+Philip were sternly refused, and within a year the city was recaptured by
+the Turk and the eight thousand Spaniards in it slaughtered. Don Juan in
+despair remained in Italy, full still of high dreams if heroic conquest
+for the faith. He was surrounded, as before, by advisers as flighty and
+hot-headed as himself; and it occurred to some of them if he was not to
+be allowed to become a Christian Emperor of the East, there was in the
+West another empire in the hands of heretics, still awaiting its champion
+who should restore it to the Church.
+
+Guaras wrote to Philip’s Secretary, Zayas, as early as November, 1574,
+saying, “The Queen of Scotland founds all her hopes upon his Majesty
+after God, and by a letter she has written to an influential friend, who
+read it to me, it is certain that there is nothing she desires more than
+to accept the proposition about Don Juan of Austria,[213] she having been
+persuaded by this person and others that it would benefit Christendom
+greatly. If it be his Majesty’s wish that this matter should be
+considered, and communications have to be carried on with the Queen about
+it, this cipher can be utilised for the purpose, it being so obscure and
+without an alphabet that no one can decipher it.... If this happy event
+could be brought about, she would be a saintly, chaste, and Catholic
+Princess, the greatest lady on earth, for England, Scotland, and Ireland
+are indeed a vast empire.... If his Majesty will graciously allow a
+letter for her contentment in this business to be written, an opportunity
+might occur for her rescue. If consent is given on our part this project
+would undoubtedly be executed. She writes herself about it to the person
+I have mentioned, and desires above all things that her son should marry
+the elder Infanta, for which purpose she will consent that the man who
+holds him should carry him to Spain.”
+
+Philip had heard stories similar to this before, and was not ready
+yet for another plot depending upon the English Catholics. Requesens,
+the new Viceroy of Flanders, did his best, but he was surrounded by
+unconquerable difficulties from the first, legacies, most of them, from
+the _régime_ of Alba. Many of the Flemish seamen were disloyal and the
+Catholic clergy disaffected, whilst the mercantile classes were nearly
+beggared and in deep discontent. But, withal, the Walloons and Southern
+States were pacified, though Holland and Zeeland were as stubborn as
+ever. Requesens’ principal difficulty, as usual, was want of money; and
+the Catholic Flemings insisted that if they were to remain loyal to Spain
+the unpaid, murderous rabble of foreign soldiers who were terrorising
+friends and enemies alike must be withdrawn from Flanders. But Philip
+could not pay them, and they would not budge without their wage, for the
+rich houses of the burghers were always there for plunder. In the midst
+of this _impasse_, when things were at their worst, Requesens died, in
+March, 1576, and Philip, glad to get his brother away from Italy, ordered
+him to hurry direct to Flanders and carry out the policy of pacification
+at any cost or sacrifice. The troops were to be sent away, the burghers
+conciliated, and, if possible, the Dutch won over by promises of large
+concessions.
+
+To Don Juan, with his heart aflame with high ambitions, concessions
+and conciliation of heretics were utterly repugnant; but the mission
+seemed to open a sure road to the great plan we have seen hinted at in
+Guaras’ letter of November, 1574. Pope Gregory XIII. was as ready as
+Don Juan for such an enterprise, and sent his Nuncio to Philip to pray
+him to allow his brother to swoop down upon England with the troops from
+Flanders, release and marry Mary Stuart, and with her become sovereign
+of a Britain Catholic and a faithful ally of Spain. Philip, as was his
+wont when he disapproved of a plan, was vaguely benevolent, but he hated
+priestly interference in his plans, and distrusted the Vatican where
+the French priests had so much to say. Worst of all, Don Juan disobeyed
+orders and came to Spain to press his plans for capturing England, and
+the delay thus caused was fatal. Before he could reach the Flemish
+frontier the Italian and Spanish troops had thrown off all restraint and
+had sacked Antwerp. The Catholic Flemings and Walloons were forced to
+make common cause with Orange, who assumed the lead in the Government,
+and all Netherlanders stood shoulder to shoulder against the ravishers
+and spoilers of their homes. When Don Juan came, therefore, he was told
+that he would only be admitted on conditions to be dictated by the
+States. Among these conditions was that the mutinous troops should not be
+sent away by sea, for the plan to invade England with them was well known
+by Orange, but should march out overland. Don Juan protested and raved
+in vain. Philip coldly ordered him to accede to any terms consistent
+with Spanish sovereignty over Flanders; and at last, in the early spring
+of 1577, he made his “joyous entry” into Brussels with a heart steeped
+in hate of the Flemings, whose firmness had destroyed his great dream
+of capturing England for the Cross and marrying the imprisoned Catholic
+Queen, like the hero of a fairy tale.
+
+In these fine plans Guaras was a zealous and a willing agent, and
+Mary Stuart, as usual, an eager participant, all their intrigues
+being perfectly well known to Cecil through his spies. Cecil, indeed,
+had become quite friendly with Guaras,[214] and thus, without being
+suspected, kept his eye on all his proceedings. The letters the merchant
+wrote to Spain were frequently intercepted, and although the pride
+of Guaras in his cipher was justified and most of the contents are
+still undeciphered, sufficient was read to prove that he was plotting
+ceaselessly with England’s enemies. Letters, too, were known to be
+passing by means of Guaras between Mary Stuart and Don Juan; and even
+the Flemish Catholic nobles, who had now for a time deserted the Spanish
+cause and were appealing to Elizabeth for aid, were constantly warning
+the English of the plans that were being so industriously forwarded by
+Guaras.
+
+That Mary Stuart and Don Juan at this time understood each other
+perfectly, though Philip, for reasons already pointed out, was
+irresponsive to their appeals, is seen in an important letter written by
+Mary to the conspirator Charles Paget long afterwards (May, 1586) at the
+time when she was implicated in the plot that ended in her death. Paget
+was instructed to discover through Mendoza, the Spanish ambassador in
+Paris, whether Philip was then (1586) ready to attack England, which, she
+says, “to me seemeth the surest and readiest way for him whereby to rid
+himself altogether of the Queen’s malice against him. So as now he doth
+find himself constrained to come to the same remedies which in Don John
+of Austria’s time were propounded unto him, which I doubt he shall not
+find presently in these parts of such strength and virtue as if he had
+applied them in time and place.... I remember that Don John was always
+stiff in this opinion that there was no other means in the world whereby
+to set up again the King’s affairs in the Low Countries, and to assure
+his States in all other parts, than in re-establishing this realm under
+God and a Prince his friend; for, so much as Don John foresaw right well
+that this Queen would not fail to break with him, and give him, as she
+hath done, the first blow.”[215]
+
+Guaras had many hints and warnings which he failed to regard, both from
+Cecil and the Queen herself. In his letter of 29th March, 1575, he gives
+an account of one such hint. “The Queen was walking,” he says, “a long
+way from the Palace of Richmond, where she is staying, surrounded by her
+courtiers and nobles, when, catching sight of me from afar, she called me
+by name and welcomed me.” He had to ask her permission to buy some cannon
+in England for the Flemish Government, to which she gave him an amiable
+reply, and he continued to walk through the park a few steps behind her
+chatting with her alone. She was full of her witcheries and compliments
+to Spaniards, with whom for the moment it suited to be friends, but
+told Guaras that she was annoyed at the way her subjects in Spain were
+treated by the Inquisition. She grew somewhat vehement about it and
+said, “I promise ye my father would not have put up with it, and if the
+matter is not amended I shall be obliged to arrest some of the King of
+Spain’s subjects and treat them in the same way.” Having given this
+hint, she grew gracious again and said: “You know full well, old wine,
+old bread, and old friends should be valued, and if only to let these
+Frenchmen see, who are wrangling as to whether our friendship is firm
+or not, there is good reason to show undisguisedly the kindly feeling
+which inwardly exists.” This, of course, referred to the attempts of the
+French to interfere in Flanders, which always made Elizabeth smile upon
+Spaniards;[216] and when Guaras handsomely returned the compliment the
+Queen suddenly turned upon him, and shot the bolt she had been preparing
+all along: “You say you wish to serve me, Guaras; will you tell me the
+truth? They say that a certain Scottish prisoner of mine has sent you
+a token of friendship in the form of a painted lion; is it true?” Poor
+Guaras could only protest that he had never received any such token,
+as he had not; but the hint, and the more pointed one about the arrest,
+certainly did not abate his activity as a go-between for Mary and Don
+Juan.
+
+So long as the danger of French interference in Flanders lasted Elizabeth
+dared not do anything very unpleasant to Spain; but as soon as that
+difficulty was banished by new negotiations for the marriage of Elizabeth
+and Alençon, Guaras began to find his position less comfortable. In
+November, 1575, Egremont Ratcliff, the brother of the Earl of Sussex, who
+had been a fugitive in Flanders and Italy since the northern rebellion,
+came to England, with a story of Don Juan’s plans in conjunction with
+Mary Stuart, and in this, of course, Guaras was involved. His fresh
+negotiations, too, early in 1576 for the betrayal by the English
+Catholics of certain of the Zeeland fortresses to the Spaniards was
+discovered. The Flemish Catholic nobles were now in England praying for
+support against Philip’s soldiery, and Elizabeth was in mortal fear of
+French aid being given to them on the one hand and of Don Juan’s reported
+plans against England on the other, whilst Guaras in his correspondence
+grew more and more bitter and violent as he saw the fruition of his hopes
+gradually disappear before Elizabeth’s amiability to the Catholic Flemish
+nobles and the united opposition now offered to Don Juan’s ambitions.
+
+But in the circumstances Elizabeth did not dare yet to proceed to
+extremities with Spaniards; and one case amusingly shows that these high
+political considerations somewhat bewildered administrative officers,
+who could not follow such frequent changes of attitude. A Portuguese
+ambassador, Giraldi, had been for some time in England endeavouring
+to arrange some open questions relative to the depredations of the
+Protestant privateers; and late in 1576 the Recorder of London, Sir
+William Fleetwood, a zealous Catholic-baiter, with the Sheriffs,
+considered it his duty to surround with his posse the house of the
+Portuguese envoy for the purpose of catching and arresting unauthorised
+persons there hearing Mass. They forced an entry after a stiff fight with
+the Portuguese porter, Mr. Recorder Fleetwood being rather seriously
+mauled in the affray, and loudly broke in upon the sacred service by
+summoning all English people to come out in custody. Immediately the
+foreigners present, indignant at the interruption, drew their daggers and
+swords, and made as if to attack the officers, but were appeased by the
+sheriffs until the ladies had withdrawn. Having allowed the members of
+the embassy to depart, the officers then examined the other foreigners:
+“and trulie they most despitefully against all civilitie used such lewd
+words in their language against us, that if our company had understande
+them there might have chanced great harm. ‘Sirs,’ I saide to them, ‘I see
+no remedie but you must goe to prison, for most of you be free denizens.’
+And then I willed the officers to lay hand on them, and immediately every
+man suddenly most humbly put off his cap, and began to be sutors and
+sought favour; and so on their submission we suffered them to depart, all
+save Antonio de Guaras, who was not willing to go from us, but kept us
+company.” After sending the English subjects off to prison and scolding
+some of their own constables for accepting “singing cakes” from the
+priest at the altar, Fleetwood and Sheriff Barnes stood in the gallery
+looking down upon the altar. “And then Antonio Guaras tooke me by the
+hand to see the altar how trim it was. And I said to Guaras, ‘Sir, if
+I had done my duty here to you and to the Queen upon All Hallowes Day
+last I had taken two hundred, and as many more on All Souls.’ ‘Ho! Sir,’
+said Guaras unto me: ‘become of this religion, and surely you will like
+it well, and I will be readie means to make you a good Christian.’ And
+so we went near the altar, where neither he nor I touched any manner of
+thing; and so we bade the priest farewell, who gently saluted us, and
+I suddenlie looked back and saw the priest shake his head mumbling out
+words that sounded like _Diable_ and _male croix_, or to that effect.
+Then said I to Mr. Sheriff, ‘Let us depart, for the priest doth curse
+us.’ And so we departed, and Antonio Guaras brought us to the utter gate,
+where the Sheriff and I invited him to dynner with us; but he departed
+back to hear the profaned Mass. The aforesaid Guaras at this business
+said that he himself was an ambassador of a greater person than —— and
+so did shake his head. ‘What!’ quoth I, ‘do you mean a greater personage
+than our mistress?’ ‘Na, na,’ said he, ‘I mean not so.’ ‘No,’ quoth
+I, ‘it were not best for you to make comparisons with the Queen our
+mistress. Whose ambassador are ye, then?’ quoth I, ‘the Pope’s?’ And then
+he departed further off in anger. This Guaras was a very busy fellow in
+this action.”[217]
+
+Neither Giraldi nor Guaras was disposed to allow their diplomatic
+privileges to be violated in this fashion, however; and in consequence of
+their vehement complaints Fleetwood had to submit to a severe scolding
+from the Council and was sent to the Fleet. But Guaras’ immunity was
+not to last much longer. Elizabeth, before many months were over, found
+herself assiduously courted by the French, and assured by Catharine
+that Alençon would do nothing in Flanders but with the co-operation
+of England—it was hoped as Elizabeth’s husband. Don Juan also, during
+the time that he remained in negotiation with the States, was only
+too anxious to win Elizabeth’s help, or at least neutrality; so that
+when suspicion against Guaras became certainty she had no hesitation
+in closing the toils around him. In January, 1577, Sir Amyas Paulet,
+the English ambassador in Paris, reported that a dependent of Guaras,
+a Spanish tailor, named Damian Dela, a resident in London, had passed
+through Paris with some highly suspicious letters for King Philip. We
+know now that the King was firmly against Don Juan’s plans to invade
+England; but this, of course, was not known at the time, and Paulet
+advised Burghley to put Guaras to the torture to discover what was going
+on. This only made the English Government more vigilant; but in the
+spring of 1577 Secretary Wilson was sent to Flanders to endeavour to
+bring about an agreement between the States and Don Juan. The latter,
+when jocosely twitted by Wilson on his wish to marry the Queen of
+Scots, somewhat ungallantly ridiculed the idea as preposterous; but
+whilst Wilson was in the Low Countries he managed to obtain through St.
+Aldegonde possession of some intercepted letters from Guaras on the
+matter. The cipher was difficult, and only some words could be read;
+but they were enough to prove that Guaras was in constant communication
+with Mary Stuart and Don Juan, and Wilson wrote to Cecil expressing his
+surprise that an unofficial person like Guaras should be allowed to act
+more scandalously than any accredited ambassador would be allowed to do.
+
+From that time, May, 1577, Guaras was watched almost night and day, and
+most of his letters intercepted, though not many could be read. On the
+28th September, 1577, he proposed to Zayas, King Philip’s secretary,
+that he should be allowed to arrange for the kidnapping and conveyance
+to Spain of some of the important Catholic Flemish nobles then in
+England, or to promote a revolt in Ireland; and he continues by saying,
+“I have received the enclosed letters from the Queen of Scotland. I have
+perfectly safe means of sending and receiving letters for her, and the
+world is praying that God may be preserving her for some great service
+to the fear of this Queen and her friends. I am encouraging her with
+letters of comfort until she can be served by acts.”[218] On the 4th
+October Guaras wrote another inflammatory letter to Zayas, detailing
+the plans which he said had been agreed upon by England and the Flemish
+nobles to throw off the Spanish yoke for good by the aid of Elizabeth.
+He passionately cries for prompt reprisals upon the English, but he
+complains that his letters are read, and he fears his ciphers may be
+discovered.
+
+At midnight on the 19th October, 1577, the Sheriff of London with an
+armed force appeared before the house of Guaras in Thames Street. In the
+Queen’s name entrance was forced and Guaras placed under arrest, all his
+papers being seized, and he himself a few days later placed in solitary
+confinement in Newgate. His clerk, in conveying the news to Zayas,
+understood the gravity of the affair, for from the first the authorities
+refused to acknowledge the prisoner’s diplomatic status. “God deliver us
+from these troubles,” he wrote, “for I promise your worship that unless
+some remedy be sent from Spain my master Antonio de Guaras will find
+himself in dire trouble, as will all of us in his house, for we are sore
+distressed. With all earnestness I supplicate you to let his Majesty
+know, in the hope that delivery may be sent to us.” Guaras himself writes
+from prison in hot indignation. He had, he says, placed the letters from
+the Queen of Scots and King Philip in a safe place, and they had not been
+captured, but he knows that much of his correspondence has been sent to
+England by the Flemish nobles, and, reading between the lines, one sees
+that the poor wretch is in mortal fear, though he passionately protests
+his innocence whilst vituperating his captors.
+
+No consideration or mercy was shown to him, and now that he was under
+lock and key all sorts of claims and accusations were made against
+him.[219] To add to his trouble he, who for thirty years at least
+had been looked upon as a wealthy merchant, was found to be well-nigh
+penniless. Philip was always a bad paymaster, and the 500 ducats a year
+he allowed to Guaras had been embargoed or stopped in Spain for some
+time previously. The great sum of 20,000 crowns, promised to him for his
+services in negotiating the reopening of trade, was never paid to him,
+though for the rest of his life he was petitioning piteously for it.
+Damian Dela, his tailor-steward, was arrested at the same time as his
+master and lodged in Newgate, whereupon Recorder Fleetwood, examining him
+in November, he revealed the sad condition of Guaras’ finances: “I finde
+that he hath not a groat to bless him withal. His household stuff is not
+worth forty shillings. He is in my opinion _Iro Pauperior_, and were it
+not that libertie is sweet I know not where in his own country he should
+have like entertainment.” By Fleetwood Guaras sent beseeching messages
+for mercy to Burghley, “his only hope and trust”; but it was not the
+Cecil way to befriend fallen men, and Guaras appealed to his former crony
+in vain.
+
+Slowly the act of accusation against Guaras was elaborated. Such portions
+of his letters as could be read were brought up against him,[220] his
+servants, one and all, were interrogated, whilst he himself was almost
+driven crazy by threats of the rack and the scaffold. The questions
+administered to him in prison are amongst Lord Burghley’s papers and
+at Simancas, and show the charges brought against him: “What letters
+had passed between you and the Scots Queen?” “What do you know of their
+contents and of the negotiations between her and Don Juan?” “How far did
+Don Juan proceed in the marriage treaty with the Queen of Scots?” “In
+the cipher between you and Don Juan, who were intended by the numbers
+82, 29, and 38?” “What practices have been intended for disquieting the
+realm, and who were the principal authors?”[221] and many other questions
+of the same sort. In June, 1578, the case against him for conspiring
+against the State in favour of Mary Stuart was held to be proven, and
+the unfortunate man was lodged in the Tower, threatened now with death.
+To all interrogatories Guaras had answered haughtily that he was the
+diplomatic representative of the Catholic King, who would heavily avenge
+any injury done to him; but Philip had other cares to occupy him than
+to avenge a meddling merchant’s plots, of which he (Philip) had never
+approved.
+
+It was more important now than ever that Elizabeth should be
+conciliated. Don Juan, in despair at his hateful position and at the
+cold irresponsiveness of his brother, had in February, 1578, cast all
+considerations to the winds, had fortified himself in Namur, and had
+defied the States to do their worst. Philip, by the rash impetuosity
+of his brother, thus found it necessary to fight not only for the
+maintenance of orthodoxy in his Netherlands dominions, but for his
+sovereignty. The Archduke Mathias, one of his own kin, had been invited
+by the Flemings to accept the Catholic Crown of Flanders, and on his
+failure to unite the country, Alençon, the French Prince, had bidden
+for the prize. If Elizabeth could be won over by Orange to help or
+co-operate with the French in Flanders, then nothing could save Philip’s
+sovereignty; and so, until the great Alexander Farnese, Don Juan’s
+successor, with warcraft and diplomacy combined, was able gradually to
+separate the Catholic Flemings from the Protestant Dutchmen, it behoved
+Philip at any sacrifice to win again the good graces of Elizabeth, to
+arouse her jealousy of French interference in Flanders, and hold her,
+notwithstanding all that had passed, to the traditional alliance with
+his House with the ancient object. Nor was Elizabeth loath to meet her
+brother-in-law half-way this time, for a French domination in Flanders
+she could never allow, and whilst on the one hand she conjured the danger
+by befooling Alençon into the firm belief that she would marry him if he
+would obey her, on the other she held out her hand to Philip. Wilkes,
+the Clerk of the Privy Council, was sent off to Spain to vindicate the
+Queen’s action in Flanders: to say how hard she had tried to bring about
+peace, notwithstanding Don Juan’s impracticability, to beg for Don Juan’s
+recall,[222] and to urge that some sort of peace should be brought about
+with the States on the basis that Don Juan had violated, failing which
+she will be obliged, as before, to aid those who are battling for freedom
+of conscience.
+
+It was a bitter pill for Philip that he should have to brook Elizabeth’s
+interference between his rebel subjects and himself, and he treated
+Wilkes in very high and mighty fashion, on the pretext that his rank
+was inadequate for such a mission. But he made amends by sending to
+England, hard upon Wilkes’ heels, a scion of one of the noblest houses
+in Spain as his ambassador. Soldier, author, diplomatist, and courtier,
+Don Bernardino de Mendoza, a man with the pride of Lucifer and the
+intolerance of St. Dominic, was entrusted with a mission of humility
+to the Queen of all the “heretics.” No apology had ever been sent by
+Elizabeth for the expulsion of de Spes, or for the seizure of the
+treasure; Guaras was a close prisoner, daily threatened with torture, and
+his claim to diplomatic privilege laughed at; yet the King of Spain was
+obliged to swallow his pride, and send an ambassador who was almost a
+suppliant to beg Elizabeth not to help his revolted subjects.
+
+The change of position between the two sovereigns since the beginning
+of the Queen’s reign is nowhere so clearly seen as by a comparison of
+the instructions of Mendoza with the attitude of Feria and his master,
+described in the earlier pages of the present volume. Mendoza’s mission
+was piteously apologetic. Don Juan and the Spanish troops should be
+withdrawn. It was all a mistake about the abrogation of the edict of
+toleration. The States should have all they demanded if they would only
+be loyal and Catholic, and Elizabeth was appealed to earnestly not to
+aid rebellion in her good brother’s States. Mendoza was directed to
+“endeavour to keep her in a good humour, and convinced of our friendship,
+banishing the distrust of us which she now appears to entertain, and for
+which we have given her no good cause.” The English ministers were all to
+be heavily bribed, and at any cost, the new ambassador was instructed,
+English neutrality was to be secured.
+
+Mendoza passed through Paris on his way to England in February, and found
+the French Court in dismay. Young Alençon had escaped his brother’s
+vigilance, and, with a force of Huguenots and German mercenaries, was
+on the Flemish frontier in full negotiation with the Prince of Orange
+and the Protestants to assume the sovereignty as a rival to Mathias, the
+nominee of the Catholics. Don Juan had just won the battle of Gembloux
+against the united rebel States, and was known to be intriguing with
+the Guises against Elizabeth, though not, as was thought in England,
+with Philip’s connivance; and the Queen of England found herself in
+perplexity between two fires. The Marquis d’Havrey, the Flemish Catholic
+noble representing the States, was assuring her that unless she sent an
+army over at once, under Leicester or his brother, to help them, they
+must hand themselves over to Alençon and the Frenchmen, which she was
+determined to prevent, cost what it might;[223] whilst, on the other
+hand, she was told from all quarters that the Kings of Spain and France,
+with the Pope, Don Juan, and the Guises, were all united and determined
+to crush her for once and for all. Her problem was how to save Orange
+and the Protestants in Holland from being overwhelmed, without dragging
+England into a war with Philip; to prevent the French, even Huguenots,
+from gaining a footing in the Low Countries, and to avert a Catholic
+coalition against her. By what consummate diplomacy she contrived to
+attain her ends will be seen in the next chapter, which recounts her
+intercourse with Bernardino de Mendoza as Philip’s ambassador.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VIII
+
+1578-1584
+
+    Mendoza and Elizabeth—His haughty behaviour—The French in
+    Flanders—Elizabeth’s approaches to Philip—The Spanish designs
+    on Portugal—Renewed plots of Mary Stuart—Appeals to Philip
+    to aid her in England—Philip’s attitude towards Guisan
+    co-operation with him in Britain—The Jesuit mission—Mendoza
+    and the Catholic plot in Scotland—Elizabeth aids the
+    Portuguese pretender—Anger of Mendoza—His altercation with
+    Elizabeth—Progress of the plots—Collapse of Lennox—The
+    interference of Guise in the plans—The jealousy between English
+    Catholic exiles and the Scots—Development of the Anglo-Spanish
+    plans and intended exclusion of Guise—Arrest of Francis
+    Throckmorton—Discovery of the plot—Expulsion of Mendoza—Philip
+    faces the inevitable and slowly prepares for a war of invasion
+
+
+On the 16th March, 1578, Mendoza sat on a low stool by Elizabeth’s side,
+under the canopy in the Palace of Greenwich. He was a man already of
+mature age, of stately port, strong and masterful as became a dashing
+cavalry leader, but he spoke on this occasion, his first formal audience
+of Elizabeth, in silken tones, as he tried his best to excuse Don Juan’s
+breach of faith with the States. The Queen, on her side, had nothing
+but complaints and protests. Her aim was to be made a party to the new
+pacification, either as arbitrator or mediator, because, she said, that
+she would have to provide the financial guarantee offered by the States.
+But it was not Philip’s intention to allow her thus to come between him
+and his subjects, and this point was always evaded, cleverly as she
+urged it. But upon the main point she and Mendoza soon agreed. If Philip
+would make the concessions to the States that he now promised, and they
+refused to submit, she herself would help to punish them; and as for the
+French, she would take care they were never masters of Flanders, with or
+without Don Juan. It was noticed that as soon as the Queen said that she
+would help to punish the States if they did not accept the terms promised
+by Philip, Leicester hurriedly left the chamber, it was whispered to
+write by special courier to Flanders that Havrey should at once return to
+England and represent the rebel view of the situation.
+
+“I am glad to see you again,”[224] said the Queen, after the business
+talk was finished, “although I have been told that the real object of
+your coming is to plan many things to my injury; but even if you were
+not a minister of my good brother, I do not think that you would do me
+much harm.” Needless to say, Mendoza loudly proclaimed his devotion to
+her, and for a time all went harmoniously between them. Alençon from
+the frontier sent to Elizabeth lovelorn epistles of devotion, which she
+looked at for a time with some distrust, believing that this might be a
+trap whereby the French, as a nation, were endeavouring to gain a footing
+in Flanders to her prejudice. Of one thing she was quite determined,
+namely, that for every Frenchman who entered Flanders an Englishman
+should enter too; and to all Mendoza’s remonstrances at the aid in men
+and money that constantly flowed over to the Netherlands, Elizabeth
+had the answer ready that they went as much in Philip’s interest as her
+own, to prevent the country from falling into the hands of the French.
+To Orange, whom she constantly upbraided for welcoming French aid, her
+scolding reproaches meant little, for, as he said, he cared not whence
+came the help by means of which he could fight the Spaniards, and if he
+obtained, as he did, forces from Alençon and from Elizabeth too, he was
+willing to put up with the Englishwoman’s hard words.
+
+She did not mince matters with Mendoza, either. “By God!” she shouted,
+“if the edict of toleration is not re-granted to the States I will help
+them against you whilst I have a man left in England.” Mendoza drily
+remarked that she was helping them pretty effectually already, “and
+that, grateful as I was for her kindness to me, I could not help telling
+her that your Majesty had very long arms, and that if need arose their
+strength would be felt in any country upon which they were placed. She
+swallowed this,” says Mendoza, “with rather a wry face, and said she did
+not consider these people to be rebels, as they were satisfied with what
+your Majesty had granted to them before, and she would not allow either
+the French to set foot in the States nor the Spaniards to oppress them.”
+Thus surely but slowly Elizabeth worked her way; but with the inevitable
+consequence of convincing Mendoza, as all other Spanish ambassadors in
+turn had been convinced, that force against Elizabeth was their only
+remedy, since in diplomacy she was more than a match for the cast-iron
+methods of their master.
+
+To Mendoza’s intercession for the unhappy Guaras, with whom the new
+ambassador had little sympathy as a plebeian and bungler in State
+affairs, Elizabeth replied angrily that if he had been a subject of any
+other King but Philip she would have hanged him long ago, as he had been
+plotting against her with the Queen of Scots and English rebels. She
+would get rid of him, she said, by and by, when she had squeezed some
+more information from him. Once, in June, 1578, Guaras was brought out of
+prison and told by the Council that he would have to leave the country
+in ten days; but, instead of accepting the decision humbly, he raised an
+altercation, again claiming diplomatic privilege, with the result that he
+was promptly sent to solitary confinement in the Tower again, though both
+Mendoza and Don Juan had received money from Spain to be spent in bribes
+for his help and defence.[225]
+
+Generally speaking, the parties in Elizabeth’s Court were now sharply
+divided in policy, and Mendoza promptly found who were his friends and
+who his foes. Cecil and Sussex, particularly, with Controller Crofts
+in a humbler way, were opposed to the open provocation of Spain by the
+support of the Flemish rebels; Leicester and Walsingham, whom Mendoza
+rarely mentions without the epithet “devilish heretic,” being determined,
+if possible, to bring matters to a crisis between Elizabeth and Philip
+whilst the war in the Netherlands paralysed the latter. Elizabeth herself
+leant now to one side, now to another, always balancing counsel against
+counsel. How suddenly and convincingly she could change is seen in her
+attitude towards Mendoza directly she heard that Alençon and his French
+force, mainly Huguenots, had crossed the frontier into Flanders early in
+July, 1578, at the request of the States, and had thrown themselves into
+Mons. Alençon had long been trying to convince the Queen that upon her
+alone, and not upon his brother the King of France, would he depend in
+everything, and his professions of love for her were unabated, but this
+alarmed her.
+
+To some extent her distrust of Alençon had been overcome of late,
+particularly as a large number of English troops and Germans in her pay
+were in Flanders as an antidote to him; but only a few days after the
+startling news of Alençon’s invasion reached England, Mendoza writes
+(19th July, 1578): “The Queen has been very suspicious of me hitherto,
+as she has been assured that I had come to perform I know not what, nor
+what bad office; but she is beginning to be undeceived, and is turning
+her eyes now more towards his Majesty. Some of the ministers, too, have
+begun to get friendly with me, and I can assure you [Zayas] that if his
+Majesty wishes to retain their goodwill, I see a way of doing it.... God
+knows the trouble I have had in getting her and her ministers so far,
+as they always want to see something substantial beforehand,[226] this
+being the natural character of the people. I am told by a person in the
+Palace that, even in the matter of giving me audience readily, the Queen
+has been considerably influenced by the presents of gloves and perfumes I
+gave her when I arrived.”
+
+It is true that Elizabeth was a glutton for presents, and her Councillors
+had itching palms for Spanish gold, but there were other reasons just
+then besides self-interest that made them smile upon Philip’s ambassador.
+Not only was there a French army on Flemish soil, but from all sides
+there came to England alarming news of some great Catholic combination
+against Elizabeth; the Spaniards were known to be supporting the Desmond
+rebellion in Ireland;[227] and at a day’s notice, until she had got
+Alençon completely under her thumb by the farcical marriage negotiations
+with him personally, she thought fit to smile upon Mendoza, and treat the
+moderate English Catholics with unwonted mildness. “I never see the Queen
+now,” writes Mendoza in September, 1578, “without her telling me how glad
+she is for me to be here. She gives me audience freely, and, thank God! I
+have her now in an excellent humour, whilst the Englishmen in general are
+not bad friends with me, as they think I shall not do anything against
+them in case of a disturbance.”
+
+On another occasion in September, 1578, when Elizabeth was sounding
+Mendoza about sending an English ambassador to Spain, she said to him:
+“If you were a knave, you should not have stayed here so long; ... if you
+had been here years ago, things would not have reached such a condition
+as they did, by reason of Don Gerau de Spes”; and when he went to see
+her at Richmond on her return from an autumn progress, she became quite
+coquettish with him. She thought, she said, he must have run away and
+left her it was so long since she had seen him; and, though she was
+somewhat aggrieved that she was to have no part in the pending peace
+negotiations between Philip and the Flemings, she told him that “she
+liked his manner of procedure.” “I did not inspire her with suspicion;
+and if a favourable peace was made in the Netherlands by any means, she
+was quite content not to have been a mediator, being quite satisfied with
+my explanations.” Then, turning to him, she broached the subject really
+uppermost in her mind, namely, her much-talked-of marriage with the young
+French Prince. Did Mendoza think she ought to marry him? The courtly
+ambassador was sure she would act wisely in any case; but he knew, as
+she did, that all the French wished was to prevent her prosperity and
+quietude. “I hope when you see the end you will approve of it,” said
+Elizabeth, doubtless smiling in her sleeve; for she alone knew what she
+intended the end to be, though Philip himself shrewdly guessed that “it
+was all pastime, and she would never marry any man.”
+
+But through all this amiability to the Spaniard, English aid still
+found its way abundantly across the North Sea to the Protestants in
+arms; and Hans Casinir, with 20,000 soldiers, was in Elizabeth’s pay in
+the States. Philip, much as his ambassador might humour Elizabeth and
+bribe her ministers, was no nearer than before to the complete control
+of English policy, which alone would serve his purpose. Don Juan had
+died brokenhearted at his miserable failure on 1st October, and this
+made matters somewhat easier for his brother Philip, as it removed the
+principal obstacle to the reconciliation of the Catholic Flemings to the
+Spanish rule. The absolute dissociation of the King of France from his
+brother Alençon’s eccentric vagaries in Flanders, and Elizabeth’s clever
+beguilement of the young man, also satisfied the King of Spain that once
+more affairs were reverting to the old groove, in which he would have
+against him not Catholics, but only the Protestant elements of which
+Elizabeth was the main supporter.
+
+Again, therefore, he was able to face the problem of his “good sister’s”
+overthrow. All his attempts previously in this direction had been
+disastrous for his instruments and discomfiting for himself. He had
+subsidised Mary Stuart, before and since her incarceration; he had
+ineffectively supported the English Catholics to rebel; he had consented
+to Elizabeth’s murder preparatory to his armed intervention in England;
+he had countenanced Stukeley’s wild plans to capture Ireland, and
+supported the Desmond disaffection in Munster; he had tried to bring
+Elizabeth to her knees by stopping trade, with the result of nearly
+ruining his own subjects—but all these means had failed. Philip’s
+advisers for twenty years had never ceased to assure him that he must
+boldly carry the war into his enemy’s camp if he would succeed—that to
+win all he must risk something; but he had gone on still believing in the
+infallibility of his own methods, which always aimed at binding others
+whilst himself remaining vaguely pledged or not pledged at all. Philip
+would only play when he held all the winning cards, and, much as his
+ambassadors urged upon him a policy of force towards his sister-in-law,
+he was determined to wait until Fate had dealt them to him.
+
+In August, 1578, only a few weeks before the death of Don Juan relieved
+him from his worst dilemma in Catholic Flanders, his rash young nephew,
+King Sebastian of Portugal, was killed in battle in Morocco. His heir
+was the old childless Cardinal Don Henrique, and amongst the many
+subsequent claimants Philip was the strongest. With the added power and
+great wealth of Portugal, the King of Spain might conquer heresy yet
+by force, and defy both England and France if needs be, for, with the
+harbours of Spain, Portugal, and the Islands closed to them, French and
+English ships would be unable to sail far from their own shores. The
+danger at once drew Catharine and Elizabeth together, but they could
+do nothing effectual yet, and all Philip’s plans were laid carefully
+to seize the throne of Portugal when the aged king should die. It was
+necessary, amongst other things, for him to provide that both Elizabeth
+and Catharine, when that event happened, should have their hands full at
+home, and the effect of his manœuvres is noticeable almost immediately.
+
+Mendoza had been instructed to use the greatest caution in all approaches
+to him on behalf of the imprisoned Mary Stuart; but in January, 1579,
+Zayas wrote to him, saying that negotiations had been opened by Beton,
+Archbishop of Glasgow, Mary’s ambassador in Paris, and the Spanish
+ambassador there. “If,” he said, “Philip would provide enough money to
+raise four thousand troops, great things might be done for her and for
+the Catholic religion. His Majesty is very well disposed towards it; but
+nothing, as yet, has been decided, because, in good truth, the matter
+could only be undertaken on very safe grounds, and with the assurance
+that the effect would be produced, as otherwise it would be _oleum et
+operam perdere_. Send us your opinion on it.”[228] The French intrigues
+in Scotland at this period (1579) had somewhat aroused the apprehensions
+both of Philip and Elizabeth, for Guise had sent young Lennox d’Aubigny,
+the Franco-Scot Stuart, to woo his cousin James, and he had succeeded
+beyond the wildest expectations. Philip was willing enough to foster
+Guise’s ambitions to the extent of setting him against Catharine and
+the Huguenots; but any attempt at Guisan interference in Great Britain
+without his direction always alarmed him, so Mendoza lost no opportunity
+of whispering to Elizabeth distrust of French aims in Scotland.
+
+At the same time, still further to divert Elizabeth from interfering
+with his Portuguese plans, Philip allowed himself to be persuaded to
+help James Fitzmaurice and the Pope’s Nuncio, Dr. Sanders, to land a
+small Spanish and Italian force in Ireland in the summer of 1579. The
+expedition was routed and pursued, Dr. Sanders dying miserably of want
+and exposure; but when heartrending appeals from the Irish were sent to
+Philip for further aid, he dared not make open war upon England for their
+sake—that was no part of his plan yet. All he could consent to do was to
+join with the Pope in defraying the expenses of a formidable expedition,
+not under the Spanish but the Papal flag, sailing from a Spanish port,
+with eight thousand soldiers to invade Ireland, and hold the Catholic
+West for the Desmonds. The affair was mismanaged, and all the invaders
+were slaughtered at Smerwick, Dingle Bay (November, 1580); but Mendoza
+never heard the last of it from Elizabeth, who in future excused all
+her interference in Flanders by pointing to this kind act of her “good
+brother.” It was a hint to Elizabeth that she was vulnerable, not only in
+Scotland by French intrigue, but in Ireland also, and that it behoved her
+to look to her own safety before attacking others.
+
+Mendoza had much cold water to throw upon the suggestion of Beton and
+the Spanish ambassador in Paris (with whom he was at feud) as to the
+subsidising of a rising of Catholics in favour of Mary Stuart. He, true
+Spaniard as he was, looked askance at any plan of the sort in which a
+Frenchman had a part. But early in 1580 the matter entered a new phase.
+Elizabeth, for the first time in her reign, found herself unpopular, in
+consequence of the general belief that she really intended to marry the
+young French Prince; the great Jesuit propaganda was busily making ready
+to spread through England the young missionaries, who in the true spirit
+of martyrdom had pledged their lives to bring back England and Scotland
+to the Faith; the power of Morton in Scotland was waning fast, and Lennox
+was in the ascendant. Everywhere the Catholic cause had taken new hope,
+thanks in great measure to the encouragement of Philip, in order that
+when the time came he might have a free hand in Portugal.
+
+But whilst the King of Spain was quite ready to utilise these priestly
+and other auxiliaries for his ends, though most of them had no idea that
+politics had any part in their propaganda, he himself would make no move
+to capture England until he knew that he, and no one else, would enjoy
+the benefit of success if success were attained. So long as the Pope and
+Guise were the leaders of the movement, Philip gave it his blessing but
+no more, and on the 11th February, 1580, the old Archbishop of Glasgow,
+in Paris, seeing this, visited Vargas Mexia, the Spanish ambassador, and
+made a distinct step in advance. The Duke of Guise and he, he said, had
+persuaded Mary Stuart to place herself without reserve in the hands of
+his Catholic Majesty; and the Archbishop produced a letter from Mary to
+that effect, saying that she had arranged for her son to be captured and
+sent to Spain, that Philip might marry him to his liking. Guise himself
+came secretly to Vargas Mexia soon afterwards, and told him that he had
+everything arranged now by the aid of the Scottish Catholics to overthrow
+Elizabeth, and if Philip would subsidise the affair, he (Guise) would
+undertake to prevent any French national interference.[229] As for Mary
+herself, said the Archbishop, “she was determined not to leave her prison
+until she left it to be Queen of England.” Philips attitude changed at
+once on hearing this; and when a Catholic Scot, Fernihurst, was sent to
+Madrid by the party, he gave him a cordial reply, leaving in Mary’s hands
+the arrangement for the capture and deportation of James. But before
+anything could be done, the overthrow of Morton in Scotland and the rise
+of Catholic Lennox d’Aubigny to supreme power gave a far wider scope to
+the plan.
+
+The great conspiracy of 1569-70 against Elizabeth had failed, owing
+to lack of complete co-operation of the various Catholic elements:
+the present attempt seemed to promise an organisation of greater
+ramifications and more intimate combination. This was owing in great part
+to a new feature now first introduced. Those who watched the debarkation
+at Dover of the passengers from a skiff that had arrived from Calais
+on the 12th June, 1580, saw leap upon the shore a swashbuckling young
+captain, such as many who came from the Flemish war. He was a man of
+five-and-thirty, clad in a buff military coat covered with gold lace, and
+had a great, clanking rapier hung upon his hip, whilst a fine feather
+flaunted in his wide-brimmed hat. With him came a soldier-servant of
+humbler mien, and, after being duly searched and coming through the
+ordeal successfully, the two travellers swaggered upon their way.[230]
+The captain told the searcher who kindly procured him a horse that a
+friend of his, an English jeweller living at St. Omer, would follow him
+to England in a day or two. The jeweller, Mr. Edmunds, duly came, and
+also went on his road to Gravesend, and so by tilt-boat to London, there
+to be lost like his military forerunner in the crowds of the capital.
+The captain came not to rest from the wars against the Spaniards in
+Flanders, but to conquer England again for the Faith, for he was Father
+Robert Parsons the Jesuit, and the jeweller Edmunds, who followed, sold,
+not jewels alone, but his own life for the task to which he had been
+dedicated by the Church, for he was Edmund Campion.
+
+These three young men were but the advance guard of an army of Jesuit
+missionaries who soon flocked over from the seminaries of Rheims and
+Rome to strengthen the resistance of the sorely tried Catholics of
+England and Scotland. Wherever these zealous clerics reached, the power
+of Elizabeth over her subjects was weakened. There were many Catholics
+who had grown tired of persecution, and were willing to purchase peace
+by open compliance with the Queen’s laws. More there were who would have
+been fully content with even limited toleration for their observance.
+But to these fiery young spirits toleration was a more deadly blow than
+persecution, and although up to this time the secular priests had been
+willing to concede to Catholics some appearance of outward conformity,
+the attendance at Protestant service was now forbidden to those of
+the old Faith. The result was almost at once a recrudescence of the
+persecutions against Catholics in a crueller form than ever, with the
+inevitable result of raising a stronger and more fanatical religious
+spirit than had existed amongst the Catholics in England since the early
+days of Elizabeth’s reign.
+
+[Illustration: ROBERT PARSONS, S.J.
+
+1546-1610]
+
+Needless to say, Mendoza soon got into touch with the new fighting
+element in the struggle against Elizabeth. The ambassador’s feigned
+politeness towards Elizabeth had been strained almost to breaking point
+by the news of Drake’s terrible depredations in the Pacific; and he
+had already fallen in his correspondence with his master into the same
+heated tone of indignation as his predecessors had done, urging the King
+to prompt reprisals upon these “insolent heretics.” When Drake himself
+arrived with his vast booty, and was effusively received by the Queen,
+Mendoza’s angry violence of word, and his open threats, earned for him
+exclusion from the Queen’s presence. He was offered, indeed, a bribe
+of 50,000 crowns to moderate his tone, but he replied in a rage, “that
+he would pay more than that sum himself to punish so great a thief as
+Drake.”[231]
+
+Almost daily Mendoza’s indignation with Elizabeth became more heated.
+Amongst other causes of complaint was one that for the first time
+brought him into an acrimonious squabble with Elizabeth herself, though
+the occasion was a small one. The ambassador had been trapped into one
+of the usual bogus plots, ostensibly to betray Flushing, but really
+to cheat and betray him, and he had paid a large sum of money and
+given much information to certain Dutchmen for the purpose. One of the
+conspirators had left his son, a child, in Mendoza’s hands as a hostage,
+and when the fraud was complete, on the 4th June, 1581, during the
+ambassador’s absence, his house in the Strand was forcibly entered by
+London constables accompanied by the Secretary of the Prince of Orange,
+and the young hostage was taken from the custody of the Spaniards. The
+household drew their swords and attacked the authorities, but before the
+affray had proceeded far the ambassador himself appeared. Learning that
+the officers were acting under the authority of the Council, he ordered
+his servants to put up their weapons and angrily protested against this
+violation of his domicile.
+
+Mendoza had avoided appearing at Court during the warm philandering with
+Alençon and the French that was going on, fearing that Elizabeth might,
+with her usual artfulness, get better terms from the French by pretending
+that the Spaniards were seeking her. But this new insult overcame all
+other considerations. In a violent temper Mendoza demanded immediate
+reparation from the Queen. She must receive him at once, he said, and
+apologise, or he would leave the country and lay the matter before his
+master for redress. Elizabeth was anxious not to have an altercation with
+him whilst the special French embassy as well as Alençon’s _mignons_
+filled her Court, and by flattery and cajolery she managed to defer the
+unpleasant interview until the French embassy had gone. On the 17th June,
+Elizabeth stood in the gallery of Whitehall overlooking the river, when
+Mendoza, who had landed at the private stairs, was led to her by Hatton,
+the captain of the guard. Fearing that the Spaniard might use angry
+words, she took him into a window embrasure out of earshot of the only
+two persons in the gallery, Sussex and Hatton, and at once anticipated
+him by complaining bitterly that King Philip had helped these knaves
+of Irish rebels by sending a large body of soldiers to them. Mendoza
+said he must leave that subject for another time, and launched into
+angry invective of the treatment to which he had been subjected. He
+had, he said, been denied rights recognised even amongst savages to the
+ambassadors of kings. He had expected to hear that she had hanged the
+constables the next morning; but as she had not done so, he supposed they
+had told the truth when they said they acted in her name.
+
+Calling Sussex and Leicester to her, she ordered that inquiry should be
+made in the matter, and then once more started her Irish grievance, again
+forcing Mendoza to take the defensive. He made the best of matters, and
+retorted with Drake’s plunder and her constant aid to the Netherlanders,
+ending by a scarcely veiled threat that unless she mended her behaviour
+towards his master, especially in her attitude towards Portugal, his
+vengeance would fall upon her. Elizabeth was rather cowed at this, and
+said she did not want to quarrel with her good brother; the King of
+France had done more harm in the matter of Portugal than she had. To this
+Mendoza retorted curtly that if the King of France did evil that was no
+reason why she should. Mendoza afterwards snubbed and hectored Cecil and
+the Council, and left the Palace in no very pacific frame of mind. “If I
+had not shown spirit,” he wrote to the King, in giving him an account of
+the interview, “which is the thing that moves the Queen and her ministers
+most, such is their insolence that probably I should never have been able
+to get conference with them. This attitude alone has enabled me to hold
+my own with them until now, thus gaining time for matters to develop
+themselves.”[232] Notwithstanding his self-satisfaction, it is clear
+that Mendoza got the worst of the interview with the Queen, for although
+she was compliant on the unimportant point of the violation of domicile,
+the boy was never restored, and she assumed the position of the injured
+party about Ireland, as well as preventing Mendoza from making a formal
+reclamation about Drake’s plunder.
+
+But soon there came a new grievance to exacerbate the irritation of the
+Spaniards. Alba had been summoned from his retirement to conquer Portugal
+for Philip on the death of the old Cardinal King. The many claimants
+to the Crown were mostly timid and unready, whilst Philip’s power was
+irresistible, and Alba marched through Portugal, with the King in his
+wake, brushing aside such slight attempts as were made to stay him in the
+interests of the only Portuguese claimant who showed fight at all—the
+doubtfully legitimate Don Antonio, Prior of Ocrato, who had at first
+been accepted by his countrymen as their Sovereign. He had fled before
+Alba’s advance, and had been a fugitive for months past—some said in
+Brazil, some in Azores, and some in France. Wherever he was, he carried
+with him jewels of inestimable value, and such a man in the hands of
+Philip’s enemies might be made a powerful weapon against the King of
+Spain. Rumour was busy as to Don Antonio’s movements, and Mendoza’s spies
+had much to tell, most of which was untrue. But it was noticed at the
+end of June, 1581, that Elizabeth’s Portuguese-Jew physician, Lopez,
+was very busy and important, posting backwards and forwards between
+London and Dover, and soon Mendoza learnt that a party of Portuguese
+had landed there, amongst whom one was treated with marked respect and
+consideration. He was described as being “under the middle height, very
+dark and thin, with a spare face, a grizzled beard, and greenish-grey
+eyes.”
+
+This man Mendoza, from the description, at once recognised as Don
+Antonio, the so-called King of Portugal, proclaimed by Philip a rebel
+with a heavy price upon his head. Before even he had had time to verify
+his suspicions, Mendoza peremptorily demanded audience of Elizabeth to
+complain of her thus sheltering the Pretender. The Queen’s ministers,
+through the Earl of Sussex, flatly refused him access to their mistress
+for any such purpose unless he brought fresh special letters from Philip;
+and as, he says, he was determined to have no more _pros_ and _cons_ with
+intermediaries who simply talk nonsense and then repudiate what they say,
+blaming the messengers, he wrote a haughty letter to Elizabeth herself,
+threatening to leave England instantly unless audience was accorded to
+him. Elizabeth was hunting at Eltham when the letter was handed to her,
+and as she read it she changed countenance. Through Hatton, who was by
+her side, she replied to the bearer, “that if the ambassador, for reasons
+of health or other private causes, wished for his passports he could have
+them; but that the Queen had not the slightest desire that he should
+leave her Court, or that she should break with the King of Spain.”
+
+Two or three days afterwards, however, thanks to Cecil, Mendoza was led
+up a secret stair into the Queen’s private chamber, where she was with
+Leicester, Sussex, Hatton, and Walsingham. “I suppose,” began Elizabeth
+as soon as she saw him, “you have come to give me some satisfaction about
+Ireland.” “That, your Majesty,” he replied, “as I told you before, is
+a matter concerning the Pope, not my master.” She had, he continued,
+refused to receive him for nearly a year, pending her investigation of
+the case. Elizabeth angrily swore that she had never sent him such a
+message. Until he could bring her a fresh letter from Philip excusing
+this Irish business, she would have no more to say to him; and she
+thought that he had done his master a poor service in giving her the
+answer he had done. “If I have done ill to my master, madam,” he replied,
+“I have a head to pay for it; and although as the King’s minister I am
+bound to render an account to him of my acts, I thank God that He has
+granted me such a noble ancestry as alone would prevent me from failing
+in my duty to my Sovereign, if for no other reason but to leave unsullied
+the scutcheon of Mendoza.”[233] “She screamed out louder than before
+at this, saying that I was to blame for everything that had happened,
+to which I replied smilingly that she was speaking as a lady, those of
+her sex usually displaying most annoyance at the things that were done
+in their interest. It was no small service I had done her, I said, in
+patiently awaiting her pleasure so long.”
+
+In the heated altercation that ensued, Mendoza seized an opportunity
+of mentioning the real object of his visit, namely, the arrival of Don
+Antonio. She prevaricated for a long time, and finally retorted that if
+Don Antonio was in England, the rebel Earl of Westmorland was not only in
+King Philip’s dominions but enjoyed a pension from him. She had not made
+up her mind yet, she said, whether she should help the Portuguese or not,
+but she was determined not to surrender any one to be killed; and if she
+did not choose to give him up it would not be she, but Philip, who had
+first violated the old treaties. Upon this Mendoza made a formal demand
+for the surrender of Don Antonio in accordance with the international
+agreement, and was curtly refused.
+
+Thus every day the breach between Elizabeth and her brother-in-law grew
+wider, and Mendoza followed in the footsteps of de Spes and Guaras. Don
+Antonio was welcomed at Court with royal honours, and was very soon
+borrowing money on his jewels to fit out expeditions to the Azores, which
+still held out in his favour. The Queen herself blew hot and cold. If
+Antonio succeeded in capturing the throne of Portugal again, she wished
+him to be beholden to her for it and not to the French, whilst she was
+determined not to be drawn into open war with Philip for him unless she
+could manœuvre the King of France into the same position. Philip wrote to
+Elizabeth himself, begging her to expel or surrender the rebel Pretender,
+and Mendoza continued to press her, often intemperately, on the subject;
+but she always countered with Ireland, the refugee Desmonds, Ridolfi, and
+the Earl of Westmorland; and usually succeeded in getting up a wrangle
+with the heated ambassador, which placed him at a disadvantage. To
+prevent Philip from proceeding to extremities against her, and to keep
+the King of France from breaking away, the marriage dealings with Alençon
+were carried by her to a point from which all observers believed she
+could never extricate herself. But her tactics, risky as they really were
+at this time, were successful in their main object, namely, in weakening
+Philip’s power on every hand, and making it impracticable for him to
+avenge himself by force.
+
+The English Catholic party had already felt the cruel consequences of
+the renewed Jesuit activity. Campion, the most fearless of the young
+missionaries, with two brethren, suffered cruel martyrdom with unshaken
+constancy in December, 1581, and scores of other priests and laymen were
+under sentence of death,[234] whilst throughout the country recusants
+were hunted with merciless vigour, not, of course, for religion, said
+Elizabeth’s officers, but as disobedient and disloyal subjects. Most of
+the active Catholic nobles were now in exile, and it was clear that no
+armed rising in England against the Queen’s Government was now possible,
+except with very powerful help from abroad. But in Scotland matters
+were entirely different. Morton had fallen, and the half-French Lennox
+d’Aubigny, a Catholic, was the most powerful force in the country. His
+French ancestry had caused the Spaniards to look askance at him for a
+time; but the declaration of Guise to the Spanish ambassador in Paris,
+that Mary Stuart in future would look alone to Philip for direction,
+somewhat disarmed Mendoza, and, despairing of striking at Elizabeth by
+other means, the ambassador turned to this quarter to aid him in his
+vengeance.
+
+Philip had commanded him to continue to console and encourage the
+imprisoned Mary, and in September, 1581, referring to his correspondence
+with her, the ambassador opens a new chapter in his activities in
+England. He has, he says, been trying in every way—of course, through
+the Jesuit missionaries mainly—to convince the Scots how advantageous
+it would be for King James if Scotland were formally to return to the
+Catholic Church; but for fear of driving Elizabeth into the arms of the
+French, if she knew it, he has had, he says, to work very cautiously and
+secretly. He then goes on to say that he had just held a private meeting
+with some leading English Catholics, especially the brothers Tresham,
+and had urged upon them that the best way to cause trouble to Elizabeth
+would be for Scotland to submit to the Holy See. Even if Philip’s other
+cares allowed of his sending a large force to England, such a course
+would be impossible owing to French jealousy. Yes, admitted the Treshams
+sorrowfully, the English Catholics were now so downhearted and crushed
+that a rising in England was impossible unless King Philip sent a great
+fleet and army fit to conquer the country, which they saw he could not
+do. The Irish, too, were not to be depended upon, and they agreed that
+the only way to gain England now was by winning Scotland first for the
+Church.
+
+The idea took root, and a meeting of six English Catholic peers and
+several gentlemen thereupon took a joint oath of fidelity to devote all
+their means and energies to this end. The confederates, with Mendoza’s
+approval, despatched one of the senior Jesuit missioners, Father
+Creighton, to Scotland to broach the matter to Lennox d’Aubigny, saying
+that if James would embrace the Church the English Catholics would
+rise, have him proclaimed heir of England, and release his mother, but
+if he refused they promised to adopt another candidate as Elizabeth’s
+successor. D’Aubigny was to be entertained with the notion that help
+would be forthcoming from France and the Pope, as well as from Philip;
+but this was only intended to be a blind, for Mendoza specially warned
+the plotters that nothing should be said to Frenchmen about it, “in order
+to prevent it from being hindered by the fear that it is a plan of your
+Majesty alone.” “They agree with me in this, as they are all Spanish and
+Catholic at heart, and do not wish to have anything to do with France.”
+
+Creighton went on his way to Scotland in disguise, and in the meanwhile
+the relations between Elizabeth and Mendoza became more strained than
+ever. Philip had instructed him in October to address the Queen strongly
+about the unconcealed encouragement she was giving to Don Antonio. For
+some time Mendoza asked for audience in vain. Elizabeth was at Nonsuch,
+and all sorts of excuses were given for her declining to receive him.
+Mendoza, chafing under what he calls “her insolent and outrageous”
+treatment of him, at last sent a servant of his to Burghley, positively
+to demand audience of the Queen when she arrived at Richmond. The reply
+brought back in Burghley’s words was ominous. “Sir, I must tell you the
+truth; the Queen is at present alone, unattended by Councillors, and as
+Don Bernardino is to bring letters to the Queen from so great an enemy of
+hers as his master, it is meet that he should be received accordingly.”
+
+They kept Mendoza fuming for several days longer before he was received;
+and when he entered the presence chamber at Richmond, boiling over with
+wounded pride, he found the Queen no longer the smiling coquette she
+had formerly been with him. Seated upon a tabouret under the canopy,
+with Sussex and Lord Admiral Clinton standing by her, she refrained from
+rising and advancing to receive him, as was her wont, and welcoming him
+with a greeting in Italian. Instead of that she sat frowning as he bowed
+low before her, the first words she said being to complain that she was
+suffering from a pain in her hip. Mendoza expressed his sorrow that he
+should have to trouble her with business in such circumstances, but she
+made no reply, and left him standing uncovered. “How about the letter
+you say you have from the King?” she snapped at last, and he handed her
+the King’s demand for Don Antonio’s surrender, which she read with a
+clouded brow. “You know very well,” she said, “that Don Antonio has left
+England; but I can tell you that if I had chosen to help him your King’s
+fleets from the Indies would not be where they are now, and Portugal,
+perchance, would not be so tranquil”—all this, as Mendoza says, with much
+browbeating and vociferation.
+
+“What else have you to say?” asked the Queen tartly; and in answer
+Mendoza, in high and mighty strain, began to talk about the power of
+his master’s fleets, and how those who dared to attack them would get
+well trounced. She had helped the rebel Antonio, he said, she had called
+him “King,” she had let him sail from the Thames with English ships and
+arms from the Tower to attack his sovereign, the London merchants had
+lent him money on his jewels, and much more to the same effect. His
+King, already offended by the way she had helped the Flemish rebels, was
+doubly resentful now. What more could she do, asked Mendoza, even if she
+were at open war? To all of which Elizabeth replied boldly. As for Don
+Antonio, she had helped him and still would do so; but she knew not what
+the ambassador meant by his other complaints. “This was said,” continues
+Mendoza, “with the most terrible insolence; and as I saw her evil intent,
+I replied that I had been here for over three and a half years; but as
+it appears she had heard nothing in all this time of the complaints I
+had constantly been making, and would find no remedy for them, it would
+be necessary to see whether cannon would not make her hear better.” In
+answer to this Elizabeth, for a wonder, replied calmly and in a low voice
+that he need not think to threaten or frighten her, or she would put him
+into a place where he could not say a word. In future he might negotiate
+with her Council, but as she had no ambassador in Spain she would not
+receive him herself.
+
+Mendoza thought probably that he had gone too far, as he certainly had;
+for Philip, as we shall see later, had no intention, or indeed ability,
+at this time (October, 1581) to attempt the conquest of England. He did
+not desire to threaten, Mendoza said; he was in her power and of course
+she could do as she liked with him, but whatever she did, thank God!
+King Philip would avenge him. Elizabeth then ordered every one out of
+the room but the two Councillors, to whom in angry tones she repeated
+Mendoza’s threat about cannon, and her reply. “I smiled to hear her
+relate this with so much fury and agitation, and remarked that I would
+not waste time on that point. Monarchs, I knew, were never afraid of
+private individuals, and above all she, who was a lady so beautiful that
+even lions would crouch before her. She is so vain and flighty that her
+anger was at once soothed on hearing this, and she began to relate how
+thankful your Majesty ought to be to her for having refused help to the
+Flemish rebels. All she had done was to prevent the French from taking
+possession of your territory.” Thenceforward to the end of the long
+interview Elizabeth played off the Spanish support of the Irish rebels,
+the subsidising of the northern rebellion, and the intrigues of de Spes,
+against Mendoza’s complaints of her help to Orange, the depredations of
+Drake, and the reception of Don Antonio; and the exchange of grievances
+ended by Elizabeth coldly saying that she would receive the ambassador
+no more until the King sent her some satisfaction, to which he retorted
+by saying that he would prefer to do business with the Council. As he
+turned to go and was already some paces from the Queen he heard her
+heave a deep sigh, and say in Italian, evidently intended to reach his
+ear, “I would to God that each one had his own and was at peace.”[235]
+Mendoza, humiliated and embittered at the course of events, which he
+ascribed entirely to Leicester and Hatton, thenceforward became a more
+virulent enemy of Elizabeth than ever de Spes had been. In the next
+letter after the interview just described he prayed Philip to avenge
+himself by seizing all English property in his dominions; but the King
+had tried that game before to his cost, and dared not run the risk again,
+nor would he listen to Mendoza’s earnest prayers to anticipate the
+intrigues of Leicester to have him expelled from England by recalling him
+himself.
+
+When, therefore, Father Creighton returned, in October, 1581, from his
+mission to Scotland, Mendoza was ripe for any plan which promised injury
+to Elizabeth. The Jesuit told him how he had been secretly conveyed
+across the Scottish border, and had conferred with Lennox, Eglinton,
+Huntly, Caithness, and Seton, who had warmly consented to Catholic
+missioners being sent—“on condition that they brought money for their
+own maintenance.” They would have King James approached, too, and told
+that his one hope of obtaining the English succession would be for him to
+embrace Catholicism and make friends with Spain. Neither Lennox nor the
+King was to be frightened with the suggestion that the French were to be
+thrown over: but Seton, who appears to have known James’s character well,
+proposed that his greed and ambition might be worked upon by his being
+shown how much more effectual a friend Spain would be to him than France.
+Father Parsons was in London when Creighton arrived, and he and his
+colleague Heywood were long closeted with Mendoza to discuss who should
+be the pioneer missioners to Scotland. Creighton thought that Father
+Parsons, himself, and Heywood should go, “as they would need to be very
+learned and virtuous men.” Parsons, still in his captain’s garb, ran over
+to Rheims to consult the Principal of the English Seminary, Dr. Allen;
+and at Mendoza’s instance it was agreed that Parsons could not well be
+spared from England, and that Dr. Allen should appoint fresh men for the
+Scottish mission.
+
+The six English Catholic lords who had first arranged the matter with
+Mendoza were now in prison: Catholics were being savagely persecuted
+everywhere, and it was evident that the scheme for upsetting Elizabeth
+by means of a Catholic movement in Scotland must be managed by Spanish
+agents in France and Dr. Allen, “as the Queen and her heretics are served
+here by such a multitude of spies that the Queen of Scots herself is in
+great alarm.” But above all, says Mendoza, though the affair must be
+managed in France, “the French must have no suspicion that your Majesty
+has anything to do with it.” As may be supposed, Mary Stuart was a keen
+participant in the scheme. In April, 1581, six months previously, she had
+sent a message through Archbishop Beton to the new Spanish ambassador in
+Paris, Tassis. “Things,” she said, “were never in better form in Scotland
+than now for a return to ancient conditions, so that English affairs
+could be dealt with afterwards from there. Her son was determined to
+be a Catholic, and inclined to break with Elizabeth as soon as he could
+be sure of substantial help.” This help Mary earnestly begged of Philip
+through Tassis, and asked that it should be landed first in Ireland,
+ready to cross to Scotland as soon as the treaty was signed.
+
+For some reason or another Mary conceived some distrust of Tassis, the
+Spanish ambassador in Paris, and of Beton; and as soon as she heard of
+the result of Father Creighton’s mission to Scotland, she wrote direct
+to Mendoza to tell him that she had partly consented to join her son
+with herself in the sovereignty of Scotland, which course had been
+urged upon her by the French, but that she was still determined in all
+things to follow the direction of the King of Spain in her affairs.
+She had understood from the first that from France, divided as it was,
+she had nothing effective to hope for. Her son and the Catholic Scots
+might desire to keep alive the ancient alliance with France, but Mary
+wanted more than that: she needed rescue from England, and this could
+only be effected by a Power that was willing to go to war with England
+if necessary for her sake, which she knew France, with its powerful
+Huguenot element and Catharine de Medici at the helm, would never do.
+Mary was suspicious, and grew even more so, of Guise’s interference in
+her affairs, which she saw was not occasioned by the desire to benefit
+her personally, but to increase his power by keeping hold of Scotland.
+Mendoza, of course, threw cold water upon the suggestion that Mary should
+recognise James as King on the recommendation of France, and by gaining
+Mary’s entire confidence, gradually worked her affairs into his own hands.
+
+The priests sent to Scotland were meeting with great success; and James
+himself told Creighton that, though out of policy he was obliged to
+appear in favour of the French, in his heart he would rather be Spanish.
+Parsons, whilst, fortunately for himself, he was abroad, though just
+about to embark for England, had been proclaimed a traitor and a price
+set upon his head; so that in future his sphere of activity was in
+Scotland and on the Continent, where he continued to direct English
+affairs with ever-increasing violence against the Queen and her faith.
+It is characteristic of Spanish methods that, though even Mary protested
+against it, all the priests sent by Dr. Allen to Scotland were to be
+Englishmen, because it was feared that Scotsmen might have other ends
+and incline to France. Above all, it was provided that the French should
+have no idea that Spain was behind this purely religious propaganda.
+Elizabeth’s Government, suspicious already of the Catholic _régime_ in
+Scotland, was well aware that something was going on in which Mendoza was
+concerned,[236] and keen vigilance was kept upon the Border. “So far as
+can be seen, this business is proceeding most hopefully,” writes Mendoza
+in December, 1581, “and is under God’s protection; for, whilst these
+two priests were on the English Border one night, a great search was
+made in every house in the neighbourhood, as the Queen had been informed
+that some English priests would endeavour to go to Scotland, but God
+ordained that they should escape almost by a miracle.”[237] Tresham was
+in prison, but priests carried messages backwards and forwards between
+him and Mendoza, so that the plot was kept going; and the fortitude of
+the Catholic prisoners under torture in refusing to divulge the names
+of their associates had drawn into the new combination a large number
+of sympathisers, whilst Mary herself, gaining ever more confidence in
+Mendoza personally, was urging him to assure King Philip that the time
+was propitious for him to take some bold and decided action in her favour
+in Scotland.
+
+This was the hopeful condition of affairs when Father Holt, a young
+Jesuit sent by Parsons and Creighton from Scotland, arrived in London.
+Tresham and the other English leaders being in prison, he had been
+directed to a disguised English priest in London, who would take him to
+the person who was to receive his message. Holt, like the rest of the
+rank and file of the Jesuit missioners, had no suspicion that a political
+object was behind their Scottish propaganda, and was astounded when
+he was led to the house of the Spanish ambassador to give his report.
+What he had to say was important. Everything, he reported, was going
+excellently in Scotland. The lords were trying by every means to convert
+the King; but they wished to obtain Queen Mary’s permission, if he
+remained obstinate, “to force the King to open his eyes and to see the
+truth.” Failing this, they would, if the Queen authorised them, depose
+or transport James until Mary’s arrival in her realm. But, continued
+Holt, they considered it necessary, if they were to succeed in their aim,
+to be able to count positively upon foreign armed assistance to subdue
+the heretics and provide against any interference from England. If they
+had two thousand soldiers from abroad they would be sufficient for the
+purpose. Where could they look, he asked, for such assistance? Not to
+France or to the Guises, for several reasons, and they hoped that Queen
+Mary would prevail upon the Pope and the King of Spain to send Spaniards
+or Italians. He begged that Mendoza would convey this to Mary and to
+Philip, and to have more English priests sent into Scotland for the
+propaganda, “only they must bring money for their own maintenance.”
+
+To Mary Mendoza sent the message of the Scottish Catholics in a somewhat
+softened form, in order not to arouse her maternal solicitude for James;
+but to his own Sovereign, Philip, he wrote almost vehemently, praying him
+to seize the opportunity for striking a fatal blow at Elizabeth. “With
+the two thousand soldiers they ask for, he says, the Scots might defy
+this Queen ... and the whole North of England would be disturbed, the
+Catholics there being in a majority, and the opportunity would be taken
+by the Catholics in other parts of the country to rise when they knew
+that they had on their side the forces of a more powerful Prince than
+the King of Scotland.”[238] There was no more concealment of Mendoza’s
+opinion beneath a veil of assumed humility: he not only urged Philip to
+ensure the victory of Scottish orthodoxy by force, but to aid a rising
+of English Catholics over the Scottish Border. The opportunity looked a
+tempting one, for it provided for the removal of the doubtful James, and
+the plan might be carried out (if the Scottish lords were to be depended
+upon) without giving to Elizabeth the legal right to interfere.
+
+The experienced Cardinal de Granvelle, who was governing Spain in
+Philips absence in Portugal, was almost as enthusiastic in its advocacy
+as Mendoza himself. “The affair is so important,” he wrote to Philip,
+“both for the sake of religion and to restrain England, that no other
+can equal it. By keeping the Queen of England busy we shall be ensured
+against her helping Alençon (in Flanders) or daring to obstruct us
+elsewhere.”[239] Mary Stuart was just as eager, but had wider views than
+Granvelle, seeing clearly with her great penetration, if she was to be
+Queen of Britain, the absolute need for organising the English Catholics,
+whilst keeping the French out of the affair and not arousing unduly the
+suspicions of Elizabeth. “In the event,” she wrote, “of the Scots having
+the support requested, and the Queen of England attempting to interfere,
+which might give an occasion for the English Catholics to rise, it
+would be necessary to have this latter part of the business arranged
+beforehand, but in such a way that they should not understand what is
+intended, or have any idea until everything was ready to burst forth.”
+
+Holt went back to Scotland with a promise from Mendoza, which he
+certainly was not authorised by Philip to give, that the two thousand
+men asked for should be sent to their aid, and the English Catholics, or
+such of them as were still at liberty, were conciliated by means of Lord
+Henry Howard, who was very heavily bribed by Philip, and thenceforward
+became the principal Spanish agent at Elizabeth’s Court. The plot looked,
+indeed, a promising one under the sole guidance of Mendoza; and all were
+in high hopes that Mary Stuart’s fortune was at last to take a turn,
+when Father Creighton arrived in Paris directed to Tassis, the Spanish
+ambassador, with a letter from the Duke of Lennox. “Understanding,” he
+says, “from the missioners that the Pope and the King of Spain desire to
+make use of him for the design they have in hand to restore the Catholic
+faith in Scotland and release the Queen ... he is prepared to employ
+his life and estate in carrying out the same, on condition that he is
+supplied with all things set forth in the statement taken by Father
+Creighton.” This letter was dated early in March, 1582, and reached
+Tassis in May, having been brought to him by Creighton and Parsons.[240]
+The plan was a perfectly new one to Tassis, as Mendoza in London had been
+the sole intermediary purposely chosen by Mary and the originators of the
+plot, in order to exclude any probability of French participation; and
+Philip, to his surprise, was now informed of the affair by his ambassador
+in Paris, as if for the first time. Why Lennox should have chosen to send
+his adhesion to Paris instead of to Mendoza is not quite clear; but,
+being naturally attached to Guisan interests, it is probable that he
+wished to ensure that his French patrons should not be excluded.
+
+In any case, it does not need much knowledge of Philip’s character
+to foresee that such inept management as this would upset the whole
+business as far as he was concerned. The demands of Lennox, as stated
+by Creighton, were ridiculous. The Scottish Lords had promised Mendoza
+through Holt that if two thousand foreign troops landed they would be
+able to effect the revolution, and this was a number that Philip could
+have provided; but here was Lennox demanding twenty thousand men paid
+for eighteen months and a large quantity of munitions of war of all
+sorts. He must have, he says, twenty thousand crowns in money sent to
+Scotland immediately for fortifications, &c., and a further subsidy to
+raise Scottish troops; he asks that the troops should be of various
+nationalities and placed under his command, and if the attempt failed and
+he lost his Scottish estate in consequence, he wanted a guarantee from
+the Pope and Philip that an estate of equal value should be given to him
+elsewhere. He proposes himself to leave Scotland at the most critical
+juncture, and to go to Paris to make final arrangements, as soon as he
+hears that the Pope and the King of Spain are pledged to the enterprise.
+
+Tassis, not unnaturally, remarked to the priests that Lennox was asking
+for a good deal, and he learned from them that the Duke of Guise had
+been consulted, and thought that fewer men would do. Parsons then took
+up the story, and was quite sure that the Catholics of England would
+rise immediately the Scottish affair began; and it was soon evident,
+even to Tassis, who had been previously quite in the dark about it, that
+not only Guise but many other people, clerical and lay, had been drawn
+into the business, since one of the Jesuits was to go to Madrid, others
+to Rouen and to Rome; and the Nuncio, Archbishop Beton, and Dr. Allen
+were also parties to the proposals. The idea that Lennox should be in
+supreme command, and that French troops were to be included, alone would
+have sufficed to render the plan abortive, apart from the other quite
+extravagant conditions he imposed. Lennox wrote a somewhat similarly
+foolish letter to Mary Stuart, saying that the Jesuit Creighton had
+promised him fifteen thousand men; and that he, Lennox, was to go to
+France to raise a large force of Frenchmen. Mary was furious at such
+impracticable nonsense, and wrote to Mendoza begging him to restrain
+the bungling priests, as she was trying to do, and once more to get
+the matter into his own hands. “I am advising Lennox,” she writes, “to
+stay in Scotland, and I disapprove entirely of his plan to raise men in
+France. You may inform these Jesuits, too, that I will not on any account
+allow anything concerning this matter to be done in my name ... and I do
+not approve of sending any one on my behalf to negotiate direct with the
+Pope and King Philip.”
+
+Mendoza also was full of scorn for such muddling, and the whole scheme
+was thrown into confusion. Guise, as soon as he was informed by Lennox’s
+letter brought by Creighton, travelled from Eu to Paris and met
+Tassis secretly at Beton’s house. He, too, was full of far-reaching,
+ill-digested plans, his main object evidently being to prevent Spanish
+troops from being sent to Scotland, in order to avoid, as he says, French
+jealousy, but really because he feared Philip’s power. His plan was to
+raise a large mixed force to be sent by the Pope to Scotland, whilst
+he, Guise, was to make a descent upon the coast of Sussex with a French
+force. Philip met the new situation in his characteristic way. So far as
+he was concerned, the plan became impossible the moment that Guise and
+the French interest were included in it, and he wrote to Tassis, with
+vague sanctimonious sympathy, deprecating overzeal and ordering that
+nothing more should be done in the matter until further orders.[241]
+
+Father Parsons, by far the cleverest of the Jesuits, went to Madrid and
+submitted Lennox’s foolish conditions to Cardinal de Granvelle and Sir
+Francis Englefield, Philip’s English secretary. They both agreed that
+the bases laid down by Mendoza and Mary were the only practical ones,
+and Granvelle incidentally in his report on the matter throws rather
+a curious light upon the diversity of views that we see now existed,
+although he probably did not know it, between Philip’s views with regard
+to England and his own. We shall see presently what was in Philip’s mind;
+but that of Granvelle is sufficiently revealed when, speaking of the fear
+of the Scots that the landing of foreign troops might endanger their
+liberties, he says: “This is not what his Majesty wants, nor do I approve
+of it; but that we should loyally help the King of Scots and his mother
+to maintain their rights, and, by promoting armed disturbance, keep
+the Queen of England and the French busy at small cost to ourselves in
+comparison with what she will have to spend, and so enable us to settle
+our own affairs better. If it had no other result this should suffice,
+but much more when we consider that it may lead to the re-establishment
+of the Catholic religion in those parts. When we strike there the Irish
+will pluck up courage; and it is advantageous that the matter should be
+taken in hand by the Duke of Guise, as it will ensure us from French
+obstruction. Since we cannot hope to hold the island for ourselves, Guise
+will not hand it over to the King of France to the detriment of his own
+kinswoman.” He also hints at the possibility of Elizabeth’s coming to
+terms with Spain and renewing the old alliance.
+
+This was certainly not Philip’s view at this time (1582). He had now lost
+hope of conciliating England whilst Elizabeth was on the throne, and he
+was gradually being convinced that nothing but a great national conquest
+with purely Spanish arms would serve his turn. The policy of “loyally
+helping the King of Scots,” and, above all, with the co-operation of
+the French, would have been useless to him except as a means of gaining
+for him uncontrolled command of English foreign policy, which, with
+James an unknown factor and Guise as a confederate, was uncertain. The
+idea of attacking England through Scotland, which some of his advisers
+favoured, was one that never appealed very strongly to him after this
+first fiasco of Lennox, and it introduced an element in the situation
+which subsequently influenced him greatly, finally, indeed, deciding
+his policy. This was the jealousy felt by Englishmen of Scots, and a
+determination that nothing like a domination of England by a people whom
+they considered inferior should be allowed. Scotland and France, it must
+be recollected, had for centuries been looked upon by Englishmen as
+their joint enemies, whilst Spain and Flanders had been their friends,
+and it soon became a common saying amongst the English Catholics, of
+whom Parsons was the mouthpiece, that England would welcome a thousand
+times more a Spanish sovereign than a Scottish one. The first note of the
+feeling is struck in Granvelle’s memorandum quoted above, where he says
+that Englefield is very distrustful of the Archbishop of Glasgow, with
+whom he has ceased to correspond, and he wishes that he (Beton) should
+not be made cognisant with this business, “which he would immediately
+divulge to the French.”
+
+Whilst these events were passing in France, the causes for irritation
+between Elizabeth and Philip were becoming daily more grave. The Queen,
+almost at her wits’ end, had managed to get rid of her importunate
+suitor Alençon, in February, 1582, by means of a solemn promise to marry
+which she never intended for a moment to keep. She had insisted upon
+Leicester accompanying him to Antwerp, where the Prince was to join
+Orange as the obedient servant of Elizabeth. To the Queen’s dismay, a
+few days afterwards she learnt that Leicester had sanctioned by his
+presence the investiture of the French Prince with Philip’s Crown of Duke
+of Brabant, and it seemed now, even to her, that the cup was full and
+that nothing could save her from the vengeance of the outraged Spaniard,
+especially as she found that the King of France ostentatiously disavowed
+her and his brother’s action. Elizabeth railed at Walsingham and
+Leicester like a very fury, summoned Burghley from a sick bed to counsel
+her, and ended by leaving her French lover in the lurch.
+
+Far from seeking immediate vengeance, however, Philip’s own perplexity
+was such, in the face of this new dilemma, that he contemplated a step
+which up to that time he had always repudiated with scorn. Writing
+to Mendoza in May, 1582, he orders him to endeavour to exacerbate
+Elizabeth’s jealousy of the French in Flanders for the purpose of
+enlisting her aid as a mediator between his rebellious subjects
+and himself. Orange had just been dangerously wounded by a Spanish
+agent,[242] and it may have appeared to Philip that the moment was a
+favourable one to bring about some settlement which, at all events,
+might save his sovereignty. “It will be well,” he writes, “for you to
+discover whether it is possible for the Queen herself to intervene
+for the purpose of reconciling me with my subjects.” He is not very
+sanguine, he says, of such an intermediary; “and she is much more likely
+to continue her usual arts to incense my subjects against me, but it is
+worth trying”; and to show how urgent was Philip’s need of a peaceful
+settlement, he sent the large sum of 40,000 crowns to Mendoza to bribe
+Elizabeth’s ministers to propose her mediation.[243]
+
+The presence of Alençon in Flanders as sovereign, even under her own
+auspices, made Elizabeth anxious to learn at first hand what the
+Spaniards thought of this new provocation, and a hint was sent to
+Mendoza that she would receive him again with Philip’s Portuguese envoy,
+who had come to announce his accession to the Crown. She was, during
+the interview, very emphatic as to her perfect neutrality with regard
+to Portugal, “just,” says Mendoza, “as if it were true, instead of an
+evident lie.” Mendoza interposed by saying that no doubt that was her
+intention, but there were, at that moment, perhaps unknown to her,
+several ships being fitted and armed in the Thames for Don Antonio.
+What did he mean? Elizabeth asked, and the ambassador gave her full
+particulars. Up to this point Elizabeth had been polite, but when she
+found that no complaint was made about Alençon, she plucked up courage,
+and Hatton, a special enemy of Mendoza’s, who was behind him, seems to
+have made some sign to the Queen, for her tone suddenly changed. “This
+is no time to deal with that matter,” she cried angrily, and Mendoza
+retired more wrathful than ever, and more determined to work his revenge.
+
+He had been praying for his recall for some time, for he was nearly
+blind with cataract, and his soul rebelled against the humiliations he
+had to suffer; but Philip had pressed him to stay on, for nobody could
+manage the great conspiracy against Elizabeth so wisely and stealthily
+as he. He would not abandon his post, moreover, until Mary Stuart had
+consented to deal with a fresh ambassador, and he urged Philip to send
+a special envoy, on the pretext of claiming the restoration of Drake’s
+plunder, but really to succeed him if Mary would show confidence in the
+new man. “If it be profitable that I should remain here I will willingly
+sacrifice myself for a matter so closely touching the service of God
+and the increase of His Church, as well as serving your Majesty, since
+two hundred priests are risking their lives in the same cause, in face
+of great hardships, hunger and poverty.” His stay in England, indeed,
+was a true martyrdom, only endured because of his hope that in union
+with Mary of Scotland he might be instrumental in overthrowing Elizabeth
+and her Protestant ministers. They, for their part, repaid his hatred
+with enmity as bitter. Leicester, Hatton, and Walsingham left no stone
+unturned to make his post in England untenable. There was no English
+ambassador in Spain, they said, and should be no Spanish ambassador in
+England: the man was only a spy and a conspirator. It was he, said his
+detractors, who had planned the assassination of the Prince of Orange,
+and was the abettor and provider of the flock of black Jesuit crows who
+were infesting England with their presence. Even the street boys in
+London pelted and hooted him as he passed,[244] and he was practically
+excluded from Elizabeth’s Court. But for every fresh slight offered to
+him he became more ardent in his determination to make Mary Stuart Queen
+of Catholic Britain. The correspondence between them was close, for Mary
+refused to trust any other intermediary, and until the raid of Ruthven
+and the flight and death of Lennox finally upset the Catholic _régime_
+in Scotland, the hope of bringing back again into workable shape the
+plot that the priests and Lennox had embroiled was never abandoned by
+them.[245]
+
+The fact of their correspondence was, of course, well known to
+Elizabeth’s Government, and this made the ambassador’s treatment the
+harder. Once, in May, 1582, he was driven, by orders from the anxious
+King, to demand audience of the Queen, who replied that she would receive
+him as a private person if he liked, but would see him no more as
+ambassador until he brought an apology from Philip for aiding the Irish
+rebels. To this he replied haughtily in a letter, threatening to leave
+England at once and let muskets speak for him. When Elizabeth read the
+letter she was perturbed, and softened somewhat. “God forbid,” she said,
+“that she should ever break with the King of Spain, to whom she bore
+nothing but goodwill, ... She hoped that Don Bernardino would not leave;
+he could communicate with her in writing until the King’s explanation
+of the Irish affair came.” Writing to Philip in November, 1582, Mendoza
+says: “I have tried every means, overt and covert, to get into relations
+with the Queen’s ministers, but they fly from me as if I were a rebel
+subject of hers, and things have reached such a point that no one will
+speak to me or even to my servants.” Even his heavily paid Court spies,
+Lord Henry Howard and Sir James Crofts, avoided communication with him,
+except when they needed money.
+
+The efforts of Guise and Beton to keep the Scottish Catholic intrigue in
+their own hands also tended to isolate Mendoza. Both he and Philip, when
+the news of the raid of Ruthven and the flight of Lennox reached them,
+recognised that the enterprise through Scotland was hopeless for a time,
+and endeavoured to confine Guise’s energies in future to France. He was
+told how dangerous it would be for him to leave France with his enemies
+the Huguenots in possession, and was flattered and encouraged by Philip
+with the suggestion that the Crown of France might be his by Spanish aid,
+if Henry and his brother Alençon died childless, as seemed probable: “for
+it would be a public infamy if the most Christian Crown should fall, as
+may be feared, into the hands of a man who was not a Catholic [_i.e._,
+Henry of Navarre], besides the danger of this, it will be a standing
+disgrace to a true Catholic like Guise himself.” Guise was proud and
+delighted that so much deference was being paid him, but he could hardly
+be expected to look at Scottish affairs entirely from Philip’s point of
+view; and, whilst not losing sight of his vast ambitions in France, he
+still endeavoured through Beton, Tassis, and Parsons, to keep his hand on
+the realm of his cousin.
+
+When Lennox passed through London in January, 1583, on his way to exile
+in France he sent his secretary to Mendoza—not daring to come himself—to
+give him an explanatory account of Lennox’s ignominious collapse, and
+to inform him of his plans to return to Scotland, with James’s full
+connivance, and for an invasion by foreign troops in the Catholic
+interest. In such plans both Mendoza and his master had now lost hope,
+and though Lennox soon afterwards died, Guise himself, undeterred by
+Philip’s flattering attempts at diversion, became the central pivot of
+the intrigue, abetted by Beton, Tassis, and the Jesuits, who were still
+curiously blind to the real trend of affairs. A new French ambassador, La
+Mothe, was sent to remonstrate with Ruthven and the Scottish Protestants
+for keeping their King in durance, and to warn Elizabeth not to interfere
+in Scotland; and with him went young de Maineville on a separate mission
+from Guise to the Scottish Catholics, for the purpose of reviving the
+plot for landing a foreign force in Scotland. Beton and Tassis were,
+of course, parties to the arrangement, much to the annoyance of Mary
+and Mendoza, who thus saw all their carefully planned schemes thrown
+into confusion. James in Scotland, as usual, lied to everybody, and
+the Scottish Catholic party was disunited, so that Guise’s agent, de
+Maineville, promptly saw that any present attempt to invade Scotland in
+Mary’s interest would end in failure, and Guise changed all his plans.
+
+[Illustration: HENRI, DUC DE GUISE
+
+FROM AN ENGRAVING]
+
+On the 4th May, 1583, Tassis wrote to Philip that Guise, in view of the
+changed position in Scotland, had decided to negotiate with the English
+Catholics for a rising in England. “He has already carried the matter
+so far that he expects to have it put into execution very shortly, and
+intends to be present in person.” He asked for 100,000 crowns from the
+Pope and Philip, to be ready in Paris when he wanted it, though Tassis
+says that he does not expect that his Holiness will send much. He needed
+this large sum, it appears, principally “for one object which I dare
+not venture to mention here, but which, if it be effected, will make
+a noise in the world.” This object was no other than the murder of
+Elizabeth, which was to be the prelude of the revolution to place Mary
+on the throne. Two days before this letter to Philip was written by
+Tassis the Nuncio in Paris wrote to the Papal Secretary of State, the
+Cardinal of Como, much more plainly. Guise and his brother Mayenne, he
+says, had arranged for the murder of the Queen by one of her courtiers,
+secretly a Catholic, who owed her a grudge for executing certain of his
+relations. This man had made the proposal to Mary, and she had refused to
+entertain it, but the Duke of Guise was less scrupulous and had promised
+the assassin 100,000 francs for the work. He did not ask the Pope’s aid
+for this, but for the invasion of the South of England, which he, Guise,
+intended to effect immediately after the Queen had been killed. Neither
+the Nuncio nor the Cardinal, nor even his Holiness, had anything but
+praise for this saintly plan, and readily promised one-quarter of the sum
+needed if Philip would find the other three-quarters.
+
+Guise’s ideas, as usual, were vague and scattered. Simultaneously
+with this plan for murdering Elizabeth and invading Sussex, with the
+connivance of the English Catholics, an utterly impracticable scheme,
+he tried to keep the Scottish Catholics in hand by heavy bribes and to
+convert James. All this sinister activity could not be quite hidden from
+Elizabeth, who made a counter move by proposing terms for Mary’s release,
+which in future would render her harmless. Mary at once asked the advice
+of Mendoza, who was quite shocked at the idea, and wrote to her, as he
+says, “with all possible artifice,” by all means to refuse her liberty;
+but he tells Philip his real reason: “Nothing could be more injurious to
+your Majesty’s interest and hopes of converting this island than that
+the French should get their fingers into the matter through the Queen of
+Scotland and turn it to their own ends.”[246] Philip agreed that it would
+be best to keep Mary where they could lay hands upon her at any moment;
+but, perhaps influenced by the opinion of Granvelle, quoted in an earlier
+page, he asks for Mendoza’s further opinion on the association of Guise
+in the contemplated revolution. Since he was a near relation of Mary’s,
+and had the confidence of the Scottish Catholics and the Pope, would his
+co-operation, in the opinion of Mendoza, be open to the same objections
+as that of Frenchmen generally? To this Mendoza gave a cautious,
+sagacious reply. There was no objection to Guise pulling the chestnuts
+out of the fire, if he depended entirely upon Spain, but above all Mary
+Stuart must be kept in England.
+
+Philip professed himself willing to provide a part of the money required
+for Guise’s murderous attempt, but bargained for a larger contribution
+from the Pope.[247] Before anything could be decided, however, the
+ill-knit plan fell to pieces. Father Allen and most of the English
+Catholic exiles were in deadly earnest, and thought that “all this talk
+and intricacy was mere fencing.” The feeling, also, of national jealousy
+of the Scots began to manifest itself strongly amongst them. “They
+suspected a tendency on the part of the Scots to claim a controlling
+influence in the new Empire, and, as the Scots are naturally inclined
+to the French, they would rather see the affair carried through with
+but a few Spaniards, whilst the English hate this idea, as their
+country is the principal one, and they say that it should not lose its
+predominance.”[248] This tendency of the English exiles gradually worked
+upon Philip and his ministers, until French co-operation in the plans to
+subjugate Britain, even under the auspices of the Guises, was eliminated
+from the schemes, so far as Spain and the English exiles could influence
+them.
+
+Not many weeks elapsed before this vague plot of Guise to murder
+Elizabeth simultaneously with an invasion of Sussex had fallen through.
+On the 30th May, 1583, the Nuncio in Paris wrote to the Cardinal of Como,
+“I believe that the design upon the person of the Queen of England will
+come to nothing”; and three weeks later Tassis wrote to Philip that the
+murder plot “is, I see, for the present, quite at an end, and nothing
+more is being said about it, so the funds referred to will therefore
+not be required.”[249] The English Catholic exiles, led by Dr. Allen
+and Father Parsons, soon tired of such an unbusinesslike conspirator
+as Guise, and they came to Tassis, in Paris, with a scheme of their
+own. They were already jealous of French and Scottish intervention in
+English affairs. “They have received so much favour from your Majesty,
+that they would rather have the help of Spaniards.” Dr. Allen and his
+followers therefore stood aloof somewhat now from the Guise proposals,
+and “convinced that they must look for a remedy only to the feeling of
+England, they have made up their minds that they are simply wasting time
+in depending upon what is arranged here in France, and they have decided
+to lay the real condition of England before your Majesty, and beg you to
+extend your pity to the poor, afflicted, distressed Catholics there.”
+
+Tassis was much impressed by Dr. Allen’s earnestness. Scotland was in no
+condition, he said, to co-operate at present, even if it were advisable
+for her to do so, which the English thought it was not. The King was
+a mere boy, notably unstable and in the hands of heretics, though he
+pretended to be secretly favourable to Guise’s plans; and the Catholics
+of the North of England were ready to rise on their own account if Philip
+would aid them with money and a few troops to be landed in Yorkshire or
+Lancashire. “They are so confident of success, with the blessing of God,
+in whose service the attempt will be made, that it is impossible for any
+one to hear them without being convinced.” In this scheme the exiled
+Earl of Westmorland and Lord Dacre were to join, and Dr. Allen was to
+accompany the expedition as Bishop of Durham. The time fixed by Allen
+and his friends for the attempt was in September or October of that year,
+1583, in the hope that Philip’s fleet would by that time have defeated
+Don Antonio’s expedition off the Azores, and be free to co-operate with
+an English Catholic rising. Even an extreme Catholic party in Scotland
+were desirous of working independently of France and the Guises, and
+sent Lord Seton’s brother to Spain to appeal to Philip, avoiding all
+communication with Guise and Beton.
+
+The Duke of Guise, determined not to lose hold of the business if
+he could help it, tried to graft a plan of his own upon that of the
+English Catholics, who were in such dead earnest and had no object in
+view but the conversion of England. He was willing to abate his demands
+considerably, and Tassis thought that if he were flattered enough he
+would agree to whatever Philip ordered. Guise eventually managed to
+upset the businesslike plans of Dr. Allen and his friends by forcing
+upon them his undesired and impractical co-operation. Father Parsons,
+who had recently returned from Spain, was to go to Madrid (July, 1583)
+to represent to Philip the English view of the case and to crave Spanish
+support; but before he left Paris in August, Guise managed to enlist him
+as an advocate of his new combined plan, which he was to submit, not to
+Philip, but to the Pope. Parsons travelled under the name of Melino—one
+of his many aliases—and was instructed by Guise to say that if Philip
+would send 4,000 good soldiers and contribute money to raise and pay
+10,000 more, with arms for 5,000 Englishmen, the affair could be carried
+through successfully. Parsons was to go to Rome first and earnestly beg
+the Pope in Guise’s name to provide money liberally, and to leave the
+whole management of the affair to the King of Spain. Ports, he was to
+assure the Pope, had already been secured, especially that of Fouldrey,
+on the Lancashire coast, and troops could be sent from Flanders to join
+Guise’s force of 6,000 men to land in the South of England. The whole of
+the North of England and Catholic Scotland was ready to rise, the nobles
+prepared, and even James of Scotland had now freed himself from the
+custody of the Ruthvens and smiled upon the enterprise. The Pope was to
+be asked to issue a Bull approving of the expedition, giving indulgences
+to all who aided it, and to appoint Dr. Allen Nuncio and Bishop of Durham.
+
+This was the message that Parsons, under the name of Melino, took to
+Rome; and to any one who knows Philip’s methods it spells failure on the
+face of it. When the King heard that Parsons had in Guise’s name settled
+with the Pope what Rome’s contribution was to be, without reference
+to him, he expressed his annoyance with unwonted energy, for he had
+no intention of allowing his hands to be forced by priestly meddling
+or French interference. He had, indeed, by this time, as we shall see
+presently, gradually allowed himself to entertain the vast project for
+the conquest and domination of England on his own account, towards which
+he intended the Pope to contribute, not the comparative trifle demanded
+by Guise, but the lion’s share of the expense.
+
+At the same time as Parsons went on his way to Rome, Guise despatched to
+England Charles Paget, who, with Thomas Morgan, had been sent by Mary
+Stuart to serve as assistants or secretaries to Beton, his mission being
+to ascertain from the English Catholics what force they could join to
+Guise’s invading army. Paget, although an Englishman, was ostensibly a
+devout Guisan, but in strong opposition to the interference of Parsons
+and the Jesuits in political affairs.[250] From the first he had been
+a spy in Walsingham’s pay, and to him was owing the perfect knowledge
+possessed by Elizabeth’s Government of the whole of the present intrigue.
+The instructions given to him by Guise display more clearly than any
+other document the utter incompatibility of the views respectively of
+Philip and Guise with regard to England, and of themselves are sufficient
+to account for the subsequent exclusion of Guise from all the Spanish
+plans relating to it. Paget is instructed to discover which port will
+be most convenient for Guise’s landing, and what strength will join him
+there. Guise would come with 4,000 or 6,000 men, and desired a port
+within fifty leagues of Dover. He wished to know what provisions and
+arms would be ready for him, and much other information was sought. To
+all of this Philip scattered on the margin when he read the dispatch
+satirical exclamations at the unreadiness and uncertainty that these
+inquiries demonstrated; but what finally convinced Philip that Guise
+was no fit confederate for him was the concluding portion of Paget’s
+instructions. “Assure the English Catholics, on the faith and honour
+of Hercules [_i.e._, Guise], that the enterprise is being undertaken
+with no other object or intention than to re-establish the Catholic
+religion in England, and to place the Queen of Scotland peacefully on
+the English throne, which of right belongs to her. When this is effected
+the foreigners will immediately retire from the country, and if anyone
+attempts to frustrate this intention, Hercules [Guise] promises that
+he and his forces will join the people of the country to compel the
+foreigners to withdraw.”[251] No wonder that Philip underscored these
+lines, and that he thenceforward found the whole plan insufficiently
+matured. Once more he primly deprecated undue haste, and gently put the
+plan aside with vague professions of sympathy.
+
+Mendoza in England was less cautious than his master. His position,
+as we have seen, was a humiliating one, as Elizabeth persisted in her
+refusal to receive him as ambassador, and he was exposed to daily
+slights from those who took their tone from the Queen. When Charles
+Paget went to England on Guise’s errand in August-September, 1583, he
+was directed to Francis Throckmorton for the purpose of obtaining the
+information he sought; this man being probably the person referred to
+in the correspondence already quoted, as having been willing to kill
+Elizabeth a few months previously at Guise’s bidding. However that may
+be, Throckmorton was an intimate of Mendoza, who had been informed of
+all that had been discussed in Paris, and both he and Charles Paget,
+whilst he was in England, were closely watched. Through his numerous
+spies Walsingham was perfectly aware of all that had been so incautiously
+handled by Guise; the whole of the invasion project had been known to
+Elizabeth’s Government for months, and though Charles Paget, who was a
+spy, was allowed to get clear away to France, no sooner was he gone than
+the blow fell upon those in England with whom he had conferred.
+
+Francis Throckmorton was arrested, as was the new Earl of Northumberland
+and his son, whilst the Earl of Arundel was summoned before the Privy
+Council, and Lord Paget and Charles Arundell (of Wardour) fled to France.
+Mendoza was deeply concerned at the arrest of his friend Throckmorton,
+and wrote to Philip an account of it, cautiously worded, but sufficiently
+inculpatory: “The Catholics are quite cowed.... Only one paper was
+found upon Throckmorton, containing a list of the principal ports in
+England, and particulars with regard to them, and the chief gentlemen
+and Catholics resident in them. For this they carried him at once to the
+Tower, and it is feared that his life is in danger, although he informed
+me by a cipher note, written on a playing-card and thrown out of the
+window, that he denies that the document is in his handwriting, the hand
+being a disguised one. He told them that some person had thrown it into
+his house for the purpose of injuring him, and he assures me that he
+will endure a thousand deaths rather than accuse any one, which message
+he begs me to convey to his Catholic friends.... I have written to the
+lady in prison [_i.e._, Mary Stuart], encouraging her, and begging her
+not to grieve over the matter to the detriment of her health, but the
+business, it may be feared, may imperil her life if the negotiations in
+France are entirely discovered.”[252]
+
+Tassis in Paris was even more despondent, and he feared, what proved to
+be true, that the rack would soon draw from the prisoner all he knew.
+Time after time Throckmorton was tormented, as were his brother-in-law
+and two other relatives, and sufficient was torn from them, together with
+the known correspondence, to furnish a good pretext at last for expelling
+Mendoza from England with ignominy. On the 19th January, 1584, a formal
+summons for him to appear before the Council was handed to him. “If these
+gentlemen wish to see me in my private capacity,” he replied to Beal,
+the Secretary, “let them come to my house as I went to theirs when I
+wanted to see them. But if they are sitting in Council, I would wait upon
+them, as an ambassador should; but I warn them that if I open my ears to
+what they have to say, I shall not shut my mouth to answer them, as the
+service of my master may demand.” He says he gave this answer because he
+knew the intention was to expel him, and on the Councillors answering
+that they wished to see him officially, he went to the Lord Chancellor’s
+house to meet them.
+
+Walsingham spoke Italian better than the rest, and formulated the
+Queen’s complaint. Mendoza, he said, had conspired with Guise to liberate
+the Queen of Scots; he was known to be in communication with Mary, with
+the French plotters, and with Throckmorton, and he must leave the country
+within fifteen days. “It is strange,” sneered Mendoza, “that the Queen
+should have summoned them and himself for such a trifle as this. What
+you tell me are mere dreams, hardly worthy of an answer. These general
+accusations are absurd, mainly extorted by the rack, and unsupported by
+details.” Very different were the charges he brought against the Queen of
+trying to injure his master, King Philip: and he launched out his usual
+string of complaints, from the seizure of the Spanish treasure fifteen
+years before to the present helping of Don Antonio against his rightful
+sovereign. As for his leaving England, that, as his hearers well knew,
+would delight him, and he would go the moment his master instructed him
+to do so in answer to a despatch sent by the Queen requesting his recall.
+The Councillors rose angrily at this and said that nothing of the sort
+would be done: he must leave England at once: “and they explained their
+past acts with impertinences that I dare not repeat to your Majesty, the
+least of them being that I ought to be very thankful that the Queen had
+not ordered me to be punished for what I had done.”
+
+The blood of the proud Mendozas, the noblest family in Spain, flared out
+at this: “To my King alone in the world belongs the right of correcting
+me, and to him alone under heaven am I responsible: so, say no more
+on that point, unless ye are prepared to fight.” As for the Queen of
+England punishing him, he laughed at the idea. He would be overjoyed to
+be gone as soon as a passport was sent to him. She was a lady, and, as
+such, the least grateful to those who served her best; but, as he had
+failed to satisfy her as a minister of peace she would in future force
+him to try whether he would succeed better as a minister of war. Thus
+Mendoza flung down the gage to England and the Reformation. He had been
+unpopular in London before, but now the rumour spread through England
+that he had plotted to kill the Queen, and his life was in the greatest
+danger from the popular indignation against him. He himself, seeing that
+the Government refused him the aid of English ships to get away, and the
+Dutch privateers still swarmed in the narrow seas, was convinced that
+mischief was meant to him. But he held his head high and boasted more
+than ever, as slight followed slight from Elizabeth’s ministers, of the
+overwhelming greatness and power of his master, King Philip, who would
+avenge with interest all the injuries inflicted upon him and Spain. “Don
+Bernardino de Mendoza was not born to disturb countries, but to conquer
+them,” he said in one of his messages to Elizabeth; whilst to Philip
+himself he passionately wrote with a back-handed reproach: “All their
+behaviour is on a par with this; and if God had not made you so clement
+and God-fearing a prince, surely no vassal of yours would consent to
+serve you in England, seeing the way in which the English treat us: for
+so powerful an empire as that which God has granted to your Majesty
+cannot endure such ill-treatment as this for any earthly reward.”[253]
+
+To add to his trouble, he was almost without money, for Philip was
+the worst paymaster in the world, and he had to bring away with him
+from England, not only his own great household but the English spies
+and intermediaries who had served him. “The insolence of these people
+[_i.e._, Elizabeth’s Government] has brought me to a state, in which my
+only desire to live is for the purpose of revenging myself upon them;
+and I pray that God may let it be soon, and will give me grace to be His
+instrument of wrath, even though I have to walk barefoot across the world
+to beg for it. I am sure his Majesty will give such an answer as their
+insolence merits.”[254]
+
+And so, cursing and reviled, the proud ambassador, with rage in his
+heart, was hustled out of England, and once more King Philip was face
+to face with the apparently unsolvable problem of how to gain control
+of English policy. Five ministers of his had begun hopefully with
+methods of suave diplomacy, and one after the other had become dangerous
+conspirators and promoters of treason. Elizabeth and her Government,
+timidly at first and with many gyrations, had through a long series of
+years injured with impunity the dearest interests of Spain. The seizure
+of the treasure had caused the failure of Alba; the constant aid of
+the Netherlands revolt had prevented the pacification of Flanders; the
+sheltering of the pirates and privateers in English ports had almost cut
+off communication between Spain and the Flemish dominions by sea; the
+depredations of Drake, afloat and ashore, had well-nigh ruined Spain and
+demonstrated her impotence to the world; whilst the assistance and asylum
+given to the Portuguese Pretender had rendered incomplete Philip’s hold
+over the new conquest upon which he based such great hopes.
+
+For five-and-twenty years Philip, against the impatient advice of
+many of his ministers, had persisted in the belief that his own slow,
+cautious, diplomatic methods would succeed in conciliating Elizabeth or
+in substituting for her an instrument more amenable to his hand. The
+expulsion of Mendoza, in January, 1584, marks the conclusion of the era
+of peaceful effort. The ambassador left England breathing threats of war
+and vengeance, and when Philip received the reports of his doings he had
+no words but those of praise and approbation for them. “You have acted
+with the same good sense and courage in the manner of your departure
+as in all else that has happened during your stay in the country. I am
+entirely satisfied with you, and with your good services, and will take
+care that they are duly remembered.”
+
+Philip at last had made up his mind: henceforward it must be war to
+the knife between himself and Elizabeth, and no keener instrument to
+work the destruction of his enemy could be found than Mendoza, with a
+bitter personal injury of his own to avenge. From his new post in Paris
+the ambassador worked incessantly to compass the ruin of the _régime_
+in England that had wounded his pride; and for the rest of his active
+life, until, blind and heartbroken with failure, the brilliant soldier,
+diplomatist, and historian was shrouded in a monk’s gabardine, Elizabeth
+had no enemy so indefatigable and rancorous as Don Bernardino de Mendoza.
+Plans and plots for revolution in England, for the murder of Elizabeth,
+and for the overthrow by treachery of the Protestant power in favour of
+Mary Stuart, were the means upon which Mendoza mainly depended.
+
+Philip was willing, in his cool, cautious way, to smile upon such
+attempts, when he could do so without committing himself prematurely
+or too far. They might turn out well by chance, and he might reap the
+harvest where others had sown the grain and nourished it with their
+blood. But through it all thenceforward there was slowly maturing in
+Philip’s mind, and preparing in his chancelleries, the great enterprise
+to which he had been forced by the logic of events—the conquest and
+domination of England by his own arms and for his own benefit. Such
+a scheme necessitated patient plotting in every capital in Europe
+before the material preparations could be even commenced. Of the secret
+preliminaries, the laborious concentration, and the final disaster of the
+great Armada in which Philip’s ambitions were wrecked the next chapter
+will tell.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IX
+
+1584-1588
+
+    English Catholics _versus_ Scottish—Santa Cruz’s proposal to
+    conquer England—Enlisting the Pope—Intrigues in Rome—Mary
+    Stuart and Philip—Drake’s raid on Galicia—Elizabeth assumes
+    the protectorate of the Netherlands—War at last inevitable—The
+    preliminaries of the Armada—The Babington plot—Philip’s
+    consent—His distrust—Discovery—Elizabeth’s fears of war—Her
+    approaches to Spain—Santa Cruz’s fresh proposals to invade
+    England—His great plan—The Scottish Catholics try again to
+    share the attack upon England—Failure of Huntly’s scheme—Guise
+    not allowed by Philip to interfere—Mendoza in favour of the
+    Scottish plan—Philip’s claims to the English crown—The peace
+    negotiations—Drake’s dash upon Cadiz—Parma and the Armada—Death
+    of Santa Cruz—Medina Sidonia—The Armada—The failure and its
+    causes—The end of the struggle to win England
+
+
+When the news came of the arrest of Francis Throckmorton and his friends,
+and the expulsion of Mendoza, in January, 1584, Allen and Parsons were at
+Tournay busily discussing and arranging with Alexander Farnese, Philip’s
+viceroy in Flanders, the details of the proposed invasion of England
+in conjunction with Guise and a rising of English Catholics. At first
+the English priests affected to believe that the arrests would have no
+serious effects upon their plans. “If,” they wrote to Philip, “these
+men had been cast into prison in consequence of our great business,
+they would, as usual, have been put into the Tower of London; and we
+feel sure, therefore, that up to the present our adversaries have not
+discovered any particulars of our plans.”[255] On the contrary, they
+continue, what has happened should only have the effect of encouraging
+his Majesty to carry the matter through with greater celerity. “It is
+nothing short of a miracle that a business known to so many friends for
+two years past should have remained undiscovered so long; but it cannot
+remain hidden much longer, so that unless aid comes from abroad at once
+the Catholics in the island will be utterly ruined. We therefore cast
+ourselves at the feet of his Majesty, and cry unto him for the love of
+Jesus Christ that he will not abandon so many suffering souls, who with
+their hands raised to heaven are looking eagerly for his help. The time
+is favourable, and every day’s delay is filled with danger.”
+
+Alas! the zealous Churchmen, who were still at this time acting in
+concert with the Duke of Guise, did not even yet understand the character
+and aims of Philip. The King, keener sighted than the priests, knew
+full well that the arrest of the English Catholics and the expulsion of
+Mendoza meant not only the failure of the loosely-knit plan of invasion
+with Scottish-Guisan co-operation, but a remodelling of the whole scheme
+for subduing England to his will. He faced the new problem cautiously
+and speciously, as was his wont, for he could not afford to alienate
+the Papacy by avowing political ends, nor dared he at first openly
+to fly in the face of Guise. Mendoza was summoned to Spain to confer
+with his master, for Mendoza was always haughtily oblivious to any
+but purely Spanish means and ends, and to him was confided the entire
+direction of the English enterprise from the Spanish embassy in Paris,
+to which he was appointed. But ere he arrived at his post the English
+Jesuits, recognising, at last, that the Scottish-Guisan plan was really
+frustrated, had trimmed their sails in the direction most likely to
+attain the ends they aimed at—namely, that which would best please their
+Spanish paymaster.
+
+The Vatican, always jealous of Spanish overreaching, still clung to
+the inclusion of Guise and the attack upon England across the Scottish
+border;[256] and Beton and other Scottish Catholics naturally followed
+a lead which offered such prospects for the aggrandisement of their
+country. But Allen and Parsons were already undeceived, for they had been
+in close touch with Spanish feeling in Flanders; and when the former
+was summoned to Paris by Beton and Guise in April, 1584, in order that
+they might convince him that the Scottish plan was the best, they came
+to high words, and Allen penned a vigorous defence of his own and the
+Spanish view. The English Catholics, he said, would never rise and join a
+force coming from Scotland, owing to the hatred and jealousy between the
+peoples; the King of Scots’ religion being more than doubtful, moreover,
+will make people believe that he is trying to conquer England for himself
+rather than for the Church, and the very Catholics will fight against him
+and his foreign Catholic allies. A landing in Scotland also, said Allen,
+would give Elizabeth and her Government time to prepare and mass their
+forces on the Border, whilst a descent on the Welsh or northern English
+coasts would find the people ready to welcome their deliverers and secure
+their footing before the Queen could organise resistance.[257]
+
+Before he surrendered his post to his successor, Mendoza, Tassis, the
+outgoing Spanish ambassador in Paris, also wrote a weighty memorandum to
+Philip enforcing the same view, whilst recommending him to send money
+to the King of Scots to keep him in hand;[258] and thus not many weeks
+passed from the failure of the combined Guisan and Jesuit plan before the
+English Jesuit and Spanish elements perfectly understood each other, and
+agreed that Spain must act alone in England. In May, 1584, Tassis wrote
+to Philip that Allen and Parsons were both in Paris: “Still of opinion
+that the enterprise should be directed against England itself, and on no
+account should it be attempted elsewhere.... Scotsmen here, impatient
+at the delay, are discussing the possibility of carrying through the
+business by other aid than that of your Majesty; and, although Allen
+and Parsons are trying to keep in with them as much as possible, they
+[_i.e._, Allen and Parsons] say that the English need no other patron
+than your Majesty, and they not only look to you for a remedy, but they
+say that even if you make the Queen of Scotland their Sovereign they
+hope you will not leave them hastily, or until everything is settled
+permanently. They also say they would be glad for your Majesty to keep
+some [English] ports in your hands, the better to assure matters.”[259]
+This was the thin end of the wedge; and, knowingly or not, the ideas of
+Allen and Parsons must even thus early have agreed with Philip’s humour
+at the time.
+
+James Stuart, by his tergiversation, had made himself quite impossible,
+from Philip’s point of view, as a successor to his mother on the
+throne of Catholic England. Philip’s own descent from John of Gaunt
+was undoubted, and already had been quietly mentioned as giving him a
+claim to succeed to the Crown in default of other Catholic heirs. If
+England had to be conquered by sheer force and by Spanish arms, Philip
+was determined to make a complete job of it, and to suffer no more
+backsliding such as had happened after the death of his wife Mary; so
+that the suggestion of the Jesuits that the attack should be a frontal
+one on England itself, and that the Spaniards should retain their
+hold upon the country even after Mary Stuart had been substituted for
+Elizabeth, met a ready but cautious echo from the King himself.
+
+Some months before this, when, in August, 1583, the Marquis of Santa
+Cruz, the great Alvaro de Bazan, had scattered off the Azores the
+mercenary French and English fleet in the service of the unfortunate
+Portuguese Pretender, Don Antonio, and the Spanish squadrons, flushed
+with victory, were ready for more fighting, the famous admiral wrote in
+exalted strains to the King, praying for his permission to make him King
+of England. “Your Majesty,” he wrote, “is now so well prepared, and with
+an army so victorious, that I supplicate you not to miss this chance;
+for believe me, sire, I have the will to make you King of England and of
+other realms as well, whence you might with confidence hope to subdue
+Flanders.” Philip was hardly ready for the step yet; for he had the hard
+task before him of hoodwinking the Vatican as well as parrying French
+opposition and Guisan interference, but he wrote to his great admiral:
+“These are things of which we can hardly speak just yet, for they must
+depend upon time and circumstances; but in any case I will order the
+preparations you propose to be made, biscuits to be provided, the
+building of galleons hastened, and men sent to Flanders to be ready.”[260]
+
+The first necessary step was to secure the financial support of the
+Pope without letting him know the real object of the proposed invasion.
+Gregory XIII. was cautious and unambitious, though not unwilling to
+signalise his pontificate by some great effort against heresy, but,
+like most Italians, with no desire to aggrandise Spain politically. He
+was surrounded by Cardinals representing different interests: Medici,
+D’Este, Gonzaga, Rusticucci, Santorio, and others favouring the French
+view, which looked with hope towards the conversion of James Stuart and
+an arrangement with Elizabeth to recognise him as her heir, the real
+object being, of course, the exclusion of Spanish influence from England.
+Cardinal Sanzio watched the interests of the House of Guise, while the
+Secretary of State, Caraffa, Sirleto, Como, Dr. Allen (somewhat later),
+and the Spanish ambassador, the Count of Olivares, worked craftily and
+incessantly to forward Philip’s wishes. It will be recollected that when
+Father Parsons, under the name of Melino, went to Rome at the instance of
+Guise in the autumn of 1583, to beg the Pope’s assistance in money for
+the combined Anglo-Scottish project, Gregory XIII. had readily promised
+what was asked of him, much to Philip’s annoyance. When, therefore,
+Olivares, in Philip’s name in the spring of the following year, 1584,
+sounded the Pope upon the much vaster project of invading England with a
+great force direct, the Pontiff blandly replied that he would contribute
+what he had promised to Guise through Parsons, and at the same time
+recommended to Philip the Guisan plan of an invasion of Scotland as a
+preliminary of the conquest of England for the faith.
+
+It was not so easy, replied Philip, to liberate the King of Scotland, nor
+was it safe for the Duke of Guise to stir from his house in France unless
+in great force. If he were to try the Scottish plan he would probably be
+lost, which would be an irreparable blow to the Catholic cause in France.
+Then Philip gently pushed James Stuart into the background. He shall be
+helped with money, of course, and the English Catholics shall be kept in
+good heart, but the affair is a great one, and will take time and much
+money if it is to be done with a certainty of success; above all, the
+Pope must “contribute very largely, and must find ways and means, through
+his holy zeal, to do much more than any one has yet imagined.”[261]
+
+The stars seemed to favour the Spanish plan. Young Alençon died in June,
+1584, and the next heir to the Crown of France was the Huguenot Henry
+of Navarre. Guise, with his high hopes and the people of Paris at his
+bidding, was thenceforward more easily brought into obedience to Philip;
+for upon Spanish forces alone could he depend to aid the French Catholics
+to resist the accession of a Protestant sovereign. Civil war, indeed,
+loomed up in France, and from it the Duke of Guise might hope to emerge
+a king; and in December, 1584, the Catholic league of Philip and Guise
+was signed at Joinville, by which the King of Spain was left a free hand
+in English affairs in return for his support of Guise in the rapidly
+approaching struggle in France. Philip was thus assured, first, that the
+Huguenots would be too busy to help Elizabeth in her hour of need, and,
+secondly, that Guise would be too full of his own ambitions in France to
+interfere with his in England.
+
+The death of Gregory XIII. and the accession of Felice Peretti as Pope
+Sixtus V. also seemed to favour the Spanish objects. Sixtus was full
+of vast projects for the spread of orthodox Christianity; he was a man
+of great ability and boundless ambition, who had waited long for his
+chance and was determined to make the most of it now it had come, so
+that Olivares had in future a more ready listener than before to his
+exhortations on behalf of the Catholic King. But though Sixtus yearned to
+do great things for the Church, he was determined, as his predecessor had
+been, not to work for purely Spanish aims to the prejudice of France; and
+for the next two years a keen war of wits was waged between Olivares and
+the Pope, the Spaniard seeking to obtain the million ducats subsidy to
+the English enterprise without pledging his master to any definite course
+in England after the conquest.
+
+In the meanwhile the long delay was driving Mary Stuart and the English
+Catholics to desperation. The Queen had been taken from the mild custody
+of Lord Shrewsbury, and was now kept a close prisoner in the hands of
+very different gaolers. Her one hope was in Philip and Mendoza; but as
+month followed month whilst her treatment became harsher and no succour
+came—for the vast plans of Philip could only be carried out, if at all,
+with infinite preliminaries—the unhappy woman became almost vehement in
+her prayers that the movement should be made before it was too late.
+In November, 1584, she wrote to Mendoza: “Let the end be what it may,
+and whatever becomes of me, no matter what change may be made in my
+condition, pray use all diligence in forwarding the execution of the
+great enterprise without any regard for the personal danger I may incur.
+I shall look upon my life as well spent if by its sacrifice I can help to
+relieve the multitude of oppressed children of the Holy Catholic Church.”
+Both she and Mendoza believed at this time that her life was in danger
+unless the Spanish attack was delivered in time to avert the supposed
+evil intention, and the ambassador, writing to Philip, added his own
+supplications to those of the Queen that no more time should be lost.
+
+What Mendoza dreaded even more than Mary’s murder by the English, was
+the possibility of her escape by their means, as she would then owe her
+life to heretics, and would thereafter presumably be an untrustworthy
+instrument against them. “If, on the contrary, she perish, as may be
+feared, it cannot fail to bring scandal and reproach upon your Majesty,
+because as you are, after her, the nearest Catholic heir of the blood
+royal of England, some false suspicion might be aroused at your having
+abandoned the good Queen to be ruined by the heretics, in order to open
+the door to your Majesty’s own advantage.”[262] This idea of Philip’s
+claim to the English succession was industriously kept alive by Allen,
+Parsons, and Hugh Owen, who had been appointed a committee to advise the
+Duke of Parma in Flanders with regard to the English enterprise, until
+the breaking out of the civil war in France, and the open support given
+to the Dutch rebels and Huguenots by Elizabeth, changed the centre of
+intrigue from Flanders to Rome; and Allen and Parsons were sent thither
+to work in favour of the Spanish plans.
+
+For the scheme was surely growing now into a vast expedition, ostensibly
+to place Mary Stuart upon the throne of England, but really to make
+Philip master of the country, with or without the nominal sovereignty.
+Deeply though France was plunged in civil war, with Guise in arms
+tyrannising over the King, the French interest was still strong, and,
+both at Rome and elsewhere, would struggle its hardest against anything
+like a Spanish domination of England. Nor were the Italians in love with
+the idea of a conquest that would make Philip supreme in Europe, and
+consequently all the skill, boldness, and cunning of Spanish diplomacy
+was concentrated in Rome to obtain by false pretences from the Church the
+vast sums required for the conquest of England. With the weak attempts
+of the French Government itself to avert the danger Philip could easily
+deal. The French ministers proposed to Mendoza in June, 1585, that Spain
+and France jointly should invade England in favour of Mary Stuart.
+Philip understood the object at once, and in his usual way, with much
+sanctimonious verbiage, asked for a multitude of pledges and particulars,
+as if he entertained the proposal, whilst he continued his own stealthy
+preliminaries in Rome for the purely Spanish enterprise, for which
+others might pay but he alone must direct.[263] When the leader of the
+French party in the Vatican, Cardinal D’Este, soon after this tried to
+persuade the Pope that the best and safest course for the Church would
+be to aid Guise to direct the English enterprise and make James Stuart
+King of Britain after his mother’s death, another line had to be taken
+by Philip. Then Olivares boldly told the Pope that D’Este, like so many
+of his house, was a bad Catholic, who sought to bring about the victory
+of heresy in France and the consequent downfall of the Guises. Let the
+Pope secure the triumph of Guise and the faith in France first, urged
+Olivares, and the English enterprise could be undertaken afterwards.
+
+Sixtus V. was willing, nay anxious, to allow the conquest to be
+undertaken by Spain alone, recognising that the French Catholics could
+not now safely be allowed to exhaust their strength in a foreign war; but
+he always hoped that James’s constant assurances of Catholic sympathies
+might be sincere, and that Mary Stuart might be duly succeeded by her son
+under Catholic auspices. Guise also was constantly plied with arguments
+by Mendoza on Philip’s orders, directed to divert him from all ideas
+of England. “Warn him [Guise] against making any agreement with his
+enemies,” wrote Philip, on the 17th August, 1585, “and open his eyes with
+regard to the English enterprise. Point out to him the danger he runs
+if he allows himself to be cajoled into leaving his home and country
+before he has humbled his rivals and converted or expelled the heretics,
+and how much deceived he might find himself when he wished to return to
+France from such an attempt.... Tell the French first to put an end to
+the heretics in their own country, and afterwards we can deal with them
+elsewhere.”[264]
+
+The sinister activity of Philip’s agents in Rome and the vapouring of
+the English Catholic refugees in Spanish Flanders, had in the meanwhile
+aroused the distrust of Elizabeth and her Government. Ever since Philip
+had captured Portugal and obtained thus the command of the Atlantic, the
+Puritan element in the English Court, led by Leicester and Walsingham,
+had promoted attempts, through Don Antonio and otherwise, to strike a
+crushing blow at the Spanish naval power in Europe. Drake’s depredations
+in the Pacific had been a terrible loss to Spain, both in a moral and
+material sense, and the English seamen were eager to return to the
+charge, in order to anticipate and frustrate the evil which most of them
+believed was being plotted against their country by the quiet, stealthy
+little elderly man far away in the mountains of Castile. Elizabeth and
+Cecil detested to face responsibility; and although the Queen was willing
+to accept the benefit of accomplished facts, she usually set her face
+against assuming an attitude of open hostility to Spain when she could
+avoid it. Leicester had at last, in the autumn of 1585, induced her
+to accept, with much misgiving, the practical protection of the rebel
+Dutch States, and this was naturally assumed by Philip as an act of open
+war. Thenceforward any means for injuring the English were considered
+legitimate by the King of Spain.
+
+In the spring of 1585 a large number of English ships had been induced,
+on a promise of immunity from molestation, to carry cargoes of grain to
+the northern ports of Spain, where famine was impending. One of these
+ships, the _Primrose_, was discharging her cargo off Portugalete, near
+Bilbao, when, as the English sailors averred, the Lieutenant-Governor
+of Biscay and a force of men disguised as merchants boarded the ship
+and suddenly called upon the Englishmen to surrender. Though taken
+by surprise, the crew turned upon the intruders and threw them all
+overboard, though some were subsequently rescued by the English, amongst
+them the Lieutenant-Governor himself; whereupon the _Primrose_, carrying
+her prisoners with her, immediately set sail to England, with the news
+of the treachery, the official orders found upon the person of the
+half-drowned Lieutenant-Governor being to the effect that the ships were
+all to be captured to help the expedition contemplated for the invasion
+of England. At all events, the rest of the English ships were captured,
+Philip’s own pretext for the act being that it was in reprisal for the
+daring abduction by the _Primrose_ of the Lieutenant-Governor.[265]
+
+No sooner did the news reach England than the country burst into a chorus
+of indignation, and the sailors and Puritans, who had so long urged
+an active policy against Spain on the sea, found that all Englishmen
+were now with them.[266] It was no longer to be a timid support of the
+Portuguese Pretender, or a surreptitious sheltering of Dutch and Huguenot
+privateers, but an avowed public movement, and London and the western
+ports of England came openly with subscriptions, to which the Queen
+contributed largely, for a joint-stock fleet under Drake, to avenge the
+capture of English ships, and to injure Spanish shipping wherever it
+could be found. This was open war; and through the summer and autumn of
+1585 Philip’s spies in England continued to send him alarming news of the
+great preparations for a naval expedition against him under the dreaded
+Drake. Sometimes it was said to be another attempt to place Don Antonio
+on the Portuguese throne, sometimes it was the Spanish silver fleet that
+was to be met and plundered on its way home, and so forth; but whatever
+it was it boded ill to Philip’s ships, with Drake in command of his
+foes. Retaliatory embargoes were placed once more on Spanish property in
+England, and the two countries thenceforward were practically at war.
+
+The enthusiasm in England knew no bounds; and when Drake and his sea-dogs
+Fenner, Wynter, and Frobisher sailed out of Plymouth with twenty-one
+stout craft and many pinnaces well armed, on the 14th September, 1585,
+every one in England knew that Philip’s secret plotting was to be met by
+open action. Capturing the Spanish ships, they met, Drake and his company
+in a few days, came to anchor off the Bayona Isles in Galicia, and landed
+a force of men. “What want ye here,” asked the terrified townsmen, far
+from succour. “We come,” said Drake, “for the Englishmen ye have in your
+prisons, and for the English merchandise ye have stolen.” The people
+could only give them fair words and presents of country produce, for
+the English ships had not been captured there. Burning a chapel and its
+contents, the English force then sailed to the great harbour of Vigo,
+where they looted all they could lay their hands upon. Here again the
+people came to parley, and Frobisher, who spoke good Spanish, was the
+spokesman of the English. “We want our countrymen and our stolen goods
+restored to us,” he said; and the Spaniards were ready to promise this
+or anything if the valuables just seized by the English were returned.
+Banquets and palavers followed, but they were full of distrust, and
+nothing came of them; for Drake saw that his enemies were but delaying
+until help should arrive. So, capturing all he could catch in Vigo
+Bay, he sailed away on his West India voyage, intending to assail the
+Spanish colonial power in its three principal western centres. Philip
+was astounded at the boldness of the attack, the first upon Spanish
+soil itself, not, as he was careful to explain, because of the material
+damage suffered, which was small, but for the “insolence” of the thing;
+but withal, it took six months of frenzied effort before Alvaro de Bazan
+could muster a Spanish fleet fit to pursue the bold Devonshire sailor,
+who was devastating the West Indies.
+
+The departure of Leicester and a strong English army to Holland, at the
+end of 1585, finally brought England and Spain nationally face to face
+in the field. We have witnessed the slow process by which Philip and
+Elizabeth, both haters of war, had been drawn into this position. For
+the former it was vital that England should be amenable to his direction
+in foreign policy, or the cause for which he lived was doomed, and the
+decadence of Spain as a dominant power in Europe was certain; and, with
+his patient, inflexible belief in the fated triumph of his methods, he
+had striven through twenty-eight years to secure his object by peaceful
+means. He had failed, and it was to be war after all. Not now against
+a Queen whose throne was unstable, but against a popular sovereign and
+a nation which, since he had seen it, had been born to a new sense of
+power, a consciousness of potential grandeur, and a determination to
+live its own life without interference from its neighbours. But though
+Philip’s plans were thus changed late in the struggle and he saw himself
+faced by new forces, he, at least, never doubted of the result. For him
+the idea of failure, in a cause that in his eyes was that of God Himself,
+was impossible. With a limited mental scope, which shut out all views
+but one, he was incapable of understanding that there were two sides to
+every question, or that Elizabeth was actuated in her resistance to his
+advances by anything else than an impious desire to do evil for evil’s
+sake. A small spice of imagination would have enabled him to see that she
+was fighting for her own and her country’s life and greatness, as surely
+as he was fighting for his; and perchance the knowledge might have made
+harmony, or at least neutrality, possible. But, given Philip’s character
+and Elizabeth’s circumstances, it was inevitable, after the autumn of
+1585, that the antagonists should come to close grip, and that one or
+the other should be reduced to impotence for harm.
+
+Philip was convinced of this at last, and with his leaden-footed
+deliberation he set about making success as certain as he knew how to
+make it. He was laborious, unsparing of himself and others, a man of
+great personal ability, sagacious and wise within his limitations; but
+his ingrained distrust of other men—part of his father’s teaching—led
+him to take upon himself the care of every detail in all his enterprises
+and deprived his officers of initiative and independence. From his cell
+in the Escorial, far away and difficult of access from the coast, he
+insisted upon pulling the wires which controlled the smallest actions of
+his subordinates, and we shall see how in the crowning effort of his life
+these fatal characteristics cast a blight over the vast enterprise, upon
+which depended the fate of Christendom for centuries.
+
+[Illustration: CARDINAL ALLEN]
+
+There were many difficulties to overcome before the material preparations
+could even be commenced. First there was Sixtus to persuade, which was
+not an easy task. Olivares and Allen worked hard in Rome to convince him
+that Philip was moved solely by religious zeal, and not by a desire for
+revenge or aggrandisement, in projecting the expedition. “I have plied
+him,” wrote Olivares, “with every argument ... but in addition to his
+natural tenacity and his buckler of precedents, I have been much hampered
+with the news of your Majesty’s preparations which pour in from all
+quarters.” The Guisan and Italian Cardinals, too, were for ever undoing
+one day what Olivares and Allen with Caraffa had effected the day before.
+The Scottish and Welsh Catholic clergy in Rome, too, especially Dr. Owen
+Lewis, Bishop of Cassano, and even many of the English secular clergy,
+were strongly opposed to what they feared would mean a Spanish domination
+of the island; and between the opposing factions and his disinclination
+to part with the vast sum of money demanded of him, Sixtus was not
+easy to bend to Philip’s will. At length, after much friction and many
+quarrels, Olivares was obliged to be content with the Pope’s promise of
+a million ducats towards the subjection of England; but no persuasion or
+pressure could move Sixtus to provide any part of this sum until after
+the Spanish army had secured a footing on the island. A more delicate
+matter even than this was the question of the sovereignty of England
+after the death of Mary Stuart. Sixtus now usually agreed—though he
+often wavered on the point—that James Stuart was not to be trusted; and
+in compliance with Philip’s argument that a successor to Mary should be
+chosen before she was placed upon the English throne, in order to prevent
+her from forcing her son as her heir afterwards, the Pope was at length
+brought to agree to leave the choice of the future Sovereign of England
+to the King of Spain, though he pleaded hard that the person chosen
+should be an Englishman.[267]
+
+Whilst Olivares in Rome, with imperious boldness, was managing the Pope,
+Mendoza in Paris, with equal skill, was keeping Guise in hand, pointing
+out the great destiny that awaited him in France, and the shame of
+allowing a heretic King to succeed to the “most Christian” Crown. At the
+same time he maintained a close correspondence with Mary Stuart and the
+disaffected section of English Catholics who were represented as yearning
+for the coming of King Philip’s liberating fleet. Mary was sore and angry
+at what she thought an unjustifiable delay on the part of Philip, and was
+incessant in her prayers, through Mendoza, that she should be liberated
+before it was too late. Most of her intermediaries were false, and her
+secret correspondence was known to Walsingham and Elizabeth, but with
+Mary’s unhappy trustfulness she never failed to seize upon any chance,
+however dangerous, by which her great ambition might, perhaps, be served.
+
+In the middle of May, 1586, Charles Paget, who was still one of Mary’s
+agents in Paris, came to Mendoza, bringing with him an English priest
+named Ballard, who had been sent by a number of Catholics, especially
+in Lancashire and the North, to represent to him that: “God had infused
+more courage than ever into them, and had convinced them that no time
+was so opportune as the present to shake off the oppression of the Queen
+and the yoke of heresy that weighs upon them, as most of the strongest
+heretics are now absent in Zeeland. They say that I have never deceived
+them, and they beg me to tell them whether your Majesty had determined
+to help them to take up arms when they decided to do so.”[268] Mendoza
+had but a general expression of sympathy to reply to this; for though
+the great fleet of conquest projected in Spain was already the talk of
+Europe, to Philip’s officers it was still supposed to be an inviolate
+secret. This inquiry of the English Catholics, however, was not John
+Ballard’s real reason for coming to see Mendoza. He handed him a letter
+from four English Catholics who had access to Elizabeth’s Court, in which
+they promised to kill the Queen either by poison or by steel if they were
+assured of Philip’s help after the deed was done. Mendoza ciphered the
+letter himself and sent it to Philip’s secretary, but as John Ballard
+did not broach the subject verbally Mendoza’s disinclination to give any
+pledges kept Ballard in Paris beating about the bush in doubt for many
+weeks. Parsons, who was a good hater, asserted ten years afterwards[269]
+that the whole scheme of Ballard and Gifford was promoted by Paget
+and Morgan, Mary Stuart’s correspondents in Paris, for the purpose of
+frustrating the purely Spanish attack upon England, to which they are
+represented as being bitterly hostile, and that Walsingham was informed
+of the plot with the same object. Paget was, and continued to be, a
+pensioner of Spain, and Morgan, who was entirely trusted by Mary, was
+also richly rewarded by Philip, at her request; but there is no reason
+to doubt the positive assertions of Parsons that both of them belonged
+to the anti-Jesuit party, to which, indeed, most English as well as
+the Scottish and Welsh Catholics adhered; and that by every means they
+endeavoured to frustrate what Allen and the Jesuits tried so hard to
+promote—a Spanish domination of England.
+
+Whilst Ballard waited in Paris the reply of Mendoza, the latter received
+important letters from Mary Stuart, who at last had been able, by
+Morgan’s contrivance, to reopen correspondence with the outer world,
+little dreaming, poor soul, that the facilities provided were only a trap
+of her enemies. This was the first time she had communicated with Mendoza
+since his arrival in Paris a year before, and William Paget, the brother
+of Charles, was her messenger. He was to make certain proposals to him
+for Philip’s aid to “our designs”; but by far the most important part of
+the message came afterwards. The continued heresy of her son James had,
+she said, well-nigh broken her heart, and in order to secure the triumph
+of the Church “I will cede and make over by will to the King your master
+my right to the succession of the English Crown, and ask him to take me
+in future entirely under his protection, and also the affairs of this
+country. For the discharge of my own conscience I could not hope to place
+them in the hands of a Prince more zealous in our Catholic faith or more
+capable in all respects of re-establishing it in this country.... I am
+obliged in this matter to prefer the public welfare of the Church to the
+aggrandisement of my posterity.”
+
+Thus Mary finally embraced the Jesuit view which looked forward to
+a Spanish sovereignty over England to the detriment of her son and
+Scotland, and in opposition to many of her friends and adherents in
+England and France.[270] To the King of Spain this renunciation of her
+son by Mary was of profound significance. His own English descent had
+never been lost sight of, but here his claim was rendered legitimate
+apart from his ancestry; and Mendoza, though when he received Mary’s
+letter he had just been couched for cataract and was temporarily blind,
+caused a reply to be written to the Queen warmly commending her saintly
+resolution. She saw, he said, how evil her son was disposed, and the
+French had done little enough for her, whereas Philip had always
+befriended her. “Moreover,” he wrote to Philip, “failing the Queen of
+Scots and her son, your Majesty is the direct legitimate heir to the
+Crown of England. Cecil, the Lord Treasurer, was in the habit of saying
+that the Duchy of Lancaster had been unlawfully usurped from your
+Majesty.”[271] No wonder that Philip replied to this in what was for him
+an unusually effusive strain: “She [Mary Stuart] has greatly risen in my
+estimation in consequence of what she says, and has much increased the
+devotion I have always felt for her interests, not so much because of
+what she says in my favour, though I am very grateful for that also, as
+because she postpones her love for her son, which might be expected to
+lead her astray, for the service of our Lord, the good of Christendom,
+and the salvation of England. Tell her all this from me, and assure her
+that if she perseveres in the good path she has chosen I hope that God
+will bless her by placing her in possession of her own. You will add that
+I shall be happy to undertake the protection of her person and interests
+as she requests.”[272]
+
+This move of Mary’s made it necessary for Philip to handle the question
+of the succession with more caution than ever in Rome, for if once the
+French and Italian Churchmen thought that he meant to seize the Crown
+of England for himself, half Europe would have been ready to oppose
+him. So Olivares was ordered to “keep constantly before the eyes of his
+Holiness the advisability of choosing some firm Catholic, who on the
+exclusion of the King of Scots should take his place, and it is equally
+important to keep his Holiness to the point, binding him to agree to my
+nomination of a fit successor to the Queen of Scots in England.” The
+reply from Philip gave Mary new hope. She had been deeply discouraged at
+the repeated failures of attempts to rescue her and overthrow Elizabeth,
+and the long delay of any effective aid from Philip had well-nigh driven
+her to despair. But now, surely, a new era of success was opening to her.
+Rumours reached even her in her prison of the great preparations being
+made in the Spanish and Portuguese ports for some vast naval enterprise;
+whilst the open war between Elizabeth’s troops and the Spaniards in
+Zeeland seemed to Mary to make certain and near the hour when Philip’s
+arms should avenge the injuries done to him by finally crushing the
+heretic Queen and substituting Mary for her. Many times in the last six
+months, she wrote to Mendoza, she had turned a deaf ear to proposals
+of English Catholics for her deliverance: “But now that I hear of the
+good intentions of the Catholic King towards us I have written to the
+principal leaders of the Catholics here a full statement of my views
+on all points of the execution of the enterprise. To save time I have
+ordered them to send to you with all speed one of their number, fully
+instructed to treat with you, in accordance with the promises given to
+you in general terms, and to lay before you all the requests they wish to
+make to the King. I assure you, on their faithful promise given to me,
+that they will carry out their undertakings, even at the risk of their
+lives. I therefore beg you to give full credit to their messenger as if I
+had sent him myself. He will tell you the means they have for getting me
+away from here, which I will attempt to effect on my own account if I am
+assured of armed aid.”[273]
+
+Almost simultaneously with this the group of English Catholics who had
+sent Ballard to Mendoza in May were able to supply the ambassador with
+the details and assurances he had requested to prove the seriousness
+of their intention. Their envoy on this occasion was Gilbert Gifford,
+brother of the Dean of Lille, and, according to Parsons, a strong
+opponent of the Spanish-Jesuit party. He unfolded to Mendoza the
+existence of a vast conspiracy in England, in which most of the Catholic
+nobles were implicated. The Earl of Arundel, son of the late Duke of
+Norfolk, and most of his kinsmen, with a score or so of other noblemen
+and gentry whose names Mendoza sent to Philip, were ready to rise in
+force whenever they were advised that the Spanish fleet was approaching.
+Sir William Stanley, in command of a large body of Irishmen intended for
+Flanders, would delay his departure if possible, revolt against the
+Queen, and join the invaders; the English force in Ireland under Bele
+would do likewise, whilst Claude Hamilton and a force of Scots would join
+the Catholics of the North on the signal being given. The very heretics
+themselves, they said, were ripe for revolution, tired of the burden
+of taxation; but, above all, a young man named Babington and some six
+confederates[274] had determined to kill Queen Elizabeth, in accordance
+with the suggestion previously made by them through Ballard. They only
+asked that Spain should support them when the deed was done. No Frenchmen
+should be concerned in the business, but promptitude was now vital, for
+every hour increased the risk of discovery; and they prayed Philip to let
+them know at once what he would do to rescue England.
+
+Mendoza jumped at all these proposals, for, according to Gifford,
+the greatest men in England were pledged to the rising—as apart from
+Babington’s murder plot; even the moderate Catholics being pledged to
+it. Two letters went off at once from the Spaniard to the heads of
+the enterprise, “praising the proposal as it deserved, as it was so
+Christian, just, and advantageous to our holy faith and to your Majesty’s
+service, worthy of spirits so Catholic as theirs and of the ancient
+valour of Englishmen.” If they succeeded in killing the Queen, promised
+Mendoza without authority, they should have the assistance they required
+from the Netherlands, and the assurance that King Philip would succour
+them. “I promised them this on my faith and word, urging them to hasten
+the execution.” Directly they had despatched the Queen, wrote Mendoza to
+them, let them seize Don Antonio and the Portuguese with him and lodge
+him in the Tower; get Sir William Stanley to seize the Queen’s fleet,
+unless Lord Admiral Howard was a trustworthy party to the plot, and let
+them be sure to kill Cecil, Walsingham, Hunsdon, Knollys, and Beal at the
+same time as the Queen.
+
+Mendoza’s hatred of Elizabeth outran his discretion, and in conveying all
+this to Philip he wrote: “Of all the plots they have hatched these many
+years past none have been apparently so serious as this. They have never
+before proposed to make away with the Queen, which is now the first step
+they intend to take. As she so richly deserves her punishment, it may be
+believed that God has heard the groans of the afflicted Catholics and
+desires to bring it upon her thus swiftly. Let Him dispose as He will;
+but if, for our sins, He shall ordain that it do not succeed there will
+be much Catholic blood shed in England. Up to the present your Majesty is
+pledged no further than the risk of 100,000 crowns, which have been given
+to the priests sent thither, and if secrecy be kept we need only watch
+what comes of it. If the Queen falls the country will submit without
+bloodshed, and the Netherlands war will be at an end.”
+
+Philip was horrified when he received this letter, and scribbled upon its
+margin, in that appalling scrawl of his, scornful comments which showed
+that his cold, secretive nature rebelled against the rash enthusiasm of
+his usually discreet Mendoza. How could such a secret be kept, he asked,
+if all these people were chattering about it? How could the schismatics,
+or outwardly conforming Catholics, be trusted? They were mere heretics
+and no better; and how imprudent of Mendoza, his ambassador, to send to
+the conspirators two such compromising letters as those mentioned! Philip
+had heard too often in the past of such plots as this, and he had thrown
+away already too much money in subsidising such adventures. Nothing but
+conquest, he was convinced, would serve his turn now; and to that end he
+was bending all his energies night and day, penning the Pope closer into
+the corner, inflaming more than ever the French ambitions of Guise, and
+fomenting trouble in France; and, above all, collecting stores, arms, and
+ships from all his vast dominions to crush Elizabeth for good and for all
+in the interests of the Church and Spain.
+
+But, withal, Philip was not a man to throw away a chance if he could
+gain it with a minimum of responsibility, and he blended his somewhat
+caustic remarks upon the lack of secrecy and caution displayed with
+saintly approval of the plan to murder his sister-in-law. “As the affair
+is so much in God’s service,” he wrote to Mendoza on the 5th September,
+“it certainly deserves to be supported, and we hope that our Lord will
+prosper it, unless our sins are an impediment thereto. It appears to be
+based upon a solid foundation and to have the support of many Catholics,
+but it is difficult to keep a secret entrusted to so many people, and it
+causes me anxiety that it should be so widespread, and even schismatics
+let into the secret.... But the importance of the matter is great, and
+perhaps the time has arrived when God will strike for His own cause.”
+Philip left in no doubt his own attitude with regard to the matter. The
+Spanish aid should be ready, but should not be sent until the murder of
+Elizabeth had been effected. Let the “principal executions” be done, he
+urged, without a moment’s delay. “Everything depends upon the one act
+which is to be the commencement. When this is done they may with one
+voice acclaim it, and the way will be clear, whilst if the intention is
+discovered before its execution each one will be destroyed separately and
+union will be impossible. As all hangs upon this, and the cause is God’s
+own, we must hope that He will prosper it.”
+
+Gifford was sent on his way to England with the King’s message, and soon
+the heavy hand of Walsingham fell upon the conspirators, who had all
+through been living in a fool’s paradise, betrayed, as was Mary herself,
+by the instruments they thought so trusty and faithful. Philip had
+been right in his distrust; once more conspiracy subsidised by Spanish
+intrigue and money had failed, more disastrously this time than ever
+before; and the King of Spain, whilst deploring in conventional terms the
+dire fate of most of those upon whom he had depended for an auxiliary
+movement in England on the approach of his fleet, accepted the reverse
+with stolid philosophy. In one respect, indeed, it was to some extent a
+relief to him. There is no doubt that he greatly esteemed Mary Stuart for
+her steadfast Catholicism, and would have placed her upon the throne of
+England if his attempt at conquest had been successful during her life;
+but there was always lurking in the background the fear that after her
+accession she might be drawn by French intrigue or maternal solicitude
+to adopt her son as her heir, in which case Philip’s vast efforts and
+expenditure might have been in vain. But with Mary a condemned prisoner,
+whose head might fall at any moment, it was the present rather than the
+future sovereignty of England that was now to be decided, and slowly,
+with the aid of Parsons and Allen, the claims of Philip to the English
+succession were advanced tentatively even in England itself, though not,
+as we shall presently see, with any intention of his personally assuming
+the sovereignty after Elizabeth was disposed of.
+
+The question of Mary Stuart’s complicity in Babington’s murder-project is
+one that does not directly concern us here, but there can be but little
+doubt that, even though it was not conveyed to her in so many words,
+she was well aware of the whole plan.[275] At least Mendoza, who should
+have known, believed that she was; for on the collapse of the conspiracy
+he wrote to Philip: “I am of opinion that the Queen of Scotland must
+be well acquainted with the whole affair, to judge by the contents of
+a letter she has written to me.... Doubtless it is God’s will to give
+England to your Majesty by the strong arm only, since He has allowed so
+much Catholic blood to be lost, as will be shed by the discovery of this
+business. Nothing has been said yet about my letters, but even if they
+were discovered and printed they are so worded that another construction
+could be placed upon them.” Mendoza was too sanguine in this respect. His
+letters were read and his conversations with the messengers repeated.
+There was no need on the part of Elizabeth and Walsingham to go out of
+their way to put harmless constructions upon his words, which, indeed,
+were plain enough, and a shout of execration went up all over England at
+an ambassador who thus connived at the murder of a sovereign and a lady.
+
+Already the alarming reports of spies had aroused the worst fears of
+Elizabeth and her people. The Queen, particularly, dreaded the vengeance
+which seemed hanging over her. For years she had defied Philip and had
+beaten him in the game of diplomacy, depending for her immunity upon the
+continued war in the Netherlands and upon Philip’s distrust of France.
+But she saw that France could not help her now, whatever her extremity,
+for the Guises were in arms and the wretched fribble upon the throne
+was but a straw borne hither and thither upon the tempest, whilst the
+Huguenots were grimly awaiting the hour when they themselves would
+have to fight for freedom and for life. The war in Zeeland, moreover,
+was now only maintained by English help, and when the dreaded Spanish
+descent upon England was made Elizabeth would have to abandon the Dutch
+Protestants to their fate, and the last bulwark of Reform would be
+submerged by the flood of Spanish popery.
+
+Once more Elizabeth played the outworn game that had served her turn
+so often before. Andrea de Loo and many other intermediaries hurried
+backwards and forwards at the instance of Burghley between London and
+Flanders, impressing upon the Duke of Parma the English Queen’s earnest
+desire to come to terms with her “good brother.” Let the Pacification of
+Ghent, which had been accepted in the time of Don Juan, be re-enacted and
+all might be settled; let a conference meet, in which mutual grievances
+might be arranged, and England and Spain should live happy together ever
+after. But Parma for a time gave stiff answers to all this, much as he
+knew that Flanders needed peace, for Philip kept him in the dark as to
+his real intentions, and he dared not act without precise instructions
+from the King. Other attempts were made to reopen the trade negotiations
+through Portuguese agents with a view to a general agreement, but Philip
+was irresponsive now; for after half a lifetime of hesitation he had
+finally made up his mind. England must be conquered by the sword wielded
+by his hand alone; and although he might feign to talk of peace to suit
+his purpose, there was in his slow-moving, inflexible mind thenceforward
+no peace possible with England until Elizabeth and her Government had
+been crushed.
+
+Another spirited attempt was made by Elizabeth to reach Philip direct.
+Pedro Sarmiento de Gamboa, the famous explorer and Governor of Patagonia,
+had been captured at sea by one of Raleigh’s ships. Usually such men
+were held for heavy ransom, but Sarmiento was received by the Queen at
+Windsor with every witchery she knew how to exert, and was impressed with
+her sorrow that such unhappy relations existed—God knew from no fault
+of hers—between her people and the Spaniards. Would Sarmiento convey a
+letter to his King, accepting his liberation as a reward for his doing
+so? Naturally nothing would suit Sarmiento better, and Raleigh carried
+him with all distinction to Durham House as his honoured guest, plying
+him with assurances of Sir Walter’s desire to serve the King of Spain by
+putting a stop to all this piracy, of which the Queen herself and Lord
+Treasurer Burghley disapproved. Besides this, he (Raleigh) would sell a
+fine ship of his to Philip for 5,000 crowns, would prevent any more aid
+being given to Don Antonio, and would, indeed, become Philip’s humble
+servant in England. This was, doubtless, nothing but one of the usual
+mystifications to divert Philip; but the Queen herself gave a cordial
+verbal message to Sarmiento for the King, saying that she was really
+anxious to let bygones be bygones and make a durable peace. Sarmiento
+left London in November, 1586, and gave his message to Mendoza in Paris,
+but on his way to Spain was unlucky enough to be captured again, by
+Huguenots this time, near the Pyrenean frontier, and all Elizabeth’s and
+Raleigh’s influence was exerted to secure his prompt release. By all
+means accept Raleigh’s offer to prevent further aid being given to Don
+Antonio and to stop piracy, wrote Philip; but to the suggestions for
+direct peace negotiations he made no reply.
+
+In the meanwhile the arsenals and harbours of Philip’s realms were
+ringing with preparations for the great enterprise. The peace conference
+so much desired by Elizabeth might meet in Flanders and talk, but no
+pause was made in the feverish activity in the Spanish preliminaries for
+war. Old Santa Cruz had waited patiently after the King’s gentle rebuff
+to him in 1583,[276] until the circumstances detailed in the foregoing
+pages had rendered war with England inevitable early in 1586, when he
+wrote to the King from Lisbon a letter full of fiery zeal, recalling his
+former offer to conquer England when his victorious fleet was ready, and
+deploring the shame that had fallen upon Spain since by reason of the
+continued insults and injuries inflicted upon it by the heretics, much
+to the material gain and moral prestige of the Queen of England. They
+had, he said, plundered a million and a half of ducats in the last five
+months, and had defied the King of Spain successfully at all points.
+Everything was now propitious, urged the admiral, for dealing a final
+blow at these daring heretics, and he prayed the King to arise in his
+wrath and smite his enemy before the occasion passed. “I am not moved to
+this,” he proudly added, “by a desire for fresh battles or the ambition
+for new victories, but by no other motive than the service of God and
+your Majesty.”
+
+This time the hero’s appeal found the King ready, for all his peaceful
+diplomacy had failed to bring England to his side; and Santa Cruz was
+requested to submit to the King a plan for carrying out the enterprise
+he proposed. It took Santa Cruz two months, as he says, to draw up from
+his papers and the experience of forty years at sea a complete scheme
+for the irresistible descent upon England; and the estimate with which
+he furnished Philip stands to-day, after three centuries and a quarter,
+an unexampled monument of foresight, skill, and boldness. Nothing was
+forgotten in this prodigious estimate: naval and military requisites,
+arms, stores, clothing and material, down to the minutest detail, are
+set forth, with estimates of price and with surprising clearness; the
+salaries to be paid to men of every rank are given; the weight and bulk
+of every article, the best place where it may be obtained, the rations
+to be provided, and the discipline to be observed on land and sea,
+are all written in due order, and to such a lover of formal papers as
+Philip the estimate of Santa Cruz must have been a pure delight from the
+bureaucratic point of view.
+
+Not so, however, with regard to the concentrated magnitude of the
+demands, greater than had ever been made for such an enterprise before.
+Santa Cruz wanted for the invasion of England 150 great ships, 40
+store hulks, 320 small craft of 50 to 80 tons burden, 40 galleys and 6
+galleasses, or 556 sail in all, besides 40 skiffs and 200 landing rafts.
+There were needed 30,000 sailors and nearly 64,000 soldiers, with 1,600
+cavalry horses, all to be shipped from Spain, and this enormous multitude
+was to be provisioned beforehand for eight months with food and water.
+Deducting the ordinary cost of armaments in Spain, the extra estimated
+expense to be incurred by the enterprise was placed by Santa Cruz at
+3,800,000 ducats.[277] The sum in money was much greater than Philip had
+ever had to provide in Spain for any one enterprise before, and it took
+him aback now. The Pope, it is true, had promised a million ducats, but
+not a soldo would he pay beforehand, and the Italian States might be
+coerced into contributing; but the bulk of this vast sum in ready money
+had to be wrung somehow out of already exhausted Castile, and, anxious
+as Philip was to make assurance doubly sure, he knew that this was
+impossible; so Santa Cruz’s estimates had to be modified.
+
+The opportunity for the invasion, nevertheless, was one that could
+hardly be expected to recur. The cup of Elizabeth’s provocations was
+full to the brim, and her anxiety to open peace negotiations proved her
+own apprehensions. France, for almost the first time, was paralysed and
+could not interfere. Leicester’s ineptitude in Holland had even turned
+the feeling of the Dutch against their protectors, whilst many of the
+English troops and their leaders, such as Roland York, Sir W. Stanley,
+and Colonel Semple had deserted to the Spanish side and had delivered
+to Parma the fortresses occupied by them. The Turk, moreover, was for
+the time harmless, and Don Antonio was already a discredited and waning
+force. So, although Philip did not approve of Santa Cruz’s plan that
+the whole army should be embarked in Spain, he gave orders that the
+arsenals and dockyards should work night and day, and through Spain and
+Portugal, Sicily, Naples, and Lombardy there rang the echoes of warlike
+preparations such as they had never known before; whilst the recluse of
+the Escorial, shutting himself away from all other tasks, took counsel
+how he might effect his purpose with the means at his disposal.
+
+It is not to be supposed that the French and Scottish faction would sit
+tamely by and see without an effort the whole enterprise of England
+fall into the hands of Spain. The conversion of James Stuart was still
+a fervent hope with many who dreaded to see a Spanish king supreme in
+Britain; and the English Jesuit faction had to fight hard against the
+Welsh, Scottish, French, and many English Catholics at home and abroad.
+James Stuart himself and the Scottish Catholic nobles were fully alive
+to the danger that threatened. The Scottish nobles, with the secret
+connivance of James, made a bold attempt to associate themselves with
+Philip’s invasion, and to bring Guise again into the combination. Huntly,
+Morton, Claude Hamilton, Crawford, and Montrose, in the summer of 1586,
+sent one Robert Bruce with three blank signed papers to the Duke of
+Guise in Paris, where the letters over the signatures were written at
+Guise’s dictation and addressed to Philip,[278] begging him to listen to
+the verbal proposals of their envoy, Bruce. Guise and Beton introduced
+Bruce to Mendoza, and the gist of the proposals was that Philip should
+send to the Scottish Catholics 150,000 crowns to raise and arm soldiers,
+whom they would maintain for a year, and they also asked that a foreign
+force of 6,000 men should be sent to Scotland to secure the triumph
+of the Catholics, in consideration of which they promised to place at
+his disposal one or more ports in the south of Scotland to serve as a
+shelter and a base of operations against England. Mendoza understood, as
+indeed did all experienced fighting-men, the immense importance of the
+latter suggestion; for Santa Cruz from the first had insisted upon the
+need of seizing harbours in the Channel in case of contrary weather; and
+Bruce was sped on his way to see Philip with all the support that the
+ambassador could give him.
+
+But Philip had had enough of Guisan meddling, and he had no intention of
+allowing the supreme effort he was making to be used for the benefit of
+any one but himself, and least of all for that of shuffling James Stuart.
+As usual, he did not say no plainly, for he had no wish to alienate the
+Scottish Catholics, or to arouse suspicions of his motives anywhere.
+So, gently suggesting doubts and difficulties, he referred the question
+to Mendoza and Parma for report, sending Bruce back to Paris with “fair
+words” and a letter to Guise “praising the zeal which moves you to strive
+so sincerely for the promotion of our holy Catholic faith.” Mendoza was
+directed to keep the Scots in hand, to suggest that they should ask
+the Pope for the money they needed, and to flatter Guise as much as he
+thought necessary; all of which meant that Philip would not bind himself
+to Scot or Frenchman in the execution of his project, though, if on their
+own account and at their own risk they cared to divert his enemy, he had,
+of course, no objection to their doing so. But the offer of one or two
+safe ports in Scotland near the English border was one not lightly to be
+refused—its acceptance, indeed, might have changed the whole course of
+history—and Mendoza, an experienced soldier, wrote in October, 1586, to
+Parma strongly urging that the offer of the Scottish Catholics should
+be sympathetically entertained, in order that a diversion might thus be
+effected in the North simultaneously with the Spanish invasion of the
+South of England; though here commended that full inquiries should be
+first made to ascertain to what extent Huntly and his friends could carry
+out their pledges.
+
+Parma, however, was almost as cautious as his uncle. He was, in fact,
+resentful that Philip was keeping him in the dark as to his ultimate
+plans, and was determined not to move a step in any direction beyond his
+written orders until he knew what the King was really aiming at; whether
+to frighten Elizabeth into peace, which Parma more than suspected, or to
+crush her finally by war. So to Mendoza’s almost vehement advocacy of
+the Scottish diversion Parma replied coolly, saying that the proposal
+would fail unless it formed part of the combined plan and was executed
+in co-operation simultaneously with the invasion. Mendoza grew more
+and more in love with Bruce’s proposal, which would, he said, give
+harbours of refuge for the Spaniards in the North Sea and divide the
+Queen of England’s forces; and here began the first whispers of Parma’s
+half-hearted loyalty,[279] which amongst the vanquished officers of the
+Armada afterwards swelled into a tempest of indignant recrimination.
+
+Mendoza’s inquiries of Bruce had satisfied all his doubts, and to
+Philip he wrote beseechingly on the 24th December, 1586, in favour of
+the scheme. Some of the passages in his extremely able letter,[280]
+read by the knowledge of the subsequent disaster of the Armada, sound
+almost prophetic. “It is of advantage to the English,” he wrote, “that
+they should be attacked by a force which needs great sea fleets for its
+transport and maintenance, both on account of the immense sums of money
+which must be spent upon such an expedition, and the vast quantities of
+material and the length of time necessary for preparation, as well as
+the many opportunities which occur during this delay for impeding the
+progress of such armaments. Such expeditions, moreover, are liable to
+much greater disasters than land armies, for in most cases the mere death
+of the leader suffices to frustrate them ... and in the event of the loss
+of a great fleet the owner is deprived at one blow of forces, ships,
+and guns—things difficult to replace readily.” It is clear now, with
+our later knowledge, that the old warrior-diplomatist—the last of the
+disciples of Alba, as he calls himself—was right in his appreciations,
+and that Philip made a fatal mistake in not following the advice of such
+men, instead of indulging in his fatal itch for retaining in his own
+hands all executive monopoly and all ultimate profit in his plans.
+
+But the advances of Huntly were not entirely rejected, for not only
+Mendoza, but Parma too, as time went on, saw their importance, and
+although the idea of invading England over the Scottish border was
+again vetoed, Bruce was sent back to Scotland after many months of
+impatient waiting in France and Flanders, carrying with him ten thousand
+crowns to freight ships in Scotland ostensibly for Dantzig, but really
+for Flanders, to embark there an auxiliary force to aid the Scottish
+Catholics in their intended rising.[281] Bruce went on his way late
+in the summer of 1586, with his doublet padded with gold, but when he
+arrived in Scotland the whole scheme was embroiled and frustrated with
+the usual ineptitude. It was too late in the season for the ships to be
+obtained. James Stuart was also consulted by the Scottish lords as to his
+joining the Spanish attack upon England to avenge his mother, with the
+result that was to be expected. Bruce and his companion, Foster, turned
+traitors when the plan was seen to be impracticable, and once more, and
+for the last time, Philip settled down to the inevitability of conquering
+England by himself alone, and for himself alone.
+
+It was more important now than ever it had been that he should succeed
+in doing it, for Henry III. of France was without a son, and was in bad
+health. If Henry of Navarre, a Huguenot, became King, and France ceased
+to be a Catholic country and in alliance with Protestant England, the
+Catholic domination of Europe would be at an end, and the sun of Spain
+must sink rapidly. The conquest of England, indeed, must be effected,
+and the country made Catholic before Henry III. died, or all, it seemed,
+would be lost; and Philip, after thirty years of paltering, was now in
+a desperate hurry. There was still another reason why Philip’s zeal for
+the conquest of England should be further inflamed at this time. Mary
+Stuart was condemned to death, and in the bitterness of her heart she
+wrote the beautiful letter[282] to Mendoza (23rd November, 1586), in
+which she entrusted to Philip alone the task of avenging her and the
+cause for which she died, of providing for her servants, and, above all,
+of inheriting her rights to the succession of the Crown of England,
+which bequest she afterwards confirmed by a formal will. There was no
+longer any legal bar between Philip and the sovereignty, and no further
+fear of a doubtfully Catholic successor being adopted by Mary after her
+accession. With the fall of the head of the Queen of Scots the spirits
+of the English Jesuit party rose, for they knew now that James and his
+countrymen would not be allowed to lord over Englishmen if once Philip
+held the country in his grasp.
+
+The subtle web of intrigue that had been spun for so many years past, the
+threads of which we have to some small extent endeavoured to unravel, had
+so far been favourable to Philip. He had patiently suffered numberless
+indignities and injuries at the hands of Elizabeth and her people; he
+had seen England and his own Dutch provinces drift ever further away
+from him; but he had never ceased to plot patiently in order to dispose
+affairs aptly for his vengeance when the propitious hour should strike.
+The Guises had been alternately flattered and frowned at, until their
+great ambitions in France seemed to hang upon Philip’s will, and they
+dared not stir without his countenance. Henry III. had been by the same
+means rendered equally powerless to help England or to hinder Spain. The
+Scottish Catholics had been subsidised and cajoled, as had James Stuart
+himself, into a benevolent neutrality towards Philip with blended hopes
+and fears of the English succession. Mary Stuart had been so handled as
+to lead her to make Philip by will the heir to the English Crown; and
+gradually all the strings which were intended to pull down the edifice of
+the Reformation were gathered into the hands of the gouty old monastic
+monarch in his granite cloister-palace on the bleak Castilian sierra.
+Each interest, as we have seen, had been silently and separately dealt
+with, and tricked into the position that best suited Philip’s ends;
+for he would take no risks that he could avoid, and aspired to imitate
+natural forces in the slow, insensible accumulation of power, which at
+the supreme moment might be launched by the master with irresistible
+effect.
+
+When, at length, the stealthy plotting had reached fruition, and
+Elizabeth saw herself isolated, with Henry III. and James VI. paralysed;
+when the Pope and the Cardinals understood that the Church and its
+cherished hoards were to be instruments of Spanish political ends; when
+the Guises found that they and their kin were to be excluded from all
+share in the great prize of England; and even the English Catholics of
+the more patriotic and moderate sort awoke to the knowledge that their
+religion and their scorn of the Scots were being used to forward a
+conspiracy against the independence of their country; then each separate
+interest struggled as best it might to free itself from the toils in
+which the diplomacy of Philip had involved it. Allen, with his seminary,
+and the English Jesuits under Parsons, had gone over to the Spanish side
+bag and baggage, but the English Carthusians and seculars under Dr. Owen
+Lewis, and the large Scottish Catholic element in Rome under the Bishop
+of Dunblane, aided the Guisan Cardinals in combating the idea of a purely
+Spanish domination of England, and the contest went on bitterly and
+without cessation, especially after the death of Mary Stuart had made the
+fears more imminent.
+
+Before that had happened, Philip had instructed Olivares to sound the
+Pope cautiously, and, if possible, to obtain a brief from him, declaring
+Philip entitled to the throne of England after the Queen of Scots, “as
+I cannot make war upon England for the purpose merely of placing upon
+the throne a young heretic like the King of Scots.” The Pope’s fears
+were to be lulled by the declaration that Philip had no intention of
+annexing England to the Crown of Spain, but of passing the sovereignty to
+some suitable Catholic candidate, perhaps to his daughter, the Infanta
+Isabel. Olivares, Allen, and Parsons knew at this time (January, 1587)
+that the Vatican was uneasy about the whole business, and they prayed
+the King to say nothing about his own claim openly until the Armada had
+been successful. But when, a month or two later, the news of Mary’s
+death came, Philip was obliged to some extent to show his hand to the
+Pope, and the brief was ordered to be secretly asked for as a measure of
+precaution. Above all, Philip urged, not a word must be said about his
+claims to Guise or the Frenchmen.
+
+Unfortunately, much had already been said about them, even by Mendoza;
+and Guise and Catharine de Medici, and James of Scotland himself, were
+all trying their utmost to prove how very Catholic the latter was, and
+what an excellent King of England he would make. Philip ordered that his
+claims upon England were only to be broached with the utmost caution to
+the English Catholics. In May, 1587, the King wrote to Mendoza: “You
+must only speak of my rights to well-disposed native Englishmen in order
+that they may be informed of the truth, and convey it to others of their
+nationality, that it may thus spread and gain ground amongst them. But
+do not mention the matter to Frenchmen and others, who will only take
+it up for the purpose of frustrating it.”[283] To add to his authority
+in the matter, Philip urged successfully that Allen should be made a
+Cardinal, and he was well primed by instructions from Spain how to push
+the succession question with the Pope. Religion, of course, was to be
+the pretext. The King of Scots was a heretic, and unfit to succeed. For
+the good of the Church a Catholic of unquestionable orthodoxy should be
+chosen, and he must be powerful enough to keep England in the straight
+path. All this, of course, could only tend to the conclusion that Philip
+or his daughter alone would serve; and very gradually and cautiously this
+view was made familiar to Catholics, to be struggled against fiercely by
+all those who were not absolutely under the Jesuit and Spanish influence.
+Parsons was indefatigable in writing letters, addresses, and memoranda in
+favour of this view, and the absolute quiescence of the moderate English
+Catholics when at last the Armada appeared in the Channel, and their
+loyalty through the crisis, was largely due to the unwise forcing of the
+idea of a Spanish Sovereign over England by the Jesuit propaganda.
+
+Elizabeth was no less active than the other threatened interests in her
+efforts to escape from the position in which she found herself. Still
+hoping against hope that the old policy of advance and retire might again
+be successful, she and Burghley strove heroically to arrange some form
+of peace congress with Parma through Andrea de Loo. It was not easy, for
+neither side was in a yielding mood in matters of procedure; but Philip
+said that he saw no harm in entertaining the advances, which he knew
+from the first he did not intend to have any result other than to lull
+Elizabeth into a false security, whilst his preparations advanced. The
+Burghley party in Elizabeth’s Court had all the Puritans against them,
+and, more strongly still, the blue water school of sailors, who for years
+past had shown by their deeds that the Spaniards were no match for them
+at sea. “Why wait to be attacked on our own coasts,” was their constant
+argument, “when we can go and crush our enemies before even they can
+leave port?”
+
+The English ships had finer lines and lower bows than the Spaniards. They
+could sail several points nearer the wind; and the need for ocean attack
+and defence had developed an entirely new school of seamanship, depending
+upon celerity of movement, broadside armament low down, by which the
+hulls of the enemy might be riddled between wind and water, whereas the
+Spanish ships depended still largely upon bulk, needful for the carriage
+of cargoes from the Indies, and the old tradition descended from the
+Mediterranean galleys of heavy armaments fore and aft. The attack in
+the Spanish system consisted only in grappling with the foe and pouring
+soldiers on board of him, the vessel being less of a fighting entity than
+a conveyance to bring the fighting-men on each side into contact, as
+galleys had been. Under Drake the English sailors had developed an ideal
+entirely distinct from this, namely, to avoid grappling, and by superior
+handiness of the craft to cripple the hulls of the enemy, and make them
+unseaworthy and incapable of manœuvring. Again and again the English
+sailors had proved that the new methods were effective; and whenever
+there was a chance of meeting the Spaniards at sea, they eagerly sought
+it.
+
+It was this combination of sailors and the Puritans or Liberals, led
+by Leicester, that sought once more to force Elizabeth’s hand in the
+midst of the negotiations for the peace conference with Parma early in
+the spring of 1587. The Portuguese spies in England continued to report
+to Mendoza the great preparations being made for a naval expedition,
+by Drake, in Plymouth and the Thames. Elizabeth and Burghley deeply
+distrusted a policy of daring aggression, and hesitated much to allow an
+attack upon Spain, though Leicester’s influence and Drake’s confidence
+ultimately carried the day. The secret of the destination of Drake’s
+fleet was well kept. The pretence was cleverly maintained to the last
+that it was one more attempt to aid Don Antonio—this time, it was said,
+to go to the Indies; and Mendoza, who reported almost daily to Philip
+what he heard, was hoodwinked all through. Drake arrived in Plymouth
+from the Thames on the 23rd March, in a hurry to get away, for fear
+the Queen would alter her mind and order him back. He had obtained her
+commission—“to prevent or withstand any enterprise against her Highness’s
+dominions, and especially to prevent the concentration of the King of
+Spain’s squadrons”—and he was authorised to “distress the ships as
+much as possible, both in the havens and on the high seas.” Drake knew
+that as soon as he left Court attempts by the moderate party would be
+made to spoil and hamper his plans, for his Vice-Admiral, Borough, a
+Queen’s officer, had been sent with him only to serve as a clog upon his
+actions, and Elizabeth was still full of faith in the insincere peace
+negotiations. Sure enough, only a few hours after he hurriedly sailed
+from Plymouth, a royal order came thither from London, happily too late,
+“to forbear to enter forcibly any of the said King’s ports or havens, or
+to offer any violence to his towns or ships in harbour, or to do any act
+of hostility on land.” Drake took very good care that these timid orders
+never reached him until too late to stay his hand, and went on his way as
+usual, in defiance of Borough’s warning.
+
+Slowly, and with infinite difficulty, stores, arms, and material were
+being collected in Spain. The roads were bad, communications laborious,
+and Philip’s centralising methods clogged the wheels of progress. Old
+Santa Cruz was labouring early and late, in Lisbon, making ready such
+great ships as could be collected in the Tagus; whilst in the ports of
+Andalusia the Duke of Medina Sidonia, the great magnate of the Province,
+had seized for the King all the merchant ships and stores; and was
+actively getting ready to sail from Cadiz and join Santa Cruz in Lisbon
+in the early summer, and, together with other vessels expected from Italy
+and the Biscay ports, attempt the conquest of England. Thus matters stood
+in April, 1587. Santa Cruz was almost in despair, for he profoundly
+disliked the modification of his plans adopted by Philip, by which the
+bulk of the army under Parma was to cross in small boats to England when
+the Armada should arrive off the North Foreland to protect its passage
+from Dunkirk to the Thames, and the command was to be divided, Santa
+Cruz to be supreme at sea and Parma on land. The ships in Lisbon were
+still unready, and the crews and soldiers were joining in mere driblets
+from distant parts of Spain. The provisions, too, for all his host came
+in slowly, and much of the stores rotted before they could be used. The
+ships from the eastern ports of Spain and from Naples and Messina were
+lagging; for delay was inevitable when every detail had to be directed by
+one overworked old man far away.
+
+Then suddenly, on the 18th April, 1587, the people of Cadiz saw in the
+offing a fleet of thirty white sail. “Some contingent of the Armada,”
+thought the Duke of Medina Sidonia, busy with his stores inside the
+harbour. It was nothing so welcome as that; for it was the terrible
+Drake himself, with his stout ships, bent upon mischief, notwithstanding
+Elizabeth’s timid wavering and her Admiral Borough’s warning. Looking
+up the harbour of Cadiz, Drake could see a forest of masts, many a tall
+ship, he knew, that was intended for the subjugation of his country.
+They were, for the most part, store ships, nearly a hundred of them
+altogether; and though they were crammed with provisions and material,
+neither their guns nor their crews were on board. Into the harbour
+dashed Drake, sinking the big galleon at the entrance that served as a
+guardship, and disdaining the fire of the protecting forts, and soon he
+had all the harbour at his mercy. The very name of Drake appalled the
+Spaniards, and without impeachment he turned adrift and set on fire some
+twenty-five of the principal ships. Soon the great crowd of galleons was
+a blazing ruin, and in the three weeks that followed Drake deliberately
+annihilated in the harbour of Cadiz the results of a year’s work and vast
+expenditure. Then, on the 1st May, 1587, he leisurely sailed away, secure
+in the knowledge that, come what might, no invasion of England by Spanish
+ships was possible for that summer.
+
+In the Tagus, at Lisbon, there still lay the fifty great galleons,
+under Santa Cruz, which were to form the principal fighting force of
+the Armada, and as Drake stood off the mouth of the river, they looked
+tempting. He was more than half inclined to sail in and serve them as he
+had served the Cadiz ships; but he did not know whether they had their
+great guns on board or not. Whilst he was ascertaining this by his spies
+the peremptory orders came to him from the Queen that he was to provoke
+the King of Spain no more: the great fighting ships of Spain, with no
+crews or guns on board, were left unattacked, to Drake’s abiding regret,
+and the chance of making the invasion of England by Spain impossible
+altogether was missed through Elizabeth’s belief that by her usual
+methods she might avoid war, even at this eleventh hour. The damage done
+by Drake was in great part irreparable. Not only were many stores and
+ships destroyed in Cadiz, but for weeks afterwards the English fleet lay
+off the coast of Portugal, capturing great numbers of vessels loaded
+with pipe staves,[284] for the water and wine casks of the Armada. These
+could not be quickly replaced, and their loss led to the short and bad
+water supply in the fleet, which was one of its worst calamities. When
+Drake sailed away, Spain was crippled for a time; and the capture of the
+rich Indies galleon, _San Felipe_, completed the discomfiture of King
+Philip, who had no alternative now but to order Santa Cruz to make ready
+his ships in Lisbon, in a hurry, not now to invade England, but to
+prevent Drake from intercepting and plundering the silver fleet, whose
+safe arrival in Spain would alone enable Philip to proceed with his plan
+of invasion in the following year. The injury inflicted by Drake’s raid
+was a terrible one to Philip, but he plodded on, still convinced of the
+goodness of his methods and the ultimate certain victory of his cause.
+
+[Illustration: QUEEN ELIZABETH
+
+FROM THE PAINTING BY MARC GHEERAEDTS AT THE NATIONAL PORTRAIT GALLERY]
+
+To Parma, in Flanders, the news of Drake’s attack brought anguish and
+discouragement beyond words, for he was less blinded by fervour than his
+uncle was, and was brought nearer to his practical difficulties. He was
+a great commander and saw plainly the weak points of Philip’s scheme for
+the Armada, so far as it was communicated to him. A divided command and
+strictly limited authority were repugnant to him, a sovereign Prince
+and practically supreme in Spanish Flanders; and from the first he was
+determined that no blame for the failure which he feared would attend
+the attempt should be laid at his doors in consequence of his exceeding
+the strict letter of the King’s written instructions. He had strained
+every nerve to muster and equip his troops to be ready for the expected
+arrival of Santa Cruz with his fleet in the summer of 1587, and now he
+found himself with a large force of men, and short of money, provisions,
+and stores for their maintenance. But he was a general of resource, and
+utilised his army to capture the Sluys and invest Ostend and so improve
+his position before the English Peace Commissioners, the Earls of Derby
+and Hertford, Lord Cobham, Sir James Crofts, and Drs. Dale and Herbert,
+went over in the autumn of 1587, in the chimerical hope of making peace
+with Philip. Leicester, Walsingham, and the sailors wondered aloud how
+her Majesty could be so blind as to believe that peace with Philip was
+possible now. Exhortations and prayers reached Elizabeth, from those who
+knew Philip’s intentions well, that she would allow another bold stroke
+to be dealt upon the enemy’s heart; but her parsimony and belief in her
+methods made her turn a deaf ear to all such urging, and England still
+stood unready in the face of danger so imminent and dire.
+
+Whilst Parma was still spinning matters out with the English Peace
+Commissioners on fine-drawn points of etiquette and procedure, in order
+to give time for really illuminating instructions to reach him from
+Philip, and Elizabeth was living still in her fool’s paradise, the plan
+of the Armada was finally settled; for Philip, dead against the advice
+of his seamen, had determined to send out the expedition at all risks,
+in the autumn of 1587, as soon as Santa Cruz returned from convoying the
+silver fleet. The letter in which he conveyed his plan to Parma on the
+4th September, 1587, is worth quoting at some length.[285] The Armada,
+under Santa Cruz, was to sail up the Channel, avoiding, if possible,
+any decisive engagement, until it had reached the Straits of Dover and
+had joined hands with Parma. “We calculate that by the time you have
+invested Ostend you will have 30,000 men ready for the main business,
+whilst 16,000 Spanish infantry, a part of them veterans, will go in the
+Armada from here, the whole force of soldiers and sailors in the fleet
+reaching 22,000 men. I have decided that as soon as the Marquis of Santa
+Cruz returns with the flotillas to Cape St. Vincent ... he shall leave
+them in charge of the galleys, and himself go straight to Lisbon, where
+he will take command of the fleet which will there await him, and, with
+God’s blessing, sail direct for the English Channel. On his arrival
+he will anchor off Margate, having given notice to you at Dunkirk of
+his approach. You in the meanwhile will be quite ready, and when you
+see the passage assured by the arrival of the fleet off Margate or at
+the mouth of the Thames, you will, if the weather permits, immediately
+cross over in the boats you will have ready. You and the Marquis will
+then co-operate, you being in command on land, and he at sea; and, with
+the help of God, will carry through the main business successfully.
+Until you have crossed, the Marquis is not to be diverted by anything
+from assuring your passage. His taking possession of Margate will cut
+the communications of the enemy, and prevent him to some extent from
+concentrating his forces. When you have landed (the Marquis giving you
+six thousand selected Spanish infantry as ordered),[286] I am inclined
+to leave to the Marquis’s discretion what he should do with the fleet,
+whether to stay and ensure the passage of our people from Flanders to
+England and intercept any foreign aid that might be sent to the English,
+or to go and capture some port and divert the enemy’s strength; or else
+he might go and seize English ships lying in various ports, to deprive
+them of maritime forces, upon which their strength mainly depends. You
+will settle this point between you, the Marquis carrying out your joint
+decision, whilst you will hasten to the front to conduct the enterprise
+on the lines laid down. I trust to God, in whose service it is done, that
+success may attend the enterprise, and that yours may be the hand to
+execute it.”
+
+The advice of all his best soldiers and sailors had failed to move Philip
+on one point because he knew that it meant delay, and he was ready now to
+risk everything rather than wait any longer. “We are quite aware of the
+risk incurred by sending a heavy fleet in the winter through the Channel
+without a sure harbour; but the various reasons which render this course
+necessary are sufficient to counterbalance the objections. As it is all
+for His good cause, God send good weather. The most important of all
+things is that you should be so completely ready when the Marquis arrives
+at Margate that you may be able to do your part at once without delay.
+You will see the danger of any tardiness, the Armada having to wait there
+with you unready; as until your passage is effected they will have no
+harbour for shelter, whereas when you have crossed he will have the safe,
+spacious river Thames. Otherwise he will be at the mercy of the weather,
+and if, which God forbid, any misfortune should happen to him you will
+understand what a state it would put us into. All will be assured, please
+God, by your good understanding; but do not forget that the forces
+collected and the vast monetary responsibility incurred make it extremely
+difficult for any such expedition to be organised again, if they [the
+English] escape us this time; whilst the obstacles and divisions which
+may, and certainly will, arise next summer, force us to carry through
+the enterprise this year or fail altogether. I hope this will not occur,
+but that great success may attend us by God’s grace, since you are to
+be the instrument, and I have bountifully supplied you with money. I
+have told you how all our prestige is now at stake, and how entirely my
+tranquillity depends upon success being achieved, and I now once more
+earnestly enjoin you to justify the trust I place in you. Pray send me
+word that there shall be no shortcomings in this respect, as I shall be
+full of anxiety till I hear from you.”
+
+Thus, like a desperate gambler, Philip at last, after all these years
+of waiting and planning, was ready to stake everything—fleet, army,
+resources, prestige, and the cause for which he had lived—with the
+chances of success and the warnings of experience dead against him. For
+years past his expert advisers had been telling him how much superior in
+staunchness and seaworthiness the English ships were to his, that the
+new naval construction and armament, by which the artillery fire was
+delivered low and from the broadside, gave an enormous advantage to the
+handy English craft, which, by reason of their finer lines and weatherly
+qualities, could avoid fighting at close quarters. Santa Cruz, Parma, and
+Mendoza had pointed out to him the rashness of taking a vast, unwieldy
+fleet in the late autumn, the worst period of the year, up the Channel
+without a harbour of refuge in case of contrary winds or tempest; again
+and again he had been told that his ships were still unready, his stores
+and arms unconcentrated, and his army but partially mustered in various
+provinces of Spain and Italy. All this he knew, and yet in the face of
+disorganisation, incapacity, and corruption in his administration, of
+almost insuperable material difficulties in collecting and supplying
+such an enormous fleet as that contemplated, the growing alarm and the
+opposition of all Christendom to his designs, he trusted, in the absence
+of all the mundane elements of success, to the special intervention
+of Providence in his favour. Patience and diplomacy had brought the
+possibility of success within his reach, but patience and diplomacy can
+be worked by the methods of a chess-player in a monastic cell, whilst
+armies and fleets must be raised, organised, and led by practical men on
+the spot, and this was where Philip failed. All power and initiative must
+be his, whilst he sat upon his office chair, annotating, checking, and
+dictating from morn till night, but never coming within hundreds of miles
+of executive action.
+
+In obedience to Philip’s fervent exhortations Parma did his best,
+keeping his army of German, Italian, and Walloon mercenaries in good
+heart and readiness whilst the sham peace preliminaries went on. Most of
+the English Commissioners themselves were soon satisfied that nothing
+would come of their mission, for months were wasted in discussing and
+wrangling over such questions as the place of meeting, the sufficiency of
+powers, and the points to be discussed, though Croft, representing the
+moderate Catholic party in England, strained his loyalty to the utmost
+to conciliate Parma.[287] But still the Armada came not, though the
+winter of 1587 wore on and Parma’s painfully gathered thirty thousand
+men-at-arms were rapidly melting away, demoralised by short commons and
+dying by thousands of the plague. Not even Parma’s extremity could move
+Santa Cruz to take a course that he knew would end in disaster. When
+he returned to Lisbon from convoying the silver fleet, he told Philip
+flatly that it would be certain disaster to take the Armada out at such
+a season of the year, the ships and men, moreover, being unready. Scorn
+and derision were poured upon the old admiral by the nobles and soldiers,
+as well as by the bureaucrats who were at the King’s elbow, though the
+sailors who had met the English on many seas knew that Santa Cruz was
+right. “Once let us grapple with the heretics,” cried the vapouring
+men-at-arms, “and all will be well; the sailorman’s task is but to bring
+us face to face with the foe and we shall know how to deal with him.”
+Philip rarely reproached those who served him, but even his almost
+inexhaustible patience gave way, and his curt, cold words of reproach to
+Santa Cruz for his tardiness in serving him broke the old hero’s heart,
+and in February, 1588, there passed to his grave the one man in Spain who
+perchance might have rescued from otherwise inevitable catastrophe the
+Armada and the mighty freight of hopes it bore.
+
+Philip was, indeed, nearly at his wits’ end, though personally he
+never lost faith in ultimate success. Sixtus was growing more and
+more sarcastic, and unwilling to pledge himself further to a policy
+which he now understood was making religion the stalking-horse of
+politics. Olivares might rail insolently at the Pontiff as a garrulous
+old curmudgeon, Cardinal Allen and Father Parsons, by word and pen,
+might, and did, urge with bland eloquence the saintliness of the
+enterprise and the holy aims of the Catholic King; but all Europe now
+was aware and apprehensive of Philip’s overwhelming schemes—not against
+England alone, it was feared, but against all those who questioned the
+political supremacy of Spain. By every courier went frantic appeals
+and remonstrances from Parma to Philip, as week after week passed and
+no Armada appeared in the Straits of Dover. The army was getting out
+of hand, he said, and, what with plague and discontent, would soon
+disappear altogether, whilst of money he had none, and even his credit
+was exhausted.
+
+In December, 1587, Philip, apparently in desperation, thought that
+Parma, failing the coming of the Armada, might have made a dash
+across the Straits on his own account, and have captured England by a
+_coup-de-main_, whilst the peace preliminaries were being discussed.
+Parma, who was a practical soldier, was furious at such a suggestion,
+as well he might be. Writing to the King on the 31st January, 1588,
+he asks how could he be expected to do what he had the King’s strict
+orders to avoid doing. He had laid down clearly, he said, the necessary
+conditions of success; namely, that the flat boats and skiffs, too small
+for fighting and unfit to weather a freshet, much less a storm, should
+be ensured an absolutely unimpeded passage across, whilst the French
+should be kept busy at home, and the Dutch rebels rendered powerless
+for harm. “Your Majesty ordered me to undertake this business, and be
+fully prepared, though the time given to me was short and my resources
+were limited. I have done my best to perform the impossible in order
+to please you and carry out my duty.... Affairs have been unduly drawn
+out, both men and money have been delayed beyond the time indicated, and
+particularly the Spanish troops, who are the sinew of the whole business,
+and who have, after all, come in less number than agreed upon, and so
+dilapidated and maltreated as to look unfit for service for some time to
+come. The Italians and Germans have dwindled in consequence of having to
+march quickly in very bad weather, and they are so badly housed to keep
+them near the ports that many are missing; and our men are dying and
+falling away rapidly. I have strained every nerve to keep them near the
+coast to be ready for the arrival of Santa Cruz with the Armada ... and
+now I see that everything has turned out wrong and contrary to my hopes.
+Secrecy, which was of the utmost importance, has not been maintained.
+From Spain, Italy, and elsewhere come full details of the expedition.
+The King of France, as well as the League, has raised enormous forces,
+and they, being Frenchmen, are certainly not likely to be in our favour.
+Holland and Zeeland have armed as promptly as usual, and have prevented
+the few ships of our fleet in Antwerp from getting out, whilst the
+English themselves are preparing for their defence with great energy....
+If the Marquis had come in good time the crossing might then have been
+easily effected, by God’s help, as neither the English nor the Hollanders
+and Zeelanders were then ready.”
+
+Then Parma passionately protests against Philip’s attitude. Let the King,
+he says, tell him plainly what he wishes him to do. He will do it at
+all risks and at any cost; but to give him orders to do one thing and
+expect him to do another in quite impossible circumstances is unfair.
+The position has changed, he continues, and the force brought by the
+Armada must be an overwhelming one to clear the seas or the troops from
+Flanders cannot cross. “The delay in the coming of the Armada is causing
+the total ruin of Flanders, and is hardly less disastrous to the rest
+of the States. The country can bear the burden but a short time longer.
+The greatest trouble of all is my lack of money. The cost of maintaining
+the boats, the keep of the soldiers, the subsidy to Guise and Lorraine,
+and the contract with the German mercenaries, is all so great that your
+Majesty must provide me with a great sum of money. If I run short, as
+indeed I am doing, your Majesty may be certain that evil will befall and
+all the past expenditure and effort will be wasted.”[288]
+
+Two months after this, when the death of Santa Cruz had cast a still
+deeper gloom over the prospects of the Armada, Parma, now quite
+disillusioned, and convinced that the great enterprise would fail, urged
+Philip earnestly to allow him to turn the feigned negotiations for peace
+into real ones. “I should fail in my duty,” he wrote, “if I did not
+tell your Majesty that the general opinion is that if the English are
+proceeding straightforwardly, as they profess, and their alarm at your
+Majesty’s preparations and great power really inclines them towards you,
+it would be better to conclude peace with them. We should thus end the
+misery and calamity of these afflicted States, the Catholic religion
+would be established in them, and your ancient dominion restored. Besides
+this, we should not jeopardise the great fleet which your Majesty
+has raised, and we should escape the danger of some disaster causing
+you to fail in the conquest of England whilst losing your hold of the
+Netherlands. It is thought that it would be much best to try to settle
+and pacify everything during your own happy reign, so that all might
+prosper by the grace of God and your Majesty’s goodness. Nothing more
+honourable and beneficent could happen to us, no step would be more
+heartily welcomed by your vassals, or more effectually check your rivals,
+especially the heretics, than a good and honourable peace. We should thus
+avoid the danger of disaster. If the enterprise were in the condition
+we expected it to be, and secrecy had been kept, we might, with God’s
+blessing, have looked more confidently for a successful issue. But things
+are not as we intended. The English have had time to arm by land and sea,
+and form alliances with the Danes and the German Protestants.... They
+are well aware of our plans, and we shall have plenty of work to do in
+effecting a landing and advancing afterwards, especially if our force is
+inadequate.”[289]
+
+And thus, point by point, the greatest soldier of his time lays bare
+in letter after letter the weakness of Philip’s position and the
+hopelessness of success in the circumstances. But to all Parma’s
+remonstrances and advice the King had but one cold, precise reply. The
+expedition was to go in God’s own service, and it would be duly carried
+through by His help. That being the case, Parma could only stand more
+stiffly than ever upon the absolute fulfilment of his conditions, without
+which he knew that failure and disgrace would befall him. The sea must be
+kept clear of enemies before he would embark a man for England, and he
+must have six thousand Spanish veterans from the Armada or he would not
+undertake the conquest. To Philip’s embarrassments there seemed no end.
+His greatest military officer thus predicted disaster, and would take no
+responsibility beyond the letter of his instructions, and Santa Cruz, his
+greatest seaman, had assumed the same attitude for similar reasons.
+
+But the death of Santa Cruz in February plunged the King into deeper
+difficulty than ever; for although it allowed him to control the details
+of the command more completely than Santa Cruz would have allowed him
+to do, he had no officer of sufficient rank, authority, and experience
+to replace the dead admiral. Seamen he had, many of them fine mariners
+from the Biscay coast, who had commanded the great flotillas from the
+Indies, and had faced with varied fortune the English plundering craft
+any time these twenty years; but the tradition lingered that the seaman
+was a mere drudge to carry the nobler soldier into the fight, and the
+quarrelsome, haughty soldier nobles scorned to serve under a man who
+was a seaman only. The men in nominal command of the great ships were
+nearly always military officers whose orders the shipmasters obeyed. So
+although Oquendo, Bertondona, and Recalde, with a half score of others,
+were as splendid sailors as ever ploughed the seas, the supreme command
+of the Armada could not be given to such as they. The Spanish nobles were
+jealous of each other, each standing upon his dignity in a way that to
+modern men looks ridiculous, but which to them was a matter of the first
+concern in life.
+
+The man to be appointed to command, since the King himself could not go,
+must be of rank so exalted as to overtop the rest, and yet so amenable
+to Philip’s control as to allow the fleet to be commanded practically
+by the King from his writing-table. The only man in Spain who seemed to
+unite in himself these two qualities was appointed by Philip to lead the
+fleet upon which depended the fate of Spain and Catholic Christendom,
+and he was of all men the least fit to carry to success such a forlorn
+hope as the Armada—the Duke of Medina Sidonia, the magnate and admiral
+of Andalusia, who had been so busy collecting ships and stores in Cadiz
+and his other ports. He was a dignified noble of early middle age, well
+meaning and not without administrative ability in normal circumstances,
+though utterly unequal to deal with critical conditions. His high rank
+was sufficient to ensure the obedient respect of the other nobles and to
+hold the sailor commanders in awe. But, as he plaintively protested to
+the King, in dismay, when he was first informed of his appointment, he
+was utterly inexperienced in practical warfare both on land and sea. He
+knew nothing of navigation, he was always wretchedly seasick as soon as
+he lost sight of land, and he was quite unable to bear the expense which
+such a command entailed. His wife and friends were more emphatic still,
+and ridiculed the idea that such a poor creature as this should assume
+a responsibility so tremendous. Perhaps Philip was not sorry to have a
+weak and timid commander who would not dare to depart a hair’s breadth
+from his orders. At all events, his mind was made up; and Medina Sidonia,
+with a shrinking heart and unwilling spirit, was forced to go to Lisbon
+to replace the great Santa Cruz as the Captain-General of the Invincible
+Armada.[290]
+
+The Tagus was crowded with ships when, in March, 1588, Medina Sidonia
+took command. Eleven huge galleons, contributed by Portugal, headed by
+the flagship _San Martin_, was to be the squadron of the high admiral.
+The Andalusian squadron of fifteen vessels was to be led by Don Pedro
+de Valdés; and the famous Biscay seamen Oquendo and Martinez de Recalde
+were to lead other squadrons, and Diego Flores yet another. There were
+thirty-one armed store-ships, all carrying their quota of fighting-men
+as well as sailors, seven-and-twenty pinnaces and sloops, and four
+armed galleys, such as in the Mediterranean formed the Spanish fighting
+force. In all 114 ships lay there before the white city of Lisbon on
+its amphitheatre of hills. Gallant and strong they looked with their
+carved and gilded prows, their fluttering silken banners, and the soaring
+crucifix upon the highest pinnacle of their bows. But, alas! the dry-rot
+of Philip’s system was at the very heart of the enterprise. The soldiers
+came still in driblets and unwillingly. Arms were accumulating in one
+part of Spain, whilst the men to bear them were mustered in another.
+Stores went astray or remained bogged and derelict many miles from their
+destination; wine ran short and water went bad upon the ships. The long
+delay had caused the bottoms to foul and the seams to gape; and the
+overburdened Duke of Medina Sidonia could but clamour more piteously
+than Santa Cruz had done for more supplies, more men, more arms, more
+money, more everything, unless disaster were to fall upon the expedition.
+The Irish and English Catholics on the quays of Lisbon, and the priests
+and friars who flocked everywhere, made light of difficulties. Was it
+not God’s own fleet, going upon His errand, and could He be beaten? Was
+not England tired to death of their heretic Queen and her ministers? and
+was not a whole nation waiting with open arms to welcome those who came
+as friends and deliverers? And the haughty, confident Spanish nobles,
+courtiers, and soldiers, fretting in idleness, scoffed and reviled the
+timid councils of the Duke of Medina Sidonia. But the sailormen shook
+their heads sadly. They knew that Biscay storms and Channel gales could
+not be controlled by swords and pikes, and that at sea Drake and the
+West-country ships could sail several points closer to the wind than
+could their lumbering round-bowed galleons that looked so mighty.
+
+No day passed without some fresh demand from Medina Sidonia; and at
+last Philip himself, long-suffering as he was, began to lose patience,
+for the spring was wearing on, and Parma, in despair, was, as we have
+seen, praying him either to abandon the enterprise or send him means
+for keeping together his dwindling army. At length, in April, it was
+impossible to hide any longer the open complaints of the soldier nobles.
+Medina Sidonia’s insatiable demands, they said, were prompted by sheer
+cowardice, with a view to preventing the sailing of the expedition
+altogether. Already he had under his command the strongest force that
+ever sailed the seas—130 vessels of an aggregate tonnage of 58,000
+tons, 2,431 cannon, and 30,000 men, between soldiers and sailors. All
+was ready. The orders to the fleet had been given long since—orders that
+prescribed a code of conduct for the rough seamen and men-at-arms such as
+would have befitted a convent school. There was to be no bad language or
+loose talk, no dicing or card-playing, no evil living. Prayers and Masses
+were to be sung daily, and every man, high and low, was to be confessed
+and absolved; for all were going on a sacred crusade against the foes of
+God and the faith. The friars and priests, both on the ships and ashore,
+exhorted ceaselessly all these reckless soldiers and half-savage sailors,
+until, with hearts aflame, they too began to scowl at the tardy Duke, who
+alone seemed to hold them back from their heaven-sent mission.
+
+At length, at the end of April, peremptory command came from Philip that
+the Armada must sail at once. The old orders to Santa Cruz were repeated.
+The fleet must go straight up the Channel to the North Foreland,
+avoiding an engagement if possible, until the main body of the English
+fleet should be met, as he thought it would, off Margate, where it was
+to be defeated or held in check, and then Parma and his army were to
+be protected on their way across to the Thames. All difficulties and
+dangers in such a plan were ignored or smoothed over by Philip. The
+warnings of years had been lost upon him. He still counted upon his big
+ships outmanœuvring and gaining the wind of the English craft; he still
+believed that the old grappling tactics were possible, in the face of
+Drake’s new strategy and the superior build of the English ships. And he
+broke faith with Parma too. Parma had never wavered in his condition. He
+would not cross the sea until he was reinforced by six thousand Spanish
+veterans from the Armada; and yet in these last instructions to Medina
+Sidonia it was left to his discretion whether these veterans should be
+sent. Thus all the elements of discord existed before the great fleet
+sailed. An almost monkish discipline was enjoined on the fleet by the
+King, and it is clear that Philip himself had worked his spirit into a
+state of fervour which made him believe that sanctimoniousness would
+compensate for the absence of practical provisions for success. Saints’
+names alone formed the watchwords, Jesus for Sunday, the Holy Ghost for
+Monday, the Holy Trinity for Tuesday, and so on; whilst the ships’ boys
+were to chant the Salve and good-morrow at daybreak and the Ave Maria at
+sunset on every vessel.
+
+On the 25th April, 1588, the sacred banner was delivered to the Duke by
+Philip’s Viceroy, the Archduke Albert, in Lisbon Cathedral; and thence
+with raised crosses, swinging censers, flaming candles, and chanting
+priests it was borne before the whole kneeling hosts of the Armada in
+the great square of the city. And then, sped by prayers and psalms of
+rogation, the Armada, with its cargo of hopes and fears, tried for a
+month in vain to get out of the Tagus, with a boisterous westerly gale
+blowing full into the mouth of the river. But at length, at the end of
+May, 1588, the fleet got clear out to sea; the Duke complaining to the
+last of his subordinates and of his ships to the King, and praying that
+God would avert disaster. Contrary winds still held the fleet back for a
+fortnight more on the coast, and then, on the 19th June, a great storm
+came and scattered the ships like chaff. Some, with the Duke, fled in
+dire danger to shelter in Corunna, some even were blown within sight
+of the Scilly Isles, and many ran into the Biscay and Galician ports.
+Confusion, utter and complete, overcame the host. Many of the ships were
+crippled, spars broken, sails split, and planks started. Provisions were
+spoilt; the long delay had consumed stores and water; and again Medina
+Sidonia appealed to the King to abandon an enterprise which seemed so
+ill-starred, and again he clamoured for more stores, more men, more
+money, more arms.
+
+On the 24th June, in despair, he wrote to the King as follows: “When
+your Majesty ordered me to take command of this fleet I gave many
+reasons why I ought not to undertake it.... I saw that it was going
+against a powerful nation, which had the help of its neighbours, and
+that the task would require a much larger force than that collected at
+Lisbon; I therefore declined the command.... Since then the ships have
+suffered much, and the fleet is now greatly inferior to that of the
+English; the crews are weakened by sickness, and numbers fall ill daily
+in consequence of bad food.... The provisions are rotten, the water
+is stinking, and our stores will not last two months under the most
+favourable conditions.”[291] Then he goes on to say that all the power of
+Spain, all the King’s hopes, credit, and prestige, are entrusted to this
+Armada, and its loss would mean irretrievable ruin. “It would be unwise,”
+he says, “to run such a risk even with equal forces, but much more so
+with such an inferior force as we have now, the men inexperienced, and
+the officers, on my conscience I assure your Majesty, hardly any of them
+knowing or capable of doing their duty.... Believe me, your Majesty, we
+are very weak; pray do not allow any one to persuade you otherwise.” The
+timid Duke was full of forebodings, but Don Pedro de Valdés and other
+officers were writing at the same time to the King, impatiently scoffing
+at the delay, and Philip sternly, almost angrily, ordered Medina Sidonia
+to carry out his instructions without further parley—to patch up and
+collect his vessels again and sail up the Channel, with God’s blessing,
+to conquer the heretics who were holding the fair land of England.
+
+And thus Philip the Prudent cast to the winds all the dictates of
+prudence. Parma, at all events, could not be accused either of ineptitude
+or of cowardice, and yet he had twice solemnly warned his uncle to
+abandon his plan, now that all Europe knew of it and was prepared to
+frustrate it. If Philip had determined (as indeed he had) to run all
+risks and depend upon the special interposition of Providence in his
+favour, it was surely the height of folly to entrust the task, upon the
+success of which the whole future of his cause depended, to two unwilling
+commanders, both of whom deliberately foretold failure. It was, perhaps,
+impossible for him to dismiss Parma at short notice; but the letter
+from Medina Sidonia quoted above would amply have justified either his
+recall or the abandonment of the enterprise for which he, the commander,
+foretold defeat. Like Villeneuve at Trafalgar, Medina Sidonia was a
+beaten man before he met his enemy; but Philip, blind to all worldly
+considerations and steadfast in his faith in himself and his cause,
+elected to strike his supreme blow against Elizabeth with an obsolete and
+faulty weapon wielded by a feeble hand.
+
+With plentiful prayers and the blessings of Churchmen, with abundant
+copies of Father Parsons’s allocutions to his countrymen on the
+blessings of Spanish rule, and Cardinal Allen’s exhortations in favour of
+the old faith, the Armada sailed. The victuals were scanty and bad, the
+water was putrid, the craft overcrowded and fever-haunted; the admiral
+was faint-hearted and prophesied disaster; but the crank ships, with
+strained spars and gaping seams, though they looked so brave and loomed
+so high, sailed out of Corunna on the 12th July, 1588, doomed beforehand
+to disaster, which only a miracle from on high could avert from them. How
+the disaster fell there is no space here to relate; but a week’s running
+fight up the Channel, and one hopeless battle at bay, struck the first
+irreparable blow at the fable of Philip’s irresistible power, and the
+prestige that clung still around the name of the Emperor and his son.
+
+We have followed the process by which circumstances and the personal
+character of the chief actors in the great drama had driven Philip, after
+thirty years of diplomacy in trying to win England to his side without
+any concessions on his part, into a violent course at last. The result
+of his over-caution for so many years had been that he was forced to be
+reckless after all or fail entirely; the outcome of his fatal desire to
+win all for himself without risking anything was that when the crisis
+came he had to risk everything on a losing hazard. Elizabeth was more
+fortunate in the issue than her brother-in-law, but hardly more wise.
+Almost to the day when the Armada sighted her coasts she was beguiled
+into a belief that her negotiations with Parma might avert war, though
+Walsingham and the sailors were almost in despair at what they saw was
+the terrible risk she ran. She was far more hard-fisted and parsimonious
+than Philip, too, when once it was brought home to her that she and
+her people would have to fight for the independence of England. Her
+men, unlike those at the bidding of Philip, were full of initiative and
+boldness, though they had to cope with material obstacles almost as great
+as his. All was unready in England when the peril loomed near, and even
+if the Queen had been as liberal as she was stingy, sufficient stores
+could not in the circumstances have been improvised and concentrated.
+
+But every one in England, high and low, did his best. There was but
+little of the vapouring self-confidence that led the Spanish soldiers
+into the disillusionment which destroyed their nation’s potency; but the
+predictions and assurances with regard to England of Parsons and the
+English Jesuits and Spanish pensioners, were all signally falsified. The
+moderate English Catholics, who quite conceivably might have welcomed
+the adoption of an English Catholic successor to Elizabeth under Spanish
+patronage, were indignant at the Jesuit-Spanish plan to foist Philip’s
+daughter upon the throne after deposing Elizabeth and submitting the
+country to conquest. The treatment meted out to Englishmen in Spain by
+the Inquisition had given even to Catholics no desire to live under a
+rule which made such an institution a branch of Government. So, when the
+time of trial came, the Howards, Catholics though they were, and often as
+they had been parties to Philip’s plans, fought against him as stoutly
+as the veriest Puritan of them all. A generation had passed away since
+Philip had personally felt the pulse of England. Allen, Englefield, and
+Parsons had not, for many years before the Armada sailed, seen with
+their own eyes the growing spirit of patriotism which under Elizabeth
+was binding Englishmen as such together, independent of their creeds;
+and the Jesuit Churchmen and pensioned laymen who advised Philip that
+the English people would welcome the men on the Armada with open arms
+as liberators were as the blind leading the blind, for they were not in
+touch with nor understood the England that had arisen since their time.
+
+For the rest of Philip’s life, ten years, a more pressing task even than
+that of winning England by finesse or force claimed his every effort. The
+murder of Henry III. made a Protestant King of France; and to prevent
+the country from joining the Reformation Philip and Spain would have
+to fight until the last dollar was spent and the last Spanish soldier
+was dead. Again, the Infanta was his candidate for the Crown of all or
+a portion of her mother’s land; and, as in the case of England, the
+forces of patriotism in the end overrode the differences of creed, and
+all Frenchmen coalesced to oppose foreign aggression. Henry IV. “went to
+Mass,” it is true, and that France remained a Catholic country through
+his efforts was the only great triumph of Philip’s strenuous life.
+
+From the time when the Armada, or such of the ships as escaped the
+wild Atlantic gales, crept home, plague-stricken, battered wrecks, and
+the cry of mortal anguish went up from all Spanish hearts at the cruel
+disappointment of their hopes, Philip, it is true, continued to strive
+against the woman who had beaten him. These efforts I have described
+elsewhere: but with no hope of conquering England by frontal attack was
+one little expedition after another with infinite difficulty and friction
+fitted out thenceforward in Corunna. For that Philip knew well the time
+had passed, notwithstanding the continued exhortations of the Churchmen
+and pensioned refugees. Thenceforward it was his plan to incite Irish
+Catholics to revolt, to render Elizabeth unsafe and uneasy, in order to
+prevent her from aiding Henry of Navarre in France; to look forward to
+the time when her death, by natural or unnatural means, should give him a
+chance of manœuvring a sovereign apt for his purpose upon the throne of
+England. With the failure of Philip’s thirty-five years’ struggle to gain
+the control of England for his ends under two sister Queens, the downfall
+of his own system and the decay of Spain were absolutely inevitable,
+though the tradition of its potency died hard and was maintained long
+after its reality had fled.
+
+It is bootless to consider what would have been the result if Philip’s
+methods had been less rigid, and if he could have fought his enemies with
+their own weapons; for if such had been the case he would not have been
+Philip, and the situation that made the long struggle incumbent upon him
+would never have been created. But, though on his agonising death-bed
+in his poor cell at the Escorial, in the autumn of 1598, he knew that
+Elizabeth still defied him, and the Dutch Protestants repudiated his
+rule, that wherever the yoke of Rome was shaken off it could be imposed
+no more, he still held firmly to his faith beyond all earthly evidence,
+that God in His good way and time would send triumphant victory to the
+cause for which He and Philip had fought in partnership—the supremacy of
+Catholicism and the preponderance of Spain amongst the nations.
+
+
+
+
+FOOTNOTES
+
+
+[1] Moryson to the Council, 7th October 1552. Record Office.
+
+[2] Thirlby, Hoby, and Moryson to the Council. State Papers, Germany.
+
+[3] Sir Philip Hoby to Cecil. Hatfield Papers and Haynes.
+
+[4] Papiers d’État du Cardinal de Granvelle, vol. iv.
+
+[5] The envoys to the Emperor. Papiers d’État de Granvelle, vol. iv.
+
+[6] The Emperor to the envoys. Papiers d’État de Granvelle, vol. iv.
+
+[7] The Imperial envoys to the Emperor. Papiers d’État, vol. iv.
+
+[8] The Emperor to the envoys, 20th July.
+
+[9] Contemporary account by Antonio de Guaras. Edited by Garnett.
+
+[10] Ambassades de Noailles, vol. ii
+
+[11] Renard to the Emperor. Papiers d’État de Granvelle, vol. iv.
+
+[12] He had, in fact, several children by the Lady Doña Isabel de
+Osorio, with whom he had lived since his young wife’s death. The fact
+that Granvelle puts the word in the plural proves that this was quite
+recognised.
+
+[13] In the private letter which the Emperor wrote to his son on the
+subject he says: “if the choice falls upon a foreigner, I think the
+English would rather have me than any one else, as they have always
+been well disposed towards me. But I can assure you that even greater
+dominions” (_i.e._, than England) “would not seduce me nor divert me from
+the very different intention which I hold. If, therefore, they should
+send and propose this marriage to me, I have thought that it would be
+better to suggest you, and the matter could then be carried through
+successfully. The benefits and advantages which would accrue are so
+great and notorious that they need not be particularised. I only place
+it before you for your consideration. Let me know at once what you think
+of it, so that we may act accordingly; but keep it strictly secret.”—MS.
+Simancas. Printed in the _Retiro, estancia y muerte del Emperador Carlos
+V._
+
+[14] Granvelle to Renard. Papiers d’État, vol. iv.
+
+[15] Although Renard at this interview of 6th August did not, according
+to his own statement, bring forward Philip’s name to the Queen, public
+rumour was already busy with it. Noailles three days afterwards wrote
+to the King of France saying that the Imperial ambassadors had proposed
+Philip to the Queen: “and it was not now so sure that she would
+marry Courtenay. It is thought that the effect of his presence has
+greatly damaged his reputation, although he is quite handsome and well
+bred.”—“_Mais la nourriture que vous, Sire, pouvez penser qu’il á pris
+ayant été toujours fermé dés son enfance dans des murailles lui a laissé
+si peu de gravité et d’experience qui je crains beaucoup qu’il soit
+pour se conduire á telle fortune, Combien que la commune de toute cette
+province la lui desire._”—Ambassades de Noailles.
+
+[16] The Princess in question was the daughter of Eleanor, sister of the
+Emperor, and now the widow of Francis I. of France.
+
+[17] Renard had seen Bishop Gardiner, the Queen’s principal minister, the
+day before, and had tried to draw some declaration from him, although he
+was known to be in favour of the Courtenay match. The Bishop said that
+he would not suggest any name to the Queen; but if she asked his advice
+as to marrying a foreigner, he would tell her that, for the good of her
+country and her own safety, it would be better to marry an Englishman, as
+the very name of foreigner was hated by the English. “As for the Prince
+of Spain,” continued Gardiner, “if she married him, the people would
+never tolerate the Spanish character; which even the Flemish subjects of
+the Emperor detest; besides which, the marriage would mean for England a
+perpetual war with France.”—Papiers d’État de Granvelle, vol. iv.
+
+[18] Philip wrote to his father, “If the marriage should be proposed for
+your Majesty, that would be the best course. But if your Majesty persists
+in the view you state to me in your letter and you think better to treat
+of the marriage for me, you know already that as an entirely obedient
+son I have no other will than yours, and above all on an affair of this
+importance. I therefore leave it to your Majesty to act as you deem
+best.”—MS. Simancas. _Retiro estancia y muerte del Emperador_, etc.
+
+[19] A curious account of these preparations will be found in Machyn’s
+Diary.
+
+[20] Ambassades de Noailles, vol. ii. Noailles, in describing the scene
+to the King of France, says that when de Geneda entered the boat that
+was to convey him down the Thames on his way to Spain, he announced that
+Prince Philip would visit Queen Mary in the following March on his way to
+Flanders; and Noailles advises the King of France to muster his ships in
+the Channel to prevent the Prince’s passage.
+
+[21] Antonio de Guaras.
+
+[22] Antonio de Guaras, who was present in the Abbey. It was noticed by
+the Imperial ambassadors that Princess Elizabeth, who at the ceremony
+took the place due to a Royal Princess, with Anne of Cleves, exchanged
+significant glances with Noailles whenever she met him. In the course
+of the day she complained to the French ambassador of the weight of the
+coronet she was wearing. “Patience!” was his reply, “it will soon produce
+a better one.”—Record Office, Brussels Transcripts, i. p. 436.
+
+[23] The details of these interesting interviews are in Renard’s Letters,
+Record Office, Brussels Transcripts, vol. i.
+
+[24] Renard to the Emperor, 31st October. Record Office, Brussels
+Transcripts. Mary had apparently waited until the Acts had passed
+declaring her mother’s marriage legal. This was effected on the 28th
+October.
+
+[25] The Emperor to his son, 21st January, 1554, asking him to ratify the
+treaty, notwithstanding the hardness of the conditions. MSS. Simancas,
+Estado 808.
+
+[26] Queen Jane and Queen Mary.
+
+[27] Queen Jane and Queen Mary.
+
+[28] Record Office, Brussels Transcripts, vol. i. 979.
+
+[29] Documentos Ineditos, vol. iii.
+
+[30] Queen Jane and Queen Mary.
+
+[31] Ambassades de Noailles, Instruction à Lamarque, vol. iii.
+
+[32] Documentos Ineditos, iii.
+
+[33] Renard to the Emperor, 8th March. Record Office, Brussels
+Transcripts, vol. i.
+
+[34] Renard to the Emperor, 8th March. Record Office, Brussels
+Transcripts, vol. i.
+
+[35] Ibid.
+
+[36] As showing the excited condition of the public mind even yet with
+regard to the marriage, it may be mentioned that the day before this
+scene was passing, on the 6th March, two bands of about 300 London
+urchins collected in a field—probably Moorfields—and engaged in strenuous
+combat against each other; one band representing the Queen’s and
+Philip’s forces, and the other those of the King of France and Wyatt’s.
+Noailles, in his account of the affair—though Renard does not mention the
+detail—says that the unfortunate boy who was made to represent the Prince
+of Spain was captured and hanged, very nearly fatally. The leaders of
+the fight on both sides were well whipped and imprisoned by the Queen’s
+orders.—Ambassades de Noailles, iii. 130. Renard’s Letter, 9th March.
+Record Office, Brussels Transcripts, and Queen Jane and Queen Mary.
+
+[37] Muñoz’s narrative, Sociedad de Bibliofilos.
+
+[38] Muñoz’s narrative.
+
+[39] On this and on all occasions that English fashions of the time
+are described by Spaniards, mention was made of the enormous number of
+ornamental buttons that English gentlemen wore on their garments.
+
+[40] Muñoz’s narrative.
+
+[41] Muñoz’s narrative.
+
+[42] In fact they shipped a large number of horses.
+
+[43] Muñoz’s narrative. Sociedad de Bibliofilos.
+
+[44] Record Office, Brussels Transcripts.
+
+[45] Renard to the Emperor. Record Office, Brussels Transcripts.
+
+[46] Renard to the Emperor, 9th June. Record Office, Brussels Transcripts.
+
+[47] Noailles to the King, 17th June, 1554. Ambassades.
+
+[48] Renard to the Prince, 13th March, Record Office, Brussels
+Transcripts.
+
+[49] Papiers d’État de Granvelle, vol. iv.
+
+[50] The only warrant for the seasick story is that contained in a letter
+from Bedford and Fitzwalter in Spain to the Council, saying that the
+Prince “was wont to be very sick upon the sea,” and proposing that some
+preparations should be made at Plymouth for his landing there in case of
+need. But, in fact, Philip had a smooth voyage, and remained at anchor on
+the _Espiritu Santo_ in Southampton harbour for nearly twenty-four hours
+before he landed, and was in perfect health.
+
+[51] The bulk of the Spanish fleet was not allowed even to enter the
+harbour of Southampton for provisions and water, which only after much
+unpleasantness and discourtesy they were able to obtain at Portsmouth.
+
+[52] Whilst they all praise the sumptuous fittings of the rooms, not a
+single Spanish narrator says a word of the story told by the malicious
+Venetian, that Philip was shocked by the words “Fidei Defensor” being
+embroidered on the hangings.
+
+[53] Enriquez’s narrative. Sociedad de Bibliofilos.
+
+[54] Philip’s courtiers sneered that Browne took the King’s horses to his
+own stables to recover from the voyage, in order that he might have a
+chance of keeping them altogether.
+
+[55] Muñoz’s and Enriquez’s narratives. Sociedad de Bibliofilos.
+
+[56] Narrative by Car, who was a servant to Pescara. Printed in Milan,
+1554. See the author’s “Year After the Armada.”
+
+[57] All foreign visitors to England in the sixteenth century remarked
+upon the great profusion of plate used for household purposes at the time.
+
+[58] Enriquez’s narrative.
+
+[59] Philip had sent a Spanish magistrate, Alcalde Bribiesca, to England
+before him, to dispose of cases in his own following. The English were
+bitterly jealous of this, and refused to acknowledge any jurisdiction for
+him.
+
+[60] Enriquez’s narrative. The narrator was a kinsman of the Duchess.
+
+[61] This reminds one of Queen Elizabeth’s dancing, which was praised as
+“high and disposedly.”
+
+[62] Queen Jane and Queen Mary (Camden Society), Foxe’s Acts and
+Monuments, and other contemporary chronicles.
+
+[63] John Elder’s Letter, Camden Society.
+
+[64] John Elder’s Letter, Camden Society.
+
+[65] MSS. Simancas, Estado 808.
+
+[66] Queen Jane and Queen Mary.
+
+[67] Ambassades de Noailles, vol. iii. 311.
+
+[68] Letters from both Mary and Pole to the King of France advocating the
+conclusion of Peace are in Ambassades de Noailles, vol. iii. 323-4.
+
+[69] Queen Jane and Queen Mary.
+
+[70] Queen Jane and Mary, and Holingshed.
+
+[71] We get at this time (October, 1554), whilst the royal couple were at
+Hampton Court, a glimpse of their life together. “As for newes you shall
+understand that the King’s and Queen’s Majesties be in helth and merry,
+whom I did see daunce togethers uppon Sunday night at the Court, where
+was a brave maskery of cloth of gold and silver apparailed in mariners
+garments, the chief doer whereof I think was my lord Admiral.”—Francis
+Yaxley to Sir W. Cecil, Landsdown MSS. (Cotton), vol. iii. 44.
+
+[72] Venetian Calendar.
+
+[73] Ibid.
+
+[74] In the Venetian Calendar, 21st September, 1554, there is a dignified
+letter from Pole to Philip reproaching him for allowing him, a Prince of
+the Church, an Englishman exiled for Mary’s sake half a lifetime, and
+a Legate of the head of the Church, thus to knock at the door of his
+country unheeded by a Catholic King.
+
+[75] Mason to the Queen and King, 9th November, Foreign Calendar.
+
+[76] Ibid.
+
+[77] Enriquez’s narrative (Sociedad de Bibliofilos) and John Elder’s
+letter, Camden Society. Queen Jane and Queen Mary.
+
+[78] John Elder says that, as an instance of Pole’s good repute, that
+when he (Elder) was in Rome it was a common saying there, not only
+amongst Englishmen, but amongst Italians as well, “_Polus Cardinalis
+natione Anglus pietatis et literarum testimonio dignus, non qui Polus
+Anglus, sed qui Polus angelus vocetur_.”
+
+[79] Enriquez’s narrative.
+
+[80] John Elder’s letter.
+
+[81] Papiers d’État de Granvelle, vol. iv.
+
+[82] Enriquez’s narrative.
+
+[83] Enriquez’s narrative.
+
+[84] Michaeli says that ten thousand people listened to the sermon.
+
+[85] Signor Claretta has published (Pinerolo, 1892) an interesting series
+of documents from the Turin Archives giving full particulars of the visit.
+
+[86] The assertion of so many historians that she came to Whitehall at
+Christmas, 1554, is erroneous. She did not come till the end of April,
+long after Savoy’s departure.
+
+[87] At this time (late in 1554) a large number of Spanish shopkeepers
+and artisans had established themselves in London under the erroneous
+belief referred to in an earlier page, that the marriage of Philip meant
+their entering into possession of the kingdom. This had been so much
+resented by the Londoners that not only were attacks upon these people
+constant, as recorded by Enriquez and others, but on the 12th October
+Mary had been obliged to issue a decree commanding all Spanish tradesmen
+to shut up their shops. This, of course, was a new source of complaint
+with them.
+
+[88] Foreign Calendar.
+
+[89] Queen Jane and Queen Mary.
+
+[90] Papiers d’État de Granvelle, vol. iv.
+
+[91] On occasion of a grand tilting at Whitehall on the 25th March twenty
+gentlemen made a brilliant show, and Philip distinguished himself so
+much that the Queen became anxious and apprehensive, sending to beseech
+him, as he had run so many courses and done enough, not to encounter any
+further risk for her sake. He also attended another grand tilt at the
+weddings of Lords Maltravers and Fitzwalter in the following month.
+
+[92] Venetian Calendar.
+
+[93] “Acts and Monuments.”
+
+[94] Elizabeth’s Italian master was arrested in connection with one of
+these publications, called “A Dialogue.”—Michaeli, Venetian Papers.
+
+[95] Michaeli’s advices, Venetian Calendar.
+
+[96] Michaeli on this visit mentions that he saw Queen Mary, “who was
+looking very well; for, placing herself every morning at a small window,
+she likes to see the procession pass, which at her desire, goes round
+the palace court, she most courteously bowing her head in acknowledgment
+to all persons who salute her ... as she did twice with extraordinary
+cheerfulness and graciousness to the Portuguese ambassador and myself,
+we having gone into the court to accompany the King to Mass, and joined
+the procession on the invitation of the Lords of the Council. Her Majesty
+expects and hopes during this week to comfort the realm by an auspicious
+delivery, but the greater part of her women think that she will go
+beyond.”
+
+[97] Renard to the Emperor, 27th June, 1555.—Papiers d’État de Granvelle.
+
+[98] Michaeli, Venetian Calendar.
+
+[99] Ambassades de Noailles, vol. v. 136.
+
+[100] Ambassades de Noailles, vol. v. 98.
+
+[101] Ambassades de Noailles.
+
+[102] Michaeli to the Doge, 3rd September, 1555.—Venetian Calendar.
+
+[103] It must be recollected that Philip’s tolerance and moderation with
+regard to the extreme persecution of heresy in England was purely a
+matter of policy, as his after life clearly proved. At a later period,
+moreover, he actually claimed for himself the credit of the religious
+persecution. Cabrera de Cordoba quotes a letter from him to his sister
+Juana, in which he says, “I, having diverted the realm [England] from the
+sects and brought it into obedience to the Church, and having always been
+in favour of the punishment of the heretics, which is now being carried
+out so smoothly in England” (Cabrera, “Vida de Felipe II.”).
+
+[104] State Papers, Domestic, September, 1555.
+
+[105] Ambassades de Noailles.
+
+[106] This, of course, was late in 1555, before the truce of Vaucelles in
+February, 1556.
+
+[107] Michaeli to the Doge, Venetian Calendar, 28th April, 1556. She had
+been asked many times to go to Flanders to stay with Philip’s aunt, Mary
+of Hungary.
+
+[108] The process of these conspiracies may be followed step by step in
+the Letters of Noailles (Ambassades), Michaeli (Venetian Calendar), and
+Wotton (Foreign Calendar).
+
+[109] Michaeli, Venetian Calendar.
+
+[110] In a pathetic and submissive letter (Cotton, Titus B. 2, 57,
+British Museum) Mary beseeches Philip to allow her to defer the matter
+until he comes to England. Her doubts on the matter seem to have been
+partly inspired by jealousy of her sister, who if she married Emmanuel
+Philibert in Flanders would be near Philip, for she adds: “If you will
+not defer it I shall be jealous of your Highness, which would be worse
+for me than death—I have already begun to feel uneasy.”
+
+[111] Noailles and Michaeli.
+
+[112] The particulars of this treaty will be found in the author’s
+Calendar of Spanish State Papers, Henry VIII., vols, vi., vii., and viii.
+
+[113] Sorzano to the Doge, May, 1557, Venetian Calendar, detailing a
+conversation with Henry on the subject.
+
+[114] The Earl of Bedford, writing to Cecil on the 21st August, says that
+“the Count of Egmont with two thousand Spaniards and Schwartzreiters
+and as many of us made a ride into France of twenty-two miles, and
+found no great resistance, nor should have done though we had gone much
+further.”—Haynes’ State Papers.
+
+[115] The vast monastery palace of the Escorial owed its origin to such
+a promise on the part of Philip II. when he saw to his sorrow that his
+troops had destroyed and sacked a church and cloister dedicated to St.
+Laurence at St. Quintin. To appease the saint, he promised on the spot
+to build the grandest monastery to St. Laurence in the world, and he
+kept his word. For the greater part of his life the building of this
+stupendous pile upon the sterile Guadarrama steppes was an obsession of
+the King.
+
+[116] Lord Grey de Wilton to the Queen.—Domestic Calendar.
+
+[117] An interesting account of the defence and loss of Guisnes is given
+by Lord Grey himself (Camden Society).
+
+[118] MSS. Simancas, Philip to Feria, January, 1558.—Estado, 811.
+
+[119] Howard suspected the influence that had been exerted against him,
+and charged Feria with it. The Spaniard assured him that he had been
+misinformed; and in order to mollify him Philip wrote to the Queen asking
+her to give Howard some Court appointment instead of the Admiralty.
+Clinton was by Philip’s influence also placed in the Council, of which
+Howard was not a member, but became so, as well as Lord Chamberlain,
+shortly afterwards.
+
+[120] Feria to the King, 12th February, 1558 (MSS. Simancas, Estado 811).
+Philip replied that he could not send the 10,000 crowns required at once,
+as he was very short of money, but would send it as soon as he could get
+it in Spain.
+
+[121] MSS. Simancas, Estado 811, Feria to the King, 10th March.
+
+[122] Philip had written to Feria a day or two before saying that the
+English orders for powder, &c., in Flanders were so excessive that if
+they were made public the dealers would at once put up the price to his
+detriment, and he begged that the amount might be reduced. In Rymer’s
+“Federa” there is a list of the munitions which Gresham was to obtain
+in conjunction with the Italian banker Bonvisi, who had advanced a loan
+to Mary: “3,500 hackequebutts, 1,000 pistolets, 500 pondera (lbs.) de
+Mauches, 100,000 pondera (lbs.) petre salse (saltpetre), 3,000 corselets,
+2,000 mourreyens, 3,000 iron cappes, 8,000 lances and pikes.”
+
+[123] Feria, writing to the King on the 6th April, says in reference to
+this: “Gresham writes that he has found much difficulty and has only
+taken up £10,000. I do not know how this comes to pass, for Paget and
+the rest of them told me at first that the loan for £100,000 was already
+arranged with the merchants I wrote about, and I naturally thought
+that as it had been settled between them and me that Gresham should go
+straight to your Majesty that the affair would be carried through at
+once.... He took letters from the Council to your Majesty, and the Queen
+instructed him to go straight to you. Now it seems from what he writes
+that he has not been to Brussels, and he deserves punishment at your
+Majesty’s hands, as I have told the Queen.”—MSS. Simancas, Estado 811.
+
+[124] Foreign Calendar.
+
+[125] MSS Simancas, 10th March, 1558, Estado 811.
+
+[126] MSS. Simancas, Estado 811.
+
+[127] In the letter written by Philip to Feria in reply to that quoted
+above he says that he has written to Clinton ordering him to go to
+Flanders at once to receive Philip’s orders as to what he is to do with
+the English fleet, “in order that the money it is costing should not be
+spent fruitlessly.”—MSS. Simancas, Estado 811.
+
+[128] MSS. Simancas, Estado 811.
+
+[129] Feria’s suggestion, to which this is a reply, runs thus: “I wrote
+to your Majesty that I did not see Madam Elizabeth when I came here
+because my principal means of carrying through what I wanted was the
+goodwill of the Queen, and I was anxious not to run counter to her in
+anything, especially as your Majesty had given me no instructions to
+the contrary. I afterwards sent a message of apology to Madam Elizabeth
+by the Admiral’s wife [_i.e._, Lady Clinton], who was brought up with
+her and is much in her favour. I said that after she left [London] I
+had received orders from your Majesty to pay my respects to her in your
+name. I told Paget to excuse me to her also, but I do not think he did
+so. On the contrary, the Admiral’s wife told me that he asked Madam
+Elizabeth whether I had visited her, and when she said no he expressed
+much surprise. Figueroa and myself think the matter should not be left
+thus, and that it would be best for me to go and see her before I leave.
+She lives 20 miles away. I shall be glad of your Majesty’s instructions”
+(MSS. Simancas, Estado 811, Feria to the King, 18th May).
+
+[130] A good instance of this is given in the appointment of the
+commander of 1,000 English pioneers who had been raised for Philip’s
+service. Feria wished to send Major Randolph in charge of them. The
+Councillors appointed another man and said that Randolph was to be
+appointed to a post on shore in connection with the navy. Feria insisted,
+and a long quarrel resulted, Feria insisting that Philip should write
+peremptorily to the Queen about it.
+
+[131] This was certainly not the case. Suriano, the Venetian ambassador,
+writing from Brussels on the 12th November, on Feria’s hasty voyage to
+England, when Mary was known to be dying, says drily: “He is in great
+favour with the Queen and he likewise fancies himself popular there [in
+England], but may God grant, in case of her Majesty’s death, that he do
+not experience to his detriment the perverse nature of those people, and
+their most inveterate hatred of foreigners and above all of Spaniards”
+(Venetian Calendar, 12th November). The fable of Feria’s great power in
+England persisted for years, probably owing to his marriage with Sir
+William Dormer’s daughter Jane, which brought him into relationship with
+the Sidneys and a powerful group of English noble families. Dr. Man, the
+English ambassador in Spain in 1567, writes to Cecil (Cotton MSS., Galba
+ciii.) that he had heard a Spanish gentleman say at table that the “Count
+de Feria was so beloved in England that in case he would he might have
+made himself King of England. Which although it be an untruth yet it
+argueth a confidence the Spaniards have of some great part the Count is
+yet able to make in England.” In fact, Feria, whose hatred of Elizabeth
+was intense, was extremely unpopular for his arrogance and presumption in
+England.
+
+[132] MSS. Simancas, Estado 811.
+
+[133] Philip was already in peace negotiations with the French; and the
+English Commissioners were holding out strongly for the restitution of
+Calais as a condition.
+
+[134] Venetian Calendar, 29th October, 1558.
+
+[135] The letter from Feria, dated 14th November, detailing this
+interview with Elizabeth was abstracted by Gonzalez many years ago with
+other papers of the period and translated into English. Unfortunately
+since then the letter appears to have been lost. At least I could not
+find it when I transcribed the other letters of the period relating to
+England in the Spanish Royal Archives at Simancas. The letter, however,
+was printed in Kervyn de Lettenhove’s “Relations Politiques,” &c.
+
+[136] From Father Clifford’s contemporary “Life of the Duchess of Feria”
+(published), for the inspection of the original manuscript of which I am
+indebted to its present possessor, Lord Dormer.
+
+[137] Spanish Calendars of Elizabeth (Hume).
+
+[138] Spanish Calendars of Elizabeth, vol. i. (Hume).
+
+[139] The English correspondence on this matter is of much interest. It
+is in Forbes’s State Papers.
+
+[140] Philip to Feria, 14th February, 1559.—Spanish Calendars of
+Elizabeth (Hume).
+
+[141] Elizabeth was all the time in negotiation with the Reform party in
+France through Guido Cavalcanti for a separate peace, if possible, on
+better terms than could be got in conjunction with Spain. She was quite
+willing to leave Philip in the lurch, if necessary, though the Catholic
+advisers of Henry II. had entirely different views. The correspondence is
+in Forbes’ State Papers of Elizabeth.
+
+[142] Hatfield Papers, part i, p. 151.
+
+[143] Spanish Calendar of Elizabeth (Hume).
+
+[144] “Queens of Old Spain,” by Martin Hume.
+
+[145] 12th July, Spanish Calendar, vol, i.
+
+[146] The Bishop of Aquila to Feria, 7th March, 1560.—Spanish Calendar,
+vol. i.
+
+[147] This pretended _rapprochement_ may be followed in detail in
+Quadra’s letters in the Spanish Calendar. The intrigue was mainly
+engineered by Lady Mary Sidney.
+
+[148] Spanish Calendar, vol. i.
+
+[149] Quadra wrote a letter to the Emperor on the 26th June, before
+he received Philip’s instructions, worded in a way that was purposely
+intended to deceive. Whilst saying that the Scots were not favourable
+to the Archduke’s suit unless he brought enough money to keep himself
+and also that he was strong enough to assert Mary’s claim to the English
+Crown, he hinted that it was to France and not to Spain that she was
+looking for a husband. No word is mentioned about Don Carlos.—Spanish
+Calendar, vol. i. 340.
+
+[150] Serious allegations of intrigues against the Queen had been made
+against the Bishop by a former secretary of his to Cecil. Shan O’Neil was
+known to have frequented his house; English Catholics were known to be
+attendants at Mass in the embassy chapel, and many other complaints were
+made besides the harbouring and connivance in the escape of the fugitive
+Italian. The Bishop himself was placed under arrest and subsequently
+deprived of the use of Durham House as a result of the investigation of
+these charges.—Spanish Calendar, vol. i., and Domestic Calendar of the
+same date, 1563.
+
+[151] And not alone to Philip. The merchants of Antwerp wrote
+beseeching letters to Cecil, and also to Gresham, asking for their
+influence to procure the re-establishment of commercial intercourse.
+The correspondence on the subject, extending over many months, is in
+the Spanish Calendar, vol. i., and in the Flanders Papers of the date
+(1564) at the Record Office, for the most part abstracted in the Foreign
+Calendar.
+
+[152] Some of the arguments he is directed to use sound strangely
+incongruous as coming from Philip. “You may say that they cannot fairly
+refuse the request about the [Catholic] churches, for even the Turk
+allows Christians who live in his country to worship God in their own
+way.”—Spanish Calendar, vol. i. 353.
+
+[153] The meaning of this is that Dudley and his Catholic friends were
+saying that the suspension of commercial intercourse was favourable to
+them, as it was driving Englishmen to desperation, and would lead to a
+revolt against Cecil.
+
+[154] Guzman was warned by his master that he must be very wary how he
+listened to treasonable suggestions, either from the English and Irish
+Catholics or from Dudley’s friends, as in either case they might be
+traps. If Dudley would get Cecil disgraced, Philip would be delighted,
+but the hand of Spain must on no account be seen in it.—Spanish Calendar,
+vol. i. 371.
+
+[155] Spanish Calendar, vol. i.
+
+[156] When Elizabeth visited the University of Cambridge on her autumn
+progress, she declined, in consequence of want of time, to attend a
+theatrical performance offered to her by the students. Before she reached
+her next stopping-place she was persuaded to alter her mind, and she
+returned to witness the play. To her annoyance the imprisoned Catholic
+bishops were lampooned upon the stage with much sacrilegious buffoonery,
+whereupon “the Queen was so angry that she at once rose and entered
+her own chamber, using very strong language, and the torchbearers,
+it being night, left them in the dark, and so ended this scandalous
+representation.”—Spanish Calendar, vol. i. 375, Guzman to the Duchess of
+Parma.
+
+[157] The Duchess of Aerschot had written to her from Flanders to this
+effect at the end of 1564.
+
+[158] The King to Guzman, 6th June, 1565.—Spanish Calendar, vol. i. 433.
+
+[159] Randolph to Cecil, 29th April, 1565.—Scottish Calendar (Bain).
+
+[160] Cardinal Pacheco to Philip.—Spanish Calendar, vol. i.
+
+[161] Labanoff, vol. vii.
+
+[162] Spanish Calendar (Hume), vol. i., 16th July, 1565.
+
+[163] Scottish Calendar, vol. i. (Bain).
+
+[164] Scottish Calendar (Bain), 15th September, 1565.
+
+[165] Ibid.
+
+[166] Labanoff, vol. i.
+
+[167] Spanish Calendar, vol. i. 497, Philip to Guzman.
+
+[168] Diary of Sir James Melville of Hall Hill.
+
+[169] How serious the situation was for Elizabeth, and how wide the
+ramifications of the Catholic intrigue at the time, may be seen by a
+letter written shortly after this by the English spy Rogers to Cecil.
+Arthur Pole, who was a prisoner in the Tower, had surrendered in Mary’s
+favour his claim to the Crown of England, and if he could escape from
+his prison was to come to Scotland to support her with others of his
+kin. Darnley himself, trying to outbid Mary, had boasted that forty
+gentlemen and more in England were ready to serve him. Letters passed
+fortnightly between the Countess of Lennox in the Tower and her son,
+whilst every month an emissary of the northern Catholic gentry came in
+disguise to Darnley from Carlisle. A regular plan, moreover, was prepared
+for the capture and fortification of Scilly in the Catholic interest,
+and the representative of the Irish rebel Shan O’Neil was made much of
+by Darnley, who, amongst other presents, sent to Shan two hundred crowns
+with which to buy whiskey. The hopes that Mary and Darnley built upon the
+English Catholics and Spain were therefore well founded, if they had been
+well handled.—Scottish Calendar, vol. ii. 293.
+
+[170] Guzman to the King, Spanish Calendar, vol. ii., 16th February, 1568.
+
+[171] One of the English spies in Madrid, Hogan, said that it was really
+Feria who had got Man into the trouble.
+
+[172] Spanish Calendar, vol. ii.
+
+[173] Spanish Calendar, vol. ii., 9th August, 1568.
+
+[174] “I told him that, as for arranging anything of the sort between
+the Cardinal and the Duke, I regarded such a statement as a silly joke,
+the vain babble of the idle. I could assure him that to say that such
+a treaty had gone through my hands was absolutely false. If I had done
+such a thing against the Queen I should deserve heavy punishment from
+your Majesty, and even from the Queen herself, such action being entirely
+opposed to my instructions. I had never in my life had any communication
+with the Cardinal, and I was quite sure the Queen would not believe
+such nonsense.”—Spanish Calendar, vol. ii., 65. The English did not
+seem to understand fully at this time Philip’s distrust of all French
+interference, even that of the Guises.
+
+[175] This letter is not in Labanoff, but it is probably similar to that
+sent to Charles IX. from Carlisle on the 26th June.
+
+[176] Spanish Calendar, vol. ii. 71.
+
+[177] Paget House had been the palace of the Bishops of Exeter, and was
+the first of the great houses on the river side of the Strand outside
+Temple Bar, on the site of what is now called the Outer Temple. It had
+been granted by Henry VIII. to Lord Paget.
+
+[178] Very shortly after this, 30th October, when he had got into touch
+with Mary’s imprudent agent, the Bishop of Ross, de Spes wrote to the
+King: “I am of opinion that this would be a good opportunity for taking
+Scottish affairs in hand successfully, and restoring the Catholic
+religion in this country; and if the Duke [of Alba] were out of his
+present anxiety and your Majesty wished, it could be discussed.”—Spanish
+Calendar, vol. ii. 81. A week later de Spes wrote: “It appears as if
+the time was approaching when this country may be made to return to
+the Catholic Church, the Queen being in such straits and short of
+money. I have already informed your Majesty of the offers made by the
+brother-in-law of Viscount Montagu, on condition that they may look for
+the protection of your Majesty.”
+
+[179] Almost simultaneously de Spes went to the French ambassador in
+London (La Mothe) and proposed joint action between them first to oust
+Cecil from his office, and secondly to stop trade with England entirely
+both from France and the Spanish dominions, the ostensible object being
+that, if this were done, Elizabeth and her subjects would be obliged to
+become Catholic to avoid ruin. De Spes even proposed that the French
+should pull the chestnuts out of the fire for him by stopping trade
+first. La Mothe, in writing his account of the suggestion to Catharine,
+calmly points out the evident absurdity of both proposals. De Spes
+apparently had no notion of the incompatibility with Philip’s objects of
+joint action of France and Spain in England.—Correspondance de la Mothe
+Fénélon, vol. i.
+
+[180] These letters are in the Spanish Calendar, vol. ii.
+
+[181] How dangerous the position was at the time is seen by a letter
+(3rd December, 1568) from Sir Francis Knollys, who had charge of Mary at
+Bolton, to Cecil, in which he says that he has less fear that the attempt
+to release Mary by subterfuge as Cecil thought, than by force, and begs
+for more troops to resist attack from without. “We all agree herein, that
+this is an inconvenient and dangerous place for this Queen to tarry in.”
+
+[182] Whilst this letter was being written, Cecil and the Lord Admiral
+(Clinton) with a great train of followers and the alderman of the City
+came to Paget House and demanded to see de Spes. Cecil angrily told him
+that he had advised the Duke of Alba to seize English property, for which
+disloyal act the Queen placed him (de Spes) under arrest, dismissing his
+Spanish servants, and handing the charge of the house to Henry Knollys,
+Arthur Carew, and Lord Knyvett. De Spes answered defiantly, and the
+breach became wider than ever. Proclamations and counter proclamations,
+or printed broadsheets, were issued by the English Council and by de Spes
+respectively, each claiming that justice was on their side with regard to
+the seizures.—De Spes to the King, 8th January, 1569, Spanish Calendar,
+vol. ii.
+
+[183] The King to de Spes, 18th February, 1569.—Spanish Calendar, vol. ii.
+
+[184] “Memoirs of Sir James Melville of Hall Hill.”
+
+[185] Norfolk, on his trial, said that Leicester had also suggested the
+marriage.
+
+[186] De Spes to the King, 5th August, 1569.—Spanish Calendar. Nonsuch
+House was in the occupation of the Earl of Arundel. De Spes, who had
+not been admitted to the Queen’s presence for many months, had hopes at
+this time of being received again to discuss the eternal question of the
+seizures. But another hitch had occurred, as the Queen refused to receive
+him without new credentials from Philip himself. It had been intended
+to take him from Oatlands, where the Queen was, to Nonsuch, after the
+audience, and there a meeting of the conspirators was to confer with him.
+This plan, however, was upset by the delay in granting him the audience
+with Elizabeth.
+
+[187] The details of the Northern Rebellion may be followed closely in
+the Calendars of State Papers of the period (Spanish, Domestic, Border,
+and Scottish); in the Sadler Papers; in the Bowes Papers (Memorials
+of the Rebellion of 1569, by Sir Cuthbert Sharpe). Wright’s Elizabeth
+Papers, &c.
+
+[188] Philip to Alba, 16th December, 1569.—Spanish Calendar, vol. ii.
+
+[189] These letters are in Labanoff and in the Hardwick State Papers.
+
+[190] The Regent Murray had just been murdered.
+
+[191] Antonio de Guaras to Secretary Zayas.—Spanish Calendar.
+
+[192] Haynes State Papers.
+
+[193] He was made to vacate Winchester House “because it had too many
+doors”; and on the 10th August two of the City aldermen came to him with
+an order to proceed to Saint Albans to meet a Committee of the Council,
+who wished to discuss his proceedings with him. He went as requested,
+but refused to discuss anything until the Queen would receive him, which
+she had refused to do since his disgrace. He was confident even now that
+they would soon expel him with ignominy. He was no longer an ambassador,
+said Leicester, but a spy, and the sooner he was gone the better.—Spanish
+Calendar, vol. ii.
+
+[194] De Spes to Secretary Zayas, 6th February, 1571.—Spanish Calendar,
+vol. ii.
+
+[195] The letter is in the Cotton MSS., Caligula, c. 11, p. 469.
+
+[196] Depositions of Ross and Barker.—State Trials.
+
+[197] Spanish Calendar, vol. ii.
+
+[198] Cobham arrived in Madrid in May, when Alba’s memorandum on
+Ridolfi’s mission was in Philip’s hands. As was usual in English affairs,
+Feria was one of those asked to report on Cobham’s mission. He and his
+colleagues recommend that Cobham should be curtly dismissed, and the
+English again referred to Alba for the discussion of the trade dispute,
+and this course was taken. An extremely interesting letter was written by
+Feria to the King’s Secretary, Zayas, which is full of bitterness that
+his former advice as to England had not been taken. Amongst other things,
+Feria writes: “I understand that our object is to keep friendly with
+England because it is not at present possible to undertake the subjection
+of that country and Ireland. We were lords of it once and left it. The
+friendship will be difficult to maintain if the Sovereign be not a
+Catholic and our hold upon the Netherlands less firm. The Queen sees our
+weakness and assails us with inventions and fears that she will marry in
+France. She will no more marry Anjou than she will marry me.... If Cobham
+is not dealt with in dignified fashion I fear that our efforts to avoid
+war will only bring it upon us, and we shall find suddenly some day that
+we have lost the Catholics, and even they will take up arms against us.
+When the Queen once understands that the Catholics depend upon our King
+she will not dare to break with us. There is no other way out of it. For
+the last two years we have trodden the path of feebleness; let us now try
+the other road.”—Feria to Zayas, 10th May, 1571, Spanish Calendar, vol.
+ii.
+
+[199] MSS. Simancas, Estado 823. Portions of the document are reproduced
+by Mignet.
+
+[200] The whole of the depositions will be found in the Hatfield Papers
+Historical MSS. Commission, and the circumstances are related in the
+Spanish Calendar.
+
+[201] Simancas MSS., Minuta de Consejo, Estado 823. It will be seen on a
+subsequent page that the money, 200,000 crowns, was found.
+
+[202] Spanish Calendar, vol. ii. Even after Philip knew that the plot
+had failed and that Norfolk was in the Tower, he did not abandon his
+hopes—for he was tenacious when once he had laboriously made up his mind.
+In the instructions given to the Duke of Medina Celi in November, 1571,
+when he was going to succeed Alba in the Netherlands, the King writes as
+follows: “As regards England you will proceed in conformity with what was
+communicated to you here and the Duke of Alba’s information, although
+I do not think there will be much to do at present, as the Queen has
+got scent of the business and has arrested the Duke of Norfolk and the
+principal people concerned. She has also made the Queen of Scotland’s
+prison straiter, and de Spes writes to me on the 21st October that they
+are all in great peril, for which I am very sorry, though I still have
+confidence that God, whose cause it is, will help us to forward the
+matter as we wish. You will therefore hold yourself ready, in case the
+Duke of Alba write to you at sea, to take any step with this end: in
+accordance with Clause iv. of your instructions. I have thought well
+to repeat it in this letter, _which for greater security you will burn
+before you embark_” (the words in italics have been added in the King’s
+own hand). Medina Celi is told that 200,000 crowns, half in gold, will
+be handed to him for the English business, and must not on any account
+be used for any other purpose, “but for this English affair, which I
+sincerely hope that God will guide in some unexpected way for the good of
+His cause.”—Spanish Calendar, vol. ii. 349.
+
+[203] Scottish State Papers, Mary, vol. vi.
+
+[204] That Elizabeth intended the expulsion of de Spes, and her
+refusal to continue negotiations about the seizures, to be a political
+demonstration to show her power and impress her new friends the
+French, is seen by her conversation at this time (December, 1571) with
+Cavalcanti, Catharine de Medici’s confidential envoy. The King of Spain,
+she said, thought that he could separate her from the alliance with
+France at any time; but however accommodating he might show himself in
+the negotiations about the seizures, and however ready to agree to terms
+favourable to the English, she would never trust Spaniards again, seeing
+the trouble they had prepared for her in Ridolfi’s plots with the Pope.
+The King of France might see how little she cared for the King of Spain
+by the way she had ordered his ambassador to be gone without delay. She
+wished Cavalcanti could have seen him actually on the road, but with some
+pretext about wanting money he was here for a day or two longer. She
+could assure him, however, that he should not stay in her country, and
+she cared not whether another came or not.—Spanish Calendar, vol. ii.
+
+[205] “Recueil des Depeches,” &c., de la Mothe Fénélon, vol i. 375, and
+Spanish Calendar.
+
+[206] Spanish Calendar, vol. ii.
+
+[207] The French Huguenot force that had entered Flanders to aid the
+rebels had just been utterly routed by Alba’s son, Don Fadrique, and
+Charles IX. saw that unless he could dissociate himself from the
+unsuccessful attempt he might be dragged down by the fall of the Huguenot
+party.
+
+[208] The story of the reception of the news of St. Bartholomew in
+England may best be followed in the Correspondance Diplomatique de La
+Mothe Fénélon.
+
+[209] How soon division was introduced is seen by the action of
+Catharine, who saw only a few weeks after St. Bartholomew the mistake
+she had made in allowing the Catholic party to go too far, and once more
+began to court the Huguenots and Elizabeth, and also by the suspicion
+evinced by La Mothe, the French ambassador in London, of Guaras’ renewed
+favour at Elizabeth’s Court. Writing on the 9th November, he says that
+Alba is making all sorts of tempting offers to Elizabeth through Guaras
+to draw her away from French friendship and send an ambassador to Philip.
+“Guaras is intriguing for this with such good presents that I am told
+that he has given more than 10,000 crowns to one personage alone, who has
+some authority here. He has done so much that the Lords of the Council
+have been busy for several days trying to come to some arrangement
+with the King of Spain, and Guaras is often at Court.”—Correspondance
+Diplomatique, vol. v.
+
+[210] Guaras went to Kenilworth before the reception of the news of St.
+Bartholomew to carry letters to Elizabeth from King Philip notifying
+the appointment of Medina Celi to Flanders. Only a few days after the
+tidings of St. Bartholomew the French ambassador wrote to Charles IX:
+“It seems to me that these people are bent in any case in hatching some
+new plan with Antonio de Guaras on the pretext of the letters from the
+King of Spain and Medina Celi he carried to the Queen at Kenilworth. The
+purport of the letters was simply to notify the coming of Medina Celi
+to Flanders; but these people, in consequence of what has happened at
+Paris, wish to make them serve for a further purpose.”—Correspondance
+Diplomatique de la Mothe Fénélon.
+
+[211] Spanish Calendar, vol. ii.
+
+[212] Correspondance Diplomatique de la Mothe Fénélon.
+
+[213] This was not the first time that the suggestion of a marriage
+between Mary and Don Juan had been made. A letter written by Lord
+Burghley to the Earl of Shrewsbury, Keeper of the Queen of Scots, written
+soon after the discovery of the Ridolfi plot, says that Elizabeth does
+not complain of Mary’s attempts to escape to Spain or elsewhere, nor is
+she offended by the proposal to marry young James to the Infanta. “Nether
+that she sought to make the King of Spayne beleve that she wold geve
+ear to the offer of Don Jon of Austria.” The real cause of Elizabeth’s
+anger, says Lord Burghley, is Mary’s conspiracy to raise a revolution in
+England.—Talbot Papers (Lodge).
+
+[214] One of Burghley’s spies, Lane, a Catholic, ventured even to
+reproach the minister for talking so much to Guaras on foreign policy.
+It appears that Burghley’s hare-brained son-in-law, Lord Oxford, and
+another English noble were in secret negotiation with Guaras to do some
+service to the Spaniards in Flanders, Guaras to find the necessary
+money on Oxford’s pledge. Lane advises Burghley to put a spoke into the
+wheel. Lane says that unless Guaras is employed in some way—preferably
+in Ireland on Government affairs—he may develop pernicious activity
+elsewhere.—Hatfield Papers, vol. ii., June, 1573.
+
+[215] Hardwick State Papers.
+
+[216] At this time (March, 1575) Orange, despairing of efficient aid from
+Elizabeth, was wooing the French. His daughter was to marry Alençon,
+who was to join Condé and a French army to assist the Flemings against
+Philip. This at once made Elizabeth turn to Spain. Not only was she,
+as we see, polite to Guaras, but she sent Henry Cobham to Spain as an
+ambassador in August to assure Philip that on no account would she allow
+any French domination of Flanders. A fleet of Spanish transports, too, on
+the way to Flanders were received with effusion now in the English ports
+by the Government though not by the English sailors.—Spanish Calendar,
+vol. ii.
+
+[217] Fleetwood to Lord Burghley.—Wright’s State Papers.
+
+[218] Spanish Calendar, vol. ii.
+
+[219] Fleetwood, in one of his letters to Cecil (Wright’s State Papers),
+gives particulars of one such. A son of Alderman Lee came and said that
+his brother, although a Catholic, was in perpetual prison in Spain, the
+reason being that Guaras having bought a ship called the _Clock_, had
+given to Lee £160 to man the ship and attack Flushing. Lee having failed
+to carry out the plan to his satisfaction, Guaras had had him kidnapped
+and imprisoned in Spain. Guaras, he said, had thirty or forty spies in
+his service, who used to sit or walk in his hall downstairs at night
+without a candle, until, one by one, they were led up to Guaras’ room by
+Dela to report what they had discovered. Guaras’ house at Dowgate, Thames
+Street, was on a portion of the site covered by Cannon Street Station,
+and was bought by the Drapers’ Company on his conviction.—Domestic
+Calendar.
+
+[220] Hatfield Papers, vol. ii., and Spanish Calendar.
+
+[221] Guaras had the incredible imprudence to write a violent,
+treasonable letter to Don Juan from Newgate itself, dated 14th November.
+Though he is a prisoner, he will continue to perform his work by the aid
+of friends. All has been seized, but he now sends his son, who is as
+zealous as himself, to Spain through France. The draft in Spanish was, of
+course, taken from the prisoner when he was transferred to the Tower, and
+is now in the Record Office.—Flanders Correspondence, iii. 101.
+
+[222] Her great complaint against Don Juan is founded on his plots with
+Mary Stuart, as disclosed by the intercepted letters of his secretary,
+Escobedo. “Not that she is afraid of him, but she does not wish knowingly
+to foster a serpent in her bosom. If the King asks for proof, let him
+read Escobedo’s letters set down in the book above mentioned, and
+consider his practices through his agents with her enemy the Queen of
+Scots.”—Mr. Wilkes’ instructions, Foreign Calendar, 1577-78.
+
+[223] In May, 1578, she sent Walsingham and Cobham to Orange to warn
+him against the French connection, and to Don Juan, to say that if the
+French entered Flanders she would send 20,000 men to help the Spaniards,
+and if they were not enough, every man in her country should go.—Spanish
+Calendar, vol. iii.
+
+[224] Mendoza had come to England some years previously, on one of the
+many abortive attempts to settle the question of the seizures.
+
+[225] The unhappy Guaras remained in prison, treated with the greatest
+severity, until May, 1579. Mendoza appears to have pressed his case
+rather languidly, unwilling to embitter national relations further for
+the sake of so plebeian and insignificant a person as Guaras. A wealthy
+brother of the latter, named Gombal de Guaras, came to London early in
+1579 to try whether bribery could release the prisoner. Mendoza was
+furiously angry at this interference, and had nothing but scorn for
+Gombal’s boastful tactics on ’Change. Gombal spent large sums of money
+to forward the release, and notwithstanding Mendoza’s assertion that
+Guaras would have been released earlier but for his brother’s boasts
+and turbulence it is doubtful whether the poor man would ever have got
+out at all without his expenditure. All sorts of hard conditions were
+imposed upon Guaras on his release. All his debts had to be paid and
+his maintenance in prison; he had to leave England at once without
+communicating with anybody, and was never again to return. He left
+England a ruined man, and died in 1584 at his birthplace, Tarrazona,
+and later his heirs prayed unsuccessfully for repayment of the money he
+had disbursed in England.—Spanish Calendar, vol. ii., and Españoles é
+Ingleses en el Siglo XVI., por Martin Hume (Madrid, 1903).
+
+[226] Philip, in reply to the suggestion to bribe the English ministers,
+orders Mendoza to send a schedule of the sums to be paid to each. When
+he has quite satisfied himself that they will have value for the money
+the latter shall be sent. “It is necessary, however, that before doing
+anything, we should have this information, so as not to cast our seed on
+stony ground, nor give money to people who will cheat us and laugh at us.”
+
+[227] The reason given by Elizabeth for sending Guaras back to prison
+was that she had heard anew that he had been serving as the agent of the
+Irish rebels.
+
+[228] Spanish Calendar, vol. ii.
+
+[229] Vargas Mexia at once saw the immense importance of this declaration
+and wrote to Philip (13th February): “Such is the present condition
+of England, with signs of revolt everywhere, the Queen in alarm,
+the Catholic party numerous, the serious events in Ireland, and the
+distrust aroused by your Majesty’s fleet, that I really believe that
+if so much as a cat moved, the whole edifice would crumble down in
+three days beyond repair. If your Majesty had England and Scotland
+attached to you, directly or indirectly, you might consider the States
+of Flanders conquered, in which case you could lay down the law for the
+whole world.” The adhesion of Guise as Philip’s servant made all the
+difference.—Spanish Calendar, vol. iii. It was certainly not the case
+that Guise and Beton had _persuaded_ Mary to take this course. It is far
+more likely that she persuaded them, as she had seen for many years,
+as has been proved in the chapters of this book, that her only hope of
+effectively establishing her claim was to obtain Spanish support. Up to
+this time the Guises had rather obstructed this than otherwise, as they
+looked to Mary’s elevation to serve their own ambitions, which were not
+identical with those of Philip. The Duke of Guise in question was Mary’s
+first cousin, Henry of Lorraine, aged at this time thirty years.
+
+[230] If we are to believe Camden, who was a fellow-student of Parsons’
+at Balliol, this guise was not altogether strange to him. “He was,” he
+says, “a violent, fierce-natured man of rough behaviour.... When he was
+young the fellow was much noted for his singular impudency and disorder
+in apparel, going in great barrel hose, as was the fashion of hacksters
+in those days, and drawing also deep in a barrel of ale.” Another
+contemporary of his, Archbishop Abbot, who was a Fellow of Balliol,
+describes him as being “a man wonderfully given to scoffing, and with
+that bitterness which was the cause that none of the company loved him.”
+He was Bursar of Balliol—and of course a Protestant—until 1573, when he
+got into trouble over his accounts, and for this and other reasons he
+resigned his Fellowship. He lived abroad thenceforward until he returned,
+as here described, as Provincial of the Jesuits for England, having
+entered the Society in 1575.
+
+[231] Spanish Calendar, vol. iii.
+
+[232] A few months later, when Mendoza sought audience of the Queen, to
+remonstrate by Philip’s orders with her about her aid to Don Antonio,
+Leicester and Hatton strongly opposed an audience being granted, whilst
+Cecil, who always advocated a conciliatory course with Spain, insisted
+upon Mendoza being received. “Leicester, whilst he was at supper lately,
+said that he would either turn me out of here or lose his life and
+property in the attempt; whilst Hatton, in the presence chamber in the
+hearing of the household, cried that he would do his best to get me
+expelled, for the Queen trembled every time I asked for audience. When he
+was asked by a friend whether this was because I spoke rudely to her, he
+replied: No, it was not that, for no ambassador was more courteous and
+respectful, but I communicated things in such a way that she trembled
+when she heard me.”—Mendoza to the King, 1st October, 1581, Spanish
+Calendar, vol. iii.
+
+[233] Spanish Calendar, vol. iii.
+
+[234] Mendoza, writing to Philip on the 1st October, 1581, dwells upon
+the terrible sufferings of the Catholics, and incidentally reveals how
+entirely now he had identified himself with those whom the Queen’s
+Government held to be disaffected. Not even the gifts of friends to the
+imprisoned Catholics, he says, may be given to the individuals, but are
+divided amongst all the prisoners. “They are incarcerated with crowds of
+thieves, and are left to die of hunger amongst them, in order that their
+torment may be the greater. If any one goes to visit them he is at once
+arrested, and consequently most of the gifts are sent through me and are
+distributed by my servants, the Catholics alone receiving them. In like
+manner I take charge of the money sent by the Catholics who have fled
+abroad, and of the sums given by others for the Seminaries of Rheims and
+Rome.”—Spanish Calendar, vol. iii.
+
+[235] Spanish Calendar, vol. iii. 188.
+
+[236] Herll to Leicester, 7th November, 1581.—Domestic Calendar.
+
+[237] Spanish Calendar, vol. iii.
+
+[238] Spanish Calendar, vol. iii.
+
+[239] Spanish Calendar, vol. iii.
+
+[240] Creighton had been directed to go to Rouen on the way to Paris,
+in order that he might consult Parsons, who was then there to be in
+touch with England. The Duke of Guise was near by, at his Castle of Eu,
+and Lennox’s letters to him by Creighton were also delivered at the
+same time. Even Father Parsons at this period had not penetrated the
+antagonism of the views of Philip II. and Guise, though he subsequently
+became the leader of the purely Anglo-Spanish party opposed altogether to
+the interference of the French influence and the inclusion of James VI.
+in the plans for the subjugation of England. At this time and for a short
+time afterwards Parsons was in close touch with Guise.
+
+[241] “The two Jesuit fathers who spoke to you about the Scotch affair
+must have been very zealous, but their having carried the matter so far
+as they did and communicating it to so many people may make it difficult
+to keep secret. In order that it may be kept as quiet as possible, you
+will detain the priest if he has not already started to come hither. You
+can tell him, as if on your own account, that in order to keep the affair
+quiet nothing more should be done till you hear from me. You may reply
+to the Duke of Lennox to the same effect, dealing with the matter in a
+way which will not lead them to think that you are throwing difficulties
+in the way for the purpose of refusing the aid they ask for, but only in
+order that it may all be managed on such solid foundations as to ensure
+success, for which we should all strive, as it is so greatly in the
+interests of God and the public welfare.”—Philip to Tassis, 11th June,
+1582, Spanish Calendar, vol. iii. Philip’s message to Guise through
+Tassis, in September, is in the same tone: “You will tell him I would
+gladly have helped in the submission of Scotland, and still would do so
+if I saw really good grounds for anticipating success and a willingness
+on the part of the Pope to contribute such money as the case demands, as
+he has promised me several times. You may dexterously hint at coolness in
+that quarter, so that he may see that the affair is not falling through
+by any fault of mine.”—Ibid. To those who know Philip’s style this
+represents a determination to desist from participation.
+
+[242] Mendoza had entertained several proposals for killing Orange, and
+it was asserted that he had been an accomplice in the present attempt. He
+was very indignant at the odium that this accusation brought upon him,
+but it is extremely likely to be true. He and Mary Stuart had nothing but
+praise for the crime in their letters.—Spanish Calendar, vol. iii.
+
+[243] Spanish Calendar, vol. iii.
+
+[244] Dr. Hector Nuñez writes to Burghley in August, 1582, that Mendoza,
+passing through Fenchurch Street in his carriage, was stoned and hooted
+by a group of boys playing at soldiers, and had to take refuge in Lime
+Street, where the Lord Mayor, Sir James Harvey, lived.—Hatfield Papers,
+part ii.
+
+[245] Mary wrote to him when she was deploring the confusion in their
+plans caused by the muddling of the Jesuits and Lennox: “There are, as
+you have pointed out, many objections to carrying out this enterprise
+from France, and I wish it to be conducted entirely by you, sure, as
+I am, of your faith and prudence.... I must therefore beg of you most
+earnestly to continue here, and thus gain for yourself the honour of God
+and man if the enterprise be successful, as you yet give me hopes that it
+will be. The principal thing is for you to remain in England, but if that
+be impossible, then in France.”—Spanish Calendar, vol. iii.
+
+[246] Roman Transcripts, Record Office, vols. xvi. and xvii.
+
+[247] This was an ordinary course with Philip when he disapproved of a
+plan proposed to him: to pretend acquiescence, but to propose that the
+Pope should find the money, which he knew he would not do.
+
+[248] Spanish Calendar, vol. iii.
+
+[249] Spanish Calendar, vol. iii.
+
+[250] Parsons, although always an enemy of Paget, was, up to the
+period in question, as we have seen, an adherent of Guise and the
+Scottish plans; but he appears to have changed immediately after his
+return from Rome. Allen, who was older and more experienced, probably
+indoctrinated him with the Anglo-Spanish view. Tassis, writing on the
+15th November, 1583, says that Parsons “persists that upon no account
+should the enterprise he commenced in Scotland. He is strongly of
+opinion that the design upon England should be persevered in and the
+heart struck at first: and he says that Allen is told this, by persons
+on the Border itself, who prove it by irrefutable arguments.” Amongst
+these arguments is one that was constantly used afterwards, viz., that
+no matter what the nationality of the foreign troops, if they came to
+England _viâ_ Scotland, they would be looked upon as French and opposed
+accordingly.—Spanish Calendar, vol. iii.
+
+[251] Spanish Calendar, vol. iii. (Paris Archives Nationales).
+
+[252] Spanish Calendar, vol. iii.
+
+[253] Spanish Calendar, vol. iii.
+
+[254] To Idiaquez.—Spanish Calendar, vol. iii.
+
+[255] Roman Transcript, Record Office, vol. xvii. Allen and Parsons to
+the Pope and Philip, 16th January, 1584.
+
+[256] The Cardinal of Como to the Nuncio in Paris, 9th April, 1584.—Roman
+Transcripts, Record Office.
+
+[257] Allen to the Nuncio in Paris.—“Letters and Memorials of Cardinal
+Allen.”
+
+[258] Spanish Calendar, vol. iii.
+
+[259] Tassis to Philip, May 27th.—Spanish Calendar, vol. iii.
+
+[260] Bazan to the King and the reply. Fernandez Duro, “La Armada
+Invincible.”
+
+[261] Spanish Calendar, vol. iii.
+
+[262] Spanish Calendar, vol. iii.
+
+[263] Philip to Mendoza, 5th July, 1585.—Spanish Calendar, vol. iii.
+
+[264] Philip to Mendoza, 17th August.—Spanish Calendar, vol. iii.
+
+[265] Philip to Mendoza, 23rd July, 1585.—Spanish Calendar, vol. iii.
+
+[266] It appears, from a letter written by the Marquis of Santa Cruz
+in 1586, that all the English ships were released in a week or so
+without any damage being done to them, whereas the embargo upon Spanish
+property in England was not raised at all. Santa Cruz represents that
+the English were the aggressors; probably some religious point was made
+the pretext for the attempt to take possession of the _Primrose_ by
+the Lieutenant-Governor of Biscay. The Spaniards insist that none of
+the ships were embargoed until the _Primrose_ had sailed away with her
+“captors.”
+
+[267] The correspondence of Olivares detailing his negotiations with
+Sixtus is in the Spanish Calendar, vol. iii.
+
+[268] Mendoza to Philip, Spanish Calendar, vol. iii.
+
+[269] Parsons to Idiaquez, 30th June, 1597. Transcript printed in
+“Letters and Memorials of Cardinal Allen.” The original cannot now be
+found in the Simancas Archives.
+
+[270] That she knew this is seen in the letter where she implores
+Mendoza to keep the matter secret, or she will lose her French dowry.
+It is curious, however, that in the same letter she prays for rewards
+for Morgan and the Pagets, whom Parsons represents as being strongly
+anti-Spanish.
+
+[271] Mendoza to Philip, 26th June, 1586.—Spanish Calendar, vol. iii.
+
+[272] Philip to Mendoza, 18th July, 1586.—Spanish Calendar, vol. iii.
+
+[273] Mary to Mendoza, 27th July, 1586.—Spanish Calendar, vol. iii.
+
+[274] It was asserted by Mendoza that Raleigh was one of these, which is
+incredible.
+
+[275] If the postscript to her letter to Babington of 17th July, 1586
+(Record Office, “Mary Queen of Scots,” vol. xviii.), be genuine, as I
+believe, there can be no doubt of this, but her letter to the French
+ambassador, Chateauneuf (17th July), is also compromising (Labanoff).
+
+[276] See p. 420.
+
+[277] These were Castilian ducats worth 11 reals (2s. 5½d.), or £467,444,
+which would represent in present value nearly £3,000,000.
+
+[278] These letters (copied by me in the Paris Archives) are in the
+Spanish Calendar, vol. iii.
+
+[279] Alexander Farnese, Duke of Parma, had married a Portuguese
+princess, and his children had a better right to the Crowns of Portugal
+and England than Philip had. The English Catholic refugees in Flanders
+were already suggesting that the young Prince of Parma should marry
+Arabella Stuart and reign over England when it had been conquered.
+Farnese himself was approached by different English parties, even by
+the moderate conforming Catholics in Elizabeth’s Court during the
+negotiations, with a view to divide him from the Spaniards on this
+question of the succession. The Spanish officers, after the defeat of
+the Armada, failing to understand the tactical reasons that kept Farnese
+inactive, openly accused him of treachery. There is no doubt that Farnese
+was hurt, and justifiably so, at the contemptuous disregard for his
+children’s rights, but he was certainly loyal to Philip.
+
+[280] Spanish Calendar, vol. iii. 681.
+
+[281] Philip afterwards ordered that the aid should be confined to a
+money subvention, but Parma determined, if possible, to send the armed
+contingent, though the whole scheme fell through.
+
+[282] Spanish Calendar, vols. iii. and iv.
+
+[283] Spanish Calendar, vol. iv.
+
+[284] To prove the importance of this point, one of Mendoza’s arguments
+in favour of the proposal of Huntly and the Scottish Catholics to attack
+England across the Border by land instead of by an invading fleet, was
+the great cost of the pipe staves, which he said had already been 150,000
+ducats.
+
+[285] Spanish Calendar, vol. iv. 135.
+
+[286] This had been, and continued to be, an absolute condition of
+Parma’s, without which he would not move at all. We shall see how the
+promise was treated.
+
+[287] There is, unfortunately, no space here to give details of the
+endless pourparlers that went on. Much of the correspondence from the
+English Commissioners is in the Flanders Papers in the Record Office, and
+in British Museum Cotton MSS. Vespasian CVII., whilst Parma’s letters on
+the subject to Philip are abstracted in the Calendars of Spanish State
+Papers, vol. iv., under the editorship of the present writer.
+
+[288] Spanish Calendar, vol. iv.
+
+[289] Parma to Philip, 20th March, 1588.—Spanish Calendar.
+
+[290] The letters of Medina Sidonia and Philip have been printed in
+Spanish by Captain Fernandez Duro in “La Armada Invincible.”
+
+[291] “La Armada Invincible.”
+
+
+
+
+INDEX
+
+
+  A
+
+  Alava, Don Francés, Spanish ambassador in France, 320-23
+
+  Alba, Duchess of, in England, 84-86, 88
+
+  Alba, Duke of, 53, 67, 68, 73, 85, 117, 142, 148, 150, 197, 218, 226,
+      231, 232.
+    In Flanders, 258, 265, 266, 268, 271, 272, 275, 277-78, 282,
+      283-88, 297-316, 319, 324, 327, 330, 333.
+    Retires from Flanders, 334.
+    In Portugal, 372
+
+  Alençon, Duke of, 321, 326, 327, 342, 345, 350, 352, 358, 361, 370,
+      376, 388, 395-96, 399, 422
+
+  Allen, Dr. (Cardinal), 383, 385, 391, 404, 405, 406, 416, 418, 419,
+      425, 432, 457, 458, 459, 471, 484, 485
+
+  Alvarez, Dr., Portuguese ambassador, 270-71
+
+  Anna of Austria, Philip’s fourth wife, 300
+
+  Antonio, Don, Portuguese Pretender, 371-73, 375, 379, 380, 396, 405,
+      411, 413, 420, 427, 429, 441, 447, 450
+
+  Armada, the evolution of the, 420, 421, 425, 427, 431, 432, 447, 448,
+      449, 450, 451, 452, 453, 458, 462.
+    Orders given to, 466-70, 475-78, 479, 480-82.
+    The catastrophe, 483-84
+
+  Arundel, Earl of (Fitzallan), 14, 37, 40, 62, 67, 174, 281-82,
+      284-88, 290, 302, 303
+
+  Arundel, Earl of (Howard), 409, 439
+
+  Arundell, Charles, 409
+
+  Ashton, 136
+
+
+  B
+
+  Babington plot, 434-44
+
+  Bacon, Sir Nicholas, 163
+
+  Bailly, Charles, 310-12
+
+  Ballard, Father, 434, 435, 439, 440
+
+  Barker, 306
+
+  Bayonne, the interviews at, 230, 231, 232
+
+  Bazan, Alvaro de (Santa Cruz), Admiral, his plan to conquer England,
+      420, 428, 447, 448, 449, 451, 462, 465, 466, 467, 469, 471, 474,
+      476
+
+  Beal, clerk of the Council, 441
+
+  Bedford, Earl of, 54, 56, 57, 66_n_, 145, 149, 162
+
+  Berga, Father, De Spes’s chaplain, 300
+
+  Bertondona, Martin de, Spanish seaman, 58, 476
+
+  Beton, Archbishop of Glasgow, 239, 363, 364, 366, 383, 384, 391, 400,
+      405, 418
+
+  Beton, James, 267, 270
+
+  Blanks, the Conspiracy of the, 450 _et seq._
+
+  Bonner, Bishop of London, 113, 115, 123
+
+  Borough, Admiral, 461, 463
+
+  Bothwell, 256
+
+  Boxall, Secretary, 161
+
+  Browne, Sir Anthony (Viscount Montagu), 43, 68, 303
+
+  Bruce, Robert, 450, 451-55
+
+
+  C
+
+  Cadiz, Drake’s raid upon, 460-64
+
+  Caithness, Earl of, 382
+
+  Calais, loss of, 151, 157, 168
+
+  Campion, Edmund, Jesuit, 367
+
+  Carew, 46
+
+  Carlos, Don (Philip’s son), 54, 135, 213, 224, 225, 228, 236, 238,
+      239, 240
+
+  Castelnau, de la Mauvissière, French ambassador to Scotland, 250
+
+  Cateau Cambresis, Peace of, 191, 195, 196
+
+  Catharine de Medici, 197, 210, 211, 226, 229, 231, 287, 303, 320,
+      326, 330, 345, 362, 384, 458
+
+  Catharine Grey, 196, 241
+
+  Catholic League, the, 195, 226, 228, 230, 327, 328, 422
+
+  Catholics, English, under Elizabeth, 200, 227, 228, 233, 246-47, 261,
+      271, 280-83, 285-88, 289-92, 293-95, 298-316, 361, 367-68, 376,
+      388, 405, 409, 416, 417, 434, 435, 439, 440, 485
+
+  Cavalcanti, Guido, 320_n_
+
+  Cecil, William (Lord Burghley), 9, 99, 149.
+    Elizabeth’s minister, 183, 187, 195.
+    Checkmates Dudley, 209, 226, 227, 247, 260, 273, 274, 278, 280,
+      282, 301, 317, 319, 324, 336, 345, 348, 358, 371, 374, 379, 395,
+      427, 437, 441, 459, 460
+
+  Charles, Archduke, a suitor for Elizabeth’s hand, 199, 202, 216, 219,
+      224, 229, 238, 239
+
+  Charles V. His attempts to gain the friendship of England, 2-19.
+    His advice to Mary, 17-18.
+    His abdication, 132
+
+  Charles IX. of France, 327, 352, 358
+
+  Chatillon, Cardinal, Huguenot leader, 268, 299
+
+  Cheyne, Sir Thomas, 145
+
+  Ciappino Vitelli, Alba’s general, 292, 294
+
+  Clarencius, Mrs., Queen Mary’s nurse, 40, 78, 179
+
+  Clinton, Lady, 184
+
+  Clinton, Lord, made Lord Admiral, 157, 162, 163, 167, 170, 225, 278,
+      379
+
+  Cobham, Lord, English councillor, 14, 15, 43, 310
+
+  Cobham, Lord (junior), 465
+
+  Cobham, Henry, Elizabeth’s envoy to Spain, 307
+
+  Cobham, Thomas, 310
+
+  Coligny, Admiral, 149, 268, 329
+
+  Como, Cardinal of, 401
+
+  Condé, Prince of, 226
+
+  Cordell, Master of the Rolls, 163, 179
+
+  Cordova, Pedro de, 86
+
+  Council of Trent, proposal by Dudley for England to join in, 203-10
+
+  Courtenay, Earl, of Devon, 19, 20, 22, 24, 32-33, 38, 41, 43, 46, 48,
+      49, 62, 113, 115, 116, 139
+
+  Cranmer, Archbishop, 41, 141
+
+  Crawford, Earl of, 450
+
+  Creighton, Father, Jesuit, 378, 382, 383, 384, 385, 386, 388, 389, 390
+
+  Crofts, Sir James, 358, 399, 465, 470
+
+  Cumberland, Earl of, 285
+
+
+  D
+
+  Dacre, Lord, 285, 293, 404
+
+  Dale, Dr., Peace Commissioner, 465
+
+  Daniel, 136
+
+  Darnley, Henry Stuart, Lord, 218, 221, 226, 235-37, 238-40, 241-54,
+      256
+
+  Dassonleville, Councillor, in England, 173, 184, 278-79
+
+  De Foix, French ambassador, 230, 231
+
+  Dela, Damian, 345, 348
+
+  Derby, Earl of, 61, 67, 80, 85, 302
+
+  Derby, Earl of (junior), 465
+
+  Desmond Rebellion, 359, 362, 364, 370, 375, 398
+
+  De Spes. _See_ GERAU DE SPES
+
+  D’Este, Cardinal, 421, 426
+
+  Don Juan of Austria, 334-40, 345, 349-51, 352, 355, 357, 362
+
+  Drake, Sir Francis, 369, 371, 381, 397, 413, 427, 429, 430, 460-64,
+      465, 479
+
+  Dudley, Lord Henry, 16, 41
+
+  Dudley, Sir Henry, 136, 139
+
+  Dudley, Lord Robert, 199, 202, 221, 223, 224, 225, 226.
+    Plots against Cecil, 227
+    (Earl of Leicester), 352, 355, 358, 371, 382, 395, 397, 427, 430,
+      449, 460
+
+  Dunblane, Bishop of, 457
+
+  Durham House, 43, 170, 199, 217, 446
+
+
+  E
+
+  Edward VI., 2, 3, 4.
+    Illness and death of, 8-12
+
+  Eglinton, Earl of, 382
+
+  Egmont, Count, his embassy to England, 43, 44, 45, 48, 49, 51, 55,
+      67, 76
+
+  Elizabeth, Princess, of England, 19, 20, 38, 39, 41, 46, 48, 49,
+      61, 64, 109, 110, 113, 115, 116, 122-24, 135, 136, 138-41, 156,
+      164-65.
+    Visited by Feria, 166, 174.
+    Acknowledged Mary’s heir, 175.
+    Her accession, 181.
+    _See also_ ELIZABETH, QUEEN OF ENGLAND
+
+  Elizabeth, Queen of England. Perplexity of Feria, 181-82.
+    Her first measures, 183.
+    The problem of her marriage, 182, 186.
+    Her reception of Philip’s offer, 192-93.
+    Deceives Quadra, 203-10.
+    Her policy towards the Dutch Protestants, 221.
+    Her statecraft, 224.
+    Fresh approaches to Spain, 226-30.
+    Her danger from Mary Stuart, 235-55.
+    Her fear of Philip’s designs, 258
+    Her retort to Alba’s proceedings in the Netherlands, 258.
+    Her anger at Dr. Man’s expulsion from Spain, 259-62.
+    Seizes the treasure, 275.
+    Embargoes Spanish property, 275-80, 292.
+    Her alarm, 301.
+    Her reception of Guaras, 325.
+    Friendly with the French, 326-27.
+    Alençon’s courtship, 327-28.
+    Her talk with Guaras, 341.
+    Receives Mendoza, 354-60, 370, 374, 379-81, 385-91.
+    Draws nearer to Spain, 395, 396.
+    Proposal to murder her, 401-3.
+    At war with Philip, 431.
+    Plot to murder her, 434-35, 439-41.
+    Tries for peace, 445, 459, 466, 470.
+    The Armada, 480-84
+
+  Elizabeth of Valois, third wife of Philip, 197, 226
+
+  Emmanuel Philibert of Savoy, 7, 108-11, 116, 140, 148, 186
+
+  England reconciled to the Papacy, 102-8
+
+  Englefield, Sir Francis, 392, 485
+
+  Enriquez, Pedro de, his account of England, 84, 86, 87, 88, 90, 102,
+      111, 112
+
+  Eric of Sweden. Offers to marry Elizabeth, 165, 176, 186.
+    A suitor for Mary of Scotland, 219
+
+
+  F
+
+  Farnese, Alexander, Duke of Parma, 350, 424, 445, 451, 452, 453_n_,
+      462, 465, 470, 471, 472.
+    Advocates peace, 475, 479
+
+  Felton, John, 299-300
+
+  Fenner, Captain, 429
+
+  Feria, Count (Duke of), 55, 67, 73, 86, 151, 153.
+    His dealings with Mary and her Council, 153-172.
+    Leaves England, 172, 173.
+    Returns to Mary’s death-bed, 177.
+    Visits Elizabeth, 166, 178.
+    Philip’s ambassador to Elizabeth, 181.
+    His bewilderment at the changes, 182-84.
+    His interviews with Elizabeth, 185.
+    His action in Madrid, 259, 265, 307_n_, 317, 324, 351
+
+  Feria, Countess of (Jane Dormer), 179, 202, 316
+
+  Fiesco, 292, 323
+
+  Figueroa, Viceroy, Imperial ambassador, 67, 79, 80, 165
+
+  Fitzwalter, Lord (Earl of Sussex), 54, 56.
+    _See also_ SUSSEX
+
+  Fitzwilliam, George, 316-18
+
+  Fleetwood, Sir William, 343, 347
+
+  Flores, Diego, 478
+
+  Fowler, a Lennox adherent, visits Guzman, 235-37
+
+  Francis II. of France, 197
+
+  Frobisher, Captain, 429
+
+
+  G
+
+  Gardiner, Stephen, Bishop of Winchester, 26_n_, 36, 40, 42, 45, 46,
+      61, 71, 75, 94, 95, 103-5, 107, 115, 130-31
+
+  Geneda, Don Diego, 33, 135
+
+  Gerau de Spes, Spanish ambassador, 264.
+    His violent character, 265-67.
+    Begins plotting at once, 268-69, 270, 271.
+    Causes seizure of English property and stoppage of trade, 275.
+    His indiscretion, 276, 277, 278.
+    Under arrest in England, 278-79.
+    Plots with Mary Stuart, 280-83, 284-92, 293.
+    The Ridolfi plot, 297-315.
+    Hoodwinked by Hawkins, 316-18.
+    His expulsion from England, 319, 375
+
+  German mercenaries for England, 156, 168, 169
+
+  Gifford, Gilbert, 439, 440, 443
+
+  Giraldi, Portuguese envoy to England, 343-44
+
+  Granvelle, Cardinal de, 4, 21, 99, 387, 388, 392-93, 394
+
+  Gregory XIII., Pope, 309, 338, 401, 405, 406, 421, 422, 423
+
+  Gresham, Sir Thomas, 112, 160, 161, 268
+
+  Grey, Lady Jane. _See_ JANE
+
+  Grey de Wilton, Lord, 145, 151
+
+  Guaras, Antonio de, 35-36, 267, 322-26, 330-33, 336-46.
+    Arrested, 347-49, 357, 359, 375
+
+  Guaras, Gombal de, 357
+
+  Guise, Francis, Duke of, 142, 143, 148.
+    Captures Calais, 151.
+    Death of, 235
+
+  Guise, Henry, Duke of, 365, 366, 384, 389_n_, 390-92, 393, 394, 399,
+      401-3, 405-7, 409, 417, 418, 422, 425, 426, 450, 451, 458
+
+  Guises, the, 200, 210, 211, 232, 234, 352-53, 445, 457
+
+  Guzman de Silva, Diego. Spanish ambassador to England, 222.
+    His first interviews with Elizabeth, 225-32.
+    His negotiations with Mary Stuart, 235-54.
+    His interviews with Elizabeth about the expulsion of Dr. Man,
+      260-61.
+    Begs Philip to recall him, 262.
+    Presents his successor, 264.
+    Elizabeth’s grief at his departure, 264-65.
+    Leaves England, 265, 268
+
+
+  H
+
+  Hamilton, Lord Claude, 440, 450
+
+  Hastings, Lord, 43, 99
+
+  Hatton, Sir Christopher, 370, 371, 373, 382, 396
+
+  Havrey, Marquis d’, 352
+
+  Hawkins, John, 273, 274, 281.
+    His trick on de Spes, 316-18
+
+  Hawkins, William, 273
+
+  Heath, Archbishop, Lord Chancellor, 141, 155
+
+  Henrique, Cardinal, King of Portugal, 362, 372
+
+  Henry VIII., 2, 32
+
+  Henry II. of France, 6, 95, 115, 139, 142, 188, 194.
+    Death of, 197, 200
+
+  Henry III. of France, 399, 425, 455, 456, 457, 486
+
+  Herbert, Dr., Peace Commissioner, 465
+
+  Herries, Lord, 257, 312
+
+  Hertford, Earl of, 465
+
+  Heywood, Father, Jesuit, 383
+
+  Hoby, Sir Philip, English envoy, 8
+
+  Holt, Father, Jesuit, 386, 388
+
+  Horn, Count, 67
+
+  Horsey, Governor of the Isle of Wight, 274
+
+  Howard, Lord Henry, 388, 399
+
+  Howard, Lord William (Lord Effingham), 43, 44, 61, 63, 64, 67, 76,
+      77, 135, 148, 157, 191, 225, 254
+
+  Howard, Lord Admiral (Charles 2nd Howard of Effingham), 441
+
+  Huguenots, the, 200, 210, 211, 226, 230, 232, 268, 273, 320, 326,
+      327-29, 353, 358
+
+  Hunsdon, Lord, 441
+
+  Huntly, Earl of, 382, 450, 454
+
+  Hurtado de Mendoza, Diego, 33
+
+
+  I
+
+  Isabel, the Infanta, 458
+
+
+  J
+
+  James VI. of Scotland, 363, 366, 377, 378, 382, 384, 386, 387, 400,
+      419, 422, 426, 433, 436, 438, 450, 454, 457, 458, 459
+
+  Jane Grey, 11, 13, 16, 19, 41
+
+  Jane the Mad, 56, 120
+
+  Jerningham, Master of the Rolls, 163
+
+  Jesuit propaganda in England, 365, 367, 368, 378, 382, 385, 398, 400,
+      419
+
+  Juana, Princess, Philip’s sister, 54, 56, 225
+
+
+  K
+
+  Kildare, Countess of, 85
+
+  Kingston, Sir Anthony, 136
+
+  Kirkaldy of Grange, 255
+
+  Knollys, Sir Francis, 277_n_, 441
+
+
+  L
+
+  Landau, Charles V. at, 2, 3
+
+  La Mole received by Elizabeth, 327-28
+
+  La Mothe Fénélon, French ambassador, 275, 287, 330, 400
+
+  Leicester, Earl of. _See_ DUDLEY
+
+  Lennox D’Aubigny (Duke of Lennox), 363, 366, 377, 378, 382, 389-92,
+      398, 399, 400
+
+  Lennox, Margaret, Countess of, 218.
+    Intrigues with Guzman, 235-37, 238-40, 241, 247, 253
+
+  Lethington, William Maitland, Laird of (Scottish Secretary), 213,
+      214, 215, 218, 234-40, 285
+
+  Lewis, Dr. Owen, Bishop of Cassano, 433, 457
+
+  London.
+    Rejoices at Mary’s accession, 14-17.
+    Mary’s entry into, 19.
+    Mary’s coronation at, 32, 34.
+    Wyatt’s appeal to, 15, 47.
+    Fears of the Spanish match, 34, 43, 52, 64, 86-90.
+    Philip’s State entry, 90-92, 93.
+    Ill-feeling towards Spaniards, 114, 120
+
+  Loo, Andrea, de, 445, 459
+
+  Lopez, Dr., 373
+
+  Lopez de Padilla, Gutierre, 54
+
+  Lorraine, Cardinal, 216, 226, 231, 232, 234, 238, 244, 265
+
+  Lumley, Lord, 285, 286, 290, 302, 303
+
+
+  M
+
+  Man, Dr., English ambassador in Spain, his expulsion, 259, 265, 270
+
+  Marnix, Jacques de (Tholuze), envoy to England, 9
+
+  Martinengo, Abbé, Papal Legate for England, 209
+
+  Martin, Sir Roger, Lord Mayor, 271
+
+  Mary Tudor, Queen of England, 8, 10, 11-16.
+    Her accession, 17.
+    Her reception in London, 19.
+    Her acceptance of Philip, 23-29.
+    Her anger with Courtenay, 32-33.
+    Her coronation, 34.
+    Pledged to Philip, 40.
+    The public announcement of her marriage, 45, 47, 48.
+    Anxiety for Philip’s safety, 51.
+    Her meeting with Philip, 76-78.
+    The marriage, 80-82.
+    Entry into London, 90-92, 95.
+    Receives Pole, 102, 109-10.
+    Difficulties with Elizabeth, 116-19.
+    Hopes of an heir, 119-21, 122, 123.
+    Philip’s absence, 130, 140-41.
+    Joy at Philip’s return, 144.
+    Declares war on France, 147.
+    Her grief at the loss of Calais, 153, 157.
+    Her poverty, 158-59.
+    Her decline and death, 171, 175-80
+
+  Mary of Hungary, Regent of the Netherlands, 3, 6
+
+  Mary, Queen of Scots, 39, 141, 187, 193, 197, 200, 211, 213, 224,
+      234, 236-40.
+    Marries Darnley under Philip’s patronage, 243-45.
+    Her designs against Elizabeth, 247-54.
+    Rizzio, 256.
+    Mary a prisoner, 256, 257.
+    In England, 262, 268, 269.
+    Her communications with de Spes, 277-88, 293.
+    The Ridolfi plot, 297-315, 316, 317.
+    Intrigues with Don Juan through Guaras, 336, 339-40, 345, 349.
+    Fresh plots, 365-66, 377, 383-84, 401-3, 410, 423, 434.
+    Bequeaths Crown of England to Philip, 436.
+    Her part in the Babington plot, 444
+
+  Mary of Lorraine, Regent of Scotland, 200
+
+  Mason, Dr., English Councillor, 14, 15, 16, 99, 100
+
+  Maurice of Saxony, 2
+
+  Maximilian of Austria, 38
+
+  Mayenne, Duke of, 401
+
+  Medina Celi, Duke of, 55, 73, 85, 315_n_, 317, 331_n_
+
+  Medina Sidonia, Duke of, 462.
+    To command the Armada, 477, 479, 481.
+    Prays Philip to abandon the enterprise, 482
+
+  Melville, Sir James, 254, 285_n_
+
+  Mendoza, Bernardino, Spanish ambassador to England, 351, 353-54,
+      355-60.
+    Plots with the English Catholics, 368-70, 377-83, 386-98.
+    His unpopularity in London, 398.
+    His connivance with Throckmorton’s plot, 408.
+    Expulsion from England, 410-12.
+    In Paris, 422-25, 433.
+    Connives at the Babington Plot, 434-45.
+
+  Metz, the Emperor’s defeat at, 5
+
+  Montmorenci, Constable, 148
+
+  Montmorenci, Jean (de Courrières), envoy to England, 9, 43
+
+  Montrose, Earl of, 450
+
+  Morgan, Thomas, 406, 435
+
+  Morley, Lord, 285
+
+  Morton, the Regent, 365, 366, 377
+
+  Morton, Earl of (Stuart), 450
+
+  Moryson, Sir Richard, addresses the Emperor, 1-4
+
+  Murray, James Stuart, Earl of, 245, 251, 255, 256, 284, 285, 287
+
+
+  N
+
+  Navarre, Henry of, 326, 328, 399, 422, 455, 486
+
+  Navas, Marquis de las, 54, 59, 67, 85
+
+  Noailles, Antoine de, French ambassador, 19, 20, 33, 41, 42, 43, 46,
+      49, 62, 79, 93-94, 115, 119, 134, 135.
+    His plots, 136, 141, 146, 147, 151
+
+  Nonsuch House, 288
+
+  Norfolk, Duke of (Thomas Howard), his plots with Mary Stuart, 281-83,
+      284-88, 289-92, 293-95, 297, 301, 306, 311-15
+
+  North, the Rising in the, 293-95, 297
+
+  Northampton, Marquis of, 62, 226
+
+  Northumberland, Duke of, 3, 4, 5, 7, 8, 10, 12, 14, 15, 16, 19
+
+  Northumberland, Earl of, 254, 277, 281, 285, 290, 293, 293-95
+
+  Northumberland, Earl of (junior), 409
+
+  Nowell, Dr., Dean of St. Paul’s, 3.
+    Elizabeth rebukes him, 231
+
+  Nuñez, Dr. Hector, 398_n_
+
+
+  O
+
+  Oquendo, Admiral, 476, 478
+
+  Olivares, Count, Spanish ambassador in Rome, 421, 423, 426, 432, 433,
+      438, 457, 471
+
+  Orange, Prince of, 332-33, 352, 356, 369, 381, 395
+
+  Osorio, Isabel de, Philip’s mistress, 22_n_, 27
+
+  Owen, Hugh, 424
+
+
+  P
+
+  Pacheco, Don Juan, robbed in England, 84
+
+  Paget, William, Lord, 20, 24, 37, 40, 61, 99, 158, 163, 167
+
+  Paget, Lord (junior), 409
+
+  Paget, Charles, 339, 406, 408, 409, 434, 435
+
+  Paget, William, 436
+
+  Paget House, 238, 269, 278
+
+  Parry, Elizabeth’s controller, 184
+
+  Parsons (or Persons), Father Robert, 367, 383, 385, 389, 400, 404,
+      405, 406, 407, 416, 417, 419, 421, 425, 435, 457, 458, 471, 483,
+      485
+
+  Paul IV., Pope (Caraffa), 121, 141, 142, 150
+
+  Paulet, Sir Amyas, 345
+
+  Paz, Luis de, 219, 236
+
+  Peace negotiations with Parma, 445, 459, 465, 466, 470
+
+  Peckham, Sir W., 136
+
+  Pembroke, Earl of, 14, 61, 71, 80, 82, 97, 145, 225, 290
+
+  Pembroke, Countess of, 85
+
+  Pescara, Marquis of, 55, 67
+
+  Petre, Sir W., Secretary of State, 14, 24, 37, 40, 97
+
+  Philip II., 6.
+    To marry Mary, 21-31, 37, 38.
+    The conditions of his marriage, 42, 44-46, 50.
+    His coming to England, 52-65.
+    His presents to Mary, 54.
+    His demeanour in England, 65, 66.
+    Arrival and first sight of Mary, 66-80.
+    State entry into London, 90-92.
+    Receives Pole, 101-105.
+    His attitude towards Elizabeth, 116-17.
+    Leaves England, 125-26.
+    His influence on English policy, 129, 133.
+    His attempts to draw England into war, 143.
+    Visits England, 144.
+    Obtains armed English aid, 145.
+    England joins him in the war, 147.
+    His last farewell to Mary, 148.
+    The war and the English, 151-60, 162-63, 164.
+    His friendship with Elizabeth, 166.
+    He proposes to Elizabeth, 188-91.
+    His new policy, 195.
+    Alliance with France, 198-99.
+    Its inefficiency, 200.
+    His intrigue with Lord R. Dudley, 203-10.
+    His reception of Scottish approaches, 215.
+    His policy in the Netherlands, 220.
+    Patronises Darnley, 235-40, 241-54.
+    His determination to crush the Netherlands, 258.
+    Adopts a stronger policy towards England, 263.
+    Seizure of his treasure, 272-77.
+    Stops trade, 278-79.
+    Intrigues with Mary Stuart, 280-83, 288.
+    Accepts Ridolfi plot, 308, 313, 314.
+    His claim to Portugal, 362, 372.
+    His attitude towards Guise’s plots, 402, 407, 408.
+    Resolved upon war at last, 415, 421, 426.
+    His claim to the Crown of England, 436, 437.
+    His doubts of the Babington plot, 441-43.
+    Plans the Armada, 448-49, 450, 451-56, 457-58, 459, 466-74.
+    His obstinacy and the result, 483.
+    His failure, 487
+
+  Pickering, Sir William, 168
+
+  Pole, Arthur, plots with Quadra, 217, 255_n_
+
+  Pole, Cardinal Reginald, 19, 34, 95, 98, 99.
+    In England, 100-4, 114, 125, 130, 141, 143, 146, 155, 170.
+    His death, 179
+
+  Portugal, Philip’s claim to, 362, 371, 372, 396
+
+  _Primrose_, the attack upon the, 428
+
+  Protestant conspiracies against Mary, 136, 146.
+    _See also_ WYATT
+
+
+  Q
+
+  Quadra, Bishop Alvaro.
+    Philip’s ambassador in England, 196, 198, 199, 200.
+    Hoodwinked by Dudley, 202-10.
+    Scottish approaches to, 213 _et seq._
+    His death, 219
+
+
+  R
+
+  Raleigh, Sir Walter, 440_n_, 446, 447
+
+  Randolph, English agent in Scotland, 249, 255
+
+  Randolph, Major, 170_n_
+
+  Ratcliff, Egremont, 342
+
+  Recalde, Martinez de, 476, 478
+
+  Religious persecution, 96, 113-15, 123, 128
+
+  Renard, Simon.
+    Imperial ambassador, 9-18.
+    Proposes Philip for Mary, 21-31, 33, 37, 48, 49, 50, 51, 61, 62,
+      63, 65, 71, 113, 114, 122, 128
+
+  Requesens, Viceroy of Flanders, 334, 337
+
+  Ridley, Bishop, 41
+
+  Ridolfi, Rodolfo, 281, 297, 304, 306-11, 318, 375
+
+  Rizzio, 256
+
+  Robsart, Amy, Lady R. Dudley, 202, 203
+
+  Rochester, Sir R., 154, 163
+
+  Rome, the Armada intrigues in, 421, 426, 457
+
+  Ross, Bishop of, 285, 287, 289, 298-99, 302, 304, 310, 311
+
+  Ross, 306
+
+  Rutland, Earl of, 164
+
+  Ruy Gomez, Philip’s favourite, 55, 67, 72, 78, 92
+
+
+  S
+
+  St. Bartholomew, 328-30
+
+  St. Quintin, battle of, 148, 150
+
+  St. Quintin, English at the battle of, 149, 159
+
+  Sanders, Dr., Papal Legate in Ireland, 364
+
+  Sarmiento de Gamboa, 446-47
+
+  Schefyne, envoy to England, 9, 11
+
+  Sebastian, King of Portugal, 362
+
+  Semple, Colonel, 450
+
+  Seton, Lord, 382
+
+  Shan O’Neil, 217, 256
+
+  Shrewsbury, Earl of, 14, 16, 61, 67, 97, 302, 423
+
+  Sidney, Sir H., 202, 203, 210
+
+  Sidney, Lady Mary, 199, 202
+
+  Sixtus V., Pope, 423, 426, 432, 433, 438, 457, 459, 471
+
+  Spaniards, discontent of, 83-90, 102, 111, 112, 120
+
+  Spinola, Benedict, Genoese banker in London, 272, 273, 274
+
+  Stafford, Thomas, his abortive rebellion, 146, 147
+
+  Stanley, Sir William, 439, 441, 450
+
+  Story, Dr., 303
+
+  Strange, Lord, 43, 82
+
+  Stukeley, English traitor, 301, 362
+
+  Supremacy, Act of, 194
+
+  Sussex, Earl of, 61, 153, 157, 293, 342, 370, 371, 373, 379
+
+
+  T
+
+  Tassis, Spanish Ambassador in France, 383, 384, 389, 392, 400, 401,
+      403, 405, 410, 418
+
+  Throckmorton, Francis, 408, 409, 416
+
+  Treasure, the seizure of Philip’s, 271-77, 321-26, 331, 332
+
+  Tremayne, 136
+
+  Tresham, 377
+
+
+  U
+
+  Uniformity, Act of, 194
+
+
+  V
+
+  Valdés, Pedro de, 478, 483
+
+  Vargas-Mexia, Spanish ambassador in France, 364-65, 366_n_
+
+
+  W
+
+  Walsingham, Sir Francis, 328, 358, 397, 407, 409, 410, 427, 434, 441,
+      443, 444
+
+  Wentworth, Lord, Governor of Calais, 151
+
+  Westmorland, Earl of, 97, 147, 174, 293, 375, 404
+
+  Wilkes, English envoy to Spain, 350-51
+
+  Williams, Sir John (Lord Williams of Thame), 67, 68
+
+  Wilson, Dr., 345
+
+  Winchester, the marriage at, 72-84
+
+  Winchester, Marquis of, 86, 97
+
+  Winchester House, 287, 302_n_
+
+  Worcester, Earl of, 303
+
+  Wyatt’s rebellion, 47, 48, 49, 61, 62, 90
+
+  Wynter, Admiral, 273, 429
+
+
+  Y
+
+  Yaxley, Francis, sent to Philip by the English and Scottish
+      Catholics, 248-54
+
+  York, the Conference of, 269, 284
+
+  York, Roland, 450
+
+
+  Z
+
+  Zayas, Secretary, 305, 306, 313, 336, 346, 347, 359, 363
+
+  Zweveghem, Flemish envoy, 324, 326
+
+*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 78876 ***
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+  </head>
+
+<body>
+<div style='text-align:center'>*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 78876 ***</div>
+
+<main>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_i">[i]</span></p>
+
+<p class="titlepage">ROMANTIC HISTORY<br>
+<i>General Editor</i>: <span class="smcap">Martin Hume</span>, M.A.</p>
+
+<p class="center larger">TWO ENGLISH QUEENS<br>
+<span class="smaller">AND PHILIP</span></p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_ii">[ii]</span></p>
+
+<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop" aria-hidden="true">
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_iii">[iii]</span></p>
+
+<figure class="figcenter illowp48" id="illus01" style="max-width: 28.125em;">
+  <img class="w100" src="images/illus01.jpg" alt="">
+  <figcaption>
+    <p><i>Philip II in 1586.</i></p>
+    <p><i>From a contemporary engraving by Essarts.</i></p>
+  </figcaption>
+</figure>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_iv">[iv]</span></p>
+
+<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop" aria-hidden="true">
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_v">[v]</span></p>
+
+<p class="titlepage larger">TWO ENGLISH QUEENS<br>
+<span class="smaller">AND PHILIP</span></p>
+
+<p class="titlepage"><span class="smaller">BY</span><br>
+MARTIN HUME, M.A.<br>
+<span class="smaller">(PEMBROKE COLLEGE, CAMBRIDGE)<br>
+EDITOR OF THE CALENDARS OF SPANISH STATE PAPERS PUBLIC RECORD OFFICE</span></p>
+
+<p class="titlepage">WITH A FRONTISPIECE IN PHOTOGRAVURE AND<br>
+TWELVE OTHER ILLUSTRATIONS</p>
+
+<div class="poetry-container titlepage">
+  <div class="poetry">
+    <div class="stanza">
+      <div class="verse indent0"><i>Con todo el mundo guerra</i></div>
+      <div class="verse indent0"><i>Y paz con Inglaterra</i></div>
+    </div>
+  </div>
+</div>
+
+<p class="titlepage">METHUEN &amp; CO.<br>
+36 ESSEX STREET W.C.<br>
+<span class="smaller">LONDON</span></p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_vi">[vi]</span></p>
+
+<p class="titlepage smaller"><i>First Published in 1908</i></p>
+
+<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop" aria-hidden="true">
+
+<div class="chapter">
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_vii">[vii]</span></p>
+
+<h2 class="nobreak" id="CONTENTS">CONTENTS</h2>
+
+</div>
+
+<nav>
+
+<table>
+  <tr>
+    <td></td>
+    <td class="tdpg smaller">PAGE</td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td colspan="2" class="tdc">CHAPTER I</td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td><span class="smcap">Introductory</span> (1552-1553)</td>
+    <td class="tdpg"><a href="#CHAPTER_I">1</a></td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td class="sub">The Emperor and England—Death of Edward VI.—Mary and
+    Renard—To capture England by marriage—Philip II. accepts the
+    sacrifice—Spanish efforts to moderate the religious reaction in
+    England</td>
+    <td class="tdpg"></td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td colspan="2" class="tdc">CHAPTER II</td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td>1553-1554</td>
+    <td class="tdpg"><a href="#CHAPTER_II">32</a></td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td class="sub">The Coronation of Mary—Noailles <i>versus</i> Renard—Mary accepts
+    Philip—The marriage treaty—Alarm in London—Egmont’s
+    missions—Wyatt’s rebellion—Attitude of Elizabeth—The coming
+    of Philip—His voyage and arrival—His popular manners in
+    England—Arrival at Winchester</td>
+    <td class="tdpg"></td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td colspan="2" class="tdc">CHAPTER III</td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td>1554-1555</td>
+    <td class="tdpg"><a href="#CHAPTER_III">75</a></td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td class="sub">Philip’s first meeting with Mary—The marriage—Discontent and
+    disappointment of the Spaniards—Philip’s kindness to his wife—Spanish
+    descriptions of England—Philip in London—Arrival of
+    Pole—Philip’s religious policy in England—His attempts to marry
+    Elizabeth to Savoy—The Emperor’s war with France—Departure
+    of Philip from England</td>
+    <td class="tdpg"></td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td colspan="2" class="tdc">CHAPTER IV</td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td>1555-1558</td>
+    <td class="tdpg"><a href="#CHAPTER_IV">128</a></td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td class="sub">Religious persecution in England—Philip’s attempts to restrain it—His
+    efforts to keep control of English policy—Elizabeth comes to
+    <span class="pagenum" id="Page_viii">[viii]</span>
+    Court—Return of Philip to England—French intrigues—The
+    English drawn into the war—St. Quentin—Loss of Calais—Penury
+    of the English treasury—Illness and death of Mary—Feria’s
+    approaches to Elizabeth</td>
+    <td class="tdpg"></td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td colspan="2" class="tdc">CHAPTER V</td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td>1558-1565</td>
+    <td class="tdpg"><a href="#CHAPTER_V">181</a></td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td class="sub">Accession of Elizabeth—The beginning of the long duel—Feria
+    urges Philip to use force—Philip’s many difficulties—He offers his
+    hand to Elizabeth—The Peace of Cateau Cambresis—The Franco-Spanish
+    Alliance—Fears of a Catholic League—Philip marries a
+    French Princess—English Catholics appeal to Philip—Mary Stuart
+    claims the Crown of England—War with Scotland—Philip’s efforts
+    to effect a reconciliation—Bishop Quadra—His relations with
+    Leicester—Intrigue for a Catholic reaction in England—Mary
+    Stuart approaches Philip—Disgrace and death of Quadra—A war
+    of tariffs—Guzman de Silva, ambassador—The interviews of
+    Bayonne—Failure of the Catholic League</td>
+    <td class="tdpg"></td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td colspan="2" class="tdc">CHAPTER VI</td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td>1565-1569</td>
+    <td class="tdpg"><a href="#CHAPTER_VI">234</a></td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td class="sub">Mary Stuart marries Darnley—Their intrigues with Philip through
+    Guzman—Plan to promote revolution in England in favour of Mary—Expulsion
+    of the English ambassador from Spain—Recall of
+    Guzman—Don Gerau de Spes ambassador—His character—Commences
+    conspiring at once—His turbulent behaviour—Seizure
+    of Philip’s treasure in England—Indignation of de Spes—His
+    imprudent and disastrous action—Alba stops trade—Strained
+    relations—Proposed declaration of war against England—The
+    views of Philip and Alba—The Norfolk plot—The Northern
+    rebellion</td>
+    <td class="tdpg"></td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td colspan="2" class="tdc">CHAPTER VII</td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td>1570-1578</td>
+    <td class="tdpg"><a href="#CHAPTER_VII">296</a></td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td class="sub">Desperation of Alba—Fresh Catholic conspiracies—De Spes’s
+    complicity—Alba and the Ridolfi plot—Discovery—The revenge
+    of John Hawkins—De Spes outwitted—His expulsion from England—Guaras
+    appointed Spanish Agent—Reopening of trade—Guaras’
+    intrigues with Mary Stuart and Don Juan of Austria—The plot
+    discovered—Imprisonment of Guaras—Fall of Don Juan—Bernardino
+    de Mendoza appointed ambassador in England
+    <span class="pagenum" id="Page_ix">[ix]</span></td>
+    <td class="tdpg"></td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td colspan="2" class="tdc">CHAPTER VIII</td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td>1578-1584</td>
+    <td class="tdpg"><a href="#CHAPTER_VIII">354</a></td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td class="sub">Mendoza and Elizabeth—His haughty behaviour—The French in
+    Flanders—Elizabeth’s approaches to Philip—The Spanish designs
+    on Portugal—Renewed plots of Mary Stuart—Appeals to Philip to
+    aid her in England—Philip’s attitude towards Guise—Co-operation
+    with him in Britain—The Jesuit mission—Mendoza and the Catholic
+    plot in Scotland—Elizabeth aids the Portuguese Pretender—Anger
+    of Mendoza—His altercation with Elizabeth—Progress of the plots—Collapse
+    of Lennox—The interference of Guise in the plans—The
+    jealousy between English Catholic exiles and the Scots—Development
+    of the Anglo-Spanish plans and intended exclusion of Guise—Arrest
+    of Francis Throckmorton—Discovery of the plot—Expulsion
+    of Mendoza—Philip faces the inevitable and slowly prepares for a
+    war of invasion</td>
+    <td class="tdpg"></td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td colspan="2" class="tdc">CHAPTER IX</td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td>1584-1588</td>
+    <td class="tdpg"><a href="#CHAPTER_IX">416</a></td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td class="sub">English Catholics <i>versus</i> Scottish—Santa Cruz’s proposal to conquer
+    England—Enlisting the Pope—Intrigues in Rome—Mary Stuart
+    and Philip—Drake’s raid on Galicia—Elizabeth assumes the
+    protectorate of the Netherlands—War at last inevitable—The
+    preliminaries of the Armada—The Babington plot—Philip’s
+    consent—His distrust—Discovery—Elizabeth’s fears of war—Her
+    approaches to Spain—Santa Cruz’s fresh proposals to invade
+    England—His great plan—The Scottish Catholics try again to
+    share the attack upon England—Failure of Huntly’s scheme—Guise
+    not allowed by Philip to interfere—Mendoza in favour of
+    the Scottish plan—Philip’s claims to the English crown—The
+    peace negotiations—Drake’s dash upon Cadiz—Parma and the
+    Armada—Death of Santa Cruz—Medina Sidonia—The Armada—The
+    failure and its causes—The end of the struggle to win England</td>
+    <td class="tdpg"></td>
+  </tr>
+</table>
+
+</nav>
+
+<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop" aria-hidden="true">
+
+<div class="chapter">
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_x"></a><a id="Page_xi"></a>[xi]</span></p>
+
+<h2 class="nobreak" id="ILLUSTRATIONS">ILLUSTRATIONS</h2>
+
+</div>
+
+<table>
+  <tr>
+    <td><span class="smcap">Philip II. in 1586</span></td>
+    <td class="tdpg"><a href="#illus01"><i>Frontispiece</i></a></td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td class="sub">From a Contemporary Engraving by Essarts</td>
+    <td class="tdpg"></td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td></td>
+    <td class="tdpg smaller">TO FACE PAGE</td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td><span class="smcap">Philip II. at the Age of 24</span></td>
+    <td class="tdpg"><a href="#illus02">38</a></td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td class="sub">From the Painting by Titian in the Prado
+    Museum. Photograph by R. Anderson</td>
+    <td class="tdpg"></td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td><span class="smcap">William Lord Paget</span></td>
+    <td class="tdpg"><a href="#illus03">62</a></td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td class="sub">From a Painting in the National Portrait Gallery</td>
+    <td class="tdpg"></td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td><span class="smcap">Queen Mary at the Period of Her Marriage</span></td>
+    <td class="tdpg"><a href="#illus04">80</a></td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td class="sub">From the painting by Antonio Mor in the Prado
+    Museum. Photograph by R. Anderson</td>
+    <td class="tdpg"></td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td><span class="smcap">Cardinal Reginald Pole, Papal Legate and
+    Archbishop of Canterbury</span></td>
+    <td class="tdpg"><a href="#illus05">102</a></td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td class="sub">After a Painting by Sebastiano del Piombo. Photograph
+    by W. A. Mansell &amp; Co.</td>
+    <td class="tdpg"></td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td><span class="smcap">Queen Elizabeth</span></td>
+    <td class="tdpg"><a href="#illus06">192</a></td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td class="sub">From a Painting by Zucchero in the National Portrait
+    Gallery</td>
+    <td class="tdpg"></td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td><span class="smcap">Robert Dudley, Earl of Leicester</span></td>
+    <td class="tdpg"><a href="#illus07">208</a></td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td class="sub">From a Painting at the National Portrait Gallery</td>
+    <td class="tdpg"></td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td><span class="smcap">William Cecil, Lord Burghley</span></td>
+    <td class="tdpg"><a href="#illus08">228</a></td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td class="sub">From the Painting by Marc Gheeraedts in the National
+    Portrait Gallery</td>
+    <td class="tdpg"></td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td><span class="smcap">Fernando Alvarez de Toledo, Third Duke of
+    Alba</span></td>
+    <td class="tdpg"><a href="#illus09">308</a></td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td class="sub">From an Engraving</td>
+    <td class="tdpg"></td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td><span class="smcap">Robert Parsons, S.J., 1546-1610</span></td>
+    <td class="tdpg"><a href="#illus10">368</a></td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td><span class="smcap">Henri, Duc de Guise</span></td>
+    <td class="tdpg"><a href="#illus11">400</a></td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td class="sub">From an Engraving. Photograph by W. A. Mansell &amp;
+    Co.</td>
+    <td class="tdpg"></td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td><span class="smcap">Cardinal Allen</span></td>
+    <td class="tdpg"><a href="#illus12">432</a></td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td class="sub">From a Photograph by W. A. Mansell &amp; Co.</td>
+    <td class="tdpg"></td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td><span class="smcap">Queen Elizabeth</span></td>
+    <td class="tdpg"><a href="#illus13">464</a></td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td class="sub">From the Painting by Marc Gheeraedts at the National
+    Portrait Gallery</td>
+    <td class="tdpg"></td>
+  </tr>
+</table>
+
+<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop" aria-hidden="true">
+
+<div class="chapter">
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_1">[1]</span></p>
+
+<h1>TWO ENGLISH QUEENS<br>
+AND PHILIP</h1>
+
+<h2 class="nobreak" id="CHAPTER_I">CHAPTER I<br>
+<span class="smaller">INTRODUCTORY<br>
+1552-1553</span></h2>
+
+<p>The Emperor and England—Death of Edward VI.—Mary and
+Renard—To capture England by marriage—Philip II. accepts the
+sacrifice—Spanish efforts to moderate the religious reaction in England</p>
+
+</div>
+
+<p>At an uncovered table, upon which rested a
+clock, a pair of horn-rimmed spectacles and
+some other trifles, there sat a prematurely
+aged man of fifty-two with a long, fair, sallow face
+and a white beard. His great, projecting nether-lip
+was cracked and sore with fever, and between
+it and the tongue there lay a fresh green leaf to
+give coolness and moisture. His hands and feet
+were distorted by gout; and his fur-lined, black
+gown clung around a once-stalwart frame now
+shrunken with sickness. On his right hand at the
+other side of the table a stout, somewhat pursy,
+middle-aged English gentleman, with his cap in his
+hand and in an attitude of profound respect, was
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_2">[2]</span>delivering a speech in Italian, to which the old
+man was listening with eager attention, now and
+again painfully raising his hand to his flat black
+velvet cap in salute when the name of King Edward
+was mentioned. It was in the little city of Landau
+in the Bavarian Palatinate, and Sir Richard Moryson,
+the English Ambassador, had ridden from Spires,
+nearly twenty miles away, that day, the 4th October,
+1552, bringing his message to the greatest potentate
+on earth, the Emperor Charles V.</p>
+
+<p>Fate had dealt hardly with the Emperor of late,
+and the impossible task he had assumed was breaking
+him down mentally and physically. Once again
+he had found himself faced, not only by his old
+enemy France, but by his own German Princes;
+and solely by flight and good luck had he escaped
+capture at the hands of the Judas whom he had
+made powerful at the expense of right and justice,
+Maurice of Saxony. From sheer impotence to
+struggle further, the Emperor had been forced to
+accept the humiliating terms of the Peace of Passau
+dictated to him by the Lutheran Princes. But free
+now from danger from his own people, he had turned
+again to cope with the foreign ally of his rebel
+vassals, determined this time to make a supreme
+effort to crush his French rival utterly before his
+growing infirmities crushed him.</p>
+
+<p>As he had always done throughout his reign at
+such a juncture, he looked to England for aid.
+The insults offered by Henry VIII. to his House
+and to the Catholic faith, whose champion he was,
+had not been able to alienate the Emperor, who
+well knew that with England permanently on the
+side of France against him, the vast ambitions
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_3">[3]</span>he cherished for himself, his son, and his country
+were doomed to failure; and now, notwithstanding
+the still more aggressive Protestantism of young
+Edward VI. and his mentors, it was as necessary
+to Charles as ever it had been to secure the goodwill
+of England in his struggle against France in
+defence of his own Netherlands. So long as Charles
+had been fighting his German Lutheran subjects it
+was hopeless for him to bid for Northumberland’s
+help; and one of the considerations that led him
+to accept the terms imposed upon him by Maurice
+and the Germans was that thereby he might the
+better enlist his old ally England against the monstrous
+coalition of France, the Pope, and the Turk.
+The suggestion for an alliance had reached Northumberland
+from Charles’ sister, Mary Queen of Hungary,
+his Regent of the Netherlands; and Moryson
+had received his answer from England whilst he was
+following a day’s march behind the Emperor and his
+army, who were on their way from Austria to
+Flanders when Charles had fallen ill at Landau.</p>
+
+<p>Much dulcet verbiage there was in Moryson’s
+address, and much vague desire expressed on the
+part of the English King—or, rather, the Duke of
+Northumberland—to join a coalition against the Turk;
+but what Charles so eagerly listened for—a declaration
+against the French—came not; though he knew that
+the English had just then a bitter quarrel of their own
+with France about the seizure of English ships and
+cargoes by French privateers. Charles lisped and
+mumbled much at the best of times, but now that he
+had the green leaf on his lip, it was difficult for Moryson
+to understand what he said in reply to the speech,
+which, indeed, the Emperor interrupted more than once
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_4">[4]</span>in his anxiety to get at the important point of it. “He
+could not forget,” he said, “the love of Henry VIII. for
+him, shown at sundry times, nor betray the trust the
+late King had put in him in asking him to protect his
+young son. He would never forget the amity that for
+many years had lasted between England and his
+House, and he had perpetually tried to preserve this
+ancient friendship.” Then, raising his voice and
+speaking more emphatically, he said that friendships
+that had long been tried and found good
+should be made much of. Charles was not a man
+to wear his heart upon his sleeve; and his stolid
+face and leaden eyes as a rule gave no key to his
+thoughts; but Moryson says that on this occasion
+“he did so use his eyes, so move his head and order
+his countenance, ... as I do surely think he meant
+the most of what he said. Sure am I that he is
+too wise not to wish the King’s Majesty surely
+his.”</p>
+
+<p>That Charles was sincere in his wish to gain
+the help of England against France on this, as
+on all other similar opportunities, did not require
+much penetration to understand; but when Moryson
+left the Imperial presence and came to close
+quarters with Charles’s minister de Granvelle, the
+wily ecclesiastic and future Cardinal tried what
+cajolery could do the further to persuade the
+Englishman of the goodwill of the Emperor, and
+his wish for England’s friendship. “He [the
+Emperor] only wished,” he said, “that he found
+in the rest of the Princes the like godly mind as
+in King Edward, his good brother, and did trust
+he should be a king of as great honour as hath
+been in England this hundred years. This and a
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_5">[5]</span>hundred times as much he spake with such affection
+as, if words may be thought to mean what they say,
+there can be no more wished for than is to be hoped
+for.”&#x2060;<a id="FNanchor_1" href="#Footnote_1" class="fnanchor">[1]</a> There was no thought yet of the young
+King’s premature death; but Northumberland had
+many bitter enemies at home, and to him it was
+a matter of policy to secure for himself a powerful
+supporter on the Continent. The Catholic and
+Spanish interest being naturally against him for
+his religious action and his treatment of the Princess
+Mary, he had always hitherto looked towards France
+as his friend; but the maritime aggression of the
+French and ancient prejudice had aroused a bitter
+feeling against them generally in England; and it
+behoved Northumberland at this juncture to make
+an appearance at least of conciliating the ancient
+ally of England, the Emperor-king of Spain and
+monarch of the Netherlands. To Northumberland
+in the circumstances this was a passing expediency:
+to Charles the alliance or benevolent neutrality of
+England was a permanent necessity if his cause and
+country were to prevail.</p>
+
+<p>This necessity became more pressing still three
+months after the interview just described. The
+Emperor with a demoralised and discontented army
+laid siege to Metz, which the French had captured
+from him, and after months of effort and hardship
+in the depth of winter he was obliged to retreat,
+defeated and heartsick; already swearing that he
+would turn monk: “for fortune, like a very strumpet,
+doth reserve her favours for the young.” In his
+palace at Brussels—sick, sorry, and dejected—he was
+obliged to haggle with the German Princes as to
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_6">[6]</span>the price of their aid to fight the French. His
+darling son Philip, they stipulated, must be separated
+from the succession to the Empire, and the dream of
+the Emperor’s life to leave Philip strong enough to
+triumph where he himself had failed must be forfeited.
+The French had stirred up trouble, too, in
+the Emperor’s Italian dominions; the Turk was
+dominating the Mediterranean with the blessing of
+the Christian Pope; the Netherlands were sore and
+angry at the war taxes and the presence of marauding
+Spanish soldiery; the Imperial ministers were at
+deadly feud with each other; and on all sides Charles
+was surrounded by debts and difficulties. If only
+England could be prevailed upon to divert the
+French by attacking them in the Channel during
+the coming spring campaign, the tide of victory for
+the Emperor might yet be turned and France be
+rendered powerless. That, however, was the last
+thing that suited Northumberland’s book.</p>
+
+<p>The continuance of the war, nevertheless, was a
+standing danger to England itself, for it would
+have been impossible for her very long to have
+stood by idly whilst the French overran Flanders;
+and Northumberland made desperate efforts to bring
+about peace between the two antagonists. To all
+approaches in this sense the Emperor and his sister,
+the Queen-Regent of the Netherlands, could only
+point to the aggressive action and impossible demands
+of the King of France. “And,” writes Moryson in
+April, 1553, “whyle all these sturres ar growing
+great in Germanie, and whyle the French King is
+plying both sides with secret aydes and unseen
+practices, th’ Emperor keepyth his bed as unfyt
+to hear of the myschiefs that grow rownd about
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_7">[7]</span>him, as unable to devise how to remedie them
+if they were told him.”</p>
+
+<p>All through the spring, however, the Emperor’s
+officers worked hard to muster his armies in Germany
+and Flanders to face the French and save
+the Netherlands. Northumberland still pressed upon
+both sides the mediation of the King of England in
+their quarrel, but in the midst of these negotiations
+in April, 1553, the new Imperial general, young Prince
+Emmanuel Philibert of Savoy, suddenly dashed upon
+the French frontier-fortress of Thérouenne and inflicted
+a heavy defeat upon the Emperor’s enemies. Northumberland’s
+new embassy to urge peace upon Charles
+found less ready response even than before, whilst the
+King of France in no wise abated his extravagant
+claims now that the Emperor was looked upon as sick
+unto death. When the English envoys at length
+gained audience of Charles in Brussels early in June,
+1553, they found him with his gouty limbs propped up,
+“looking very pale, weak, lean, and feeble,” though
+his eyes were still bright and his mind clear.
+“Marry, to judge him by our sight, we must say
+that he appeareth unto us rather a man of short
+time rather than continuance.”&#x2060;<a id="FNanchor_2" href="#Footnote_2" class="fnanchor">[2]</a>&#x2060;</p>
+
+<p>How important the life or death of the Emperor
+was at that juncture to England, few people outside
+the immediate circle of Northumberland’s friends fully
+understood. Already dark rumours were spreading
+abroad that the slight indisposition of the boy King
+of England was really a mortal malady. If Charles
+died first, it might easily be foreseen that the break
+up of his Empire and the confusion resulting from the
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_8">[8]</span>demise of his many Crowns would deprive his successor
+of the power at the critical moment to interfere
+with Northumberland’s plans to exclude the
+Princess Mary from the throne and to perpetuate
+the Protestant <i>régime</i> in England under his own
+Dudley descendants. If, on the other hand, Edward
+died whilst the Emperor’s power was intact, it was
+certain that such support as he could give would go
+to his cousin Mary Tudor. To Spain and Flanders
+the goodwill of England was the crucial point upon
+which their future power and prosperity turned. To
+gain that, Charles had already condoned and suffered
+much, and there was hardly any sacrifice too great for
+him if he could win it now. With Mary on the throne
+and at his bidding—for he had been her only friend in
+all her tribulations—the sympathy of her country
+would be secure to him, and he and his could face
+France with confidence. So Charles and his Ministers
+were alert for every whisper as to Edward’s sickness,
+and the English envoys who were at his Court grew
+daily more apprehensive at what would happen to
+them and their master if the young King died before
+the old Emperor.</p>
+
+<p>On the 24th June Sir Philip Hoby, one of the
+English envoys in Brussels, received a visit from
+Evered, “the King’s jeweller dwelling at Westminster,”
+who had just come from Antwerp. In
+that city, he reported, it was current, and wagers
+laid on it, that King Edward was already dead,
+and that Mary had succeeded. To make matters
+more threatening for Northumberland’s friends, it was
+further stated that the Emperor was sending to England
+with all speed three Catholic Flemish statesmen
+to be councillors of the new Queen of England.
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_9">[9]</span>Well might Hoby in his private letter to Cecil,
+written the next day, exclaim in dismay: “Pray
+God that England’s wickedness may not be the
+cause of His taking away the King”; for if the
+country was to be guided by Charles’s councillors,
+of whom Hoby held but a poor opinion, then goodbye
+to Northumberland’s ambitions and to the
+prosperity of all his friends. “England would go
+to utter ruin,” he said, “if ruled by such men.”&#x2060;<a id="FNanchor_3" href="#Footnote_3" class="fnanchor">[3]</a>&#x2060;</p>
+
+<p>The three envoys sent by the Emperor to capture
+England for Spanish ends when Edward should die
+had indeed received their instructions two days before
+Hoby wrote his letter to Cecil. They were all men of
+mark—Jean de Montmorenci, Lord of Courrières,
+Jacques de Marnix, Lord of Tholuze, both members of
+the highest Flemish nobility, and one of the Emperor’s
+Masters of Requests, a keen, sagacious lawyer named
+Simon Renard. Charles had maintained a minister
+resident in London, one Schefyne, who became
+Chancellor of Brabant, but for so important a mission
+as that now in hand he was considered inadequate;
+and in right of his experience and ability Simon
+Renard, though inferior in point of rank to his
+colleagues, became the real leader of the embassy.
+The envoys were to seek audience of Northumberland
+and Edward, and to say that, as the King of France had
+sent a secretary to visit him on account of his sickness,
+the Emperor, whose affection for him was infinitely
+greater, could do no less. All sorts of assurances of
+friendship and goodwill towards England were to
+be given, and care was to be taken in any case
+to conciliate Northumberland. “But,” continue the
+instructions, “if you arrive too late, you must take
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_10">[10]</span>counsel together and act for the best for the safety of
+our cousin the Princess Mary, and secure, if possible
+her accession to the Crown: whilst doing what you see
+necessary to exclude the French and their intrigues.
+You must endeavour also to maintain the confidence
+and good neighbourship which it is so important that
+our Flemish States and Spain should enjoy with
+England for mutual trade and intercourse; and
+especially to prevent the French from getting their
+foot in, or gaining the ear of the men who now rule
+England, the more so if it be for the purpose of
+troubling us.”&#x2060;<a id="FNanchor_4" href="#Footnote_4" class="fnanchor">[4]</a>&#x2060;</p>
+
+<p>Already news had reached Flanders that Northumberland
+would endeavour to exclude Mary from the
+throne on the death of her brother; and although the
+Emperor foresaw that in such case the life of his
+cousin would be in grave peril, especially if French aid
+were given to Northumberland, the principal efforts
+of the envoys were to be directed to assuring the
+English Government, in any case, that the Emperor
+was their real friend and not France, the ancient foe of
+England. If Northumberland and his friends feared
+that Mary would contract a foreign marriage under
+the Emperor’s influence, they were to be assured that
+no such thing was thought of, and Northumberland
+was to be given to understand that any husband
+chosen by him for the Princess as future Queen would
+be willingly accepted, though the actual fulfilment of
+the promise was to be postponed as long as possible
+in order that Mary might, if she was strong enough
+later, avoid compliance with it altogether. The
+envoys, indeed, were to promise anything and everything
+to secure the throne for Mary. No change
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_11">[11]</span>should be made in the government or in religion, and
+full indemnity should be given for all past acts against
+her. It is clear throughout these instructions, however,
+that, much as Charles desired the accession
+of his cousin Mary, he was prepared to accept any
+solution that would enable him to remain friendly
+with England and exclude French influence from
+the country.</p>
+
+<p>Before Renard and his colleagues arrived in
+England, Schefyne wrote to the Emperor the news of
+the King’s expected death, and the patent intrigues of
+Northumberland to exclude Mary from her inheritance;
+and when, on the 6th July, 1553, the Imperial
+ambassadors entered London, though Northumberland’s
+officers greeted them as though all was well,
+they promptly discovered that Edward was no
+more for the world, and that everything was prepared
+for the elevation of Jane Grey to the English
+throne. On the day after their arrival, the 7th July,
+the ambassadors learnt secretly that Edward had
+died the previous night, and that Mary in fear for her
+life had fled to Norfolk and had resolved to proclaim
+herself Queen as soon as her brother’s death was
+officially announced. In their perplexity at this
+critical state of affairs, and their dread at driving the
+ruling power of England into enmity with the
+Emperor, the envoys took the unheroic course of
+blaming Mary’s bold action instead of supporting
+it. Certain it is that if the Princess had waited upon
+her Imperial kinsman’s effective aid, her opportunity
+would have been missed and she would never have
+been Queen of England. She had, indeed, no one to
+thank for her crown but herself; and the attitude of
+the Imperial envoys towards her in her hour of trial
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_12">[12]</span>proves once more the impossibility of the Emperor
+and his son allowing any considerations, either of
+religion or kinship, to stand in the way of their
+securing the co-operation of England to their ends.</p>
+
+<p>Renard and his colleagues were weak reeds for
+Mary to depend upon, and she did well to go her own
+way, understanding the feeling of her countrymen
+better than they did. The envoys found Mary’s
+action in defying Northumberland: “Strange,
+difficult, and dangerous.... All the forces of the
+country are in the hands of the Duke, and the Lady
+has no hope of obtaining forces nor aid to oppose him,
+whilst her proclamation of herself as Queen will
+justify the new King and Queen in attacking her
+by force, and she will have no means of resisting
+them unless your Majesty stands by her. Considering
+your war with the French, it seems unadvisable for
+your Majesty to arouse English feeling against you,
+and the idea that the Lady will gain Englishmen
+on the ground of religion is vain.”&#x2060;<a id="FNanchor_5" href="#Footnote_5" class="fnanchor">[5]</a> Serious
+remonstrances were sent to Mary herself by the
+Imperial envoys, pointing out her danger and the
+hopelessness of her position in the face of Northumberland’s
+supposed strength; and at the same time
+they laboured hard to dissuade the Duke from the
+idea that they had been sent to England to sustain
+Mary’s cause.</p>
+
+<p>The Emperor himself was no bolder than his
+envoys. “If you cannot draw the Duke of Northumberland
+to our cousin’s cause, you may see if you
+can gain over some of the nobles by promises about
+religion or otherwise, in order to alarm the Duke into
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_13">[13]</span>showing some favour to the Princess.”&#x2060;<a id="FNanchor_6" href="#Footnote_6" class="fnanchor">[6]</a> Renard and
+his colleagues had been in London five days and had
+already assumed the attitude towards Mary just
+referred to, before Secretary Petre came officially
+from Northumberland on the 10th July to inform
+them of the King’s death. They merely begged the
+Council to be kind to Lady Mary, although they well
+knew that she was mustering her forces and issuing
+her decrees in Norfolk, and that Jane was to be
+crowned in the Tower of London on the following
+day; after which they feared that Mary would be
+captured and done to death as a rebel.</p>
+
+<p>All through the critical time, whilst Mary was
+sturdily asserting her rights and gathering her friends,
+the envoys of her cousin were thus paltering, in
+mortal fear of driving the new government into the
+arms of France, limiting themselves to a repetition
+of the mission originally intended for Edward, and:
+“recommending Lady Mary to them with all softness
+and modesty, without entering into any contention as
+to the succession, which would be of no use.” In the
+meanwhile Northumberland’s cause grew more and
+more hopeless, though the Imperial envoys did not
+even yet understand it. English Catholics and others
+came to them begging for information as to the
+Emperor’s attitude, and urging him to make at
+least some declaration in his cousin’s favour; but
+all the answer they got was a mild deprecation of
+violence of any sort, and an appeal to the Emperor
+for instructions. The over-cautious ambassadors
+first began to pluck up courage when the heralds
+proclaimed in London the accession of Jane and
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_14">[14]</span>her Dudley husband on the 11th July amidst the
+silence of the frowning citizens; but when on the
+following day, 12th July, a deputation of Jane’s
+Council, Lord Cobham and Dr. Mason, came to
+inform them of the accession of the new Queen,
+and told them haughtily that their embassy had
+come to an end, as they were known to be in
+England only to help Mary, the ambassadors
+replied with bated breath and whispering humbleness,
+and with perfect truth, that they had done
+nothing of the sort. Their only mission, they said,
+which they had hitherto no opportunity of carrying
+out, was to thank King Edward for his efforts to
+bring about peace, and to assure the Government
+of the Emperor’s desire to be friendly with England
+in spite of French lies and intrigue.</p>
+
+<p>On the 13th July the ambassadors had their
+first audience with the Council. Northumberland,
+of course, was absent: he had just started on his
+disastrous expedition to Cambridge, already a beaten
+man in the face of Mary’s growing popularity; but
+Arundel, Shrewsbury, Pembroke, Mason, Petre, and
+others received them. Renard was the spokesman
+of the envoys, and he laboured hard, even now, to
+persuade the Englishmen of the Emperor’s desire
+to banish from their minds all suspicion of his
+motives—a suspicion, he said, engendered solely
+by French misrepresentations. He was naturally
+anxious for the safety and good treatment of his
+cousin, Lady Mary, but he had no desire whatever
+to use her as a political instrument, or to promote
+her marriage with a foreigner, or indeed to interfere
+in any way with the established order of affairs in
+England. The Emperor’s message was received
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_15">[15]</span>courteously, as well it might be, for the Councillors
+were already trembling in their shoes, and
+the envoys were requested to defer their departure
+from England until further instructions came from
+the Emperor—a notable change of tone since their
+interview with Cobham and Mason the day before.
+The ambassadors, however, were still as far as
+ever from understanding the real state of affairs,
+even at the date of their next letter (16th July).
+“We consider it certain that before four days are over
+the Lady will be in the Duke’s power if she has no
+force to resist him.... He is raising troops everywhere
+and is strong on land and sea, so that we do
+not see how those who secretly hold with the Lady
+will be able or dare to declare themselves. We
+have no confirmation that the Lady is aided by so
+many people as was reported.... On the contrary,
+a messenger from the Lady brought us to-day the
+copy of the Council’s reply to her letter to them,
+and a verbal message from her telling us that she
+saw the ruin into which she would fall unless your
+Majesty helped her.”&#x2060;<a id="FNanchor_7" href="#Footnote_7" class="fnanchor">[7]</a> If this had really been the
+case, Mary would never have been Queen of England,
+for the Emperor plainly told his envoys that, for
+an infinity of extremely sage and prudent reasons
+which he detailed at great length, he could not give
+the help that Mary hoped for. New credentials,
+indeed, were sent to them, and instructions that
+they were again to ply the Council with assurances
+that nothing was farther from the Emperor’s thoughts
+than to interfere in any way in England. A mild
+word or two was to be introduced on behalf of Mary;
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_16">[16]</span>but the whole object of the mission was to induce the
+English Government, whatever it might be, to
+renounce the French friendship and depend solely
+upon their ancient ally the Monarch of Spain and
+Flanders.&#x2060;<a id="FNanchor_8" href="#Footnote_8" class="fnanchor">[8]</a>&#x2060;</p>
+
+<p>Before these instructions reached London, Northumberland’s
+house of cards had fallen. His son, Henry
+Dudley, had in vain prayed for help from the King of
+France; but the latter was now at grips with the
+Emperor and dared not send troops to England,
+where the dread and hatred of the French was one
+of the principal reasons of Northumberland’s fall.
+The Duke himself was hopeless and helpless at Cambridge,
+ready to save his unworthy skin by throwing
+up his bonnet and crying, “Long live Queen Mary!”
+when in spite of him the Princess he had just declared
+a bastard was acclaimed Queen; whilst the miserable
+Councillors he had coerced into being his tools in
+London were tumbling over each other in their
+anxiety to disclaim him and betray the unhappy girl
+whom his ambition was to lead to an untimely death.</p>
+
+<p>On the 19th July the Earl of Shrewsbury and
+Dr. Mason came to the Imperial ambassadors in a
+very contrite mood. There was no talk of their
+embassy being ended now, no haughty reproaches
+for their supposed support to the bastard Lady Mary.
+After much hemming and hawing, the deputation of
+the Council announced to Renard and his colleagues
+that they came with glad news, which they thought
+would be welcome to the Emperor. All that the
+Council had done previously had been under the
+coercion of the wicked Duke of Northumberland,
+whom they repudiated. They now all acknowledged
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_17">[17]</span>Mary as their true Sovereign, and they had decided
+to proclaim her publicly that day in London. To the
+delight of the Imperial envoys, but still apparently to
+their bewildered surprise at the failure of all their
+predictions, Mary was proclaimed both in the Tower
+and the City amidst the frantic joy of the people.
+Bonfires blazed, feasts were spread, wine ran freely in
+London,&#x2060;<a id="FNanchor_9" href="#Footnote_9" class="fnanchor">[9]</a> and coins galore were scattered; for the
+rightful Queen had come into her own at last, whilst
+the “nine-days’ Queen”—the poor fated girl in the
+grim fortress that had been her only palace—found
+herself a prisoner instead of a potentate; and the
+cowardly craven whose tool she had been was basely
+striving to win mercy, if not favour, from the proud
+Princess whom he had injured beyond forgiveness.</p>
+
+<p>Still intent, as ever, upon gaining the friendship of
+England, no matter who reigned over it, the first
+instructions of the Emperor to his envoys when he
+heard the good news of Mary’s accession were to urge
+upon the new Queen the acceptance, at all events at
+first, of the <i>status quo</i>: not to be in a hurry to change
+anything, to bow to the decisions of Parliament, to
+practise her own religion only in private, if necessary.
+“And above all things she should be a good Englishwoman,
+and let people understand that she has no
+intention of acting alone and without the advice and
+co-operation of her nobles and the Parliament.” An
+assurance might now be given to her of the Emperor’s
+desire and intention of supporting her—as had always
+indeed been his intention, he said—and upon her, as
+formerly upon her brother, was to be urged the first
+and principal points of all—distrust of the French and
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_18">[18]</span>the conviction that the real, trustworthy friend of
+England was the Sovereign of Spain and Flanders.</p>
+
+<p>Mary was perfectly well aware that she owed her
+Crown to her own right and to the boldness of the
+action she had taken, and she was not inclined to
+accept to their full the moderating counsels of the
+Emperor, who had done so little for her in her need.
+But she also understood that her position was, as yet,
+far from stable; and with French intrigue against her
+and in favour of the <i>régime</i> she had supplanted, she
+turned naturally to her powerful Spanish kinsman for
+such support as she might need, as well as for counsel.
+So anxious was Charles to consolidate her position as
+Queen, that the advice he gave her might rather have
+come from a Protestant constitutional monarch than
+from the absolute champion of Catholicism. She was
+urged to moderate her religious zeal, to abandon her
+intention of celebrating the obsequies of Edward with
+Catholic rites, and whilst using severity with the few
+leaders of the revolt against her, to be clement to the
+great majority, and not to begin her reign by any
+vengeful action either of her own or of the friends
+who had suffered under the rule of her brother.
+Above all, she was recommended to summon Parliament
+in the old form and banish most of the foreigners,
+especially Frenchmen, of course, from her realm.
+With these sage counsels the Emperor sent Mary a
+promise that if the French attempted anything against
+her, she might depend upon the aid of Imperial troops
+under the Prince of Savoy.</p>
+
+<p>The very first letter written by the Emperor after
+he had news of Mary’s proclamation instructed Renard
+to tell the new Queen that it would be advisable for
+her to take a husband at once, and to say that the
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_19">[19]</span>Emperor would support her in any choice she might
+make. There were really very few princes whom
+Mary could have chosen. If she married an Englishman,
+there was none of fitting rank and faith to be her
+husband but Courtenay, whom she had just released
+from his long durance in the Tower, and the elderly
+Churchman, Cardinal Pole, both of these being of the
+blood royal of England. Mary, in violet velvet, rode
+in triumph from New Hall in Essex to the Tower of
+London on the 3rd August. A thousand velvet-clad
+courtiers followed in her train and ten thousand
+armed men formed her bodyguard. As she passed
+through the leafy lanes and into the smiling villages,
+and so to the eastern gate of her capital, no discordant
+voice reached her. Close behind her in a litter rode
+her younger sister, Elizabeth, with her fair skin and
+yellow hair, composed and self-possessed; but, as
+Mary well knew, ready to make common cause with
+her enemies if it would serve her own ends. Before
+Mary had left New Hall the clever, courtly French
+ambassador, Antoine de Noailles, had ridden out from
+London to greet her. Noailles’s task was a difficult
+one. He had done his best, almost openly, to aid
+Northumberland and exclude half-Spanish Mary from
+the throne; indeed, the Londoners, who hated him
+and his country, were loudly proclaiming that six
+thousand armed Frenchmen had been ready to invade
+England in the interests of Queen Jane.&#x2060;<a id="FNanchor_10" href="#Footnote_10" class="fnanchor">[10]</a> But
+Noailles was supple and insinuating, and the first
+speech he made to Mary when he greeted her was an
+assurance of the devotion of his master to her and
+an offer of armed assistance if she needed it. Mary
+was polite but cool, for she knew, notwithstanding
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_20">[20]</span>Noailles’s charming, that she had nothing to hope for
+from France. As she entered London there rode also
+in her train the Imperial ambassadors, jealous and distrustful
+of the Frenchman, who they knew was trying
+to checkmate them. Beyond formal greetings in the
+presence of many watchful eyes Renard had not been
+able to obtain private conference of the Queen, who
+remained in the Tower of London awaiting her
+journey to Richmond. Mary herself, knowing who
+her friends were, was naturally anxious to have speech
+with the representatives of her Imperial cousin, to
+whom she looked for guidance, and she suggested
+that Renard should seek entrance to the Tower in
+disguise to see her.&#x2060;<a id="FNanchor_11" href="#Footnote_11" class="fnanchor">[11]</a> The ambassador, however,
+appears to have thought it safer and more dignified
+to have patience for a few days until, in the comparative
+freedom of Richmond, he could see the Queen
+without attracting so much attention as in the Tower.
+In the meanwhile he had been able in private conversation
+with Paget, of the Council, to broach the
+subject of the Queen’s marriage. From him he had
+learnt positively that the current rumour of the intention
+of Mary to make Courtenay her Consort was
+untrue. “She was against such a match, because
+she distrusted the English nation, knowing it to be
+treacherous and fickle, because Courtenay is too young
+and lowly, her heart being high and magnanimous.
+Besides which, if she married an Englishman,
+the children—if she had any—would not be so
+much thought of as if her husband were a foreign
+prince.”</p>
+
+<p>The Emperor’s son Philip, a young widower of
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_21">[21]</span>twenty-seven, after several years of widowhood, was
+betrothed to his cousin, the Princess of Portugal,
+whose rich dowry was sorely needed by the Emperor
+for the war; but Renard well understood without
+instructions that if Mary of England could be won
+for the House of Spain, the gain would be infinitely
+greater than any Portuguese money dowry could
+bring. So he gently hinted to Paget in his talk that
+the Prince was not married yet, though the Spanish
+merchants in England had falsely reported that he
+was. Paget was doubtful. Yes, he said, no doubt
+the Queen’s marriage would be the richest one in the
+world, but it was not yet time to discuss it. Nevertheless,
+Renard decided when first he saw the Queen
+in private to mention Philip’s name as if by chance,
+“so as to put the idea of such a marriage into her
+head; for if she takes to it, she will be better able to
+convert her councillors to it than anybody else in the
+world.”</p>
+
+<p>The idea once started was eagerly taken up by the
+Emperor—if, in fact, it did not originate with him—and
+no time was lost by him in preparing the ground
+on his side. He wrote to Philip as soon as Renard’s
+information reached him that Mary would probably
+favour a foreign marriage, recommending him to send
+from Spain a formal embassy to congratulate Mary
+upon her accession. But to this recommendation he
+added the hint that if Philip would break off the
+Portuguese match and consent to his marriage with
+the new Queen of England it would be a masterstroke
+of policy. Charles had not seen his son for
+two years, and although he knew well that Philip was
+dutiful, yet he did not venture to press him too
+urgently. The Prince was, as Granvelle wrote to
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_22">[22]</span>Renard, a man of full age, with children,&#x2060;<a id="FNanchor_12" href="#Footnote_12" class="fnanchor">[12]</a> and the
+Emperor would do nothing decisive with regard to
+the English marriage unless Philip’s own inclinations
+led him to it. There was some fear on the part of
+the Emperor that Mary might think of himself for a
+husband. To this he had no inclination.&#x2060;<a id="FNanchor_13" href="#Footnote_13" class="fnanchor">[13]</a> He was,
+as we have seen, in declining health, and had in secret
+already made up his mind to embrace a monastic life
+as soon as he could cripple France and leave his son
+at peace. Pending Philip’s reply, Renard was instructed
+to keep the affair open with the Queen,
+always mentioning Philip as being the preferable
+<i>parti</i>, but without pledging him, “in case the Portuguese
+affair has gone too far, ... or if the Prince’s
+fancy alights elsewhere.” Even Courtenay, who was
+known to be intriguing with the French ambassador,
+was not to be banned entirely, though that idea was
+to be gently discouraged; “for if her fancy tends that
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_23">[23]</span>way she will not fail, if she be like other women, to go
+on with it, and would never forgive you if you had
+said anything against it.”&#x2060;<a id="FNanchor_14" href="#Footnote_14" class="fnanchor">[14]</a>&#x2060;</p>
+
+<p>When, after all, Renard was received privately by
+the Queen in the Tower on the 6th August, he slily
+introduced the idea of marriage, after all the more
+prosaic points of his instructions had been disposed of.
+At the suggestion of a foreign match, but with no
+mention of Philip, Renard says: “She laughed, not
+once only but several times, whilst she regarded me in
+a way that proved the idea to be very agreeable to
+her. She clearly made me understand that she would
+not attempt or accept an English marriage, but preferred
+a foreign one, ... by which I recognised that
+she had her usual pride and inclination to speak of
+her rank and grandeur. From what I can understand,
+her idea is that the Emperor should propose
+some one to her, ... and I am in good hope that if
+his Majesty inclines to our Prince [Philip], it would be
+the most welcome piece of news that could be taken
+to her.”&#x2060;<a id="FNanchor_15" href="#Footnote_15" class="fnanchor">[15]</a> But whilst this was the case, the observant
+ambassador also recognised that the English Council
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_24">[24]</span>would not be so easily pleased as the middle-aged
+Princess, who for her thirty-nine years of life had
+been starved of love—she, a Tudor, true daughter of
+her father, whose passions and affections were strong;
+she, a Queen, who had been outraged and insulted for
+years and now hungered for the vengeance upon her
+foes that was only possible with the possession of
+power such as the Imperial connection could give her.
+The French, said Renard with perfect truth, were
+leaving no stone unturned, by intrigues, bribes, and
+promises, to make the idea of a Spanish alliance
+hateful to the English people; and if Mary’s councillors
+were to be gained to the Spanish side, it could
+only be done by lavish expenditure both in ready
+money and in future pledges. Gardiner, the most
+powerful of Mary’s Ministers, was strongly in favour
+of his late pupil Courtenay as a Consort for the Queen,
+and even Paget and Petre, both pro-Spaniards and
+former pensioners of the Emperor, looked askance at
+a match which it was seen would be hateful to the
+great majority of the English people.</p>
+
+<p>As week followed week—for the road between
+Spain and Flanders was a long one—it is plain to see
+that Mary became somewhat restive at the delay.
+Renard saw her privately at Richmond early in
+September, and, in order to start the conversation
+on the subject, mentioned the common talk in London
+of her intended marriage with Courtenay. Mary coldly
+replied that she had never spoken to the man except
+when she pardoned him. She knew nobody in
+England whom she would care to marry. Had the
+Emperor, she asked, made up his mind about recommending
+any suitor to her? Renard had much to
+say about the difficulty of selecting a fitting person,
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_25">[25]</span>though he was sure that the Emperor would do his
+best. Renard dared not go too far, for no reply had
+yet been received from Philip; and rumours were
+current in London that his marriage with his Portuguese
+cousin was now irrevocably settled. But Renard
+began by mentioning the various unmarried Catholic
+Princes—the Archduke of Austria, the Prince of
+Savoy, the Princes of Ferrara and Florence, and
+even the Dauphin; to all of which Mary listened
+crossly, for she knew this was only fencing. “Of
+course, your Majesty,” continued Renard, “if you think
+twenty-seven or twenty-eight too young for a husband,
+I do not know any other Princes who are not too old.”
+Mary took the hint, for she knew that the age of
+Philip was twenty-seven, and she replied: “But your
+Prince is already married, I hear, to the Princess of
+Portugal.” Renard said that he did not think that
+the marriage was concluded yet, though he knew that
+it had been mentioned before the war;&#x2060;<a id="FNanchor_16" href="#Footnote_16" class="fnanchor">[16]</a> whereupon
+Mary, apparently losing patience at so much beating
+about the bush, determined to speak more plainly.
+She was sorry, she said, that Philip should marry his
+Portuguese cousin, as they were such near relatives.
+All the Princes that Renard had mentioned to her
+were very young—she might be the mother of any of
+them. She was even twelve years older than Prince
+Philip; besides which, the Prince would want to
+remain in Spain and his other dominions, and she
+knew how much English people objected to any
+reigning foreign Prince marrying an English
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_26">[26]</span>Princess.&#x2060;<a id="FNanchor_17" href="#Footnote_17" class="fnanchor">[17]</a> When her father was alive, she continued,
+several proposed matches for her had fallen
+through for this reason alone; and when the late Duke
+of Orleans was proposed to her, the affair was prevented
+by the antagonism which always existed
+between England and France. She hoped the
+Emperor would bear this point in mind, and not
+recommend her to marry a man she had not seen
+and spoken to in England. Renard then began
+praising Philip’s good sense, judgment, and seriousness.
+He had already a son six or seven years old,
+he said, and was wise and experienced beyond his
+years. Mary, apparently thinking she had gone far
+enough, broke into Renard’s panegyrics and declared
+most emphatically that she had never felt the smart
+of what was called love, nor had she ever had a
+voluptuous thought. She had never had an idea of
+marriage until God called her to the throne, and now
+the step would be taken against her own inclination
+and on public grounds alone.</p>
+
+<p>There need have been no misgivings as to Philip’s
+attitude in the matter. Throughout his life he made
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_27">[27]</span>of himself a martyr to his duty. Overshadowed
+always by the immensity of the task confided to
+him and his House, awed by the greatness and majesty
+of his father, he looked upon himself from youth to
+age as an instrument in the hands of the Most High
+to compass the victory of righteousness upon the
+earth as he understood it, and incidentally to exalt
+Spain to the highest place among the nations. That
+human suffering had to be endured to arrive at the
+end was only an incident: that he himself, in his
+degree, should forego his own inclinations, his ease,
+his comfort, and his pleasures in favour of the great
+objects for which he lived, was to him quite natural
+and inevitable, and he accepted the fate without
+repining. The marriage with Mary—a woman whom
+he had never seen, who was twelve years his senior
+and no beauty at best—could not have been attractive
+to him. His domestic life with Doña Isabel de Osorio
+had apparently been harmonious; and the absence
+from Spain which the English marriage would entail
+was both inconvenient and unpleasant, whilst the
+necessary concessions in manner and demeanour to
+his wife’s English subjects would, perhaps, be more
+distasteful to him than any other of the sacrifices
+imposed upon him by the match. But, as his Spanish
+contemporary biographer says, like another Isaac he
+readily submitted himself to his father’s will and wrote
+without a day’s delay that the Portuguese match
+might still be avoided, and he had already taken steps
+in that direction, “cheerfully and unreservedly placing
+himself in the Emperor’s hands to do with him as he
+thought best in the interests of their great cause.”&#x2060;<a id="FNanchor_18" href="#Footnote_18" class="fnanchor">[18]</a>
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_28">[28]</span>Two days after the Emperor had received the
+welcome letter from his son, a swift courier was
+speeding to England with instructions to Renard
+to propose Philip, Prince of Spain, as a husband for
+Queen Mary.</p>
+
+<p>The occasion was one of supreme international
+importance. Ever since Ferdinand the Catholic
+sixty years before had betrothed Mary’s mother to
+the heir of Henry VII., the sovereign of Spain had
+been trying to win for his country the control of
+English policy, in order that France might be beaten
+in the struggle for the hegemony of Europe. The
+tremendous cataclysm of the Reformation, personal
+ambitions, the weakness and sensuality of Henry VIII.,
+and unexpected deaths, had again and again frustrated
+the design. England had more than once fought by
+the side of France in the great Continental duel, and
+the English friendship upon which the House of
+Spain was forced to depend as one of the main
+elements of success, had been for all those sixty years
+an unstable quantity, though generally on the side of
+its traditional ally. But what was necessary for
+Charles and his son was a friendship that could be
+counted upon in all circumstances—an alliance that
+no bribes nor blandishments of Frenchmen and
+Lutherans could shake; and for the first time this
+seemed possible of attainment if by the marriage of
+Philip and Mary the crowns of England, Spain, and
+Flanders could rest upon the same brows.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_29">[29]</span></p>
+
+<p>To Mary of England, too, the match with her
+Spanish second cousin had more than a sentimental
+interest, strong as that was with her. The English
+people had rallied to her cause under the influence of
+their recognition of her legal right to the throne, and
+their detestation of Northumberland and his French
+friends; but Protestantism was undoubtedly strong,
+especially in London and the Eastern Counties, which
+had first acclaimed the new Queen; and it was evident
+to Mary that if she was to impose her faith upon the
+country, as she was determined to do, even against the
+advice of the Emperor, she must be able to depend
+upon some force independent of her own people to
+aid or support her at a pinch. France, of course,
+being out of the question for her, she could only look
+to a Spanish match to serve her turn. Mary shut her
+eyes obstinately to the vast change that had come over
+her country in the last thirty years. She believed, as
+did the Churchmen throughout Europe, that she only
+had to decree a return to the state of affairs prior to
+her father’s apostasy for the country to accept the
+change without demur. Pole was for extreme measures
+at once, and so, of course, was the Pope, Julius II.; but
+the Emperor, who in the supposed cause of religion
+was always ready to postpone religious considerations
+for politics, continued to advise Mary through
+Renard to go slowly and to avoid incensing her people
+until at least she was strong enough to coerce them.
+The marriage of Philip with the Queen therefore
+seemed to hold out to both contracting parties the
+ideal opportunity of attaining their great desire—in the
+one case the control of English policy to the detriment
+of France, and in the other the increment of strength
+necessary to force England once more into the fold of
+the Church.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_30">[30]</span></p>
+
+<p>Thenceforward for forty-five years Philip of Spain
+strove, often in almost impossible circumstances, to
+attain this end. There was no instrumentality left
+untried by him to secure it. Marriage, and proposals
+of marriage, wars, and threats of wars, arrogance,
+humility, diplomacy, bribery, subornation of treason
+and murder, were some of the means to which Philip in
+his long struggle appealed; for to him and his cause
+and country it was a matter of life and death; and it is
+my object to set forth in the following chapters from
+contemporary sources the story of this long series of
+efforts on the part of the Spanish King to win the
+support of England by fair means or foul. To regard
+Philip as a fiend, or even as a bad man, because in
+the cause of this life-struggle of his he assailed England
+with weapons that would now be rejected by any right-thinking
+statesman, would be unjust. The ethics of
+the time were widely different from those prevalent
+to-day; the supposed interest of the State was infinitely
+greater in proportion to the lives of individuals
+that is at present the case, whilst the assumed interests
+of religion—or, rather, of the orthodox Church—were
+considered by Philip to be so overwhelming as to
+condone any action necessary to serve them, no matter
+how criminal it would be if employed for other ends.
+No doubt, in the view of the present day, Philip
+blinded himself to a sense of right and wrong in his
+zeal to serve the cause for which he lived, namely, the
+dominance of Catholicism for the temporal benefit of
+Spain. But to him there was no wrong if it was done
+by his orders in the cause which he believed to be that
+of righteousness. Sacrifice and suffering seemed to
+him, as to most Spaniards of his day, a natural and
+necessary preparation for spiritual exaltation and
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_31">[31]</span>triumph; and whilst he never flinched from inflicting
+suffering upon others, though naturally he was a tender-hearted
+man, he never spared himself in the same
+cause. Throughout his long life he made himself a
+martyr to what he conceived to be his duty; a slow,
+laborious, unimaginative, morbidly conscientious man,
+a good son, a good husband, and, according to his
+lights, a good father; kind and indulgent to his
+servants, patient under adversity and humble in
+success: indeed, a man endowed with most of the
+elements of righteousness; and yet with a sense of
+right so blunted by his zeal as to think that he might
+do God’s work with the weapons of the devil, and turn
+enemies into friends by fear. How these principles as
+applied to England ended in failure, it is the purpose
+of the present book to tell.</p>
+
+<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop" aria-hidden="true">
+
+<div class="chapter">
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_32">[32]</span></p>
+
+<h2 class="nobreak" id="CHAPTER_II">CHAPTER II<br>
+<span class="smaller">1553-1554</span></h2>
+
+<p>The Coronation of Mary—Noailles <i>versus</i> Renard—Mary accepts
+Philip—The marriage treaty—Alarm in London—Egmont’s missions—Wyatt’s
+rebellion—Attitude of Elizabeth—The coming of Philip—His
+voyage and arrival—His popular manners in England—Arrival at
+Winchester</p>
+
+</div>
+
+<p>All London was ringing with preparations
+for the coming pageant of the Queen’s
+coronation. Fenchurch, Gracechurch, and
+Leadenhall, Cornhill, Chepe, and Saint Paul’s were
+erecting the scaffoldings for their triumphs, repainting
+and gilding gable ends and pinnacles, and trimming
+forth their fine stuffs and liveries in honour of the
+great day when the Queen was to ride in state from
+the Tower to Westminster.&#x2060;<a id="FNanchor_19" href="#Footnote_19" class="fnanchor">[19]</a> Away across the fields
+in the little sylvan palace of Saint James’s, Mary sat
+under her canopy in her audience chamber one day in
+late September, surrounded by courtiers, all, like the
+Queen herself, in a blaze of magnificence; for the
+prim Puritanism of the late reign had been banished as
+savouring of Reform, and the splendour of King Henry
+was being copied by his daughter. To one man alone
+had Mary somewhat sourly prescribed modesty in
+attire, and that was to Courtenay. The dissoluteness
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_33">[33]</span>of this young man of twenty-six, who had never before
+been free since his childhood, had already shocked the
+austerely virtuous Mary, and had made his chances of
+winning her hand more impossible than ever. But
+neither she nor those around her could fail to see that
+the cunning Frenchman Noailles was still ostentatiously
+feasting and honouring him, and already the talk of
+the French party at Court was coupling the names of
+Courtenay and the Princess Elizabeth in a way that
+boded ill to Mary’s peace of mind. Courtenay had
+ordered a gorgeous suit of blue velvet covered with
+gold for the coming ceremony; but blue was the colour
+the Queen had chosen for her own outer garb, and she
+had no intention of allowing so much bravery to the
+man she knew was being made the tool of her enemies
+to injure her, and Courtenay was ordered to put his
+finery aside and wear more modest raiment. At the
+public audience Renard brought forward to present
+to the Queen two great Spanish nobles—Don Diego
+Hurtado de Mendoza and Don Diego de Geneda—who
+were on their way from Flanders to Spain, the
+latter a member of Philip’s household. As the two
+gentlemen in their distinctive Spanish garb and with
+national gravity were led forward for presentation to
+the Queen, many scowling brows were bent upon them;
+for although the matter was supposed to be so secret,
+the talk of the Spanish marriage was already common
+at Court; and Noailles, in the deepest chagrin at the
+way things were tending, noticed that Don Diego de
+Geneda on this occasion had whispered conference
+with the Queen, unheard even by his colleague or by
+the Imperial ambassador.&#x2060;<a id="FNanchor_20" href="#Footnote_20" class="fnanchor">[20]</a>&#x2060;</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_34">[34]</span></p>
+
+<p>Whatever French gold or interest could effect to
+alarm people at the idea of the coming of a Spanish
+Consort was done. Stories of the terrible rule of the
+Inquisition in Spain, and of the pride and cruelty of
+Spaniards generally, were spread industriously by the
+agents of Noailles, and by the day fixed for the
+Queen’s state procession to Westminster, the 30th
+of September, 1553, London was almost in a panic
+of fear. The Queen had come in with promises of
+toleration, and already the zeal of the Churchmen and
+her own had belied her people’s hope for religious
+peace. Parliament had been summoned for the 5th
+October, specially for the purpose of restoring England
+to the orthodox Church; Cardinal Pole was known to
+be coming to the land of his fathers as the Legate of
+the Pope to receive the submission of England to
+the Power which King Henry had flouted so contemptuously;
+and already the dungeons in the Tower
+were being filled by the prelates of the newer ritual.</p>
+
+<p>All the dazzling magnificence that accompanied
+the passage of the Queen through London from the
+Tower to Westminster, on the last day of September—all
+the official greetings, the frequent pageants at the
+street corners, and the wonder of the multitude at the
+rare show of sumptuous garb—could not banish the
+dread thought amidst the crowd that, perhaps, all this
+bravery was only a prelude to a Spanish domination
+over England. The nobles who rode in Mary’s train
+and filled the great Court offices in her household had
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_35">[35]</span>most of them been enriched by the plunder of the
+monastic lands, and had their own reasons for dreading
+a return of the old order in its extreme form;
+though they did not know as yet that the Spanish
+Consort, whose advent they feared so much, would be
+the great modifying influence in their favour. Frenchmen
+and Venetians joined the alarmed Englishmen in
+their apprehensions of the coming change, but the few
+Spaniards in London were jubilant. One Spanish
+resident,&#x2060;<a id="FNanchor_21" href="#Footnote_21" class="fnanchor">[21]</a> who described the splendid show for the
+benefit of a noble patron in Spain, thus writes with
+reference to the match: “If the Lord vouchsafed us
+to behold this glorious day, what great advantage
+would befall our Spain in holding the Frenchmen
+in check, by the union of these kingdoms with his
+Majesty’s dominions. And were it only to preserve
+the States of Flanders, surely the Emperor and son
+must greatly desire it, for, as your Lordship knows
+well, the day that the Emperor dies the Low
+Countries will be in peril of attack from the French
+or of a German invasion under French auspices, help
+from Spain being so remote, and Flanders itself not
+being free from suspicion of revolt on the ground of
+religion or from the disaffection of the people towards
+Spaniards. It would be most advantageous, too, to
+Spain, for should aught happen to the Prince’s son
+(Don Carlos), the son born here would be King of
+both countries, which would be a good thing for the
+English too.... All the Catholics here would lift
+up their hands to God, for they love their country and
+the Queen, and especially Spain, for the sake of the
+good Queen Katharine; and the goodly here are so
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_36">[36]</span>many that there are a hundred Catholics for every
+four heretics.”</p>
+
+<p>With these mixed hopes and fears amidst the
+multitude, there went a general trust in, and affection
+for, the Queen personally. She had been ill-treated so
+long, as the people knew; she had grown faded and
+middle-aged under unjust oppression, and she was a
+true Royal Princess descended on both sides from
+kings of highest lineage. So when at the Abbey next
+day, 1st October, during the interminable ceremony
+of the coronation, Gardiner led the Queen, in her
+crimson velvet and ermine, to the four corners of the
+daïs and called in a loud voice, “Is this the true heir
+to this realm?” there was no hesitation, and all the
+lieges shouted as if with one voice, “Yea! yea! God
+save the Queen!”&#x2060;<a id="FNanchor_22" href="#Footnote_22" class="fnanchor">[22]</a>&#x2060;</p>
+
+<p>Parliament met on the 5th October. The Catholics
+in the country were unquestionably in a majority,
+though not so great, probably, as in the ratio of twenty-five
+to one, as the Spaniards asserted; and Mary had no
+difficulty in obtaining the repeal of all the anti-Papal
+laws which severed England from Rome. Gardiner
+was willing enough to aid the Queen in this; but,
+prompted by Noailles, he managed dexterously to
+get the House of Commons to vote an Address to the
+Queen, praying her not to marry a foreigner. This,
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_37">[37]</span>it is true, voiced a very general feeling in the country,
+but the Queen had now (November) quite made up
+her mind; for she had seen a portrait of Philip by
+Titian, and had fairly fallen in love with the young,
+fresh-coloured man with the curly, yellow beard who
+was asking for her hand. So in a rage, and after
+much delay, Mary received the deputation of the
+Commons led by the Speaker. “This is one of the
+Chancellor’s tricks,” she muttered, “and I will be
+equal with him for it.” Then haughtily addressing
+the deputation, she rebuked their presumption in
+attempting to dictate to her on such a matter, and
+said that if private persons were allowed to choose
+mates for themselves, surely sovereigns were not to
+be less privileged. This was the true Tudor attitude
+towards the representatives of the people; and the
+Queen, having legalised her religious changes, promptly
+dissolved Parliament.</p>
+
+<p>Watchful eyes followed Renard everywhere. The
+Queen’s Council, with the exception of Paget, Arundel,
+and Petre, looked askance at him; French and
+Venetian spies at Court reported his every movement;
+and his own colleagues were bitterly jealous of him, as
+the marriage negotiation had been kept exclusively in
+his hands. For many days he could obtain no private
+access to Mary for the purpose of giving her the
+Emperor’s message; but at last, by Paget’s management,
+on the 10th October, he was introduced secretly
+into the Queen’s presence at Westminster. The
+Emperor deplored, said Renard, that his age and
+infirmities prevented him from offering his own hand
+in marriage to his cousin, as he would have wished;
+but that being impossible, he begged her to accept his
+only and beloved son as her husband. To the chagrin
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_38">[38]</span>of Renard, Mary was now full of hesitation. What
+would her people say, and how could her Council be
+persuaded? She feared that when Philip succeeded
+his father, his many other realms would occupy the
+whole of his time, and that he would never be able to
+stay in England. Was Renard, moreover, quite sure
+of his character? He could not be so wise as the
+Emperor, and he was very young for her. Of course
+she would obey her husband, but he must not think
+for a moment that she would allow him to rule her
+State, nor could she give any offices to foreigners;
+and she threw out a strong hint that perhaps Philip’s
+Austrian cousin, Maximilian, would be a better husband
+for her, as she was absolutely free, and she had
+heard the Archduke was considered wise. Besides,
+if Philip was voluptuous in his ideas, she had no desire
+for anything of the sort at her age.</p>
+
+<figure class="figcenter illowp42" id="illus02" style="max-width: 25.0em;">
+  <img class="w100" src="images/illus02.jpg" alt="">
+  <figcaption>
+    <p>PHILIP II AT THE AGE OF 24</p>
+    <p>FROM THE PAINTING BY TITIAN IN THE PRADO MUSEUM</p>
+  </figcaption>
+</figure>
+
+<p>All these objections were, no doubt, only a display
+of becoming maiden modesty, but they somewhat disturbed
+Renard. He painted to her in lurid colours
+the enmities by which she was surrounded, and the
+dangers that threatened her—the intrigues of the
+French with Courtenay and Elizabeth, the menacing
+attitude of the Protestant party in the provinces—and
+Mary answered as best she might, asking Renard
+at last to put in writing the arguments he urged in
+favour of her marriage with Philip. Four days later
+he saw her again, and this time her hesitation took a
+more personal form. With tears in her eyes she
+seized the ambassador’s hands and conjured him to
+tell her truly whether Philip was so moderate, settled,
+and well-behaved as he said. On his life and honour
+the ambassador protested that he was, but still the
+perplexed Queen was unconvinced. If she could
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_39">[39]</span>only have seen the Prince first, she said, she would
+be better able to judge. That, the ambassador gently
+told her, was not possible; but a good portrait of him
+could be sent to her, and with this she was obliged to
+be content.&#x2060;<a id="FNanchor_23" href="#Footnote_23" class="fnanchor">[23]</a>&#x2060;</p>
+
+<p>It was only after long hesitation and prayerful
+searching of heart that Mary finally decided to carry
+through her marriage, in the face of the almost
+universal opposition of her people. She undoubtedly
+yearned for the support of a husband in her difficult
+position, and naturally hoped for a son who should
+carry on her tradition of a Catholic England. She
+was of affectionate disposition, and for all her modest
+assurance to Renard that she had never felt the
+promptings of the flesh, there is nothing unbecoming
+in believing that the sight of her cousin’s portrait had
+lit up the feeling of love in her heart where natural
+affection had been suppressed for so long. But,
+withal, her principal desire for the match and her
+determination to effect it were mainly prompted by
+public considerations. The intrigues of the French
+with the Protestant elements in the country, and the
+almost open way in which Noailles was playing off
+Courtenay and Elizabeth against her, had convinced
+Mary that France was her enemy. The only force
+in Europe strong enough to resist France was the
+Emperor; and unless the Queen could depend
+absolutely upon his support, it was evident that sooner
+or later the Protestant element in England with
+French aid would oust her from the throne—probably
+in favour of the young Queen of Scots, her cousin,
+already betrothed to the heir of France.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_40">[40]</span></p>
+
+<p>Motives personal, religious, and political, therefore
+all dictated to Mary the absolute necessity of her
+prompt marriage with Philip; and, as we have already
+seen, the motives of the Emperor and his son for the
+marriage were equally strong. Some of Mary’s
+Council—especially Arundel, Paget, and Petre—were
+first won over, for they were in the Emperor’s pay
+before; and when Gardiner saw that the tide was too
+strong for him to resist, he also accepted the inevitable
+with the best grace he could. But when he had to be
+consulted on the terms of the marriage treaty, he drove
+as hard a bargain as possible; for he, and, it is just to
+say, most of his colleagues also, were determined that
+the marriage should not mean the political subjugation
+of England by Spain. On the 31st October, Sunday
+evening, Mary summoned Renard to her oratory,
+where she received him, attended only by her devoted
+nurse, Mrs. Clarencius. Her eyes were red with
+weeping, and she told the ambassador that for days
+she had been sleepless, praying for guidance as to the
+choice of a husband. “My last resource in all my
+difficulties,” she said, “is the Holy Sacrament, and as
+it is even now displayed upon this altar, I will appeal
+to it for counsel.” Then kneeling, as did Renard and
+Mrs. Clarencius by her side, she recited with whispered
+fervour the <i>Veni Creator Spiritus</i>. After a short
+period of silent meditation she rose, calm and self-possessed,
+and told the ambassador that her mind was
+now made up: he, Renard, should be her father confessor.
+She had consulted some of her Councillors,
+and herself had pondered deeply upon the subject;
+and now, bearing in mind what she had been told of
+Philip’s good qualities, she prayed the Emperor to
+accept her as a daughter, to be indulgent with her,
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_41">[41]</span>and to consent to the conditions which her Councillors
+declared would be necessary for the welfare of her
+realm. She hoped that henceforward the Emperor
+would be doubly a father to her, and Philip a good
+husband. Then with all solemnity she approached
+the altar and, with her hand upon the gospel before
+the Sacred Presence, swore to marry Philip of Spain
+and make him a good wife. God had now sent her
+light, she said, after she had wavered long. No man
+but Philip should be her husband.&#x2060;<a id="FNanchor_24" href="#Footnote_24" class="fnanchor">[24]</a>&#x2060;</p>
+
+<p>Whilst Renard and the Council were fighting hard
+over every point of the marriage treaty, Noailles
+and the Venetian ambassadors were busy intriguing
+against it, entertaining Courtenay constantly, and
+doing their best to draw cautious Elizabeth into
+their plots. The muttering of coming trouble sounded
+on all sides—Mary, jealous and distrustful of Elizabeth,
+whose illegitimacy she was determined to assert;
+the Protestant elements in the Court and country
+already in a ferment, thanks largely to French incitement,
+and disaffection showing itself by partial disturbances
+in various parts of the country. Religious
+persecution, too, began to raise its head. Cranmer
+and Ridley were condemned to death, as were Lady
+Jane Grey and the three sons of Northumberland;
+whilst the Emperor, determined for his part to avoid
+exacerbating the evil, had, to the great indignation
+of the Pope and the Churchmen, almost violently forbidden
+Pole to go to England with his extreme Papal
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_42">[42]</span>mission, at least until the ultimate control of it had
+passed into the Emperor’s own politic hands.</p>
+
+<p>At length, by the end of the year, the hard terms
+of the treaty were drafted. Renard had done his
+best, and so had the Imperial ministers in Flanders;
+but Gardiner had been firm, and the conditions were
+a bitter dose for Spanish pride to swallow; for, as
+they stood, they bade fair to deprive the bridegroom’s
+country of the only benefit to be derived from the
+marriage—namely, control of the policy and resources
+of England. The Consort was to have no rule in the
+country, and none of his countrymen were to hold
+office of any sort; the Queen was to receive a jointure
+of 30,000 ducats a year from Flanders; and the issue
+of the marriage, if any, should, failing Philip’s only
+son Carlos, succeed to all his Crowns, as well as to
+England; whilst in the case of Mary’s death, the Consort
+was to have no hold whatever upon her country,
+nor was he to take the Queen or her children out of
+England without the consent of the Council. These
+and many similar provisions fenced round the authority
+of the Consort so completely as to deprive him
+of any direct political power in England; but Charles,
+confident in Mary’s secret promises to Renard that,
+notwithstanding the conditions, the will of the Emperor
+should prevail in England after the marriage,&#x2060;<a id="FNanchor_25" href="#Footnote_25" class="fnanchor">[25]</a>
+determined to make the best of it, and to gain the
+stubborn islanders by his son’s charming, if they were
+not to be won by a diplomatic document.</p>
+
+<p>Noailles grew daily more bitter, and almost came
+to blows with Paget on the subject of the marriage,
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_43">[43]</span>but it became clear even to him now that he had
+been beaten, and that in future England and the
+Emperor would make common cause against France.
+A pompous Flemish embassy, headed by the splendid
+young Count of Egmont, was known to be on its way
+across to ratify the marriage treaty in the name of
+the Emperor; and Noailles took care that all London
+should be in a fever of apprehension at their coming.
+On the 1st January a great retinue of servants with
+the baggage of the ambassadors rode through London
+to Durham House in the Strand, where Egmont
+and his suite were to be lodged. Thick snow lay
+upon the ground, and as the foreigners, with their
+long line of pack-horses, passed through the narrow
+lanes of the old city, the very street-boys pelted them
+with snowballs, “so hatfull was the sight of ther
+coming in to theym.”&#x2060;<a id="FNanchor_26" href="#Footnote_26" class="fnanchor">[26]</a>&#x2060;</p>
+
+<p>The next day, at the Tower Stairs, a gallant company
+of courtiers, headed by Sir Anthony Browne,
+in the gorgeous garb he loved so well, awaited the
+coming of the Emperor’s representatives, whilst the
+guns on the Tower overhead boomed out their salutation.
+Egmont, the first of the Flemish nobles, was
+accompanied by Montmorenci, Sieur de Courrières,
+who had formerly come with Renard to England,
+as well as by several other high Imperial functionaries;
+and they were escorted by Lord William
+Howard, from Calais, and by Lord Cobham, from
+Dover, as Lieutenant of Kent. As the gallant embassy
+of eighty finely clad gentlemen pranced out of
+the Tower Gate, they were affectionately greeted by
+Courtenay, Hastings, and Strange on Tower Hill,
+and led through the City in state, though “the
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_44">[44]</span>people,” we are told, “nothing rejoysing, helde
+downe their heddes sorrowfully.”&#x2060;<a id="FNanchor_27" href="#Footnote_27" class="fnanchor">[27]</a> Nothing was
+left undone by Mary and her Court to show honour
+to the guests; and banquet followed banquet, whilst
+Egmont unsuccessfully strove to modify the terms of
+the treaty. Renard tells in a letter to the Emperor
+of a banquet given to the ambassadors by the Queen
+on the 6th January,&#x2060;<a id="FNanchor_28" href="#Footnote_28" class="fnanchor">[28]</a> after which a little scene took
+place which well illustrates the free manners of the
+time. “And towards the end of the dinner the Lord
+Admiral [Howard], who had dined in an adjoining
+chamber, came in and stood before her [the Queen],
+who seemed pensive. He said something to her in
+English, and then turning to us, asked us whether
+we would like to know what he had said. Although
+her Majesty did her best to prevent him from translating
+it to us, he went on and said that he had
+wished that his Highness [Philip] had been seated
+there by her side, pointing to her right, in order to
+banish her melancholy. She blushed at this and
+asked why he said it, to which he replied that he was
+sure she was not cross and liked to hear it; whereupon
+the Queen and every one else laughed, and it all went
+off in good part.”</p>
+
+<p>The day after this entertainment (7th January,
+1554), Egmont wrote an urgent letter to Prince
+Philip, praying him to hasten his coming to claim
+his bride. The treaty, he says, has now been agreed
+to with only a word or two changed, and will be
+signed in two days. It is clear from this letter that
+Egmont foresaw the trouble that was looming. The
+nobility, he said, had received them better than he
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_45">[45]</span>had expected. “But as for the people, they are
+uncertain. We will advise the Queen to raise forces
+to prevent any hostile movement, which would not
+be extraordinary, for these people are very unstable....
+It is of the utmost importance that your Highness
+should come without delay. I hear that the
+French are arming strongly in Normandy and Brittany....
+I beseech you humbly to consider how
+urgent it is that you come hither at once, for many
+reasons which I hope to lay before you verbally soon.
+Besides this, I should like your Highness to know
+that the Emperor has not provided us with a sou to
+spend on necessary presents. More can be done
+here with money than anywhere else in the world.”&#x2060;<a id="FNanchor_29" href="#Footnote_29" class="fnanchor">[29]</a>&#x2060;</p>
+
+<p>The hollow affectation of keeping the Queen’s
+marriage secret could not be continued after the
+treaty was signed, and on the 13th January Gardiner,
+with the best countenance he could command,
+made an oration in the Presence Chamber of the
+Palace of Westminster before the assembled lords
+and courtiers, declaring the Queen’s intention to marry
+the Prince of Spain “in most godly, lawful matrimonye:
+and further that she should have for her
+joynter xxxᵐⁱˡ duckets by the yere, with all the Lowe
+Countries of Flanders; and that the issue betweene
+them two lawfully begotten shoulde yf there be any,
+be heir as well to the Kingdom of Spayne as also to
+the sayde Lowe Country.” He declared, farther, that
+“we were much bounden to thancke God that so noble,
+worthye and famouse a prince would vouchsaff so to
+humble himself in this maryadge to take upon him
+rather as a subject than otherwise: and that the
+Quene should rule all things as nowe: and that there
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_46">[46]</span>should be of the Council no Spanyard, nether should
+have rule or office in the quenes house or elsewhere
+in England nor have custody of any fortes or castells.”&#x2060;<a id="FNanchor_30" href="#Footnote_30" class="fnanchor">[30]</a>
+Gardiner made the best of it; but the bare
+fact of the announcement being officially made set
+light to the tinder which Noailles and his allies had
+so carefully prepared. When, on the following day,
+Gardiner made a similar announcement to the Lord
+Mayor and Aldermen, Noailles had seen enough to
+justify him in sending off a special courier post-haste
+to his master in France. “The nobles and commonalty
+declare,” he wrote, “that they will never tolerate
+the Prince of Spain for their King. They would
+rather die fighting against him than obey him, and
+will defend their liberties by force before they will
+submit to such servitude. They are making ready
+to rise in arms any day and expel this Queen, who
+they now see is unworthy of the Crown and as she
+had twice broken her promise to them after they had
+raised her to the position she occupies. First, in
+changing the religion after she had promised them
+toleration; and, secondly, in taking a foreign husband
+although she had promised that she would not.”&#x2060;<a id="FNanchor_31" href="#Footnote_31" class="fnanchor">[31]</a> In
+a few days the result of all this excitement was seen.
+Carew and his friends and kin in the west, depending
+upon poor feeble Courtenay’s open co-operation, rose
+in revolt. Rumours ran that French troops were on
+the way across to aid him. But Courtenay was a
+reed easily broken, and allowed Gardiner to frighten
+him into alarmed submission, whilst Elizabeth, closely
+watched at Ashridge, was too cunning to be drawn
+into open complicity by Noailles’s intrigues; though
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_47">[47]</span>the Emperor and Renard were urging Mary to put
+her sister well out of harm’s way in prison.</p>
+
+<p>And then came the most perilous movement of
+all—that of the men of Kent under Wyatt. From
+the 26th January to the 3rd February Mary’s
+crown was not worth a day’s purchase; for, though
+the cry of the rebels was only against the Spanish
+marriage, the Queen knew full well that she must now
+stand or fall by that. And she stood manfully when
+many of her courtiers were distraught by fear and
+ready to desert her at a moment’s notice. Whilst
+Wyatt and his growing host swept triumphantly
+onward from Rochester Bridge to Blackheath, and
+so to Southwark, the Council were wrangling.
+Should the Queen retire to the Tower or should
+she fly to the country; should she believe what
+the friends of the French faction urged, that the
+only safe place for her was Calais, where she could
+claim the Emperor’s protection? Mary, almost alone,
+was undismayed. She sent word privately to Renard
+that for their own safety’s sake the other Imperial
+ambassadors should return home, but that she had
+no intention of backing out of the marriage or of
+leaving London, although she might temporise with
+Wyatt whilst she mustered her forces.&#x2060;<a id="FNanchor_32" href="#Footnote_32" class="fnanchor">[32]</a> Riding to
+Guildhall, stern and sorrowful but unafraid, she made
+a stirring oration to the citizens; and although many
+were in favour of Wyatt, London Bridge was held
+firmly by the Queen’s friends, until the rebel force
+began to melt away discouraged at the delay.</p>
+
+<p>If Wyatt had struck promptly, he would probably
+have won; but loath to shed blood and to use arms
+openly against the Crown, he lingered in Bermondsey,
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_48">[48]</span>hoping for the declaration of the citizens of London
+in his favour, until it was too late. Then came the
+ignominious march through the mire to Kingston
+Bridge, and the footsore, famished, and rain-soaked
+crew tramping through the night into London, to be
+beaten almost without effort by those who, if they
+had shown a fine front, would have joined them.
+Vengeance promptly fell upon the offenders. The
+scaffolds at the street corners with their dangling
+corpses taught the common people that treason was
+a dangerous game to play; the block in the Tower
+was soaked with the blood of Greys and Dudleys
+and many of their noble friends, and Elizabeth was
+no longer bidden courteously to join her sister at
+Court, but was sternly, if ceremoniously, brought to
+London, dangerously ill though she seemed to be
+(22nd February). And, as the young Princess
+passed through the silent, sorrowful crowd that
+greeted her, making, as she did, an appeal to their
+sympathies by her proud, pale face and her snow-white
+garments, the Londoners in their hearts felt that
+Elizabeth was their champion against the Spaniard,
+whose coming they feared so much. On the same
+day (Ash Wednesday, 7th February) that poor
+Wyatt’s draggled host toiled up to Ludgate, there
+to meet final failure and the gallows, Renard urged
+the Queen to make an end of Elizabeth and
+Courtenay; and the Count of Egmont was already
+hurrying to England with advice from the Emperor
+to the same effect; but Mary, who allowed herself to
+be drawn into extreme severity against those who had
+openly conspired against her crown, asserted her own
+will in the matter of her sister, whose countenance of
+the French ambassador’s intrigues was amply proved
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_49">[49]</span>by Wyatt’s avowals and the seizure of Noailles’s letters
+at Gravesend. Thus whilst Courtenay once more
+found himself in the Tower a prisoner, Elizabeth was
+at first only secluded in her sister’s palace at Whitehall.</p>
+
+<p>A perusal of the letters of Renard and Noailles, and
+the evidence given by Wyatt himself, leaves no
+shadow of doubt that Elizabeth and Courtenay were
+accomplices in the series of risings that, with French
+support, were intended to frustrate the Spanish match;
+and, although Froude and other English historians
+have done their best to exonerate them, Mary’s
+clemency to her sister on this occasion is at least
+entitled to a word of praise, considering the great
+provocation she had suffered at her hands. When
+at last Elizabeth was sent to the Tower, in March,
+it was only because Mary was about to absent herself
+from the capital for a time; and it was, of course,
+impossible to leave the disaffected Princess, beloved
+as she was by the Londoners, practically at liberty in
+their midst. Thus the open enemies of the marriage
+were silenced; Wyatt and his accomplices, as well as
+the Greys and Dudleys, were dead or doomed,
+Noailles was found out and raging impotently,
+Courtenay and Elizabeth behind the bars, and the
+Carews and their West-country friends refugees in
+France.</p>
+
+<p>When, therefore, on the 2nd March, 1554, Egmont
+again arrived in London, with the Bulls, powers, and
+other formal documents necessary for the solemn
+betrothal, it seemed as if all would now run smoothly.
+Renard, it is true, always anxious to augment the
+importance of Philip, gravely raised the question
+before the Queen and Council whether it would be
+safe to bring the Prince to England in the circumstances;
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_50">[50]</span>because, he said, if there was to be any risk
+to either the Queen or her betrothed, it might be
+better to abandon the match. But whilst Mary
+declared that for the world she would have no harm
+happen to Philip, “neither she nor her Council saw
+any means or danger that should cause the postponement
+of a marriage so beneficial and honourable.
+Thank God, the heretics and rebels were imprisoned,
+their conspiracy discovered and proved, and in a
+short time exemplary punishment would be inflicted
+upon them! For the future the Queen would see
+to it that the strong hand would be hers, and that
+she retained full authority over her subjects; so that
+they had no doubt whatever that his Highness might
+safely pass over to England, provided that he guarded
+himself against the French naval force which was
+being prepared to intercept him.”&#x2060;<a id="FNanchor_33" href="#Footnote_33" class="fnanchor">[33]</a>&#x2060;</p>
+
+<p>A more private matter still had to be settled by
+Renard with the Queen. Which of her ministers
+and household should be pensioned and bribed by
+the Emperor, and to what extent, “as in order to
+gain them for his Highness [Philip] his Majesty had
+ordered us to be liberal to those she thought best”?
+and this question was gravely submitted to the Council
+for consideration. Charles, as usual, was dreadfully
+driven for money, but an extra turn of the screw
+could always be applied to long-suffering Castile; and
+when it was a question of gaining England, money
+had to be procured in plenty at any cost. As may
+be supposed, the list sent by the Council to Renard
+for presents to themselves and others did not err on
+the side of modesty; and four thousand crowns’ worth
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_51">[51]</span>of gold shoulder-chains and as much ready money was
+promptly handed over to the itching palms of the
+English courtiers; whereupon “the Councillors gave
+us such a good response, that if the result corresponds
+with their words, we have no doubt that
+safety will attend the coming of his Highness to
+this country.”&#x2060;<a id="FNanchor_34" href="#Footnote_34" class="fnanchor">[34]</a>&#x2060;</p>
+
+<p>The further to secure Philip from the attacks of the
+French, a fleet of twenty English ships was commissioned
+for his escort in the Channel; and when all
+this was arranged, a deputation of the Council on the
+7th March came to lead Renard and Egmont to
+a chamber in Whitehall, where the Queen and her
+household awaited them. Upon an altar in the room
+the Blessed Host was exposed, and before it Mary
+and Egmont respectively swore that the conditions of
+the marriage treaty should be held binding. Mary
+was fervid and excited. Before taking the oath she
+spontaneously “fell upon her knees and cried to God
+to witness that the marriage she had agreed to had
+not been prompted by any carnal affection, by cupidity,
+or any other reason than the honour, welfare, and
+profit of her realm, the repose and tranquillity of her
+subjects; and that she had no other intention than
+to keep true to the marriage and oath that she had
+already made to her Crown; saying all this with such
+grace that the spectators were moved to tears.”&#x2060;<a id="FNanchor_35" href="#Footnote_35" class="fnanchor">[35]</a>
+The ceremony ended with more devout prayer by the
+Queen on her knees; and then Egmont, handing to
+her the magnificent ring that had been sent by Philip
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_52">[52]</span>as a token of his troth, bade her farewell and hurried
+off to Spain.&#x2060;<a id="FNanchor_36" href="#Footnote_36" class="fnanchor">[36]</a>&#x2060;</p>
+
+<p>In the meanwhile Philip himself was busy with his
+great preparations. All Spain was impressed with
+the grandeur of the occasion. The marriage meant
+for Philip’s faithful lieges the final conquest over
+France and the bringing back into the Catholic fold
+of the rich realm of England; it meant, they believed,
+a cessation of the ruinous wars which had beggared
+the realms of Castile and reduced whole provinces to
+misery. But, though the Spaniards rejoiced at the
+great stroke of policy that in their view was to
+fasten another crown upon the brows of their beloved
+Prince, they were doubly enthusiastic at the noble
+self-sacrifice that he was making for their sake, and
+filled with regret at his leaving them. Endless
+preparations had to be made for the tremendous
+transport that would be necessary for the crowds of
+nobles, courtiers and servants who were to accompany
+the Prince to England. The absence was
+looked upon as being for an indefinite time, and
+only such persons as were able-bodied and fairly
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_53">[53]</span>unencumbered were allowed to go. Indeed, a great
+assembly of members of the household was held in
+order that the Duke of Alba might announce that
+any of those who had good reason for not accompanying
+his Highness were free to stay behind.
+Those who elected to go—the great majority—were
+granted considerable sums of money for their outfit;
+and the nobles, too, were given leave to go to their
+own towns to prepare the gorgeous dresses and
+appointments they and their households were expected
+to take with them. It is curious to note that many
+of the servitors who were to undertake the journey
+sold all their property in Spain, in the belief that they
+were at once to settle and take possession of the land
+of England. We are told that the wife of one officer,
+expecting to obtain the approval of Philip, asked for
+his leave to sell all they had in order to follow him
+unencumbered. Philip’s answer was significant and
+characteristic. “I do not order you either to sell or
+not to sell your property, for know ye that I am not
+going to a marriage feast, but to a fight.”&#x2060;<a id="FNanchor_37" href="#Footnote_37" class="fnanchor">[37]</a> This was
+the spirit in which all regarded the sacrifice he was
+making. He was going on a holy crusade, amidst
+many heretics, whom he was to win for the Church;
+the French were lying in wait to thwart or capture
+him; and all Spaniards felt that the Prince went
+to conquer and not to woo, though none doubted,
+nor did he, that victory would finally be his. Old
+servitors unable to make the journey were pensioned;
+the girl children of those who went were, at Philip’s
+expense, boarded and educated in their parents’
+absence, the boys being similarly provided for at
+Alcalá de Henares.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_54">[54]</span></p>
+
+<p>Whilst all Spain was thus busy providing the
+splendid stuffs and adornments by which the savage
+Englishmen were to be dazzled, news came to Philip
+at Valladolid that the English special ambassadors,
+the Earl of Bedford and Lord Fitzwalter, who were
+coming with greetings from his betrothed, might be
+expected any day at Laredo, on the Biscay coast,
+and his Steward, Gutierre Lopez de Padilla, hurried
+off to do them honour at the end of February, whilst
+Valladolid was hastily decked from end to end with
+bravery and lists erected for sports, bullfights, tourneys,
+and the like. But the news was premature, for it was
+the 13th March before Bedford and his colleagues
+left London on their embassy; and before they
+arrived in Spain the rejoicings prepared for their
+reception were turned into mourning by the news
+of the death of Philip’s brother-in-law and cousin,
+the Prince of Portugal.</p>
+
+<p>As soon as the tidings of Mary’s ratification of the
+treaty reached Philip, he, like the gallant suitor he
+intended to appear, despatched the Marquis de las
+Navas to England with a present to his bride truly
+magnificent in its richness. “A table diamond set as
+a rose, beautifully wrought and worth 50,000 ducats;
+a necklace of brilliant diamonds consisting of eighteen
+stones worth 30,000 ducats. A great diamond with a
+large pendant pearl, one of the most beautiful pieces
+ever seen in the world, worth 25,000 ducats; besides
+many jewels, necklaces, pearls, diamonds, emeralds,
+and rubies of inestimable value.” This list is given by
+one of Philip’s lackeys, attached to the service of Don
+Carlos. The sartorial splendour of velvets, silks,
+satins, and bullion, which the same authority sets forth
+for our admiration, as being in preparation for Philip
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_55">[55]</span>and his Court, and the extravagant richness of the
+appointments, dresses, armour, saddlery, plate, and
+furniture, for the Prince’s service sent forward to
+Corunna, where he was to embark, reads like a fairy
+tale. Every noble’s dress and livery is described
+with the minuteness of a tailor’s bill, and the appearance
+of these proud hidalgos must have been sumptuous
+in the extreme.&#x2060;<a id="FNanchor_38" href="#Footnote_38" class="fnanchor">[38]</a> Philip himself always preferred
+serious gravity in his dress; but he had been
+told that the English loved splendour, and he was
+determined on this occasion that they should have
+it to their hearts’ content. Some of his beautiful
+garments we shall have an opportunity of describing
+later, but here is one suit which must have been
+exceedingly gorgeous. A crimson velvet cape,
+covered with little chains made of silk twist, enclosing
+lozenges, and a sort of sprig with large leaves running
+between them, made of silver lace and filled in with
+silver fringe. The lining of this cape was smooth cloth
+of silver embroidered with the same sort of work; the
+trunks, doublet, and tunic were of smooth crimson
+velvet embroidered in the same way.</p>
+
+<p>All these elaborate preparations being completed,
+Philip, with the Dukes of Alba and Medini Celi,
+Egmont, Feria, Pescara, Ruy Gomez, and a score of
+the highest grandees of Spain and nearly a thousand
+horsemen glittering and flashing in the Castilian sun,
+rode out of Valladolid on the 14th May, 1554. The
+Prince’s Spanish and Teuton guards and his three
+hundred servants were all dressed in the gaudy red-and-yellow
+livery of Aragon, and each of the nobles
+was followed by a retinue which vied with that of the
+Prince in brilliance. The cavalcade had to make a
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_56">[56]</span>long detour down to the Portuguese frontier to receive
+the grief-stricken young widow, Philip’s sister, who
+was to govern Spain in his absence, and again to
+Tordesillas for the Prince to take a last farewell of his
+mad grandmother, Jane the Crazy. At each town, too,
+especially at Benavente and Astorga, there were bullfights
+and tourneys, banquets and religious ceremonials,
+so that it was the 22nd June, the day
+before the Vigil of St. John, when the kneeling
+aldermen of Santiago de Compostela tendered to
+Philip the golden keys at the gates of their sainted city.</p>
+
+<p>As the Prince and his suite rode through the
+decorated streets to worship at the shrine of the
+Spanish patron Saint James, and thank him for his
+protection so far, a party of gentlemen at the upper
+window of a house looked on with faces shrouded in
+their cloaks. These were the English ambassadors—the
+Earl of Bedford, Lord Fitzwalter, and others—sent
+by Mary to pledge her troth to her new husband; and
+on the following morning they were brought by a
+crowd of Spanish hidalgos into the presence of the
+future King Consort of England. Philip received
+them smilingly, cap in hand, for even thus early he had
+taken to heart the injunctions of his father and of
+Renard that he would conciliate the English by
+changing his habitual grave aloofness for the gay
+amiability which he afterwards assumed in England.
+Bedford, Fitzwalter, Sidney, and the rest of them,
+bowed low and half bent the knee before him one by
+one;&#x2060;<a id="FNanchor_39" href="#Footnote_39" class="fnanchor">[39]</a> and when the presentations were over, Bedford
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_57">[57]</span>took from a secretary a copy of the capitulations and
+handed them to the Prince, who confirmed them by
+word of mouth without opening the paper. Bedford
+appears to have impressed the Spaniards favourably
+as “a great gentleman and a good Christian,” and
+both he and his colleagues did their errand in courtly
+fashion. When Philip had confirmed the capitulations,
+we are told, “they showed the greatest delight, from
+the highest to the lowest, kissing his Highness’s hands
+with great demonstration; and as they went out they
+said to each other in their own tongue, ‘Blessed be to
+God who has given us as good a king as this!’ This
+was said so quietly amongst themselves that it would
+not have been noticed, but that a Spanish gentleman
+who understood their tongue heard and repeated it.”&#x2060;<a id="FNanchor_40" href="#Footnote_40" class="fnanchor">[40]</a>
+The next day the Englishmen attended pontifical Mass
+at the Cathedral with Philip, greatly, we are told, to
+their edification and devotion, “which God grant
+may continue, for they need it badly enough.” Before
+starting on his thirty-miles’ ride from Santiago to
+Corunna, Philip distributed costly presents to the
+English embassy, Bedford’s gift being “one of the
+finest pieces of gold plate ever seen, more than three
+feet in height, exquisitely and elaborately chased with
+classical and grotesque figures, the intrinsic value
+of the gold contained being six thousand ducats.”</p>
+
+<p>A brave show of ships awaited the arrival of Philip
+in Corunna, for many soldiers were to pass over with
+the Prince to defend him from the French on the way
+and reinforce the Emperor’s army in Flanders; and as
+the glittering cavalcade came in sight of the harbour,
+he was met “by six hundred seaman—lancers from
+the province of Guipuzcoa, smart men and prettily
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_58">[58]</span>accoutred, who performed many evolutions, waving
+their lances joyously, with much playing of drums and
+fifes. Then the fleet and the fortress shot such a
+salute that in very truth it seemed as if town and
+fortress together were coming down, the people being
+in great fear and wonder to see the houses tremble
+thus as if by earthquake. All said that the human
+race had never witnessed such a discharge as this. The
+smoke was so great during the hour and a half that
+the firing lasted that neither earth nor heaven could
+be seen. After this there entered the harbour nine
+ships of the fleet, well supplied with everything and
+very smart, with a vast number of painted standards
+and 3,500 soldiers on board. These ships then took
+up the salute with their big guns, after which the
+infantry shot with their muskets for half an hour.”&#x2060;<a id="FNanchor_41" href="#Footnote_41" class="fnanchor">[41]</a>&#x2060;</p>
+
+<p>On Philip’s return to his lodging, forty fishing
+sloops cast at his feet their fresh-caught harvest
+of the sea, and the next day he inspected the ship,
+<i>The Holy Ghost</i>, of Martin de Bertondona, in which
+it had just been arranged that he was to make
+the voyage to England. From end to end the ship
+was alive with scarlet silk streamers, and many-hued
+heraldic pennons waved aloft: the bulwarks and
+castles were hung with crimson damask, and the
+cabin destined for the Prince was a marvel of chased
+and chiselled gold and exotic woods. The great
+standard of crimson damask, painted with the Imperial
+arms and golden flames, was thirty yards long, and
+dozens of other standards rivalling it in size fluttered
+from every mast and spar. Three hundred sailors,
+garbed in scarlet liveries, manned this gallant craft.
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_59">[59]</span>But all this splendour seems to have aroused some
+jealousy amongst the English, and when Philip went
+on board the ship that had brought the ambassadors
+to Spain to be bounteously entertained at dinner,
+Bedford urged him to trust himself to an English ship
+and English sailors. The Prince hesitated a while,
+but his councillors, and particularly the Duke of Alba,
+would not hear of it, for none knew as yet how far
+they might trust to the islanders so recently heretic.
+To please the English sailors, however, Philip allowed
+them to choose for him the Spanish ship they considered
+the safest; and at their recommendation he
+sailed in Bertondona’s vessel, instead of, as intended,
+in the galleon of the great sailor Alvaro de Bazan.</p>
+
+<p>To muster and ship six thousand soldiers as well
+as the great train of courtiers and servants that
+followed Philip took many days, whilst the Prince
+was being feasted and entertained by neighbouring
+nobles. During this time there entered Corunna the
+Spanish ship that had carried the Marquis of Las
+Navas to England with the presents for Mary, and
+marvellous stories had the mariners to tell of the
+eager preparations being made by the Queen and
+her people to receive the new King. How she was
+at Winchester with a thousand gentlemen, and how,
+amongst other fine things to welcome her bridegroom,
+she had collected two thousand fine horses for the
+Spaniards, believing that they would bring none
+by sea with them.&#x2060;<a id="FNanchor_42" href="#Footnote_42" class="fnanchor">[42]</a> At length the fleet of nearly
+a hundred sail was ready. The gilding upon the
+towering stern and forecastles, with lines of shining
+lanterns, flashed back the summer sun, and the
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_60">[60]</span>crowds of gaily clad soldiers and sailors played
+strange pranks in the rigging and amongst the gaudy
+flags to amuse grave Philip, whilst for two days the
+ships lay idle in Corunna harbour awaiting the fair
+wind that was to carry the Prince of Spain upon his
+mission of conquest.</p>
+
+<p>On Friday, 13th July, a soft breeze from the south
+enabled the fleet to sail, whilst a dense crowd upon
+the shore sent up fervent prayers for the safety of the
+Prince, who in a pure spirit of martyrdom was thus
+going to “our new realm of England for the
+exaltation of our holy faith and the good of Christendom.”
+Others there were on the shore who shouted
+insults, taunts, and challenges to all the Frenchmen
+alive; for with England at the bidding of the
+Emperor, the poorest beggar in Spain knew that
+France was powerless against him. The slight swell
+that at first somewhat upset unaccustomed stomachs,
+was succeeded on the morning of Saturday by a dead
+calm and a motionless sea, which, whilst it comforted
+the landsmen, made the seamen look blank; for,
+as they said, it might delay the fleet for a month.
+But the next day, Sunday, a delightful fair wind
+sprang up, and the long trail of vessels stretched
+across the tranquil Bay until Ushant, the land of
+the enemy, loomed up to starboard on Monday afternoon.
+On Wednesday morning in the Channel a
+fleet of galleons was sighted, which it was feared
+might be Frenchmen, but which turned out to be the
+Flemish escort sent by the Emperor, with several
+ships of the English navy. Thus accompanied, the
+Spaniards sailed up to Southampton Water on Thursday,
+19th July, and at four o’clock in the afternoon
+anchored amidst the royal salute from the thirty
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_61">[61]</span>English and Flemish ships assembled to receive the
+Queen’s new Consort.&#x2060;<a id="FNanchor_43" href="#Footnote_43" class="fnanchor">[43]</a>&#x2060;</p>
+
+<p>Things had not been going very smoothly in
+England in the meanwhile. Mary’s Council was
+profoundly disunited, Paget and the Chancellor,
+Bishop Gardiner of Winchester, being at bitter feud
+with each other; and Mary herself was angry and
+distrustful with Gardiner and his adherents, who, she
+feared, quite without reason, were secretly favouring
+Elizabeth and the Wyatt prisoners. On one occasion,
+late in March, a number of members of the
+Council, even Paget being amongst them out of
+enmity to Gardiner, took the bold course of entering
+the Queen’s oratory after vespers, and told her
+that it was now time for clemency, and that if any
+more noble blood was shed it would no longer be
+justice but cruelty. The bloody-minded advice,
+they said, of others should not be followed—meaning
+by this Gardiner, who was absent, and Renard, who
+was never tired of urging severity upon Mary. The
+Queen, taken by surprise, at once pardoned six of the
+gentlemen of Kent implicated in Wyatt’s rising who
+had been condemned to death. Poor Mary was
+beset on every side by warring counsels, with
+Renard telling her that for her own and her husband’s
+safety she must strike hard, and her Council
+in revolt at what they considered the cruelty inculcated
+by Gardiner, and at one time she consented
+to Renard’s plan for a <i>coup d’état</i> which should
+practically make her supreme. The Lord Admiral
+(Howard), Pembroke, Derby, Shrewsbury, and Sussex
+were to be employed in distant parts of the realm; a
+reconciliation was to be effected between Gardiner
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_62">[62]</span>and Paget, and the whole business of State was to
+be managed by them, with the assistance of Petre,
+the Earl of Arundel, and two others. Renard
+thought that this solution was the only one which
+offered any security for Philip’s safety, and when
+the Queen was induced by some of her Councillors
+to pardon on Good Friday the Marquis of Northampton
+and eight more prisoners implicated in the
+Wyatt rising, the Imperial ambassador roundly
+scolded her for her ill-timed clemency. It was not
+by any means certain, he said, that Philip would
+consent to come to England at all. The dissensions
+of her Councillors were very dangerous, and
+it behoved her to consider very carefully, since the
+security must be furnished by her, and the Prince
+could not come armed, what a scandal and calamity
+it would be if anything happened to him.&#x2060;<a id="FNanchor_44" href="#Footnote_44" class="fnanchor">[44]</a> Mary
+wept at this, and said that “she would rather never
+have been born than that any outrage should be
+committed on his Highness, but she trusted to God
+that no such thing would occur. All her Councillors
+would do their duty in receiving the Prince, and are in
+great hopes of him. She would reform her Council
+and reduce it to six members; she would do her best
+to incline her subjects to his Highness’s favour; and
+she would take good care that the cases of Courtenay
+and Elizabeth were finished before the Prince arrived.”&#x2060;<a id="FNanchor_45" href="#Footnote_45" class="fnanchor">[45]</a>&#x2060;</p>
+
+<figure class="figcenter illowp58" id="illus03" style="max-width: 34.375em;">
+  <img class="w100" src="images/illus03.jpg" alt="">
+  <figcaption>
+    <p>WILLIAM LORD PAGET</p>
+    <p>FROM A PAINTING IN THE NATIONAL PORTRAIT GALLERY</p>
+  </figcaption>
+</figure>
+
+<p>Noailles and the French sympathisers, too, were
+still at work stirring up alarm at the coming of the
+Spaniards. Here was a bridegroom, they sneered,
+who was coming to win a wife, with a great army
+intended to land on English soil and proclaim himself
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_63">[63]</span>King in his own right, with all his swarm of
+priests, friars, and inquisitors to oppress the English
+people. Even the English sailors on Howard’s ships
+were so distrustful of the Spaniards that when the
+Flemish crews of the Emperor’s fleet set foot on
+shore during the time they awaited Philip’s arrival
+the visitors were hustled and insulted everywhere,
+whilst the Lord Admiral himself had openly mocked
+at their ships as mussel-shells.&#x2060;<a id="FNanchor_46" href="#Footnote_46" class="fnanchor">[46]</a> Whether it be true,
+as was asserted, that Howard committed the grave
+discourtesy of throwing a shot across the bows of the
+Prince’s fleet to compel a salute to the English flag is
+doubtful, but it is certain that the feeling in the country
+amongst high and low as the time went on was as
+strongly against the Spanish bridegroom as ever.</p>
+
+<p>During the months that passed between the formal
+betrothal in March and the coming of Philip, Mary
+grew more and more impatient, railing at her quarrelling
+Councillors, worried almost daily by Renard to
+hasten the execution of Elizabeth and Courtenay,
+and a prey to frequent hysterical attacks of wounded
+pride at what she considered the ungallant lack of
+eagerness on the part of her new husband to join
+her. She grew more faded and older with her
+anxiety, and this increased her distress,&#x2060;<a id="FNanchor_47" href="#Footnote_47" class="fnanchor">[47]</a> for Elizabeth
+was young and beautiful, and the Queen knew
+that the love of the people for her was growing
+with the dread of Spanish Catholic intolerance. And
+yet the majority of the Council, not to mention the
+Parliament that was sitting, would never sanction
+the sacrifice of the Princess at the instance of the
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_64">[64]</span>Imperial ambassador; and even the Lord Admiral
+and his fleet were suspected of a design to declare
+against the Queen unless his cousin, Princess Elizabeth,
+was well treated. Renard’s letters of the time
+reflect the distracted condition of affairs from day to
+day, no man knowing in which direction future safety
+or ruin to him might be encountered. “The Queen
+is reduced to such a state of perplexity that she is at
+a loss whose advice to adopt, knowing well that all is
+being done in favour of Lady Elizabeth.” Scurrilous
+ballads were flung about in public places, even in
+the Queen’s palace, bitterly lampooning the unhappy
+Mary and her lagging Spanish bridegroom. To
+make matters worse, when the French ambassador,
+Noailles, who was known to be the principal fomenter
+of all this trouble, went to take leave of Mary at
+Whitehall the day before she set out on her gradual
+approach to the coast to meet Philip at the end of
+May, an open wrangle took place between them, and
+the ambassador in a rage threatened to leave England
+immediately—a threat not at all distasteful to the
+Imperialists, because it brought nearer what they
+aimed at before all things—the breaking out of
+hostilities between England and France.</p>
+
+<p>By slow stages Mary travelled through the latter
+half of June and early July from Richmond by Oatlands
+and Farnham to Winchester, where she arrived
+two days after Philip had landed at Southampton.
+As Philip had truly said, this was no romantic love
+voyage that he was making, but a deliberate sacrifice
+of all his personal tastes and wishes for the sake of
+overwhelming political expediency. No effort was
+to be spared to gain England to the side of Spain
+against France, and Philip deliberately laid himself
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_65">[65]</span>out to please. On his famous voyage to stay with
+his father in Flanders some years before, his cold
+hauteur and lack of expansiveness had quite alienated
+the Germans and Flemings from him. His grave
+young face, his prim demeanour, his sober garments,
+his rigid abstemiousness in eating and drinking,
+and his distaste for the martial amusements of
+the time, were all foreign to the rough vitality of
+the Teutons; and Renard and the Emperor had
+warned the Prince that he must not repeat his mistake,
+but conform to English customs and learn at
+least some English words. The Spaniards of his
+train were enjoined also “to behave themselves
+according to English fashion, and to be modest in
+their bearing, trusting that your Highness, with your
+accustomed kindness, will make much of them.”&#x2060;<a id="FNanchor_48" href="#Footnote_48" class="fnanchor">[48]</a> And
+the Emperor, desirous of avoiding all occasion for
+dissension, writes to his son (1st April, 1554): “They
+tell me that some married women are going with
+their husbands in your company. I think they will
+be more difficult to govern and keep friends with
+the English women than even soldiers would be.
+You had better see whether it would not be wiser
+to send them here [to Flanders] until affairs in
+England are more settled.”&#x2060;<a id="FNanchor_49" href="#Footnote_49" class="fnanchor">[49]</a>&#x2060;</p>
+
+<p>Even Philip’s enemies, the Venetians, testified to
+the change of his demeanour during his stay in
+England; and Soriano, the outgoing ambassador,
+said that from that time forward, even in Spain,
+his gentle courtesy and kindness were continued
+habitually, whilst Michaeli, the new Venetian ambassador,
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_66">[66]</span>who was the staunch ally of Noailles, was
+emphatic in his testimony of Philip’s affability in
+England, and says that his conduct towards his
+wife was such as to make any woman love him:
+“for in truth no one in the world could have been
+a better or more affectionate husband.” Yet another
+Venetian envoy, Damula, accredited to the Emperor,
+wrote that on disembarking in England the Prince
+was “remarked by everybody for his graciousness,
+without any stiffness or assumption of royal ceremony,
+mixing with the courtiers rather as a comrade
+than as a king.” Certain it is, with public opinion in
+England strongly unfavourable and in a perfect panic
+of apprehension, Philip’s tact and graciousness to a
+great extent overcame the prejudice against him, and
+he became in a few months personally quite popular,
+whilst he contrived almost immediately to gain his
+wife’s devoted affection. The over-coloured picture
+of Philip as a trembling, seasick creature,&#x2060;<a id="FNanchor_50" href="#Footnote_50" class="fnanchor">[50]</a> in daily
+fear of poison, which Froude drew from the letters of
+Noailles and the account of the Venetian, Baoardo,
+needs much modification to be near the impartial
+truth; for though, as we have seen, Philip looked
+upon the marriage as a sacrifice to reasons of
+State, as undoubtedly it was, he bore his cross
+gaily and like a well-bred gentleman. If he had
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_67">[67]</span>done otherwise, indeed, as he was quite clever
+enough to recognise, the sacrifice itself would have
+been useless.</p>
+
+<p>From the hour of his arrival in Southampton
+Water, two o’clock in the afternoon of Thursday,
+19th July, until after breakfast the next day, Philip
+remained on board the <i>Espiritu Santo</i> at anchor,
+whilst the salutes of the ships and forts thundered
+out their welcome; state barges brought the English
+and Flemish Lord Admirals to visit the Prince, and
+the Marquis of las Navas, Figueroa, the Emperor’s
+special ambassador, and several high English nobles,
+came to pay their respects to the new king. After
+breakfast on the 20th July, Howard’s state galley
+came alongside the <i>Espiritu Santo</i>, and from it
+climbed to the deck the Lord Admiral and a little
+group of English nobles—Arundel, Derby, and
+Shrewsbury—with Sir John Williams, to whom
+Philip at once handed the white wand of Chamberlain.
+The Prince stood upon the high deck, cap in
+hand and with smiling face, to receive them, and after
+they had been presented to the principal grandees
+the English nobles led the Prince to the barge,
+followed by the Duke of Alba, with his lean, dark
+face and long, grizzled beard; Count de Feria, with
+his raven hair and flashing eyes; Ruy Gomez,
+Philip’s dearest friend, suave and imperturbable;
+Pescara, Egmont, Horn, and a dozen other high
+courtiers, Spaniards and Flemings. No permission
+was given to the other courtiers to land until the
+Prince’s barge touched the shore, whilst no soldier
+or man-at-arms was allowed to land at all on pain of
+death, for Philip dared not offend English feeling in
+this matter, and he had learnt from his father that the
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_68">[68]</span>fortune of war had been against him, and he needed
+every man-at-arms at once in Flanders.&#x2060;<a id="FNanchor_51" href="#Footnote_51" class="fnanchor">[51]</a>&#x2060;</p>
+
+<p>As the gaily dressed oarsmen rapidly forced the
+great gilded galley through the smooth water to the
+shore, a little ceremony was performed under the stern
+canopy. The Earl of Arundel and Sir John Williams
+as a commission from the Queen besought permission
+to invest the Prince with the Order of the Garter;
+and Williams fastened the gilt ligature around his
+leg, whilst Arundel placed upon his breast a glittering
+pendant rose and George. As Philip stepped
+upon English soil for the first time, thirty nobles
+and gentlemen of the Queen’s Court did him
+reverence, and Sir Anthony Browne, leading a
+beautiful white hackney caparisoned in crimson
+velvet and gold, announced himself in a Latin
+speech as the new Consort’s master of the horse.
+The Prince thanked the new grand equerry, but
+replied that, as the distance was short, he would
+walk on foot to the house prepared for him. But
+this he was told was not in accordance with English
+etiquette, and without more ado Browne, lifting him
+up in his arms, placed him in the saddle, and then,
+humbly kissing the golden stirrups, walked bare-headed
+by his master’s side. With crowds of gaily
+clad English and Spanish courtiers preceding him,
+Philip passed thus through the curious townsfolk to
+the Church of Holy Rood. He must have looked
+an impressive figure, with his dapper, erect bearing,
+his yellow, curly beard and close-cropped fair head,
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_69">[69]</span>dressed, as he was, in black velvet and silver, hung
+all about with massive gold chains and with glittering
+precious stones in his velvet cap, upon breast, neck,
+and wrists. Browne himself was no unworthy company
+for his Prince, for he too was garbed in a rich
+suit of black velvet entirely covered with fine gold
+embroidery, with a surcoat of the same, of which the
+long, hanging false sleeves were lined with cloth of
+silver.</p>
+
+<p>After a brief service of thanksgiving, Philip was
+taken to the house destined for his reception. The
+English guards and archers on duty and a crowd of
+English household servitors had been dressed by
+Mary’s directions in the red-and-yellow livery of
+Spain; and when Philip entered the rooms prepared
+for him, he found that here, too, his wife’s thoughtful
+prevision had been exercised; for the appointments
+and furniture were sumptuous, and upon the walls
+there hung royal draperies of gold-embroidered
+damask.&#x2060;<a id="FNanchor_52" href="#Footnote_52" class="fnanchor">[52]</a> To the assembled English nobles Philip
+then delivered a dignified speech in Latin, saying
+that he had left his own land not to augment his
+possessions or his power, of which he had sufficient,
+but because God had called him to marry their
+Queen, with whom he intended to live here in
+harmony; and he promised his hearers that if they
+were faithful to her and to him, “he would be to
+them a right good and loving prince.” He was
+from the first all smiles and graciousness to the
+English, who were, indeed, agreeably surprised at
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_70">[70]</span>his amiability when after his private supper he
+came out into the presence chamber and chatted
+unaffectedly and gaily with the gentlemen there.
+To bluff Lord Admiral Howard he said that he
+had come to England for his wedding unprovided
+with garb sufficiently sumptuous to do honour to
+their Queen, but he hoped that the velvet horse-cloth
+of the hackney the Queen had sent him might
+serve him to make a splendid vestment withal.</p>
+
+<p>The pledging of the company after supper in a
+draught of English beer, which the partial view of
+Froude presented as a repellant and unwilling concession,
+was a perfectly natural part of the whole
+of Philip’s behaviour. He had come to win the
+English by affability, and he was determined as
+much as possible to conform to English prejudices
+and to impress upon his Spanish followers the need
+for their doing likewise. Even the enemy, who
+records the action, does not hint at any demonstration
+of dislike or reluctance on the part of Philip
+to the politic course he took. So thoroughly, indeed,
+did he act up to his policy, that before he left Southampton
+his Spanish attendants were all scowling and
+grumbling in spite and jealousy that their Prince was
+preferring Englishmen to them, and that his service
+and safety were placed in the hands of foreigners to
+the exclusion of his own people. Though Philip had
+great ends to serve in drinking beer and sitting out
+gargantuan English feasts, at which his proud frugal
+countrymen scoffed, to the courtiers who accompanied
+him from Spain, it was as gall and wormwood to see
+the greatest Prince in Christendom thus curry favour
+with these rough islanders, whom they regarded as
+inferiors; and when, on Saturday, the Spaniards
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_71">[71]</span>were all ordered to leave the church at Southampton
+before the service was over, in order that the Prince
+might come out attended only by Englishmen, they
+broke out into almost open protest, particularly when,
+as the rain was coming down in torrents and the
+Prince was without cape or hat, he borrowed the
+garments from an Englishman near him rather than
+from a Spaniard, to go the few yards from the church
+to his lodging.</p>
+
+<p>The three hundred houses of which Southampton
+consisted were already crammed to overflowing with
+Philip’s great train of courtiers and four hundred
+servants, but every hour the crowd in the little port
+grew as the neighbouring gentry, with their followers,
+rode in to honour their new King in accordance with
+Queen Mary’s orders. Nor was this all, for early on
+Saturday morning the Earl of Pembroke came with an
+escort for the Prince of two hundred English gentlemen
+in black velvet and gold chains, and three
+hundred more in scarlet, all splendidly mounted. In
+return for this, Philip sent Egmont to the Queen with
+thanks and loving messages. Half way to Winchester
+Egmont met a great train coming towards him, escorting
+the Lord Chancellor, Bishop Gardiner, bearing
+from his Sovereign a valuable ring to her spouse.
+Gardiner had done his best to prevent the match, and
+when that had proved impossible, he had cleverly
+minimised its disadvantages from an English point of
+view, so that he was far from being <i>persona grata</i> to
+Renard and the Spaniards. But for weeks past he
+had been in hourly danger of ruin from the cabals
+against him and the distrust of the Queen; and he
+now sought safety in an apparent cordiality towards
+the Spanish marriage, an attitude which Philip repaid
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_72">[72]</span>by treating him with almost excessive deference.
+The next day (Sunday), in the torrential rain, the
+favourite Ruy Gomez rode to Winchester with
+another beautiful ring for Mary, and the Lords of
+the Council and a host of other nobles came in to
+salute Philip, who, after rising late, dined and supped
+in public for the first time in England. To the rage
+of the Spaniards, his English household served him;
+though the proudest of his grandees, the Duke of
+Alba, was allowed unofficially to hand him the
+napkin.&#x2060;<a id="FNanchor_53" href="#Footnote_53" class="fnanchor">[53]</a> “We are of no more use here, and are
+simply vagabonds. We should be better employed
+in serving in the war, for they make us pay here
+twenty times what a thing is worth,” grumbled one
+of Philip’s gentlemen-in-waiting, who fairly represented
+the general feeling amongst them, even on
+the first days of their arrival in England.</p>
+
+<p>Before Philip started on Monday afternoon for
+Winchester, better news came from the Emperor.
+The French had not followed up their victory at
+Marienburg, and the six hundred Spanish jennets
+which had come in the fleet, with Philip’s own
+horses, might now be landed.&#x2060;<a id="FNanchor_54" href="#Footnote_54" class="fnanchor">[54]</a> The anxious Queen,
+nevertheless, continued to send fresh supplies of
+splendidly caparisoned horses for Philip’s use; and
+when, in a perfect deluge of rain, at two o’clock in
+the afternoon the Prince started out to join his bride
+in the ancient city seven miles away, a train of three
+thousand magnificently accoutred horsemen clattered
+in his train. With the exception of some fifteen of
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_73">[73]</span>the highest Spanish nobles, who rode close around
+the Prince—Alba, Medina-Celi, Feria, and their like—Philip’s
+strong bodyguard was formed of English
+men-at-arms dressed in Spanish colours, much to the
+jealousy of the Spanish guard still cooped up in the
+pestilential ships. On the road six hundred more
+English gentlemen in black velvet and gold met the
+cavalcade and joined it. Then, nearer Winchester,
+six of the Queen’s pages, dressed in crimson brocade
+and cloth of gold, were encountered with a herald
+bringing for the Prince six more beautiful steeds as a
+present from their mistress. The malicious Venetian
+tells a story embellished by Froude of a breathless,
+galloping messenger from the Queen, whose haste
+threw Philip and his Spanish friends into a panic
+of fear; but everything that Baoardo wrote on the
+subject of the marriage is suspect and cannot be
+accepted without confirmation, of which in this case
+there is none.</p>
+
+<p>When the Prince started from Southampton, he
+wore a surcoat of black velvet adorned with diamonds,
+and doublet and trunks of white satin embroidered
+with gold. But this delicate finery, though covered
+by a thick red felt cloak, was wet through before he
+arrived at Winchester; and a halt was made at the
+beautiful hospital of Saint Cross to enable a change
+of garments to be donned, the fresh suit consisting
+of a black velvet surcoat trimmed with gold bugles,
+and under-garments of white velvet and gold. Thus
+bedizened he entered the ancient gateway, past kneeling
+mayor and aldermen, and through silent, gaping
+crowds of townsfolk, direct to the splendid cathedral,
+the shrine of England’s ancient Kings. A little group
+of mitred bishops stood before the great west door,
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_74">[74]</span>crosses raised and censers swinging; and in solemn
+procession to the high altar they led beneath a velvet
+canopy this slim, erect, little man with fair face and
+yellow hair, whom they and their like regarded as
+God’s chosen instrument to undo the impious work
+of Henry and of Somerset.</p>
+
+<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop" aria-hidden="true">
+
+<div class="chapter">
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_75">[75]</span></p>
+
+<h2 class="nobreak" id="CHAPTER_III">CHAPTER III<br>
+<span class="smaller">1554-1555</span></h2>
+
+<p>Philip’s first meeting with Mary—The marriage—Discontent and disappointment
+of the Spaniards—Philip’s kindness to his wife—Spanish
+descriptions of England—Philip in London—Arrival of Pole—Philip’s
+religious policy in England—His attempts to marry Elizabeth to Savoy—The
+Emperor’s war with France—Departure of Philip from England</p>
+
+</div>
+
+<p>Dusk was falling upon the gloomy day when
+Philip, having duly performed his devotions
+and admired the splendid fane of Winchester,
+found himself at ease in the Dean’s house, which had
+been prepared for his reception. The Queen’s maiden
+scruples had been respected, for it was not in accordance
+with etiquette that they should both sleep under
+the same roof before they became man and wife; so
+that whilst the Deanery sheltered the bridegroom, the
+bride was lodged in Bishop Gardiner’s castle adjoining.
+Philip supped, and when he was thinking of
+going to bed, it being ten o’clock at night, some
+English courtiers and the Mistress of the Robes
+came and said that the Queen wished him to visit
+her secretly in her closet, where she awaited him,
+but that he was to bring only a very few followers.
+Another beautiful dress had perforce to be assumed,
+consisting of a French surcoat embroidered in silver
+and gold, with doublet and trunks of white kid
+covered with gold embroidery; and then, accompanied
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_76">[76]</span>by Alba, Medina-Celi, Feria, Aguilar, Egmont,
+Horn, and a half-dozen more grandees, the Prince
+was led by his English guides across the lane and
+still-existing little green to a garden gate, through
+which only the nobles chosen by Philip were allowed
+to enter. They found themselves in a delicious
+garden, and in the mysterious darkness threaded
+the leafy alleys, until they arrived at the great
+moated house, which they entered by a little back
+door, from which a private stair led direct to the
+Queen’s private apartment.</p>
+
+<p>When the English guide threw open the door at
+the head of the stair, Philip for the first time looked
+upon the woman who was to be his second wife.
+Mary was slowly pacing the long passage or gallery
+lined with tapestry, which constituted the room.
+Two gentlemen bore torches before her, and with
+her were Gardiner and three or four other aged
+men and some ladies-in-waiting. Philip hung back
+a few seconds whilst Egmont entered the room. He,
+being known to the Queen, was greeted by her
+graciously; and then, as she caught sight of the
+smart figure of her bridegroom, she walked rapidly
+towards him, and kissed her hand before she grasped
+his. Philip did the same, and, in the English fashion
+of the time, gallantly kissed his elderly bride upon
+her lips. Mary was, as usual, splendidly dressed,
+and her trim little figure must have looked stately
+enough in her black velvet gown, cut high at the
+neck, her petticoat of frosted silver, her coif of black
+velvet and gold, and wonderful girdle, collar, and
+pendants of flashing gems. Her complexion was of
+that peculiar transparency which usually accompanies
+red hair; her eyes, which were also of ruddy
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_77">[77]</span>brown, were almost without eyebrows, as her father’s
+had been; and her somewhat austere face was wreathed
+now with smiles of welcome to the man for whose
+coming she had yearned.</p>
+
+<p>Leading him by the hand to a chair beside her
+own beneath the canopy, she replied in French to
+his Spanish compliments. Whilst they were thus
+seated in happy converse, the irrepressible Lord
+Admiral Howard broke in with some of his usual
+suggestive jokes, not in the best taste according to
+the ideas of to-day, but apparently accepted at that
+time as quite permissible. Then, one by one, the
+Spanish nobles were brought forward to kiss the
+Queen’s hand; and Philip, apparently finding the interview
+somewhat tedious, as his knowledge of French
+was not extensive, proposed that he should go into
+the adjoining apartment to greet the Queen’s ladies.
+Mary insisted upon accompanying him. The ladies, in
+pairs, were led forward to courtesy before the Prince,
+who, cap in hand, “in order not to violate the custom
+of the country, kissed each of them on the lips as they
+passed him.” The ceremony, probably, was not over-pleasant
+to Mary, for when, the kissing being at an
+end, Philip suggested that it was getting late and he
+had better retire, the Queen insisted upon leading
+him to the canopy again for another chat.</p>
+
+<p>Already the Spaniards began to nod and wink to
+each other to signify that the Queen had fallen in
+love with her husband thus soon at first sight, and
+it is quite probable that such was the case. Mary’s
+heart had been starved for love all her life. There
+was none of her kin now with whom she could
+unbend, and, with her crushing responsibility, it must
+have been for her like a glimpse of heaven to
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_78">[78]</span>feel that this good-looking, wise, young man, fully
+her equal in rank, and her superior in power, was
+in future to be kinsman, husband, and upholder in
+one. At last the time came for parting, and in
+jesting mood grave Philip learnt of his bride how
+to say “Good-night” in English. But alas! before
+he could reach the ladies in the other room to say
+the newly learnt words to them, the outlandish
+sounds had slipped out of his mind, and with much
+laughter and smiles he had to go back and learn
+them again from the Queen.&#x2060;<a id="FNanchor_55" href="#Footnote_55" class="fnanchor">[55]</a> In conversation with
+Philip, the Queen’s governess (Mrs. Clarencius?)
+expressed her joy at the coming union and thanks
+to God for letting her live to see the day, though
+she regretted that she had not reared a more beautiful
+bride for him;&#x2060;<a id="FNanchor_56" href="#Footnote_56" class="fnanchor">[56]</a> and according to another eyewitness’s
+account the Queen herself modestly thanked
+Philip for accepting so old and ugly a wife. Generally
+speaking, however, Mary does not appear to have
+produced an unfavourable impression upon the
+Spaniards. They speak of her manner at this time
+as being gay and gracious, and her clear complexion
+was much admired. Certainly Philip played his part
+to perfection, whatever his private feelings may have
+been; and if Mary had been a budding beauty of
+twenty instead of a faded old maid of nearly forty,
+he could not have been a more gallant bridegroom
+in appearance than he was: although to his bosom
+friend, Ruy Gomez, he confided a few days after
+the wedding that he was prepared with resignation
+to drain the chalice to the end which his marriage
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_79">[79]</span>presented to him, since, as his friend knew, he had
+not married for love, but to restore England to the
+Church; and such an object made him lose sight of
+the Queen’s lack of personal attractions.</p>
+
+<p>Philip slept late the morning after his arrival at
+Winchester, and as soon as he was out of bed the
+Queen’s tailor brought him two superb sets of
+garments—one made of very rich white brocade
+profusely embroidered with gold bugles and seed
+pearls, with diamonds for buttons, and the other a
+similar suit in crimson. Philip went that day,
+Tuesday, to Mass at the Cathedral, dressed in a
+purple velvet surcoat with silver fringe and white
+satin doublet and trunks; and then after his private
+dinner, went in great state to visit the Queen
+publicly. This time she received him in the great
+hall of the Bishop’s palace, surrounded by the whole
+of her Court and attended by fifty ladies—“none of
+them pretty”—dressed in purple velvet. Mary
+received the Prince at the foot of her daïs, amidst
+the fanfare of trumpets, and after kissing him affectionately
+led him to the seat at her side. She must
+have looked as magnificent as fine clothes could make
+her as she sat “in sweet converse” with him under
+her canopy; for we are told that her purple velvet
+robe and cloth-of-gold petticoat were all aglow with
+precious stones, and that coif, neck, breast, and wrists,
+were stiff with pearls and diamonds. There were
+special ambassadors, too, to receive and welcome:
+Figueroa, viceroy of Naples, from the Emperor,
+others from the King of the Romans and his son,
+from Venice, Florence, Poland, and Ferrara. But
+one was missing; for Noailles, the Frenchman, for
+whom this marriage was a dire defeat, had not been
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_80">[80]</span>bidden to the feast; and in the intervals of his
+plotting to raise trouble was writing to his baffled
+master ill-natured and distorted reports, at second
+hand, of the proceedings.</p>
+
+<p>The next day, Wednesday, 25th July, was the Feast
+of St. James, the patron of Spain, and the noble
+cathedral of Winchester was aflame with glowing
+colour. The ancient nave can never have seen so
+gorgeous a company as was there assembled in the
+forenoon. All that pomp, skill, and lavish expenditure
+could produce was there to do honour to an
+event which all spectators felt was one of moving
+interest for the future of the world; because it meant,
+so far as men might see, the secure fastening upon the
+neck of England again of the yoke of the Papacy,
+which Henry VIII. had shaken off, the stifling of the
+Reformation in Europe, and the reduction of France
+to a secondary place amongst the nations. Philip, in
+the white satin suit the Queen had sent him and with
+a regal mantle of cloth of gold, led his dazzlingly clad
+bride up the lofty nave to an elevated platform in the
+centre; and there Gardiner, with three attendant
+Bishops, made them man and wife. To equalise their
+rank, it was announced that the Viceroy Figueroa had
+brought formal instruments from the Emperor, resigning
+to his son the Kingdoms of Naples and Jerusalem;
+and this proclamation having been made, the King
+and Queen, with swords of state borne before them by
+the Earls of Derby and Pembroke, descended to the
+high altar, followed by fifty ladies in cloth of gold,
+to hear Mass, during which, we are told, the Queen
+never removed her devout eyes from the crucifix.</p>
+
+<figure class="figcenter illowp56" id="illus04" style="max-width: 32.8125em;">
+  <img class="w100" src="images/illus04.jpg" alt="">
+  <figcaption>
+    <p>QUEEN MARY AT THE PERIOD OF HER MARRIAGE</p>
+    <p>FROM THE PAINTING BY ANTONIO MOR IN THE PRADO MUSEUM</p>
+  </figcaption>
+</figure>
+
+<p>Rarely can a marriage have taken place prompted
+on both sides by such elevation of spirit as this. The
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_81">[81]</span>objects in view may be condemned now, as they were
+condemned by many at the time, but there is no
+gainsaying that, so far as Philip and Mary were
+concerned, they both believed they were making
+private sacrifice for the public welfare. This feeling
+was evident through the whole of the marriage negotiations
+and afterwards, especially in Philip’s case, until it
+was seen that the plan had failed. It is true that the
+famished heart of Mary grew to love her husband for
+his own sake as time went on; but she loved him
+first and best because he personified the force that
+was to make England Catholic, whilst she to him
+meant the influence that was to enable him and his
+House to wield the power of England against their
+enemy.</p>
+
+<p>After the ceremony, the King and Queen walked in
+procession through an immense crowd to the Bishop’s
+palace, where in the great hall was laid the wedding
+banquet. All the courtly ceremony of saluting the
+royal dishes as they were brought in, the genuflexions
+to the throne, the trumpeting of minstrels, and the
+symbolic functions of the great officers of State,
+aroused the admiration of the form-loving Spaniards;
+but their hearts were raging with jealousy during the
+progress of the feast, for their wounded pride did
+not fail to notice that Mary took precedence of her
+husband everywhere, that she had a more stately seat,
+and that while she ate off gold plate he was served on
+silver. They comforted themselves with the idea that
+all this would be changed when the King had been
+crowned; but that their Prince, the Emperor’s son and
+heir, should take a second place to any one on earth
+filled them with anger, for they had already begun to
+realise that they were not to enter into possession of
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_82">[82]</span>England as they had hoped. The richness and
+abundance they saw around them made their disappointment
+the more bitter. Such a show of plate
+on tables and sideboards as this they had never seen
+before.&#x2060;<a id="FNanchor_57" href="#Footnote_57" class="fnanchor">[57]</a> All the platters and dishes were of silver,
+and great buffets loaded with plate stood at both ends
+of the great hall. The sideboard behind the high
+table, at which Philip and Mary sat, with Gardiner far
+off at the end, had upon it a hundred great pieces,
+“with a great gilt clock half as high as a man, and a
+marble fountain with a rim of gold.” Before the
+King and Queen stood Lords Pembroke and Strange
+with sword and mace; the four services of thirty
+dishes each, far too much for the 158 noble guests,
+were borne in to the sound of minstrelsy; and after the
+feast the Earl of Arundel presented the ewer of water
+for the King’s hands, whilst the Marquis of Winchester
+bore the napkin. The only Spaniard allowed
+to serve the King was the Duke of Infantado’s son,
+Don Iñigo de Mendoza, as cupbearer: “as for any of
+the Prince’s own stewards doing anything, such a
+thing was never thought of, and not one of us took a
+wand in our own hands, nor does it seem likely we
+ever shall, not even the controller. They had far
+better turn us all out as vagabonds.”&#x2060;<a id="FNanchor_58" href="#Footnote_58" class="fnanchor">[58]</a>&#x2060;</p>
+
+<p>After the Queen had pledged her guests in a cup of
+wine, and a herald had proclaimed Philip’s new style
+as King of England, France, Naples, and Jerusalem,
+Prince of Spain, and Count of Flanders, the royal pair
+retired to another chamber, accompanied by the
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_83">[83]</span>English and Spanish nobles, where the afternoon
+was passed in gallant conversation, though apparently
+with some difficulty to the Spaniards, who were
+desirous of showing their gallantry to the English
+ladies. “We had great trouble in making out their
+meaning, except those who spoke Latin; so we have
+all resolved not to give them any presents of gloves
+until we can understand them. The gentlemen who
+speak the language are mostly very glad to find that
+we Spaniards cannot do so.”</p>
+
+<p>At the ball that wound up the entertainments, the
+same difficulty arising from diverse customs stood in
+the way of intercourse, for the Spanish and English
+dances were different, and the courtiers of the two
+nations could not hit upon a common formula until
+Philip led his wife out to tread a measure in the
+German fashion, which was known to both.</p>
+
+<p>With every day that passed the discontent and
+jealousy grew. Philip himself was charming, treating
+his wife in lover-like fashion, and full of tactful
+affability to the English people. But the more conciliatory
+Philip showed himself, the more his Spanish
+courtiers chafed. They had found their position in
+England entirely different from what they had
+expected; and their hopes of easily dominating the
+country were fading rapidly. The men-at-arms and
+the bodyguard were still confined to their ships at
+Portsmouth and Southampton, forbidden to land
+under pain of death, and were becoming restive; the
+courtiers themselves and their servants were ridiculed
+in the streets of Winchester, and even waylaid and
+robbed if they ventured into the country; and yet
+they dared not complain. “After this weary voyage
+these people wish to subject us to some extent to
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_84">[84]</span>their laws; for it is a new thing for them to have
+Spaniards in the country, and they wish to feel
+secure.”&#x2060;<a id="FNanchor_59" href="#Footnote_59" class="fnanchor">[59]</a> “We Spaniards are miserable here, much
+worse than in Castile; and some say that they would
+rather be in the barest stubble field of Toledo than
+here in the groves of Amadis.” Another courtier
+writing from Winchester says, “Great rogues infest
+the roads, and have robbed some of us, amongst
+others, the chamberlain of Don Juan Pacheco, from
+whom they took 400 crowns and all his jewelry and
+plate. No trace can be found of the property, nor of
+the four or five boxes missing from the King’s
+lodging; though the Council is scouring the country
+for it. As for the friars, they have had to be lodged
+in the college for their safety, and they bitterly repent
+having come.”</p>
+
+<p>It was difficult to please proud, disappointed people
+who were ready to disapprove of everything; and
+when the Duchess of Alba came, three days after the
+marriage, to join her husband, though Mary treated
+her with almost royal honours, the haughty dame and
+her kin were in a chronic state of indignation at the
+position she was obliged to occupy. An amusing
+account of her first visit to Mary on the third day
+after the wedding&#x2060;<a id="FNanchor_60" href="#Footnote_60" class="fnanchor">[60]</a> does not suggest any lack of
+ceremony, though the lodgings assigned to her may
+not have been so sumptuous as she thought fit. The
+Duchess was conducted to the Bishop’s palace by the
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_85">[85]</span>Countesses of Pembroke and Kildare and the Earl of
+Bedford, and the Queen advanced almost to the door
+of the presence chamber to meet her. The Duchess
+knelt, and the Queen, failing in her efforts to raise
+her, courtesied almost as low, and kissed her upon the
+mouth, which she usually did only to those of the
+blood royal. She then led the Duchess to the daïs,
+and seated herself upon the floor, inviting her guest to
+do likewise. But the latter refused to sit on the floor
+until the Queen sat upon a chair. This the Queen
+would not do, but sent for two stools as a compromise,
+upon one of which she sat and invited the Duchess to
+take the other, instead of which the Duchess then sat
+upon the floor, whereupon the Queen left her stool
+and also sat upon the floor; and after an almost
+interminable friendly wrangle, both ladies settled
+down on the stools, their conversation being interpreted
+by the Marquis de las Navas, as Mary,
+although she understood Spanish, did not speak it.
+When the Earl of Derby was presented to the
+Duchess, she was horrified at his offering to salute
+her in the usual English fashion by kissing her lips,
+and she drew back from him in hot indignation,
+though hardly in time to avoid contact. But as the
+lady haughtily expatiated to her own people afterwards
+upon the uncouth fashion, she declared that the
+Earl had only just managed to reach her cheek.</p>
+
+<p>By the last day of July most of the English gentry
+had gone home for the present, the Spaniards being
+distributed about Winchester and Southampton,
+whilst the troops were only awaiting a fair wind to
+carry them to Flanders. With a comparatively small
+suite the Queen and King set forth on the 31st July
+for Basing House, fifteen miles away, the seat of Lord
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_86">[86]</span>Winchester, the Lord Treasurer, and so by short stages
+to Reading, Windsor, and Richmond, where they
+remained until the 17th August. In the meanwhile
+the impatience of the Spaniards at their position in
+England grew intolerable, and the Duke of Medina-Celi,
+the premier noble, and of royal descent, was the
+first to insist upon immediate release with permission
+to join the Emperor in Flanders. Within a few days
+eighty other hidalgos had demanded similar licence,
+and by the time Richmond was reached the only
+Spanish nobles in attendance upon Philip were Alba,
+Feria, Olivares, Pedro de Cordova, and three gentlemen,
+amongst whom was the indefatigable letter-writer,
+Pedro Enriquez, whose narrative of the events
+is so expressive of the lack of community between the
+two peoples. Not only were the manners of the
+English ladies and their dresses unbecoming in Spanish
+eyes, and the English food coarsely excessive, but the
+political institutions of the country appeared to them,
+used as they were to the absolute monarchy of
+Castile, to be almost Republican in their hard
+limitation of the power of the Sovereign.</p>
+
+<p>“Their Majesties” (writes Pedro Enriquez from
+Richmond) “are the happiest married couple in the
+world, and are more in love with each other than
+I can write here. The King never leaves her, and
+on the road he rides by her side, helping her to
+mount and dismount. They sometimes dine together
+in public, and on Feast days he accompanies her to
+Mass. Although the Queen is not at all beautiful,
+for she is little, and thin rather than stout, she is
+very red and white. She has no eyebrows, she is a
+perfect saint, but she dresses very badly. The ladies
+here all wear farthingales of coloured cloth, without
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_87">[87]</span>silk, their outer garments being of coloured damask,
+satin, or velvet, but very badly made. Some of them
+wear velvet shoes, but most of them kid. They wear
+black stockings, and even show their legs, some
+of them up to the knees, at least whilst they are
+riding, for their skirts are not long enough. They
+look quite indelicate when they are travelling thus,
+and even when they are seated. They are not at
+all beautiful, nor are they graceful in dancing,
+which with them consists simply of prancing and
+trotting.&#x2060;<a id="FNanchor_61" href="#Footnote_61" class="fnanchor">[61]</a> None of the Spanish gentlemen are in
+love with them or think anything of them, nor they
+of the Spaniards. They are not worth troubling
+about, or feasting much, or spending money upon,
+which is a good thing for the Spaniards. All the
+rejoicing here consists of eating and drinking. The
+Queen spends in food 300,000 ducats a year. The
+whole of the Lords of the Council—thirteen of them—feed
+in the palace, as do the Officers of State, the
+Lord Steward, the Lord Chamberlain, the Master
+of the Horse, and the King’s English household
+with all their wives. The ladies and their servants
+and the households of all the courtiers and two
+hundred guards all live in the palace as well.
+Each officer has a cook to look after his food in
+the Queen’s kitchens. There are eighteen kitchens,
+and there is such a hurly-burly in them that each
+one is a veritable hell. So that, notwithstanding the
+greatness of these palaces, ... and the smallest of
+the four we have seen has more rooms and better
+ones than the <i>Alcazar</i> of Madrid, the crowds in them
+are so great as to be hardly contained.... The
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_88">[88]</span>ordinary consumption in the palace every day is
+from eighty to a hundred sheep, with a dozen fat
+oxen and dozen and a half of calves, besides vast
+quantities of game, poultry, venison, wild boar, and
+rabbits; whilst, as for the beer, they drink more in
+the summer than the river would hold in Valladolid.
+The ladies and some of the gentlemen put sugar
+into their wine. The noise and bustle in the palace
+are dreadful. And notwithstanding the vast number
+of rooms, they have never given to the Duchess of
+Alba a chamber in the palace. They are the most
+ungrateful people ever seen. Not even in the
+villages where we stay—and each one has a village—do
+they give to the Duke and Duchess a house to
+themselves, or the best one. They have fine trouble
+over their lodgings, as if it were not enough to
+prevent them from serving in their offices without
+housing them badly.”</p>
+
+<p>Already the courtiers saw that the chance of
+Philip being allowed to dominate England in consequence
+of his marriage was a slender one, but the
+King himself, in his patient, prudent way, persevered.
+His personal influence over his wife grew stronger
+every day, and when later she gave him hopes of
+the birth of an heir, a new prospect for the future
+seemed to open to him. The Londoners were as
+yet still almost in a panic at the coming of the
+Spanish King, and the most exaggerated ideas with
+regard to the number of armed men he would bring
+with him prevailed, artfully fostered by Noailles
+and the Protestant party. On the eve of the state
+entry of the royal pair into London the appearance
+of affairs was unpromising enough, as may be seen
+by Pedro Enriquez’s letter dated on the 17th August.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_89">[89]</span></p>
+
+<p>“The English cannot bear the sight of the
+Spaniards: they would rather see the devil. They
+rob us, even in the towns, and on the road none of
+us dare to stray for a couple of miles for fear of
+being robbed. A body of Englishmen on one
+occasion plundered and beat no less than fifty
+Spaniards. The Councillors know all about it, but
+they shut their eyes. The number of thieves in the
+country is quite incredible. They go about sometimes
+twenty together. There is neither justice nor fear
+of God.... For us there is no justice at all. The
+King commands us to raise no questions, but whilst
+we are here to put up with everything and suffer
+all their spite without a word. So, of course, they
+treat us badly and despise us. When we have
+complained to Bribiesca (the magistrate) and to the
+ambassadors, they tell us that it is to his Majesty’s
+interest that we should overlook everything. This
+marriage will have been of small use if this Queen
+does not have a child, of which I am not at all sure.
+When we were in Castile they said that as soon as his
+Highness was King of England we should be masters
+of France. The opposite is the case, for the French
+are now stronger and more aggressive than ever in
+Flanders.... Kings in this country do not command
+more than if they were subjects. The real rulers
+are the Councillors, who are not only masters of
+the country but masters of the King as well. They
+are all lords, some enriched by the plunder of the
+monasteries, some by inheritance, but they are much
+more feared and reverenced than the Sovereign.
+They say now that they will not let his Highness
+go unless the Queen and they please, as this realm
+is quite big enough for a King without any others.
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_90">[90]</span>Seeing what they are, I should not wonder if they
+do it, ... for they know how hard pressed we are in
+Flanders and are glad of it; ... they would not care
+a farthing if Flanders were lost, and his Majesty with
+it. The King and Queen enter London to-morrow,
+and I am sure we ought not to do so, seeing the way
+they are treating the Spaniards already there. Not
+only do they not provide lodgings for them, insulting
+them as if they were savages, but they rob them
+in the inns. As for the friars who came with his
+Majesty, they had better have stayed at home, for
+these English are so wicked and godless that they
+even maltreat friars, and these dare not leave their
+lodgings. Don Pedro de Cordova and his nephew,
+Don Antonio, are knights, and the people wanted
+to strip them of their habits the other day, making
+fun of them and asking them why they wore those
+crosses on their coats.”</p>
+
+<p>On the day that this was written Philip and
+Mary and their Court in state barges rowed from
+Richmond to Southwark, where they landed at the
+Bishop of Winchester’s house, and after killing a fat
+buck in Southwark Park, slept at the palace which
+stood upon the site of the present London Bridge
+Station, in order to start betimes in the morning of
+the next day across London Bridge, and so through
+the capital to Whitehall. All the fifty gibbets in the
+streets upon which Wyatt’s men had hanged were
+cleared away; the heads of the noble malefactors on
+the spikes at the Bridge-foot were no longer to be
+seen. All that paint and gilt and pageantry and
+pleasant looks could do to make the dour Londoners
+think well of the Queen’s Consort was done. Gog
+and Magog in new suits stood at the drawbridge that
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_91">[91]</span>spanned the space from London Bridge end to the
+Southwark shore. Triumphs stood at the street
+corners, one of the first, that in Gracechurch Street,
+containing the maladroit statue of Henry VIII. with
+the Bible labelled <i>Verbum Dei</i> in his hand, that
+so much moved Bishop Gardiner’s wrath.&#x2060;<a id="FNanchor_62" href="#Footnote_62" class="fnanchor">[62]</a> Past
+kneeling aldermen and velvet-clad guildsmen, and with
+a great train of splendid courtiers, Philip and his
+English wife rode through the silent crowds, whilst
+the guns of the White Tower thundered what was
+at the same time a salute to the King and a warning
+to the people. The official greetings were, as usual,
+extravagantly fulsome. That borne by Gog and
+Magog is thus translated—</p>
+
+<div class="poetry-container">
+  <div class="poetry">
+    <div class="stanza">
+      <div class="verse indent0">“O Noble Prince, sole hope of Cæsar’s side,</div>
+      <div class="verse indent0">By God appointed all the world to guide,</div>
+      <div class="verse indent0">Right harteley welcome art thou to our land.</div>
+      <div class="verse indent0">The archer Britayne yieldeth thee her hand;</div>
+      <div class="verse indent0">And noble England openeth her bosom</div>
+      <div class="verse indent0">Of hartie affection for to bid thee welcome:</div>
+      <div class="verse indent0">But chiefly London doth her love vouchsafe,</div>
+      <div class="verse indent0">Rejoicing that her Philip has come safe.</div>
+      <div class="verse indent0">She seeith her citizens love thee on each side</div>
+      <div class="verse indent0">And trusts they shall be happy of such a guide,</div>
+      <div class="verse indent0">And al do thinke that thou art sent to their citie</div>
+      <div class="verse indent0">By th’ only means of God’s paternal pitie,</div>
+      <div class="verse indent0">So that their minde, voice, study, power and will,</div>
+      <div class="verse indent0">Is only set to love thee, Philip, still”—&#x2060;<a id="FNanchor_63" href="#Footnote_63" class="fnanchor">[63]</a>&#x2060;</div>
+    </div>
+  </div>
+</div>
+
+<p class="noindent">and from Gracechurch to Whitehall tributes in Latin
+verse even more eulogistic than this greeted the man
+whose very presence the great mass of the people had
+been taught to dread. All the Philips that ever lived
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_92">[92]</span>were dwarfed, he was told, by such a paragon of
+excellence as himself; Orpheus had not such power
+to move as by his eloquence could this reticent,
+mumbling Philip, who spoke but little of any language
+but his own.</p>
+
+<div class="poetry-container">
+  <div class="poetry">
+    <div class="stanza">
+      <div class="verse indent0">“In like case now, thy grace of speech so franke,</div>
+      <div class="verse indent0">Doth comfort us whose minds afore were bleak</div>
+      <div class="verse indent0">And therefore England giveth thee harty thanke</div>
+      <div class="verse indent0">Whose chiefest joy is to hear thee Philip speke.”&#x2060;<a id="FNanchor_64" href="#Footnote_64" class="fnanchor">[64]</a>&#x2060;</div>
+    </div>
+  </div>
+</div>
+
+<p>Mary herself could see no evil in her husband,
+and we are told that she was highly gratified
+at all this dithyrambic praise of him. As they
+dismounted at Whitehall Gate, and she led him,
+all smiles, into the great presence chamber, Mary
+and Philip seemed to onlookers an ideally happy
+couple, notwithstanding the difference in their ages.
+Ruy Gomez, writing on the 24th August to Eraso
+in Spain, says: “The King entertains the Queen
+excellently, and well knows how to pass over
+what is not attractive in her for the sensibility of the
+flesh. He keeps her so pleased that verily when
+they were together the other day alone she almost
+made love to him and he answered in the same
+fashion. As for these gentlemen (<i>i.e.</i>, the English
+nobles), his behaviour towards them is such that
+they themselves confess that they never yet had a
+King in England who so soon won the hearts of
+all men.”&#x2060;<a id="FNanchor_65" href="#Footnote_65" class="fnanchor">[65]</a>&#x2060;</p>
+
+<p>Philip, indeed, had by his tact and amiability already
+begun to break down the hatred and distrust that had
+heralded his approach. At the period of the state
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_93">[93]</span>entry into London, a diarist writing in the Tower
+of London no doubt only reflected the general feeling
+of apprehension when he wrote: “At this time there
+were so many Spaniards in London; that a man should
+have met in the street for one Englishman about
+four Spaniards, to the great discomfort of the English
+nation. The Halls (<i>i.e.</i>, of the City companies) taken
+up for the Spaniards.”&#x2060;<a id="FNanchor_66" href="#Footnote_66" class="fnanchor">[66]</a> In actual fact the number
+of Spanish servants and followers left to Philip at the
+time was very few—less than a dozen noblemen with
+their respective households, probably not more than
+two or three hundred people at most; and as time
+wore on, and it was seen that no attempt was made
+by Philip and his countrymen to interfere with the
+English, the influence of the King personally being
+recognised as invariably on the side of conciliation,
+a more equable frame of mind became general. News
+had come that the Emperor and his son had detained
+Cardinal Pole on the way to England, and had vetoed
+the extreme Papal policy with which he had at first
+been entrusted; and it was seen also that Mary herself,
+as well as her husband, assumed a desire to avoid
+drawing England into hostility with France, which
+was the great fear of the English people.</p>
+
+<p>Noailles had not been bidden to the marriage, and
+had only been coldly and tardily invited to the state
+entry, which invitation he refused. But on the 21st
+August, whilst the Queen was at Whitehall, the French
+ambassador could hardly avoid offering some form
+of congratulation, for it was of the highest importance
+that England should not be driven to espouse the
+Emperor’s war. Noailles was as grudging as possible
+in his felicitations, dryly commenting upon the fact
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_94">[94]</span>that he had not been asked to the wedding, but
+hoped that it would not interfere with the friendship
+between England and France. Mary was most
+emphatic in her assurance that the peace would never
+be broken on her side, and as the ambassador left the
+Queen’s presence, somewhat reassured, he turned to
+Bishop Gardiner, who was conducting him, and said
+that if there was no objection he would like to salute
+Philip also. The Bishop was delighted, and conducted
+Noailles at once to the King, to whom the ambassador
+expressed a hope that the peace which had existed
+so long between England and France would not be
+imperilled by the coming of a Spanish Consort to
+England. He, for his part, would do his best to
+prevent any rupture. Philip called Gardiner to him
+and, speaking in Latin, told him to reply to Noailles,
+that although he understood French he did not speak
+it. “He had sworn,” he said, “both before and after
+his arrival in England, to maintain all the friendships
+and alliances existing between this and other countries,
+and he would keep his word faithfully. For his part
+the peace should not be broken so long it served the
+interests of England.”&#x2060;<a id="FNanchor_67" href="#Footnote_67" class="fnanchor">[67]</a>&#x2060;</p>
+
+<p>Noailles partly suspected what to us now is clear,
+namely, that all this suavity and tolerance on the part
+of the Prince of the proudest nation on earth was
+only a part of the deep-laid plan of the Emperor
+to obtain for his son the full control of English policy
+that the marriage treaty had withheld from him.
+Mary probably suspected this as little as any one.
+Her position was extremely difficult. She was by
+this time really in love with her husband, and was
+deeply desirous of pleasing him; she was anxious
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_95">[95]</span>for the aggrandisement of Spain, which would mean,
+she thought, the triumph of the Church over heresy
+in Europe, and the consolidation of her own throne.
+But she knew that her people dreaded above all
+things being dragged into a war with their nearest
+neighbour in a quarrel which did not concern them:
+she was an English Queen determined, so far as in
+her lay, to govern for the benefit of her country,
+and to her the only road to safety seemed to strive
+her hardest to bring about a peace between the two
+antagonists before England was involved in the war.
+Pole had also been entrusted by the Pope with the
+mission of pacifying the Emperor and Henry II., and
+was as earnest in his efforts to do so as was Mary
+herself. From Brussels, where he had been kept chafing
+impotently, he had gone to Paris on his mission of
+peace, but the French arms were on the whole in
+the ascendant at the time, and he returned to Flanders
+unsuccessful.&#x2060;<a id="FNanchor_68" href="#Footnote_68" class="fnanchor">[68]</a>&#x2060;</p>
+
+<p>These efforts of Mary, Pole, and Gardiner, to reconcile
+France and Spain, received no active help from
+Philip and his father. The object of the Emperor was
+to cripple France by the aid of England, not to patch
+up another temporary peace with her, and the whole
+tendency of the Imperial policy was to obtain complete
+control over England as the first step to this principal
+object. The Emperor had always used religion when
+necessary as an instrument for political ends, and it
+is not surprising that the English Catholic Churchmen
+should regard his present attitude towards the Catholic
+party as inconsistent. Gardiner, Pole, Bonner, and
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_96">[96]</span>the rest of them, who had never yearned for the
+Spanish connection, thought, perhaps correctly, that
+they could have restored England to the Church more
+speedily and safely if they had been unencumbered
+by the unpopular marriage. Mary, for whom the
+question was complicated by considerations of her
+personal maintenance upon the throne, thought otherwise,
+and wisely the Churchmen had made the best
+of the position. But they had no intention, if they
+could help it, of slackening in their own purpose, or
+of allowing the restoration of their faith in England
+to be retarded or imperilled for the political interests
+of the Emperor; and the harsh action of Bonner
+particularly, supported as it was by Gardiner, caused
+bitter complaints amongst the English people, and
+something approaching dismay in the Spanish party
+of Mary’s Council.</p>
+
+<p>Throughout the home and eastern countries, where
+Protestantism was strong, the action of the priests
+gave rise to constant brawls, the actors of which
+were unfortunately not proceeded against by the
+civil authorities but by ecclesiastics on the charge
+of heresy. Philip, by means of his friends on the
+Council, did his best to discourage these tactics,
+for which he saw he would unjustly have to suffer
+the unpopularity. Whilst Philip and his wife were
+living at Hampton Court, in September, there was
+a wild rumour in London that twelve thousand
+Spanish troops were on their way to land in England
+and seize the Crown,&#x2060;<a id="FNanchor_69" href="#Footnote_69" class="fnanchor">[69]</a> and almost simultaneously
+people indignantly whispered that the Archbishopric
+of Canterbury was to be given to a Spanish friar.
+The most extravagant false news, too, was current
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_97">[97]</span>that many leading noblemen and Councillors had
+been proclaimed traitors, amongst them Pembroke,
+Shrewsbury, Westmorland; that Dr. Petre had
+been dismissed from the Council; that the Marquis
+of Winchester had been forced to give Basing
+House to the Queen; that the King and Queen,
+in violation of the ordinary English traditions, had
+become inaccessible to the lieges;&#x2060;<a id="FNanchor_70" href="#Footnote_70" class="fnanchor">[70]</a> and much else of
+the same sort, evidently designed to keep up the
+irritation against the Spanish Consort, who, for his
+part, was using every means to ingratiate himself with
+his poor faded wife&#x2060;<a id="FNanchor_71" href="#Footnote_71" class="fnanchor">[71]</a> and her suspicious subjects.</p>
+
+<p>It is obvious that, so far as religion alone was
+concerned, the great majority of English people
+would have been ready without demur to accept
+Catholicism again if it had come without the foreign
+mark upon it, and the moderative policy of the
+Emperor was dictated solely by the political aim
+of conciliating the minority, who it was thought
+would be most strongly opposed to Spanish influence.
+For this the Churchmen cared nothing, whilst the
+Protestants and French party, instead of being conciliated
+by the King’s attitude, naturally seized upon
+the ecclesiastical prosecutions, which he deprecated,
+still further to discredit him. Pole in the meanwhile
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_98">[98]</span>was growing restive. He was a man of high and
+unselfish aims, a true Catholic as well as a true
+Englishman, and he resented his exclusion from his
+own country at the bidding of a foreign potentate
+after his long exile for the cause of his faith. His
+letters of exhortation to Mary and to Philip are
+throughout inspired by the Churchman’s zeal, and not
+infrequently by scorn of the opportunist policy which
+was, in his view, hampering the prompt and complete
+return of his country to the Church.&#x2060;<a id="FNanchor_72" href="#Footnote_72" class="fnanchor">[72]</a>&#x2060;</p>
+
+<p>Almost from Mary’s accession Cardinal Pole had
+been held back from his mission by the action of
+the Emperor, thanks mainly to the complaisancy of
+the new Pope Julius III. The great difficulty was
+the question of the restitution of the Church property
+which had been confiscated in the previous reigns.
+There were few noble courtly families in England
+which had not indeed been enriched from this source;
+and the Emperor expressed his opinion to Pole that
+the English people cared neither for one form of
+faith or the other, so long as they could keep their
+property.&#x2060;<a id="FNanchor_73" href="#Footnote_73" class="fnanchor">[73]</a> “Pole,” said the Venetian ambassador at
+Brussels, “might beg for permission to go to England
+for ten thousand years without avail, unless he went
+with the briefs confirming the alienation of the
+Church properties: for if the Church insists upon
+reclaiming them disorder will prevail throughout the
+country.”</p>
+
+<p>At last the Cardinal had to accept the inevitable,
+not without some bitterness of heart,&#x2060;<a id="FNanchor_74" href="#Footnote_74" class="fnanchor">[74]</a> and steps
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_99">[99]</span>were taken in the Parliament, which met at Westminster
+early in November, to reverse the act of
+attainder against him. His coming was regarded
+in some sense by the country as that of a restraining
+force upon the dreaded Spanish influence in the
+English Councils. He was known to be single-minded
+in his attachment both to the Church and
+to England. He was not ambitious, and had nothing
+to gain by serving as a tool for anti-English forces,
+whilst his rank, his ability, and his good repute
+promised that his authority would be great, even if
+necessary, against the foreign King-Consort. On
+the 5th November, 1554, a deputation was despatched
+by Mary, consisting of Lords Paget and Hastings
+and Sir William Cecil, to invite Pole to England,
+not ostensibly as Legate, but as Cardinal and
+ambassador, on condition that the Pope would
+consent to the present owners of the ecclesiastical
+lands being left unmolested. Renard had already
+been sent over to Flanders to persuade Pole of the
+need for this proviso, and had returned successful.
+The Cardinal was ready, and rejoiced greatly when
+Sir John Mason, the English ambassador, told him
+the news; though, “Marry, quoth he, you know
+I am at this present, as it were, in another’s
+ward [keeping].—I must depart when it please the
+Emperor, who is not at all times to be spoken
+withal. I have already one sent to M. d’Arras
+(<i>i.e.</i>, Granvelle) to be my mean to have access
+to his Majesty to take my leave.... Marry, the
+truth is that they have had as yet no news out of
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_100">[100]</span>England of the Queen’s determination.”&#x2060;<a id="FNanchor_75" href="#Footnote_75" class="fnanchor">[75]</a> Mason
+assured the Cardinal that it was all settled and that
+the embassy named had been despatched to fetch
+him.</p>
+
+<p>This news Mason also carried to the Emperor,
+who was better and brighter than he had been for
+years, for he knew that Pole would now go only
+to carry out his policy, so far as regarded restitution,
+and he was already full of hope that a child was
+to be born to Philip and Mary. That, indeed,
+would be to fix the hand of Spain upon England
+for at least long enough for his great purpose to be
+effected. In answer to an inquiry as to the Queen’s
+state, somewhat too coarsely worded to be quoted
+verbatim here, Mason was able on this occasion to
+inform the Emperor that: “I understand to my
+great joy and comfort that her garments wax very
+strait.” “I never doubted, quoth the Emperor, of
+the matter; but that God, who had for her wrought
+so many miracles, could make the same perfect by
+assisting nature to His good and most desired work.
+And I warrant it shall be, quoth he, a man child. Be
+it man or woman, quoth I, welcome shall it be: for
+by that shall we come to some certainty, to whom
+God shall appoint by succession the government of
+our State.... Doubt not, quoth he, God will
+provide both with fruit and otherwise: so as I trust
+to see yet that realm to return to a great piece of
+that surety and estimation that I have seen it in
+my time.”&#x2060;<a id="FNanchor_76" href="#Footnote_76" class="fnanchor">[76]</a> Here, indeed, the wish was father to
+the thought. For some weeks past it had been
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_101">[101]</span>whispered at Hampton Court that the Queen was
+with child, though Mary herself refused to confirm
+it or otherwise; but to the Spanish party such a
+fact was all-important, and the Emperor’s jubilation
+was heart-felt. Noailles, on the other hand, scoffed
+incredulously at what he asserted was only a conspiracy
+to cheat the English people into giving Philip
+greater power and importance in the country, and
+he quotes as an instance of the way in which the
+hope was regarded by English people, a scurrilous
+placard on the subject which, he says, was nailed to
+the door of Whitehall Palace.</p>
+
+<p>Cardinal Pole, already ailing and elderly, was
+carried in his litter with great ecclesiastical state from
+Brussels to Calais, and crossed the Channel as soon as
+news reached him that the Parliament at Westminster
+had reversed his attainder. Travelling by road, as
+usual, from Dover to Gravesend, he found awaiting
+him at the latter port King Philip’s own state barge
+to convey him to Westminster. On his way to
+London, on Saturday, 24th November, he was met by
+all the English Catholic Bishops and the Lords of
+the Council in their barges, and then, leading the
+imposing procession with uplifted crosier before him,
+the English Cardinal, in his rochet, tippet, and scarlet
+hat, passed up the London river to the palace of his
+royal ancestors.</p>
+
+<p>King Philip was at dinner at Whitehall when
+news came to him that the Cardinal’s barge had
+shot the dangerous rapids formed by the narrow
+arches of London Bridge. Rising from the table
+at once the King descended to the landing-stage
+of the Palace as the state barge was approaching
+it. With uncovered head and respectful mien Philip
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_102">[102]</span>greeted the great English Churchman with more
+honour than he might have shown to any sovereign
+prince, leading him on his right hand through the
+alleys and galleries to the entrance to the hall, where
+at the head of the stairs stood Queen Mary. Making
+a profound obeisance to the huge uplifted cross which
+preceded her husband and Pole, she advanced to meet
+them, Pole kneeling at her approach. Curtseying
+low and kissing her kinsman the Queen assisted him
+to rise, and then between him and her husband she
+led the way to the canopy, where for half an hour in
+polyglot converse, for Pole had lost some of his
+English, and Philip knew little Italian, Mary must
+have been for once in her life happy.&#x2060;<a id="FNanchor_77" href="#Footnote_77" class="fnanchor">[77]</a>&#x2060;</p>
+
+<p>Nothing could exceed the honour shown by the
+Sovereigns to Pole, for it was Philip’s policy to win
+him over entirely to his side, and Mary was overjoyed
+at the prospect of the full reconciliation of
+her country with the Papacy on conditions that
+seemed to promise general harmony. The people,
+too, who knew Pole’s history, welcomed him warmly.
+He, like Mary herself, had been unjustly used, and
+his family judicially murdered; he was virtuous,
+upright, and honest,&#x2060;<a id="FNanchor_78" href="#Footnote_78" class="fnanchor">[78]</a> and above all, in the eyes
+of the populace, he represented an English force
+strong enough to champion the cause of his countrymen,
+if needs be, against the Spanish faction. Pole
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_103">[103]</span>was lodged at Lambeth Palace, from which the
+unhappy Cranmer had been sent to the Tower, and
+on the day of the Cardinal’s arrival in London, Mary
+offered him the primacy, an offer which Pole for the
+moment put aside until, as he said, he had done his
+errand as papal ambassador. For the next three
+days Pole and the Sovereigns were closeted for
+hours together settling the preliminaries for the
+formal return of England to the papal fold, and
+Philip himself on one occasion, breaking through
+all the traditions of his house, crossed alone to
+Lambeth and remained with Pole for the entire
+afternoon.</p>
+
+<figure class="figcenter illowp58" id="illus05" style="max-width: 34.375em;">
+  <img class="w100" src="images/illus05.jpg" alt="">
+  <figcaption>
+    <p>CARDINAL REGINALD POLE, PAPAL LEGATE AND ARCHBISHOP OF
+    CANTERBURY</p>
+    <p>AFTER A PAINTING BY SEBASTIANO DEL PIOMBO</p>
+  </figcaption>
+</figure>
+
+<p>At length, on Wednesday, 28th November, all was
+ready, and in the great hall of the Palace the
+assembled Lords and Commons were gathered in the
+presence of the Queen and King to receive the
+Pope’s representative. Outside the people were still
+saying—to the horror of the Spanish listeners—that the
+Pope was only a man, after all, and could do no more
+than other men&#x2060;<a id="FNanchor_79" href="#Footnote_79" class="fnanchor">[79]</a>&#x2060;; but here, in Mary’s Parliament,
+no inharmonious note was sounded, as the Lord
+Chancellor, Bishop Gardiner, rose and introduced the
+Cardinal as the messenger from the Apostolic Pontiff.
+Pole, speaking from the second stage of the daïs just
+beyond the canopy, begged in Latin permission of the
+Queen to address the assembly in English; which
+granted, he spoke first feelingly of his long unjust exile
+and the persecution of his House, his attachment to the
+land of his birth through all his trouble, and then he
+launched into an eloquent appeal for the reunion of
+England to the Church. He praised the Emperor
+for his sturdy defence of orthodoxy; but said that
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_104">[104]</span>for some inscrutable reason God had not allowed him
+to achieve his end. “But,” continued Pole, “I can
+well compare him [<i>i.e.</i>, the Emperor] to David,
+whiche thoughe he were a manne elected of God, yet
+for that he was contaminate with bloode and war
+could not builde the temple of Jerusalem, but left the
+finishing thereof to his son Solomon, which was <i>Rex
+pacificus</i>. So may it be thoughte that the appeasing
+of controversies of religion in Christendom is not
+appointed to this Emperor but rather to his son who
+shal perfourme the building that his father hath
+begun.”&#x2060;<a id="FNanchor_80" href="#Footnote_80" class="fnanchor">[80]</a>&#x2060;</p>
+
+<p>When the long and moving extempore speech was
+finished, the Queen desired Gardiner to express her
+thanks and congratulations to the Cardinal, and to
+desire Parliament to consider deeply his weighty
+words. On that very day, as Noailles insisted for the
+purpose of forwarding Pole’s mission, official letters
+were despatched in the Queen’s name ordering that
+thanksgiving and rogations should be offered in all
+the churches for her pregnancy, now openly acknowledged.
+Whatever the malicious Frenchman may
+have said, it is quite incredible that Mary herself did
+not believe the assertion of her condition, nor is it
+likely that Philip thought otherwise, seeing the assurances
+which, even in private letters, he gave to his
+father on the subject.&#x2060;<a id="FNanchor_81" href="#Footnote_81" class="fnanchor">[81]</a> The Queen’s subjects, too,
+rejoiced exceedingly at the news, for a disputed
+succession seemed to portend if Mary died childless.
+But, in any case, the announcement was most opportune
+both for the success of Pole’s mission, and for
+another mission to be mentioned presently, which was
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_105">[105]</span>nearer the Emperor’s heart, and he had entrusted
+secretly to Paget when he had gone to Flanders to
+escort Pole to England.</p>
+
+<p>On Thursday, 29th November, 1554, during the discussion
+of the ecclesiastical question in the House of
+Lords, the lay peers roundly blamed the Bishops for
+all the schism and trouble that had occurred. If they
+had not been poltroons, and had refused to humour
+King Henry in his repudiation of his wife&#x2060;<a id="FNanchor_82" href="#Footnote_82" class="fnanchor">[82]</a> and his
+defiance of the Holy See all would have been well,
+said the laymen; but recriminations apart, both Lords
+and Commons promptly adopted, almost unanimously,
+a resolution repealing the acts that separated England
+from the Papacy, and authorising a commission of
+twenty-four members of both Houses to beg the
+Queen’s approval of the resolution, and to present to
+the papal ambassador the submission of the nation to
+the head of the universal Church, begging for absolution
+and readmittance to the fold. The next day, St.
+Andrew’s Day, 30th November, the formal ceremony
+was held in the Palace of Whitehall. That morning
+Philip had gone to Mass at Westminster Abbey in
+state with 100 German, 100 Spanish, and English
+guards, all in new uniforms, 50 Flemish archers, and
+150 smartly-clad pages, as if to mark the occasion as
+one of special significance, and at five o’clock in the
+afternoon the Cardinal in his pontifical vestments
+rowed across from Lambeth, the King receiving him
+at the foot of the Palace stairs. In the presence
+chamber the Commissioners of Parliament presented
+their petition to the Sovereigns through Lord Chancellor
+Gardiner. Then the King and Queen rose,
+and crossing to the Cardinal’s chair, in attitude of
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_106">[106]</span>supplication asked him as the Pope’s ambassador to
+receive the submission of England; after which the
+Sovereigns, having returned to their thrones, Pole’s
+powers from the Pope were read, and the Cardinal in
+an English discourse heartily welcomed the strayed
+sheep into the fold again.&#x2060;<a id="FNanchor_83" href="#Footnote_83" class="fnanchor">[83]</a> Kneeling, the whole
+assembly received absolution and the apostolic blessing,
+and England was recognised as a Catholic country
+again.</p>
+
+<p>To spectators of the scene, and especially to
+Spaniards, this seemed to be an occurrence which for
+importance surpassed all others of the time. Spain
+burst out into uncontrollable rejoicing, and Philip, the
+man who his countrymen thought had performed this
+miracle by God’s mercy, was more revered than ever.
+Now indeed, with the almost certainty of a son to be
+born and to succeed as King of a Catholic England in
+close union with Spain, the Frenchmen must rest
+content with a secondary place and the House of
+Burgundy-Habsburg must lead. This view, to some
+extent, was one that it suited Philip himself to promote
+in England, and he left no stone unturned to impress
+upon his wife’s subjects the profound significance of
+the formal reconciliation of the country to the Papacy;
+a power which, when it had suited his father and
+himself, they had flouted again and again, and which,
+within a year under the new Pope, Paul IV., was to
+denounce them both with invective more bitter than
+was applied to the worst of heretics.</p>
+
+<p>On the 2nd December, in great state, Philip rode
+along Fleet Street and up Ludgate Hill to St. Paul’s,
+accompanied by the whole Court. From Lambeth
+Pole had gone by water to Paul’s Wharf, and thence in
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_107">[107]</span>procession with crosses, banners, and censers to the
+Cathedral, where he awaited the King’s coming with
+the Lord Mayor and Corporation of London. Side by
+side the King and Cardinal, with a glittering train,
+passed up the nave and out at the east end to St.
+Paul’s Cross, where, we are told, “with all the Lords
+of the Council and with such an audience of people
+as was never seen in that place before,”&#x2060;<a id="FNanchor_84" href="#Footnote_84" class="fnanchor">[84]</a> fiery
+Gardiner preached a sermon upon the words of St.
+Paul, “Brethren, know ye, that it is time we arose
+from slumber”; in which he exhorted his hearers to
+shake off the evil dream of the past and salute the
+new dawn. But not exhortation alone occupied
+Gardiner’s oration, for he hinted that all the ruin and
+misery that England had suffered, “all the abominable
+heresies, synistrate and erroneous opinions, tumults
+and insurrections,” were owing to the “lack of
+restraint” that had permitted such evils without due
+punishment. For, once more into the hands of the
+priests, the rod had been delivered, and Gardiner had
+no mind that it should lie idle. The famous sermon
+was a threat to England, and the people who had
+spoken lightly of the Pope for the last twenty years
+looked askance not only at the Churchman who
+threatened, but at King Philip, whose furthest thought
+it was for the moment to light the fires of religious
+persecution in the country, the enmity and suspicion
+of which he was striving to lull to rest.</p>
+
+<p>We are told by Philip’s watchful gentleman-in-waiting
+that he enjoyed his dinner well after Gardiner’s
+sermon, but the gentleman-in-waiting saw the surface
+only. Philip was glad to have England back again
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_108">[108]</span>within the fold, though that was not the end, but
+the means for him. Two days afterwards the long-delayed
+Spanish cane tourney, perhaps the only one
+ever held in England, was celebrated with great pomp
+in the tiltyard at Whitehall. For many weeks the
+bands of Spanish horsemen had been rehearsing the
+mimic battle, in which opposing forces dressed in
+splendid uniforms prance and caracol to within a few
+yards of each other at full speed, and then, launching
+cane javelins at their antagonists, wheel suddenly
+away. The Queen and her ladies were dressed in
+cloth of gold with solid sheet-gold coifs, all at the
+King’s expense, and the Queen must have been a
+blaze of magnificence in her rich brocade, her overgarment
+of crimson velvet lined with fur, and her
+dress covered entirely with precious stones and sheet
+gold spangles. Twelve thousand people, we are told,
+looked on, as band after band of Spaniards pranced
+into the arena, some in white velvet and gold, some
+in blue and silver, some in black and gold; and a
+great ball and supper wound up the entertainment.</p>
+
+<p>Three weeks later, the visit of Philip’s heroic young
+cousin, Emmanuel Philibert of Savoy, was an occasion
+for further festivities of the same sort, although the
+occasion of his coming was in itself far from a festive
+one. The Prince was in command of the Emperor’s
+army, but in the clash of great empires he feared that
+his own smaller interests were going to the wall, as
+indeed they were. The war had prevented him from
+accepting the invitation to Philip’s wedding; but in
+September, 1554, he had sent an embassy headed by
+Count Langosco to London to pray Philip to intercede
+with the Emperor for him. Much of his paternal
+territory was occupied by the French; he had no
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_109">[109]</span>money even to pay the garrisons of Nice and the
+other fortresses that remained to him, and he foresaw
+the possibility that when France and the Emperor
+made peace Savoy might be left in the hands of the
+former. Philip was amiable but indefinite in his
+reception of Savoy’s embassy in London. A commission
+was sent to invest the Duke with the Order of
+the Garter, and kind assurances of regard were exchanged,
+but Savoy wanted more than that, and when
+his troops were in winter quarters he managed with
+difficulty to raise enough money to run over personally,
+in the last days of the year 1554, to see his cousin
+Philip and his English wife for the purpose of urging
+his own suit. It is usually assumed that the primary
+object of his visit was to offer his hand to Princess
+Elizabeth, but such was not the case.&#x2060;<a id="FNanchor_85" href="#Footnote_85" class="fnanchor">[85]</a> His handsome
+presence and the fame of his military exploits made
+him an attractive guest at Mary’s Court, and both the
+King and Queen were very favourably impressed by
+him, Philip, indeed, to a great extent acceding to the
+demands that brought him to London.</p>
+
+<p>The idea of his marriage with Elizabeth appears
+first to have come from some of his Piedmontese
+subjects, naturally anxious that the succession to his
+ancient throne should be secured. Writing from
+London in September, 1554, one of his ambassadors
+says that if he were authorised to do so, he would
+propose the match to King Philip. In any case,
+some communication seemed to have passed between
+Philip and the Savoy ambassadors on the subject, and
+when Emmanuel Philibert arrived in London early in
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_110">[110]</span>January, the question was further discussed. It was
+a match that would have suited Philip admirably, and
+he was prompt to adopt the idea. Emmanuel Philibert
+himself was in no mood for wooing, for the
+French had just captured another of his fortresses,
+Ivrea, and it seemed to him politic to keep himself
+free to marry a French princess, if necessary, as the
+price of his restoration to his domains. Nor were the
+obstacles in England to his marriage with Elizabeth
+slight. To begin with, the Queen was opposed to
+her sister’s marriage at all without the consent of
+Parliament, which would certainly refuse to authorise
+a foreign match for the Princess, and especially
+to a dispossessed Prince under the influence of the
+Emperor. Nor did the Queen wish to give to
+Elizabeth the additional importance and power which
+would accrue to her from her marriage with a
+sovereign. Philip, if we are to believe Michaeli,
+was somewhat afraid of his wife, and did not dare
+to press her too far in the matter “as she had a
+terrible and obstinate temper.” To the King’s
+Confessor, therefore, was entrusted the task of winning
+over Mary. After much trouble he persuaded her so
+far as to get her to promise to speak to the King
+about it the next evening. This she did not do, and
+it was believed that Pole had in the interval dissuaded
+her. The opposition from Elizabeth was even more
+decided. She was quite resolved, she said, neither to
+marry nor to leave England. On the part of Savoy
+also the terms proposed by Philip were held to be
+quite out of the question, including as they did the
+cession to Spain of the fortresses of Nice and Villafranca,
+in case any children were born to Emmanuel
+Philibert and Elizabeth. It will be seen, therefore,
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_111">[111]</span>that at this time the match was never probable, and
+though Savoy was lodged in Elizabeth’s palace,
+Somerset House in the Strand, the Princess herself
+was not even brought from her seclusion at Woodstock
+to see him.&#x2060;<a id="FNanchor_86" href="#Footnote_86" class="fnanchor">[86]</a> Emmanuel Philibert, impatient to
+be gone, left England, though not empty-handed, to
+resume his turbulent career after a three weeks’ stay.</p>
+
+<p>Philip had to a great extent overcome the personal
+unpopularity which at his first coming he had to face;
+but the fear of the people that, sooner or later,
+England would be dragged by the Imperialists into
+war with France was stronger than ever, and the
+Spanish followers of the King got on no better than
+before with the English. One of the gentlemen-in-waiting
+writes at this time, “We are in a pleasant
+land, but amongst the worst people in the world, at
+least of Christian nations, for these English people are
+terrible enemies of Spain. It is easy to see that by
+the many serious quarrels that take place between us
+and them. Hardly a day passes without a slashing
+match in the Palace between Englishmen and
+Spaniards, and many have been killed on both sides.
+Only last week, in consequence of a fight, they hanged
+three Englishmen and a Spaniard, and every day
+something of the sort happens.... We Spaniards go
+about amongst these English people like fools, for
+they are such barbarians that they do not understand
+what we say, nor we them. They will not crown our
+Prince, although he is a King now, nor will they
+acknowledge him as their superior. They say that
+he only came to help to rule the country and to
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_112">[112]</span>beget a child, and that as soon as the Queen has
+children he can go back to Spain. God send that it
+may be soon, for he would be glad enough, and we
+infinitely more so, to get away from such barbarous
+folk.”&#x2060;<a id="FNanchor_87" href="#Footnote_87" class="fnanchor">[87]</a> To add to the tribulation of these disappointed
+courtiers, they found prices in England ten
+times higher than those they were used to, and they
+were almost ruined by their necessary expenses,
+besides being robbed, even of their cloaks, if they
+ventured out after dark in London.</p>
+
+<p>To their chagrin, too, they saw great sums of
+Spanish money, sorely needed, they knew, for the
+Emperor’s wars, being squandered upon English purposes.
+Gresham had been allowed by the Emperor
+to borrow for Mary and export from Spain £100,000,
+an enormous sum in those days, and one which,
+Gresham wrote, was terribly wanted in the country
+itself. “I am not abell,” he wrote, “with my pen to set
+forthe unto you the greate scarsity that is now through
+all Spayne....” And he adds later, “I fere that I
+shall be the occasione they shuld all play bankrupt,”
+since one great bank had already suspended payment
+in consequence of his operations.&#x2060;<a id="FNanchor_88" href="#Footnote_88" class="fnanchor">[88]</a> Apart from this,
+Philip’s own guard carried through London to the
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_113">[113]</span>Tower 97 chests of silver, estimated to contain
+£50,000 for his own expenditure,&#x2060;<a id="FNanchor_89" href="#Footnote_89" class="fnanchor">[89]</a> whilst Eraso
+brought 250,000 crowns to England in January, 1555,
+and the gentleman-in-waiting says that not only had
+the King guaranteed a debt of the Queen’s of
+250,000 ducats, but he had distributed in bribes and
+pensions to the Councillors and courtiers 30,000
+ducats a year.</p>
+
+<p>At length, with all these blandishments and preparations,
+the Emperor and Philip thought after the
+submission of Parliament to the Pope, that the time
+had come when they might endeavour to reap the
+harvest. Paget, in his interview with the Emperor in
+Brussels, had been urged to represent to his colleagues
+on the English Council that the co-operation
+of their country in his war against the French would
+be of immense benefit to Christendom, and in a long
+memorandum sent by Renard to Philip during the
+session of Parliament, he discussed the various pretexts
+upon which a war between England and France
+might be precipitated. But Bonner’s harsh and
+violent persecution disturbed men’s minds. A great
+conspiracy was discovered in the Eastern Counties in
+which some of the Councillors were suspected of being
+implicated, the main object being the marriage and
+elevation to the throne of Courtenay and Elizabeth;
+and although Parliament passed an Act recognising
+Philip as guardian of his expected heir in case of the
+Queen’s death, his own wish to be appointed Regent
+in the event of her death without children, and his
+present recognition and coronation as King, were
+seen to be unrealisable in the state of public feeling,
+and Parliament was dissolved on the 16th January
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_114">[114]</span>Still less was it possible to urge seriously that
+England should declare war against France, and,
+thanks to the efforts of Mary and Pole, another
+attempt was made to bring about peace by means of
+a Congress meeting at Calais.</p>
+
+<p>So far from going to war for the Spaniards, the
+people, indeed, were increasingly inclined to war
+against them. King Philip’s countrymen, moreover,
+were far from sharing or even understanding his
+tolerant affability in the face of the unjust suspicion
+and insults to which they were daily subjected.
+Affrays between them and the Londoners were more
+frequent than ever, and although the hanging and
+mutilation of offenders against the peace, English and
+Spanish, was frequent, and Philip himself threatened
+dire punishment to any of his suite who drew a knife
+or shared in a brawl, the national hatred was so
+strong that no penalties could stop the disorders.
+In February, 1555, Renard wrote to the Emperor in
+an alarming strain. He prayed most earnestly to be
+allowed to return home when King Philip went to
+Flanders, which he then intended to do in a few
+weeks. He was certain, he said, that he (Renard)
+would be murdered the moment the King’s back was
+turned. The heretics were cursing him for having
+been the cause of bringing the Papists back to
+England, the French party were vowing vengeance
+against him for introducing the hated Spaniards to
+domineer over free Englishmen, the Earl of Arundel
+had sworn to be avenged upon him for frustrating his
+plan to marry his son to Princess Elizabeth, and the
+Duke of Northumberland’s sons had already hired
+four assassins to kill him.&#x2060;<a id="FNanchor_90" href="#Footnote_90" class="fnanchor">[90]</a>&#x2060;</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_115">[115]</span></p>
+
+<p>In vain Philip urged moderation in the prosecution
+of heresy, and one of his chaplains, Alfonso de Castro,
+publicly in an outspoken sermon denounced the
+burning of heretics as opposed to the true spirit of
+Christ. But Bonner and Gardiner pursued their stern
+way, and most of the odium of their proceedings fell
+upon the King and his countrymen. The Queen,
+herself in a fool’s paradise of hope and joy, thought
+of nothing but the coming glory of maternity. The
+country itself was awaiting the event as one that was
+to decide, so far as could be seen, its future fate.
+Ominous mutterings of the fell bonfires that had
+already begun in Smithfield were common enough,
+and the factions in the Eastern Counties were as active
+as ever beneath the surface, notwithstanding their
+ruthless suppression. The English exiles in France
+were being made much of in the Court of Henry II.,
+and loaded with favours, whilst Noailles in London
+kept in close touch with the elements of discontent at
+home. In the circumstances Philip’s intention to
+obey his father’s summons to Flanders soon after the
+dissolution of Parliament had to be postponed, at least
+until the expected confinement of the Queen in April
+had cleared the air and settled men’s minds.</p>
+
+<p>In the meanwhile Philip continued to do his best
+to maintain his popularity, counselling prudence to the
+zealous bishops, lavishing money on courtiers, interceding
+gently for Elizabeth and Courtenay, and taking
+active part in the showy military exercises which the
+English loved, but which for him had no attraction.&#x2060;<a id="FNanchor_91" href="#Footnote_91" class="fnanchor">[91]</a>
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_116">[116]</span>In March, Courtenay from his prison at Fotheringham
+wrote to Philip, saying that, as by the King’s intercession
+with the Queen so many persons had been
+released, he prayed for his mediation in his favour,
+very submissively beseeching his protection and that
+he would deign to accept his service. This happened
+at the very time that the new conspiracy was discovered,
+but Courtenay was almost as dangerous in
+an English prison as free, and, thanks to Pole’s
+support of Philip’s efforts, and on the understanding
+that he would accompany the English embassy to
+Flanders and Rome, Courtenay was summoned to
+Court and graciously received by the Queen and her
+husband.</p>
+
+<p>Much more important, and doubtless intended to be
+so by Philip, was his successful intercession for
+Elizabeth. The Princess, as we have seen, was not
+brought to London to receive the visit of her would-be
+suitor, the Duke of Savoy, in January; for her own
+resistance to the match, and Mary’s reluctance to
+restore her fully in blood, which would have been
+necessary if her marriage with Savoy was to serve
+Spanish ends, had nipped that plan in the bud.
+But now, in April, to the great delight and surprise
+of the people, the Queen’s sister was summoned with
+graciousness from her seclusion at Woodstock to the
+Palace of Whitehall. Michaeli, who was a keen
+observer, attributes her release and presence at Court
+before the expected confinement of the Queen to
+the fear of the Spanish party that in case of Mary’s
+death “the King’s safety would depend more upon
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_117">[117]</span>her than upon any other person; not only from his
+hope of being able, with the help of the nobles here
+whom he has gained by rewards, to succeed to the
+Kingdom by marrying her, it being not improbable
+that she herself will incline that way, as she knows
+his behaviour and character; but even should she
+and the country refuse this, yet by her presence, she
+being in his power, he would be able to secure himself
+against any rising against him and his followers, and
+they might by her means get away safely.”&#x2060;<a id="FNanchor_92" href="#Footnote_92" class="fnanchor">[92]</a>&#x2060;</p>
+
+<p>Elizabeth came very quietly to Hampton Court late
+in April, and was lodged in the apartment which the
+Duke of Alba had recently vacated. It is evident
+that her presence was desired by Philip more for his
+own security than for the sake of the Princess, as she
+only saw her sister and Philip in strict privacy on two
+or three occasions. Whilst in this close seclusion
+Elizabeth had at least one long private interview with
+Philip alone at the Queen’s request, his object
+evidently being to induce the Princess to confess her
+fault and throw herself upon her sister’s clemency.
+But Elizabeth was wary and would not commit
+herself. When a few weeks afterwards Gardiner on
+his knees urged the same advice upon her, she replied
+that she had not offended and asked no mercy of any
+one. A week later the Queen herself tried her hand
+upon her recalcitrant sister. She had not seen her
+since she sent her to the Tower two years before,
+and when the unexpected summons to the presence
+came to Elizabeth late at night the young Princess
+gave herself up for lost. “Pray for me,” she said to
+her attendants as she left the apartment, “for I know
+not whether you will ever see me more.” Across the
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_118">[118]</span>dark garden Elizabeth was led between Sir Henry
+Bedingfield and Mistress Clarencius to the foot of a
+small back staircase to the Queen’s rooms. Leaving
+her attendant outside, the Princess was conducted by
+Clarencius alone to the Queen’s presence in the
+bedchamber. Kneeling, Elizabeth besought her
+sister to believe in her loyalty in spite of calumnies.
+“You will not confess your offence, but stand stoutly
+in your truth?” asked Mary sternly. “I pray God
+it may so fall out.” “If it doth not,” replied the
+Princess, “I request neither favour nor pardon at your
+Majesty’s hand.” The Queen drily suggested that
+her sister would probably say that she had been
+unjustly punished, but Elizabeth deftly turned the
+point by a fervent reiteration of her dutifulness and
+loyalty, and Mary, apparently somewhat mollified, dismissed
+her sister not unamiably.</p>
+
+<p>Foxe, who describes the scene,&#x2060;<a id="FNanchor_93" href="#Footnote_93" class="fnanchor">[93]</a> says that it was
+believed that Philip listened behind the arras to what
+passed at the interview, and “that he showed himself
+a very friend in that matter.” Certain it is that on
+several occasions after Elizabeth had succeeded to the
+throne he claimed her gratitude or consideration for
+having on one occasion rescued her from grave peril,
+and it is probable that this may have been the occasion
+referred to. There were many reasons beyond the
+temporary one already mentioned that explain
+Philip’s solicitude for Elizabeth’s life. Failing Elizabeth,
+and any possible issue of the Queen, the next
+heir to the English throne by natural law was the
+young Queen of Scots, practically a French princess
+married to the heir of France. Better a thousand
+times for Philip and his House that England should
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_119">[119]</span>be ruled even by a heretic friendly to him than by
+the staunchest Catholic under the control of the
+hereditary enemy of the House of Habsburg. It must
+have been clear to him, moreover, by this time that the
+Reformation in England had not been crushed by
+Mary’s advent, and that a large proportion of the
+people regarded France as a more desirable friend
+than Spain. Nor could he shut his eyes to Elizabeth’s
+popularity, and to the fact that the enemies of his
+faith and his House looked to the young Princess as
+their head. So sagacious a politician would naturally
+endeavour to gain the goodwill, even the disposal
+in marriage, of a person so potentially powerful as
+his young sister-in-law, who, in any case, was likely to
+outlive his wife, and might if well handled perpetuate
+the hold of Spain upon England, now depending upon
+so tenuous a thread.</p>
+
+<p>On the 30th April there came flying to London
+from Hampton Court the news that the nation’s
+prayers had been heard, and that at midnight of the
+29th a male child had been born to the Queen, happily
+and well. Proclamation was made, joy bells rang, all
+business was suspended, and processions from every
+church perambulated the parishes with psalms of
+thanksgiving for so signal a mercy. Public tables
+were spread that all might freely eat and drink their
+fill, whilst bonfires blazed in broad daylight, and the
+people forgot for a moment the grim spectre of
+persecution that might be perpetuated if the news
+was true. But it was not true, and the sad disillusionment
+came whilst yet the rejoicings were in full swing.
+It was, said the Catholics, an invention of the enemy
+in order to cause trouble; but though this was possible,
+for Noailles had never ceased to sneer at the assurance
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_120">[120]</span>of the Queen’s condition, the open and ostentatious
+preparations for the event that had been made at
+Court were of themselves sufficient reason for the
+rumour of the birth. The occurrence naturally distressed
+Mary, who kept her room thereafter for a time,
+and at once a flood of scurrilous literature was
+surreptitiously circulated in London, calumniating the
+Queen, her husband, and all their friends.&#x2060;<a id="FNanchor_94" href="#Footnote_94" class="fnanchor">[94]</a>&#x2060;</p>
+
+<p>All through May the country stood on tiptoe of
+expectation for the birth of the prince whose
+coming meant so much apparently for the future
+of Christendom. Mary, still deceiving herself, was
+comforted by the sight of new-born babies brought
+to her whose mothers were, it was said, as old
+and as thin as she. Philip’s solicitude, too, knew
+no bounds. Every demonstration of affection was
+lavished upon his wife, and nothing was allowed
+to stand in the way of his anticipated joy. Although
+in deep mourning for his grandmother, Jane the
+Crazy, he ordered that the moment his expected
+son was born all signs of mourning were to be
+abandoned. His father was summoning him incessantly,
+and he was yearning furiously to get
+away, but he could not leave his wife whilst this
+event was still pending. At last, at the end of
+May, he gave permission for most of his Spanish
+suite and his guards to cross the Channel in advance
+of him. It was indeed time; for only a week before
+a regular pitched battle between five hundred armed
+Englishmen and a body of Spaniards took place at
+Hampton Court, many being killed and wounded
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_121">[121]</span>on both sides;&#x2060;<a id="FNanchor_95" href="#Footnote_95" class="fnanchor">[95]</a> and the fires of Smithfield were
+blazing freely now, to the almost open anger of
+the people, who unjustly cast all the blame upon
+the Spanish influence at Court.</p>
+
+<p>There were other things, too, which made it
+expedient for Philip to hurry to his father’s side.
+The Venetian ambassador went to see him at
+Richmond at the beginning of June, and on their
+way to chapel together Philip told Michaeli that
+he had that moment received news from Brussels
+that Cardinal Caraffa had been elected Pope. The
+ambassador noticed that the King was disturbed
+and unquiet at the news, as well he might be,
+for the Neapolitan, Caraffa, was the bitterest foe
+of Spain alive; and this meant that the peace
+which was being so painfully negotiated at Calais
+would be frustrated, or in any case be of short
+duration; for in future the Spanish champion of
+orthodoxy would have not only to contend against
+the “eldest son of the Church,” but against the
+head of the Church himself,&#x2060;<a id="FNanchor_96" href="#Footnote_96" class="fnanchor">[96]</a> making common cause,
+“not only with France, but with the Turk, and
+if need be with the devil himself,” to dwarf the
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_122">[122]</span>Spanish power in Italy and the Mediterranean. But,
+urgent though Philip’s presence elsewhere might
+be, it was more urgent still in England until
+safety came with the birth of his hoped for child.
+Writing in June to the Emperor, Renard says
+that everything hangs upon the happy issue of
+that event. He continues: “The doctors and ladies
+were two months out of their reckoning, and there is
+now no appearance of the affair happening for another
+ten days. If, by God’s mercy, she does well,
+matters here will take a better turn; but if not,
+I foresee trouble, and a great disturbance, so great,
+indeed, that the pen cannot express it. For it is
+certain that they have managed so ill with regard
+to the succession, that if anything untoward happens
+Lady Elizabeth will have the preference, heresy
+will take a new life and religion be overturned.
+She being French in her leanings, the nation will
+decline, the ecclesiastics will be persecuted, and
+revenge will be more rife than ever. I am not
+at all sure that the King and Court will be safe
+from the people, and the final tragedy will be calamitous.
+It is incredible to what extent this delay
+in the birth affords to the partisans of Elizabeth
+ground for the spread of false rumours. Some say
+the Queen is not pregnant at all, and that if a
+fitting child had been found there would not have
+been so much delay.”&#x2060;<a id="FNanchor_97" href="#Footnote_97" class="fnanchor">[97]</a>&#x2060;</p>
+
+<p>In this critical condition affairs remained for
+many weeks longer, the Queen obstinately refusing
+to give up her hope, which her women and physicians
+had already pronounced delusive. Hampton
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_123">[123]</span>Court was overcrowded by gossiping courtiers;
+but none were allowed to see the Queen except a
+few of her favourite ladies, and the whole of the
+routine work of the Sovereign was done by Philip.
+All this was, of course, known by the expectant
+people in London, who saw daily church processions
+for the Queen’s safe delivery month after month,
+until anxiety began to give place to ridicule.
+Sometimes rumours ran that the Queen was dead,
+and that the fact was being kept secret by Philip
+in order that he might work his will in England.
+Religious feeling grew more bitter than ever, with
+Bonner’s ruthless persecution on the one hand and
+fanatic sacrilege on the other. To make matters
+worse, the summer was the most inclement and
+the harvest the scantiest that had been seen in
+England for years, and discontent was everywhere.
+At length, after another disappointment in July,
+even poor, forlorn Mary herself was convinced that
+she had been mistaken, and early in August she
+dismissed the crowds of hangers-on from their
+attendance at Court and moved with a smaller
+following to Oatlands, where she gradually resumed
+her ordinary routine again.&#x2060;<a id="FNanchor_98" href="#Footnote_98" class="fnanchor">[98]</a>&#x2060;</p>
+
+<p>Orders were given for the processions and rogations
+of the Church to be discontinued, and Philip
+was now faced with the fact that the splendid plot
+of his father to capture the control of England by
+marriage had practically failed, for Mary’s health
+was evidently bad, and her life promised to be a
+short one. With it would end the hold of Philip
+over England unless the Queen’s successor could be
+lured into the Spanish net. Little knew the Spaniards
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_124">[124]</span>yet what a wily bird it was that they hoped to snare.
+But in the meanwhile it behoved Philip to make
+the most of his opportunities whilst his wife lived.
+He could delay his departure no longer, for his
+father was peremptory now, and the urgent need
+for his presence in England had passed. He was
+as imperturbable as ever, still an attentive and
+apparently an affectionate husband to the Queen,
+though his gallantries to other ladies began to be
+talked about somewhat openly. If the Queen were
+of a jealous disposition, wrote the Venetian ambassador,
+she would indeed be unhappy; to which
+the reply may be made that she was jealous and
+she was unhappy. Even now, on the very eve of
+Philip’s departure, she strove ardently to keep him
+by her side, or at least to extract a pledge from
+him that he would return to her within a month,
+a promise which at last he gave, though to his own
+Spanish confidants he said that if once he set foot
+in Spain again, he would never leave it on so poor
+an occasion.&#x2060;<a id="FNanchor_99" href="#Footnote_99" class="fnanchor">[99]</a>&#x2060;</p>
+
+<p>By the 20th August it became impossible to hide
+any longer Philip’s approximate departure. Every
+day fresh parties of Spanish courtiers and attendants
+were starting on the road from Gravesend to
+Dover, and the rumour spread in London that, in
+order to get away quietly, and so escape the notice
+of the French, the King intended to go down the
+river in Lord Arundel’s barge and embark at Dover
+secretly. The news was untrue, for Philip and
+Mary went openly through London to Greenwich
+to make preparations for the voyage; though it
+was jealously noted by the people that, although
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_125">[125]</span>Elizabeth was now at Court and on good terms
+with the Queen, she was sent to Greenwich by
+water, it was said in order that the people might
+not see and cheer her.&#x2060;<a id="FNanchor_100" href="#Footnote_100" class="fnanchor">[100]</a> Mary was full of grief
+and inconsolable at losing her husband even for
+a month, and Philip, ostensibly full of solicitude,
+specially confided the care of her to Pole. Orders
+were given that the minutes of all the Privy Council
+meetings, translated into Latin, were to be sent to
+the King during his absence, and that no important
+resolution was to be adopted without his
+approval. Gardiner was already dying of jaundice
+and dropsy, and in no case would have been trusted
+by Philip; but Pole was wise and amiable, and it
+was hoped would prove a pliable instrument for
+Spanish ends, advocated as they would be by the
+Councillors already bribed in the Emperor’s interest.</p>
+
+<p>On the 26th August Philip and his wife left
+Hampton Court by water for Westminster, where
+they dined; and in the afternoon, with great and
+unaccustomed state, rode through London to Greenwich
+Palace. It had been generally believed at
+one time, and the fear still lingered, that Mary
+was really dead, and it was thought necessary on
+this occasion that all London should have an
+opportunity of seeing her. At the head of the
+cavalcade rode Philip with the Cardinal on his left
+hand, followed closely by the Queen in an open
+litter. But the French ambassador, who saw the
+procession, sneered at the distrust shown by Philip
+of the Londoners, for around him there were a
+hundred of his archers of the guard, armed to the
+teeth, with their morrions on their heads and their
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_126">[126]</span>lances raised.&#x2060;<a id="FNanchor_101" href="#Footnote_101" class="fnanchor">[101]</a> The joy of the people at seeing
+the Queen again was great, for she was still popular
+personally, though murmurs there were for the
+absence of Elizabeth. Three days afterwards, on
+the 29th August, 1555, Philip tore himself away
+from his reluctant spouse. Mastering her grief in
+public by a great effort, but with tear-reddened
+eyes and drawn, pallid face, the Queen led her
+husband composedly through the long suites of
+rooms of the Palace of Greenwich; though when
+the members of Philip’s Spanish household who
+remained behind came one by one, and, kneeling,
+kissed his hand, Mary for a time failed to control
+her agitation: and she sobbed convulsively when
+the English ladies of the Court, copiously weeping,
+were kissed farewell in English fashion by the
+gallant young king. With a last embrace Mary’s
+husband left her to enter the barge, whilst she
+retired to her own apartment, where, leaning upon
+the sill of an open window, and thinking herself
+unobserved, she gave way to her sorrow unconstrained,
+whilst she watched the boat speed down
+the river, bearing away all she loved on earth.</p>
+
+<p>Philip played his part admirably to the last. Standing
+on the most conspicuous spot of the barge, he
+continued to raise his hat and waft affectionate salutations
+to the royal watcher at the window, until a bend
+in the river shut from his sight the Palace of Greenwich
+and its mistress. The bitterest disappointment must
+have been his. France was as far from being subdued
+as ever, the Emperor was weary of the struggle, old
+and sick at heart, and yearning to cast his burden upon
+his son. Peace was absolutely necessary at almost
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_127">[127]</span>any terms that the French would grant, for it was
+now clear that England would not, even if she were able,
+throw her resources into another’s war at the bidding
+of the King Consort. But Philip showed no sign
+of defeat. Like a courteous high-bred gentleman,
+smiling and debonair, he bade a fond farewell for a
+month to his faded wife, whom, if he could have his
+way, he wished never more to see.&#x2060;<a id="FNanchor_102" href="#Footnote_102" class="fnanchor">[102]</a>&#x2060;</p>
+
+<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop" aria-hidden="true">
+
+<div class="chapter">
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_128">[128]</span></p>
+
+<h2 class="nobreak" id="CHAPTER_IV">CHAPTER IV<br>
+<span class="smaller">1555-1558</span></h2>
+
+<p>Religious persecution in England—Philip’s attempts to restrain
+it—His efforts to keep control of English policy—Elizabeth comes to
+Court—Return of Philip to England—French intrigues—The English
+drawn into the war—St. Quentin—Loss of Calais—Penury of the
+English treasury—Illness and death of Mary—Feria’s approaches to
+Elizabeth</p>
+
+</div>
+
+<p>Renard had been right in his prediction.
+The moment that the restraining presence of
+Philip was removed from England the ecclesiastics
+carried things with a higher hand than ever.&#x2060;<a id="FNanchor_103" href="#Footnote_103" class="fnanchor">[103]</a>
+Not only did the fires to burn heretics increase in
+number, but proposals were made in the Council to
+resume possession for the Church of the alienated first-fruits
+and tithes, as well as the benefices in lay hands.
+The minutes of the discussion were sent to Philip
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_129">[129]</span>in Flanders with the report of the publication of the
+Bull confirming the possession by private people of
+the confiscated monastery and Church lands. To the
+latter Philip gives his readiest acquiescence; but for
+the proposal to restore the dues to the possession of
+the Church he has nothing but doubt and evasion.
+The question, he says, should be maturely discussed
+by eight selected Councillors, who should report to
+him before anything decisive is done, and he warns
+them that in the forthcoming Parliament nothing must
+be proposed without his prior consent. So, also, in
+the matter of the English Navy. The Council reported
+to him that the ships were mostly unseaworthy and
+should be brought into the Thames for repair, whilst
+the few good vessels should be reinforced and stationed
+between Dover and Calais. There was nothing that
+Philip needed more than that the French should be
+held in check in the Channel, and he is emphatic in
+his endorsement of the Council’s suggestion. “England’s
+chief defence depends upon its Navy being
+always ready to defend the realm against invasion,
+so that it is right that the ships should not only be
+fit for sea but instantly available.... The vessels
+ought to be stationed at Portsmouth, where they can
+much more easily be brought into service.” That
+Philip had his own interests in mind quite as
+much as those of England in the matter is seen by
+what follows. “The King is the more inclined to this
+course, as the Emperor has decided to sail for Spain
+about the end of October ... and has expressed
+a wish that twelve or fourteen English ships should
+escort him beyond Ushant. This makes the King
+more anxious that these ships should be ready and in
+excellent order; so that, besides other necessary uses,
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_130">[130]</span>they may go upon this service, which will be especially
+grateful to his Highness.”&#x2060;<a id="FNanchor_104" href="#Footnote_104" class="fnanchor">[104]</a>&#x2060;</p>
+
+<p>Mary, it will be seen, counted for nothing. The
+sole object in view was Philip’s interests, and, although
+decently cloaked with his usual bland professions of
+his desire to serve England, everything he did at this
+time was directed to using the country for his ends
+whilst his wife lived. After that he would have to deal
+with a new state of affairs. Another instance of the
+postponement of English interests for his benefit is
+seen in the delay in summoning Parliament until after
+he had left England. The sole object of the session
+was to raise money. Mary’s Government was in the
+deepest penury. Extravagance, corruption, and demoralisation
+existed everywhere in the administration;
+but pressing as was the need for funds, Philip could
+not face the certain unpopularity that would have
+fallen upon him if the demand for large taxation before
+his departure had given a pretext to the suspicious
+English for the belief that the money was being raised
+for him.</p>
+
+<p>In great state Mary, with Pole by her side, proceeded
+from St. James’s Palace in a sort of throne-litter
+on the 21st October, 1555, to open Parliament
+at Westminster, and Gardiner as Lord Chancellor,
+now a dying man, appealed in the Queen’s name for
+liberal supplies to conduct the business of the nation.
+It was his last effort, and though Parliament voted a
+million crowns, to be paid in two years, the Chancellor
+took no further share in public business, dying three
+weeks after at Whitehall, whither he was carried from
+the Parliament Chamber. The death of Gardiner
+was an irreparable loss to Mary. The man had many
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_131">[131]</span>faults; he was arrogant, unscrupulous, and violent,
+but he was a bold and experienced statesman, who
+kept his shifty, greedy colleagues in something
+approaching subjection; and he was determined to
+prevent, if he could, either of the great Continental
+rivals from obtaining control of English policy for
+their ends. He had opposed the Spanish match as
+long as opposition might have prevented it; but when
+it was effected he minimised its disadvantages and
+never allowed either the Queen or Philip to subordinate
+English interests to those of others. He was as
+unpopular with the French faction as he was with the
+Spanish, and his death left the greedy cliques of
+Councillors, of whom Paget was the most active and
+corrupt, most of them bribed by one or both rivals, to
+wrangle uncontrolled in the interests of their paymasters
+or their own, with little thought for England.
+Pole had lost touch of English politics, for he was, to
+all intents and purposes, an Italian ecclesiastic, with a
+first thought for his papal mission. He lived in the
+Palace during Philip’s absence, and every day solemnly
+prayed with Mary for the King’s safe return; but he
+had refused to act as leading political Councillor, and
+was only consulted, as the Queen was, on subjects of
+high importance or upon which the Councillors differed.
+He, like the Queen, undoubtedly meant well by England;
+but, like her also, his views were exalted and
+unpractical, and thenceforward there was little restraining
+power upon the Council, except such as could be
+exerted by Philip, far away in Flanders and overwhelmed
+with his own affairs.</p>
+
+<p>Philip had found his father in the last stage of
+mental and physical depression, and soon after the
+son arrived from England, on the 25th October, 1555,
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_132">[132]</span>Charles V., in one of the most dramatic scenes in
+history, surrendered to him the sovereignty of the
+land of his birth, his beloved Flanders. This was soon
+followed by the abandonment of the rest of his crowns;
+and Philip, in January, 1556, found himself monarch
+of all the vast inheritance of Burgundy and Spain,
+whilst his uncle Ferdinand took the exalted but powerless
+crown of the Empire. Almost simultaneously
+with Philip’s accession to the Spanish Crown the
+Emperor, desirous above all things of leaving his
+son at peace, brought the long-drawn peace negotiations
+to an end by signing a five years’ truce at
+Vaucelles with his rival, France. England was thus
+for a short time relieved from the dread of being
+drawn into the war to please the King Consort.</p>
+
+<p>In the meanwhile, Mary had been fretting and
+pining for her absent husband. He had promised
+her faithfully to return in a month, but that, of course,
+was out of the question. Stories came to her,
+also, that he was enjoying himself there with ladies
+younger than herself, not wisely but too well for the
+faithful spouse of so saintly a wife. “This has so
+much upset her that in conversation with one of her
+most intimate friends she said that if it should so
+happen that the King never came back, notwithstanding
+all her efforts to recall him, she must put
+up with living the rest of her life without the company
+of a man, as she had done before her marriage,
+and with such patience as she could. This gives
+food for the reflection that in order to persuade him
+to return the sooner she will make incredible efforts
+in this Parliament in his favour.”&#x2060;<a id="FNanchor_105" href="#Footnote_105" class="fnanchor">[105]</a> Philip’s revenge
+for his enforced good behaviour in England, indeed,
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_133">[133]</span>almost alarmed the Emperor. For the only time in
+his life the King Consort now became dissipated,
+carrying on vulgar intrigues and scouring the streets
+of Brussels in disguise in search of adventure. News
+came to Mary that he had fallen ill, though there was
+nothing the matter with him but the effects of too
+much gaiety, and a special English courier sent by
+the anxious Queen to learn the truth with regard to
+his health was received by Philip in Brussels in
+December, 1555. The King sent reassuring news
+to his wife with affectionate greetings, and a faithful
+promise to go over to England at once, and the
+English messenger, overjoyed at the good tidings
+he bore, promised the Spanish courtiers that he
+would not damp the Queen’s delight by telling her
+of her husband’s high jinks, “as she was so easily
+upset, and was so anxious about him that it would
+afflict her too much.” For a few days after she got
+Philip’s message Mary lived in a heaven of anticipation,
+but, alas! orders came anon that the King’s
+Spanish household in England was to make ready
+to depart, and this cast her into despair, for she
+believed it portended Philip’s own return to Spain.
+The English people, unlike their Queen, were rejoiced
+at the departure of the Spaniards, and as they went
+on their way to Dover followed them with reviling
+and insults, for Philip’s new dignity had in no way
+increased the popularity of himself and his countrymen
+in Spain, because it was feared that when the
+war broke out again with France, as it evidently
+soon would, his position as King Consort of England
+and Sovereign of Flanders would make it impossible
+for the English to keep out of the conflict.</p>
+
+<p>One of Mary’s baits to draw Philip back to her was
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_134">[134]</span>to persuade her Council to consent to his coronation in
+England. From the first both Philip and his father
+had laid great stress upon this, but the successive
+English Parliaments, and even the English Council,
+had vetoed it. Now that the strongest man who
+opposed it was dead, Philip urged his wife to press
+the proposal again, certain that she would do so, if
+possible, in order to bring him to London, if for no
+other reason; but Mary had to face for the first
+time a Parliament of some spirit and independence,
+consisting largely of gentry, and she wrote to her
+husband saying that she did not dare to propose
+his coronation yet, as so many disaffected members
+had been returned. Noailles was busy inciting
+opposition in Parliament, and he noted with glee
+that now that the King had gone people spoke
+more freely about him than ever. Another demand
+was repeated by Philip to his wife, namely, that
+she should join him in the war with France.&#x2060;<a id="FNanchor_106" href="#Footnote_106" class="fnanchor">[106]</a> Mary,
+through an envoy of Cardinal Pole, was obliged to
+tell her husband that she was surrounded by people
+whom she could not trust, that the nation was already
+unquiet, if not disaffected, and that any attempt to
+draw England into the war at present might cost
+her her crown. But she ended with another
+earnest prayer that he would return to her, and all
+might then be well. Once more Philip promised to
+come immediately, and the English fleet was made
+ready to receive him at Calais; but the truce of Vaucelles,
+already mentioned, for the next few months
+made Philip’s need less pressing, and he came not.</p>
+
+<p>Gradually the centre of interest in English politics
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_135">[135]</span>was changing from Mary to her sister Elizabeth.
+Notwithstanding the Queen’s continued assertion of
+hope that she yet might become a mother if Philip
+would return to England again, every one but the
+deluded lady herself had now abandoned such a hope.
+By the will of Henry VIII., which Mary did not
+dare to alter, Elizabeth was the next heir. The
+Princess was idolised by the people, and although
+she was to all appearance a devout Catholic, the
+Reform party and the friends of France looked
+towards her as their leader. Paget was more than
+suspected of intriguing in her favour, for he was now
+receiving French pay; her kinsman, Lord William
+Howard, treated her, to Mary’s anger, almost as a
+queen already; and other Councillors, uncertain of the
+future, were unblushingly hedging in her favour.
+When Philip left England he specially commended
+the Princess to the kindness of the Queen; and according
+to Noailles, his chamberlain in England, Don
+Diego de Geneda, with the other Spanish courtiers,
+paid marked attention to her, visiting her in her
+apartments at Greenwich during her stay there every
+day. Geneda appears, indeed, to have secretly offered
+to Elizabeth Philip’s ten-year-old son as a husband,
+but the Princess again took refuge behind her impenetrable
+reserve. She was determined, she said,
+neither to marry nor to leave the country.&#x2060;<a id="FNanchor_107" href="#Footnote_107" class="fnanchor">[107]</a>&#x2060;</p>
+
+<p>The Spanish attempts to win Elizabeth were
+watched closely by Noailles, as were the suspected
+intentions of the Queen in her disfavour whilst
+Parliament was sitting. Mary, as we have seen,
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_136">[136]</span>however, found the newly elected Commons so stout
+and outspoken that she was afraid to advance any of
+her dearly cherished designs to them, and hastened
+to dissolve them in December, clapping some of the
+bolder members into prison for speaking too freely.
+The group of English exiles still in France were
+continuing to demand fresh help to aid their disaffected
+brothers in England, and in the circumstances
+it is not surprising that Noailles and his
+master should consider the juncture a favourable
+one for making a clean sweep of Mary and the
+Spanish interest in England. Courtenay, in Italy,
+was secretly warned to hold himself in readiness,
+but this was only a matter of precaution, for poor
+Courtenay was in the hands of the enemy and already
+a dead force. The principal card by which Noailles
+hoped to win the game for France was Elizabeth,
+now living quietly and devoutly at Hatfield, surrounded
+by servants upon whom she could depend.
+Through a French agent named Bertheville Noailles
+approached a number of disaffected gentlemen, several
+of them members of the late Parliament, from Devonshire;
+and Sir Henry Dudley, Sir Anthony Kingston,
+Sir William Peckham, Ashton, Daniel, the two Tremaynes,
+and others, agreed to proclaim Elizabeth,
+expel or otherwise dispose of Mary, marry the new
+Queen to Courtenay, and free the country finally from
+the Spanish nightmare. The aid of France was, of
+course, a necessary condition of success; but when
+the moment for action came Henry II. had just
+signed the truce of Vaucelles, and he counselled
+prudence and a waiting policy, knowing that the
+blow might be more effectually dealt when the inevitable
+war recommenced. That Elizabeth was at
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_137">[137]</span>least cognisant that something was afoot is evident
+from Montmorenci’s letter to Noailles of 7th February,
+1556 (Ambassades, vol. v.), in which he says: “And,
+above all, prevent Madam Elizabeth from moving
+in the slightest degree to undertake what you say;
+for if she do it will spoil everything and prevent the
+fruition of their designs, which must be deferred until
+a good opportunity offers.”</p>
+
+<p>The French Embassy in London became the
+rallying-point for treason against Mary; crowds of
+disaffected Englishmen begged for means of joining
+Dudley, who had gone to France, and there with
+French aid to organise a descent upon England
+simultaneous with a rising at Court. Noailles himself
+was an eager conspirator, but the French
+Government advised delay, and the ambassador was
+obliged to temporise. The conspirators were in no
+mood now for half-measures, for the country was
+growing indignant at the religious persecutions and
+the unfounded belief that Mary was impoverishing
+her country by sending out money to her Spanish
+husband, and it was determined by the conspirators
+to act at once. Sir Anthony Kingston, with the
+Devonshire men, was to march to London, raising
+the country on the way; the Captain of the Isle of
+Wight, Uvedale, was to place the island at the disposal
+of the English refugees from France, whilst
+Heneage and other courtiers undertook to raise
+London, pillage the treasury, and proclaim Elizabeth
+Queen. Pole always distrusted Elizabeth, even in
+her most submissive and Catholic moods; and, thanks
+to a spy, he had already been informed of the whole
+plan of the conspirators; whilst Wotton, the English
+ambassador in France, had kept the English Council
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_138">[138]</span>well informed of the movements and gossip of the
+English refugees. Just before the time fixed for the
+rising, therefore, the hand of the Council came down
+heavily upon the conspirators, and by the end of
+March all the principals found themselves behind
+the bars, most of them on the way to the scaffold.</p>
+
+<p>There was no direct evidence of Elizabeth’s guilt—she
+had taken good care of that; but Mary and Philip
+were well aware that she was the person to supplant
+them, and they determined, if possible, to remove
+her from future temptation. The idea at first was to
+send her to Flanders or Spain, with or without her
+consent; and this probably would have been done
+but for the efforts of Pole’s secretary, the Abbé of St.
+Salut, a Piedmontese, who had been gained over to
+the French side, and convinced the Cardinal of the
+danger to England of thus handing the heiress to the
+Crown to the keeping of Spaniards. As an alternative
+Mary determined to search Hatfield House,
+arrest her sister’s confidential servants, and place
+the Princess herself under arrest. Protestant books
+and seditious publications against the King and
+Queen were discovered in a hiding-place, and some
+of her household, when pressed in the Tower, gave
+evidence seriously implicating Elizabeth herself.
+Again her fate trembled in the balance. To carry
+her to the Tower or to deal with her as a rebel
+might precipitate a rising in London, where she
+was greatly beloved; to send her to Spain might
+be to perpetuate the hold of Philip upon the country,
+and not even Pole wished for that. So in her
+perplexity, whilst guarding Elizabeth straitly, Mary
+begged her absent husband’s direction.</p>
+
+<p>Philip’s need for England’s co-operation was
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_139">[139]</span>greater than ever, for he was faced with a new
+formidable coalition of France, the Pope, and the
+Turk against him, sworn to crush him finally;
+and he knew that his wife was failing. To drive
+Elizabeth into the hands of the French now would
+be impolitic, and for him policy was everything. So
+Mary was enjoined to treat her sister gently, to
+release her from arrest, and to assure her of future
+favour. Two members of the Council went to
+Hatfield with the Queen’s message. Her Majesty did
+not believe the allegations against her sister, they
+said, and so long as the latter was obedient and
+loyal she would find that, very far from being distrusted,
+she would be beloved and esteemed; and
+this kind message was sealed by the gift of a
+costly ring. But blandishments had no more
+influence over Elizabeth than threats. She had
+begun to realise her power and importance, and
+declined to play the game of Spain by going to
+Court and allowing herself to be cajoled into a
+marriage to suit her brother-in-law.</p>
+
+<p>In the meanwhile the English refugees in France,
+led by Sir Henry Dudley, were more active than
+ever, and the reports of the spies with regard to
+the intention of Henry II. kept Mary in a state
+of constant alarm,&#x2060;<a id="FNanchor_108" href="#Footnote_108" class="fnanchor">[108]</a> for invasion was threatened at
+a dozen distinct points on the English coast, and
+her navy was in a deplorable condition. Some
+check was afforded to the intrigues by the premature
+death of Courtenay in September, but this
+rendered more necessary than ever assurance of
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_140">[140]</span>Elizabeth to the Spanish party. In response to a
+peremptory command Elizabeth was fain at last,
+in November, 1556, to travel from Hatfield to
+London. Attended by two hundred horsemen in
+her livery, her ride through the capital to her
+Palace of Somerset House was like a triumphal
+progress. Cheers and blessings resounded on all
+sides, for she knew well how to draw the affectionate
+greeting of the common people: but what
+was more surprising was that the courtiers and
+Councillors, even Cardinal Pole, who had previously
+refused even to see her, hastened to salute her, and on
+her appearance at her sister’s Court no honour was
+considered sufficient for her.&#x2060;<a id="FNanchor_109" href="#Footnote_109" class="fnanchor">[109]</a> What could it mean,
+asked her French friends, this sudden favour? and
+perhaps the Princess herself was puzzled at first. She
+had not, however, many days to wait. Philip had
+written to Mary and the Council directing them to
+press urgently the suit of Emmanuel Philibert of
+Savoy for Elizabeth’s hand, and Mary left no effort
+untried to carry out her husband’s wishes.&#x2060;<a id="FNanchor_110" href="#Footnote_110" class="fnanchor">[110]</a> Letter
+after letter came from the King in Flanders expressing
+his profound interest in the result, for the new
+Pope had united the enemies of Spain, Henry II.
+had broken the truce of Vaucelles, and, beset on all
+hands, Philip saw that unless he could depend upon
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_141">[141]</span>England even after his wife’s death, his cause could
+never prevail. But Elizabeth was as adamant. To
+all the arguments and desires of her sister she
+would only give one reply: she was determined
+not to marry.</p>
+
+<p>In vain Mary, losing all patience, stormed and
+threatened. She would deprive her of the succession
+in favour of Mary of Scotland, she would have her
+proclaimed a bastard, she would send her to the
+Tower as a traitor, and much else of the same sort,
+said the angry Queen; and Elizabeth, alarmed at
+the violence, fell ill. She thought, too, of seeking
+safety by flight to France, though from this she was
+dissuaded by Noailles. But, ill and frightened though
+she was, she never wavered for a moment in her
+refusal to marry Emmanuel Philibert at the bidding
+of her brother-in-law; and after only five days’ stay in
+London she stolidly went in disgrace again under
+guard to Hatfield.&#x2060;<a id="FNanchor_111" href="#Footnote_111" class="fnanchor">[111]</a>&#x2060;</p>
+
+<p>The intemperate violence of the Neapolitan Pope
+Paul IV. (Caraffa) against Philip and the Spaniards,
+and the war which the Pontiff had precipitated, made
+it more difficult than ever for Philip to persuade
+the English to join him in the fight: for to war
+against the Papacy seemed to Mary impious, and
+Pole, now in the place of the martyred Cranmer,
+Archbishop of Canterbury as well as Papal Legate,
+strongly discountenanced any such an attitude on
+the part of a country only just reconciled to the
+Holy See. The Lord Chancellor, Heath, Archbishop
+of York, and a devout Catholic, was shocked at the
+idea of entering into a war, and above all a war
+without any provocation, against the apostolic power;
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_142">[142]</span>and Philip found now that not only were the common
+people in England against his adventure, but the
+principal advisers of his wife, and, for the first time,
+even his wife herself. She was willing, even eager,
+to make war upon France; for she had her own
+grudge against a Power which harboured her rebels
+and subsidised all the plots against her; but to go
+to war with Henry was now also to oppose Rome,
+and the main bone of contention was the Spanish
+dominion over Italy, which concerned England not
+at all. She was, moreover, in the deepest poverty,
+for, against Philip’s wish, she had insisted upon
+restoring to the Church all the ecclesiastical property
+in the hands of the Government; and the country
+itself was seething with discontent; so that, whatever
+her own wishes were, she was perfectly powerless
+to help Philip as he wished with men, arms, and ships
+for his purpose.</p>
+
+<p>Alba, whom Philip had sent from England to
+represent him in Italy, was no weakling, and, like
+his master, though a devout Catholic he looked upon
+the Papacy as a mere instrument for Spain’s exaltation,
+and he promptly answered Paul’s denunciations by
+marching in September, 1556, boldly upon Rome,
+submitting town after town in the Pope’s dominions.
+In vain Paul shrieked anathemas and flung defiance
+at the hated Spaniards, and threatened with instant
+death any one who dared to speak of peace with
+them. Guise with the French army hastened to
+relieve Rome from imminent capture; and in the
+hope of delaying matters until he could arrive, the
+Pope entered into negotiations with Alba for a forty
+days’ truce, leaving the Spaniards in possession of
+most of the papal fortresses. Guise and his army
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_143">[143]</span>soon altered the aspect of affairs, and through the
+summer of 1557 Alba and Guise fought out the
+quarrel of Spain and France upon Italian papal soil,
+whilst on the frontiers of Flanders Emmanuel Philibert
+was at close grips with Henry II. himself.</p>
+
+<p>Now, if ever, was the time when the English
+connection might help Philip, but it was obvious
+that unless he could exert his personal influence
+upon Mary and her Councillors he could not hope
+to obtain it. So, at length, in February, 1557, Philip,
+sorely pressed though he was, announced to Mary
+his intention of visiting her again. The Queen’s
+joy at the news was pathetic in its intensity, though
+Pole warned her not to build too much upon a promise
+that had been broken so often before. She had
+been ill and disconsolate with hope deferred, but
+the news of Philip’s coming gave her new life, and
+she hurried to London from Hampton Court, visiting
+Pole at Lambeth on the way, exerting all her influence
+to win him to her side. Thenceforward for some
+weeks, whilst the King’s voyage was pending, the
+English Council sat nearly night and day, and
+couriers hastened backwards and forwards between
+London, Brussels, and Paris. The English refugees
+in France had treacherously given to Henry II.
+much information about the weakness and disaffection
+in the English fortresses of Calais and Guisnes;
+and at the first news of Philip’s fresh visit to England
+the French forces around Calais were increased, for it
+was evident now that Mary would be dragged into
+the war, and her most vulnerable point of attack
+was Calais.</p>
+
+<p>Philip landed at Dover on the 18th March, 1557,
+and took horse with all speed to Gravesend. At
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_144">[144]</span>Canterbury he alighted to attend service at the
+cathedral; but so hurriedly that he did not wait
+to take off his spurs. This being against the rule,
+a young student was bold enough to claim the forfeit,
+or fine: and the King smilingly emptied his purse
+of gold in the youth’s cap before he rode on his
+way. Again his habitual haughty frigidity was
+changed for the genial <i>bonhomie</i> that he found
+suited his purpose best in England. At every
+stage messengers from the Queen met him, one of
+whom galloped back to her immediately with news
+of his progress, and on his arrival at Greenwich
+poor forlorn Mary hailed him with love unutterable.
+For two days he remained with her alone, draining,
+as he formerly said, the chalice of his sacrifice to
+the dregs; and then they passed through London
+together once more, she borne in a litter, he riding by
+her side. His reception was not unfriendly by the
+people, whom he tried to gain by his affability and
+moderation, though the fear that war might be the
+result of his visit made them uneasy. So far as the
+Councillors were concerned, they were now but feeble
+folk to stand against him and the Queen; though
+Pole, the Pope’s legate, did not even officially greet
+one who was in arms against the Papacy, and the
+Cardinal departed as quickly as might be to his
+diocese, so as to be out of the way whilst Philip
+was at Court.</p>
+
+<p>But still, bribed though the Council was and however
+submissive the Queen, the state of feeling in
+England was such as to make a declaration of war
+against France a dangerous matter. A series of
+bad harvests, the depreciation of the coinage, and
+the enclosure of the commons and parks had reduced
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_145">[145]</span>the country to a condition of the utmost misery.
+Money was extremely scarce, and the idea of squandering
+large sums upon a foreign war drove the
+distracted Council to despair, though Philip in the
+course of many conferences with them urged it
+incessantly. The Councillors admitted that, in accordance
+with the old treaty of 1543 between the
+Emperor and Henry VIII.,&#x2060;<a id="FNanchor_112" href="#Footnote_112" class="fnanchor">[112]</a> England might be called
+upon to provide an armed contingent if Flanders
+were attacked by France: but Philip wanted more
+than that, and to some extent he was successful,
+notwithstanding that Archbishop Heath tearfully
+protested that the country was quite unable to meet
+the necessary expenditure. It was at last arranged
+that eight thousand English infantry should be raised
+for service and one thousand cavalry, three thousand
+of the former to reinforce the English fortresses in
+France, and the rest to be at Philip’s service for
+four months, under the command of Lord Pembroke,
+Sir Thomas Cheyne, Lord Bedford, and Lord Grey
+de Wilton, one-half the cost only to be borne by
+England. But there was also a promise on the
+part of the Council to fit out and man with six
+thousand soldiers the English fleet to hold the
+Channel against the French. Upon one point the
+Council was firm: these forces were simple auxiliaries
+contributed in accordance with the old treaty, and
+must not entail a national war between England
+and France.</p>
+
+<p>But this arrangement did not suit France better
+than it did her enemy. If England was to join Philip
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_146">[146]</span>in the war, she must be open to counter attack and
+reprisals. But if England could strike indirectly so
+could France, and by such means a national rupture
+might be precipitated which would allow of a French
+invasion over the Scottish border and the siege of the
+English fortresses in France. So again the English
+Protestant exiles in France were feasted and made much
+of by Henry II. They were a turbulent lot of young
+gallants whose brawls and adventures had scandalised
+the French Court: but now they suddenly assumed
+a new importance. Thomas Stafford, the nephew
+of Cardinal Pole, a cadet of his family with no valid
+claims whatever, was the most hairbrained of the
+crew, and took it into his head to pose as the rightful
+pretender to the English Crown. Henry could not
+openly countenance such a pretension, but Stafford
+was allowed to recruit men for his attempt. Frenchmen,
+Scots, and discontented English, a motley
+rabble of lawless adventurers, flocked to his standard
+at Rouen, in ignorance of their exact destination.
+Sailing in two well-armed ships from Dieppe, he
+suddenly descended upon Scarborough. Affairs were
+in so critical a condition in England that anything
+might have happened, and Wotton, the English
+ambassador in France, believed that if Thomas
+Stafford once secured a footing in England he might
+draw to him all the discontented element, to Mary’s
+undoing. Stafford, however, was not of the stuff
+from which successful pretenders are made. He
+seized Scarborough Castle in April, whilst Philip
+was still in England, and at once announced that
+he came to claim the Crown and deliver the country
+from the yoke of the Spaniards, who intended to
+rule it by force. But in a day or two the Catholic
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_147">[147]</span>Earl of Westmorland with his militia took him by surprise
+and Thomas Stafford’s bubble burst before it was
+well inflated, greatly to Noailles’ scorn and annoyance.
+The retribution for treason came swiftly, and before a
+month was out the heads of the principal rebels
+had fallen on the block on Tower Hill. But a gust
+of indignation passed over England at the attempt,
+prompted as it had been by the French, and suddenly
+the idea of war with France, the enemy of the Queen,
+became popular. Henry II. did his best to explain
+away his complicity;&#x2060;<a id="FNanchor_113" href="#Footnote_113" class="fnanchor">[113]</a> but Mary, transported with
+rage, dismissed Noailles, and Philip was delighted
+to find that England was now ready to join him
+nationally in a war against France.</p>
+
+<p>On the 6th June heralds in London proclaimed
+hostilities, and Philip for the first time, even at this
+eleventh hour, saw some return for the sacrifice he
+had made in marrying the Queen of England. He
+hated war, and his methods were essentially peaceful
+and diplomatic; but he knew that his best chance of
+securing a durable peace was to exert his utmost power
+whilst his control of English resources lasted, which
+it was evident could not be very long, for the Queen’s
+declining health was plain now to every one but herself,
+though she clung still tenaciously to her pathetic
+dream of happy maternity. Satisfied with the results
+of his mission, Philip rode on the 1st July, 1557,
+from Gravesend through Canterbury to Dover.
+Mary would not leave him whilst he remained on
+English soil, and, weak and ailing but happy with her
+new fallacious hope, she was carried in a litter by
+her husband’s side to the coast. On the 3rd July she
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_148">[148]</span>bade him a last farewell, as he stepped upon the
+barge that was to carry him to the waiting galleon,
+and then, with sorrow and satisfaction mingled, she
+turned her back upon the sea and was carried to
+her desolate palace at Greenwich.</p>
+
+<p>The gentry of England, at all events, were ready to
+welcome the war with France that gave them the
+taste of warlike adventure which they loved, and the
+contingent to fight in Flanders was soon made ready,
+whilst the Lord Admiral with his fleet of twenty-three
+ships held the Channel. Philip’s General-in-Chief
+was his young cousin Emmanuel Philibert of Savoy,
+who had an army of fifty thousand men under him
+ready for the autumn campaign; whilst the French
+on the Flemish frontier, under Constable Montmorenci,
+numbered less than half that strength, for the flower
+of the French troops were under Guise in Italy, with
+difficulty defending the Pope from the great Duke of
+Alba, and Emmanuel Philibert opened his campaign
+as soon as the English arrived. By a series of rapid
+and unexpected movements, which entirely misled the
+French, he suddenly concentrated his attack upon the
+rich and important city of St. Quintin, weakly
+garrisoned and in poor condition of defence. Montmorenci
+hurried with his main army to relieve the
+fortress, and on the 10th August was cleverly outflanked
+by Emmanuel Philibert; caught in a trap
+between a stronger enemy and a morass, the French
+were utterly routed with a loss of half their numbers,
+Montmorenci himself being captured, and the whole
+force dispersed. Coligny with his tiny garrison in St.
+Quintin heroically held out for a fortnight longer; but
+from the day of Montmorenci’s defeat there was no
+force to prevent Philip from marching upon Paris and
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_149">[149]</span>crushing his enemy for good.&#x2060;<a id="FNanchor_114" href="#Footnote_114" class="fnanchor">[114]</a> This was his chance,
+and he missed it, as he did every great opportunity in
+his long life by that “prudent” leaden foot of his
+which always lagged when it should have hastened.
+In vain Savoy begged his permission to march on, and
+was refused, to the indignant surprise of the old
+Emperor when he heard of it in his cloister at Yuste.</p>
+
+<p>Philip had been at Cambrai on the day of the battle,
+but when he saw the awful sack and sacrilege after
+the surrender of St. Quintin he was horrified at the
+sight. Te Deums were chanted, votive offerings of
+unheard of richness were promised,&#x2060;<a id="FNanchor_115" href="#Footnote_115" class="fnanchor">[115]</a> joy bells were rung
+in Flanders, Spain, and England for the great victory;
+but Philip’s host moved no further onward towards
+Paris. The German Schwartzreiters, mercenary troops
+in Philip’s service, unpaid ruffians, held high revel in
+the ruined town, burning and ravaging unchecked.
+The Earl of Bedford, writing to Sir William Cecil
+from St. Quintin a few days after the surrender, says
+that these rascals, “being masters of the King’s whole
+army, used such force as well to the Spaniards,
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_150">[150]</span>Italians, and other nations as unto us, that there were
+none could enjoy nothing but themselves. They have
+now shown such cruelty as the like hath not been seen
+for greediness. The town by them was set afire,
+and a great piece of it burnt. Divers were burnt in
+cellars, and were killed immediately; women and
+children gave such pitiful cries that it would grieve
+any Christian heart.” The Germans, discontented
+with their loot, quarrelled and deserted in thousands,
+for Philip’s fatal deliberation had left them idle; the
+English, sulky and unpaid, grumbled incessantly.
+Bedford reports that “they are pinched with scarcity
+and divers have fallen sick”; and, again, a month
+later: “Our General is sick of ague, our pay very
+slack, and people grudge for want. I trust we shall
+speedily be discharged.” The Spaniards asserted
+that the English had shown no stomach for the fight
+before St. Quintin, and certainly they did not shine
+in it. Their discontent at last became so pronounced
+that Philip, realising their uselessness, and being, as
+usual, short of money, acceded to their clamour to be
+allowed to return home at the end of the stipulated
+four months of their service. Much was made of the
+King’s victory in London. Mary and Pole congratulated
+him upon the signal mark of God’s favour.
+Bonfires, free feasts, and official rejoicings were provided;
+but London wanted to gain no victories for
+Spaniards, and refused to be glad.</p>
+
+<p>Whilst Philip’s army was melting away in idleness
+Guise, realising where the danger lay, quietly abandoned
+the Pope to the mercy of Alba, and by forced
+marches hurried to the Flemish frontier. The intemperate
+Pontiff was then obliged to make terms with Alba,
+who entered Rome, as a pretended penitent instead of
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_151">[151]</span>a conqueror, and once more the two great antagonists
+were left to fight out their quarrel without papal interference.
+Henry II. had long had his eye upon England’s
+important foothold on France, the citadel and
+town of Calais. The English refugees had exposed
+to him the weak points in its defence, it had been
+starved and neglected both by Edward VI. and Mary;
+and the younger Noailles on his way home when Mary
+had dismissed him, carefully scrutinised the fortress
+and reported to the King that it might easily be
+captured. Guise, on his hurried return from Italy,
+directed himself straight towards the place and beleaguered
+it, capturing the Rysbank, the island fort
+defending the harbour, on the first days of January,
+1558. Philip had long known that Calais was weakly
+held, and in many of his letters to the Queen and
+Council he had urged that it should be effectively
+reinforced. On Guise’s approach the King sent his
+favourite, the Count de Feria, hurriedly to England
+to say how desperate the condition now was with the
+Rysbank in the hands of Guise; but the preparations
+for the voyage of so important a person as Feria took
+much time, and the Queen in London learnt of the
+disaster immediately by a letter from Lord Wentworth,
+the Governor of Calais.</p>
+
+<p>Mary, still full of her renewed hope of maternity,
+which all but herself knew was piteously fallacious,
+received the news courageously and set to work to
+reinforce the town. Pembroke was ordered to raise
+five thousand men and cross at once to Philip’s harbour
+of Dunkirk, whence Calais might be reached by land.
+Unfortunately, the English town of Guisnes, near
+Calais, was in as perilous a condition as Calais itself, and
+Lord Grey de Wilton, the Commander, found himself,
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_152">[152]</span>as he says, “clean cut off from all aid and relief. I have
+looked for both out of England and Calais, and know
+not how to have help by any means, either of men or
+victuals. There resteth now none other way for the
+succour of Calais, but a power of men out of England
+or from the King’s Majesty or both.”&#x2060;<a id="FNanchor_116" href="#Footnote_116" class="fnanchor">[116]</a> Alas! the
+King’s Majesty himself had now few fit troops to
+meet Guise’s veterans. His demoralised army,
+scattered wide in winter quarters through Flanders,
+were difficult to collect rapidly, and Lords Wentworth
+and Grey de Wilton in vain sent daily beseeching
+letters to Philip to come to their aid, as Guise pressed
+Calais and Guisnes more closely. Calais particularly
+was crowded with traitors and enemies of the Spaniard,
+anxious to deliver the place to the French; and,
+although the English troops repulsed one attempt to
+storm the town on the 6th January, it cheerfully surrendered
+to the besiegers two days later; and Guisnes
+fell with but little more resistance directly afterwards.&#x2060;<a id="FNanchor_117" href="#Footnote_117" class="fnanchor">[117]</a>&#x2060;</p>
+
+<p>The news fell like an aerolite upon the English
+Queen and nation. The possession of Calais had been
+regarded for centuries as the keystone to England’s
+commercial prosperity and political importance in
+Europe, and the surrender of the last foothold in
+France seemed a loss irreparable. That it should
+have been lost in a war undertaken on behalf of the
+Queen’s Spanish Consort, whilst he with a great
+though scattered force was in the immediate neighbourhood,
+added bitterness to the humiliation; and
+the Count de Feria, foreseeing the storm of anger
+that in England would greet the news, tarried a day
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_153">[153]</span>or two in Dunkirk rather than cross the Channel with
+the sinister tidings. His first mission had been to
+induce the English Council to send forces to defend
+Calais and Guisnes, but he knew full well that behind
+this demand there was the need for English forces
+again to aid his master in the coming campaign; so,
+interpreting his instructions freely, he determined to
+proceed on his journey and turn his request into one
+for troops to recover the fortresses with the King’s
+help.</p>
+
+<p>Feria arrived in London on the 26th January, 1558,
+and to his surprise he found the people and the Queen
+quite changed in temper since he had left them with
+the King six months before. There was no despondency
+anywhere now; for though the blow had been a
+shrewd one it had aroused the spirit of the nation.
+The Queen was like a lioness; for she was fighting
+now, as she thought, poor soul, for the inheritance of
+her unborn offspring; and she threatened to have the
+head of any Councillor of hers who dared to talk of
+peace with France until she had recovered the towns
+her ancestors had held for centuries. She would win
+them again, she said; her son would be born, and she
+and Philip, triumphant and at peace, would live
+happily. It was a dream, but it was shared, so far as
+concerned the recovery of the English territory in
+France, by the nation at large, which was now on its
+mettle; and clergy, gentry, and merchants opened
+their coffers, melted their gold chains, and mortgaged
+their belongings to provide funds for avenging English
+honour and protecting the English soil against the
+foreigner.</p>
+
+<p>The moment the news of the peril of Calais had
+reached Mary she despatched the Earl of Sussex and
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_154">[154]</span>her Controller, Sir R. Rochester, to assure Philip that
+she would send the forces to defend or recover Calais
+without loss of time. When both Calais and Guisnes
+had been surrendered, however, it seemed better to
+Philip to curb somewhat the Queen’s ardour in the
+matter. It was too early in the year for him to
+begin his regular campaign, and it was obvious that
+without his powerful co-operation the English troops
+alone would be unable to recapture the lost fortresses.
+So the first letter written by the King to Feria after
+the arrival of the latter in England was couched in
+the cool, prudent tone so characteristic of him. The
+ambassador was to thank the Queen heartily for her
+goodwill to send him the troops, even after Calais
+had been lost, but as his own territories were not
+in present danger, “I do not wish the Queen to
+begin yet to incur expense, especially as we shall
+have to spend a great deal later in attempting to
+recover the ancient English territory. You will
+therefore tell the Queen how highly I appreciate
+her affectionate regard for my interests; but as I have
+now sufficient forces to hold my own I hope she will
+countermand the sending of troops, and apply the
+money to defending the English coast, which is of the
+greatest importance.”&#x2060;<a id="FNanchor_118" href="#Footnote_118" class="fnanchor">[118]</a>&#x2060;</p>
+
+<p>Before receiving this letter Feria saw Mary in
+the Palace of Greenwich on the day he arrived,
+26th January, 1558, and found her, as usual, eager
+to serve Philip’s interests. Feria said he only wished
+that her Councillors were as willing as she. She
+would, she said, summon the Council at once that
+Feria might discuss matters with them; but as
+Parliament was sitting it was Friday, 28th, before
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_155">[155]</span>Feria and the resident ambassador, Figueroa, met
+the Councillors in Cardinal Pole’s room. Feria had
+agreed with the Queen as to the tone he should adopt
+with the Council. It was being murmured in London,
+and even in the Council itself, that this misfortune had
+fallen upon the nation because Philip had dragged it
+into the war; and Mary urged upon Feria that he
+should anticipate any such talk as that by saying at
+once that as Calais had been lost during a war which
+the English had undertaken on Philip’s behalf, he
+considered it his duty to help them to recover the
+fortress. The first need, however, he said, was to
+ensure the coasts of England from attack. What
+did the Council propose to do in the matter? Heath,
+who was the spokesman, was apologetic and
+despondent. The nation was in dire danger and
+its resources were very low: they agreed that defence
+of England must precede recovery of the fortresses
+on the other side of the Channel, and thought it best
+not to send across the hasty levies already collected
+at Dover. Feria, who had seen the mob of recruits
+as he passed through Dover, quite agreed with them.
+They had only been sent, said the Councillors
+apologetically, because the Queen had insisted. As
+for the broad question of national defence, they asked
+for time to consider what they proposed; and although
+Feria and Mary urged expedition, three days passed
+before the Council, headed by Heath, came in a body
+to Feria’s lodging and laid before him their plan of
+campaign.</p>
+
+<p>In a harangue full of honied words for Philip
+the Chancellor set forth the poverty of the country,
+the need for a strong force on the Scottish border
+to defend the north from a French incursion, the
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_156">[156]</span>undefended condition of Ireland, and, above all, the
+danger of the Isle of Wight and Portsmouth, now that
+eighty French ships were collected at Dieppe with, it
+was feared, hostile intent. What they proposed was to
+fit out a hundred English vessels with fifty victualling
+smacks for service in the Channel, carrying an army
+of some fifteen thousand soldiers, ready, if Philip
+needed it, to land upon any spot on the northern
+French coast as a diversion. They were in fear, too, of
+a league of Denmark and the Free Cities to attack the
+northern coast of England in the interests of France;
+and they knew of no other means of raising a force to
+defend that part of the country than to beg the King
+to choose for them some good German mercenary
+leader who would engage to come over in their
+service with some three thousand Germans, to embark
+in Amsterdam for Newcastle. When they had found
+the money for all this, they said, they did not see how
+they could do more even to recover Calais.</p>
+
+<p>These proposals, which had indeed been suggested
+first by the Queen and Philip, were exactly those which
+suited the latter. Under the guise of defending the
+English south coast a large English fleet and army
+would be practically at his orders, to alarm and divert
+the French wherever he needed. Lord William
+Howard,&#x2060;<a id="FNanchor_119" href="#Footnote_119" class="fnanchor">[119]</a> the Lord Admiral, a great-uncle of Elizabeth’s,
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_157">[157]</span>and little in Philip’s favour, was by Feria’s
+intrigues superseded by Clinton, who was his obedient
+servant. The great difficulty, of course, was money.
+Everyday Feria urged the need for raising large sums
+at once. Parliament was sitting, and it was believed
+would vote liberal supplies in view of the national
+danger; and Mary herself once complaisantly told
+Feria that she believed Parliament would vote her
+a larger amount than had ever been granted to
+her father. “That is not to the purpose,” replied
+Feria, “but to get all the money you want in the
+circumstances.” The Earl of Sussex when in Flanders
+had given the King an idea that the nobles in
+England might still be induced, as Spanish nobles
+were, to supply feudal contingents of mounted men on
+the Sovereign’s demand; but when Feria suggested
+this to the Queen she told him flatly that all the
+nobles of England together would not contribute
+a hundred horse.</p>
+
+<p>The loss of Calais was unquestionably a serious
+blow to the prestige of Mary. Already people were
+grumbling that this was what she and her Spanish
+husband had brought the nation to. Here was this
+haughty Count of Feria, too: what had he come over
+for but to carry some more English money out of the
+country to feed Philip’s armies? This, of course, had no
+foundation whatever in truth, but the mere whispering
+of it made people stay away from the Catholic
+churches, and frown more sourly at the persecutions
+than they had done before. So far from carrying
+English money out, except to pay for the recruiting of
+the German mercenaries, whom Philip all along, however,
+meant to use for his own purposes, the Councillors
+to a man began dunning Feria for their unpaid
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_158">[158]</span>Spanish pensions;&#x2060;<a id="FNanchor_120" href="#Footnote_120" class="fnanchor">[120]</a> for although the Spaniard scornfully
+complains of their unwillingness to serve Philip’s
+interests first, they were all anxious for his money.
+The fear of invasion, which was, in fact, very remote,
+was industriously promoted by Feria and the
+Spaniards in order to keep the English Council up
+to their determination in raising forces which might
+be, and were, subsequently used by Philip for his own
+purposes when his summer campaign opened. These
+forces, however, did not satisfy Philip, who was somewhat
+chagrined to find that the English Council was
+so ready to limit its efforts to the defence of the
+coasts, without insisting upon the recovery of Calais.
+He had counted upon using the national anger at the
+loss to bring when he most needed them a good
+English contingent across the Channel to join his
+army, though the hasty levies in January would
+have been worse than useless to him.</p>
+
+<p>Both the King and Feria were impatient at the
+cumbrous English constitutional way of raising
+money, and pestered poor Mary daily by word and
+letter to obtain resources by other means. This she
+knew, and said, was impossible in England, and might
+cost her her crown. One day Paget came to Feria
+with a great plan to raise the vast sum of 800,000
+crowns, in addition to the parliamentary vote, and the
+Spaniards were all eager to put it into practice; but
+when the time to discuss it seriously came, Paget’s
+proposal, to Feria’s anger, reduced itself to a loan
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_159">[159]</span>of £100,000 to be raised by Gresham in Antwerp
+and £80,000 to be borrowed from the London
+bankers. All would have been well managed,
+grumbled Paget, if he had the direction of affairs;
+and the other Councillors thereupon fell to wrangling
+with him as to their responsibility. This was early
+in March, 1558, and Feria had quite lost patience with
+what he considered the ineptitude of Mary’s advisers,
+which really meant their disinclination to subordinate
+English interests entirely to the wishes of Philip and
+his minister. From the sitting of the Council just
+referred to, Feria and his colleague Figueroa went off
+in a rage to the Queen to: “complain of the reply
+[about the money], and to warn her again of the
+danger in which the country and she herself are, her
+Councillors being so inept that, although they say
+that the country is not rich, they cannot devise means
+even to raise sufficient money to defend themselves
+and recover the prestige that has been lost. We
+dwelt much upon this, as much indeed as we could;
+for the Queen was not fully aware of the poor service
+rendered by the English contingent which you had
+with your army last year. She was not even yet undeceived
+as to their not having been the first to enter
+St. Quintin until yesterday, we told her amongst other
+things. She was much grieved and promised that
+she would press them again about the money at
+Greenwich, where she will go to-day. Her one
+thought is that your Majesty should come to her
+again. She seems still to believe that she is pregnant,
+though she does not say so openly. She promises me
+to send Gresham to Antwerp at once to borrow the
+£100,000 they say have arranged. I think if that be
+the case, it would be easy to get them to borrow
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_160">[160]</span>another £100,000, though I have not pressed it until
+he is there.”&#x2060;<a id="FNanchor_121" href="#Footnote_121" class="fnanchor">[121]</a>&#x2060;</p>
+
+<p>Gresham’s instructions are dated two days after
+this letter was written, 12th March. He had previously
+been dismissed from his former post as royal
+financial agent at Antwerp, and his reappointment
+was probably owing to the fact that in the narrow
+condition of the national finances he alone had
+sufficient authority on the Continental money market
+to raise the funds required. He was to bargain for
+the loan of £100,000 that had been offered through
+one Germayn Scholl for one year, and to ascertain
+what powder and other munitions of war could be
+obtained in Flanders for English use.&#x2060;<a id="FNanchor_122" href="#Footnote_122" class="fnanchor">[122]</a> Scholl was
+Gresham’s kinsman by marriage, but the bargain does
+not seem to have been fully concluded, only £10,000
+being obtained from that source,&#x2060;<a id="FNanchor_123" href="#Footnote_123" class="fnanchor">[123]</a> Gresham remaining
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_161">[161]</span>in Flanders until the summer, spending much of the
+money he could raise in munitions of war. He had
+been instructed to present letters of recommendation to
+King Philip, and to acquaint him with all he did. But
+Gresham, who was no admirer of the Spanish faction,
+appears to have been somewhat remiss in paying
+court to the King, for he failed to mention anything
+about him in his letters. Mary, who was always
+hankering for news of her husband, began to get
+restive at the omission, and her Secretary, Boxall,
+writes a private letter to Gresham in April hinting
+to him that he will make things easier all round if
+he will pay more court to the King, as the Queen
+asked about him. Gresham promptly took the hint
+and wrote a long letter to Mary, saying that he had
+just seen King Philip at a monastery outside Brussels,
+where he had passed Easter, “who is in right good
+health as your Majestie’s own harte can desyre.”&#x2060;<a id="FNanchor_124" href="#Footnote_124" class="fnanchor">[124]</a>&#x2060;</p>
+
+<p>Whilst Gresham in Flanders was thus borrowing
+and spending money, Feria was chafing at the lack
+of sympathetic activity in the Councillors in the
+direction he desired. Writing to Philip in March,
+he says: “Before God, I can do no more, Sire! I
+do not know what to make of these people. For,
+believe me, your Majesty, from morning to night and
+from night to morning they are changing their minds
+about everything, and do what I can it is impossible
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_162">[162]</span>for me to make them understand what a state they are
+in—the worst, surely, that ever people were in before.
+If it were only for their own sakes, I should like to
+leave them to the mercy of those who would treat
+them as they deserve; but I am afraid that they
+will drag us after them, as your Majesty knows.
+The Queen does, and says, all she can, and she
+really has spirit and goodwill; but in all else there
+is nothing but trouble. As for the Cardinal, he is
+a dead man; and although he has plucked up a
+little with what they write to him every day from
+Italy since the loss of Calais, he is not so warm as
+I should have liked to see him. Of all the rest of
+them, I really do not know which is the worst
+disposed to your interest. But I know that those
+whom you have favoured most serve you the
+least.”&#x2060;<a id="FNanchor_125" href="#Footnote_125" class="fnanchor">[125]</a>&#x2060;</p>
+
+<p>Feria noticed that Mary grew ever thinner and
+more despondent. She slept badly and was devoured
+with anxiety and yearning for her husband, whose
+letters came to her so rarely. Both she and Pole,
+indeed, were now almost negligible forces; and Feria
+began to plot with a few of the Councillors upon
+whom he could depend to take into his own hands
+practically the direction of affairs. How it was
+managed is well set forth in a letter of his to the
+King of 1st May, 1558. He has, he says, been
+able to hold a private conference with Privy Seal
+(Bedford) and the Admiral (Clinton) “about that
+enterprise they had proposed to me, and also to
+press them about the land armaments.” They were
+of opinion that they could raise a land army, and
+that the recovery of Calais would not be so difficult
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_163">[163]</span>as people imagined. “They say that they could
+get together 12,000 English and German infantry,
+3,000 horse (2,000 Germans and 1,000 English),
+2,000 English pioneers, and if your Majesty did
+not think well of the <i>enterprise</i> they might be used
+for other purposes. I did not dwell so much upon
+this point as upon getting the force together. They
+think, and quite rightly, that it is useless to deal with
+this matter with more than four or five persons who
+will be in favour of it; and they propose besides
+themselves Jerningham, the Master of the Rolls, who
+was the Solicitor-General (Cordell), and the Controller
+(Rochester), although the latter is a man who always
+raises difficulties to everything. I think that these
+three will suit best for the purpose, as they are
+favoured by the Queen.</p>
+
+<p>“I know of no other way to remedy matters but
+this: that your Majesty should write to the Queen
+saying that on mature deliberation you have decided
+that the best course will be for her Majesty to raise
+these troops, beginning with the money voted by
+Parliament: for as soon as the people see your
+Majesties determined to avenge the loss of Calais
+you believe that they will favour the enterprise,
+since no prince ever begins a war with all the money
+in hand necessary to finish it. You might add that
+nothing should be said about spending the Parliament
+money, but that it should be entrusted to some person
+for the object in view. Paget thinks that Bacon
+would be a fit person for this, and the Queen would
+agree to him. Your Majesty should also write to her
+that the business should be discussed with nobody but
+the five persons mentioned. Paget, Clinton, myself,
+and Figueroa think that this is the last thing we can
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_164">[164]</span>do. Paget thought lately that Rutland would be the
+best man to command this force, and we think that
+Clinton and the Vice-Admiral should conduct the fleet.
+The fleet is now ready and is costing money with no
+profit. Even if your Majesty does not think well to
+press the Queen about the foregoing business you
+might send her instructions at once as to what she
+is to do with this fleet.”&#x2060;<a id="FNanchor_126" href="#Footnote_126" class="fnanchor">[126]</a>&#x2060;</p>
+
+<p>It will be seen by this that the plan was to use
+every atom of the force raised in England and with
+English money, not for the defence of the country
+itself, which had been the first pretext for raising it,
+but to send across the sea, either to aid in the
+recovery of Calais or, at Philip’s option, for any
+other purpose he might choose, and that similarly
+the fleet was to be placed at his disposal.&#x2060;<a id="FNanchor_127" href="#Footnote_127" class="fnanchor">[127]</a> It is quite
+plain from the way in which Feria writes of her that
+Mary was simply to be told what to do by Philip,
+and that she was expected to do it without demur.
+How completely she hung upon Philip’s words, and
+subordinated everything to his wish, is seen in a
+paragraph in the same letter as that quoted above
+from Feria to the King. A Swedish envoy had arrived
+in England with an offer of marriage to Elizabeth
+from Prince Eric, the heir to the crown. He had
+been already several days in London and had not
+even asked audience of the Queen, though he had
+committed the gross breach of propriety of going
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_165">[165]</span>down to Hatfield and delivering the Prince’s letter
+to Elizabeth before he saw Mary. The poor Queen
+was terribly upset at this; and hearing that Feria was
+despatching a courier to Antwerp, she feared that he
+was going to write to Philip about it. Sending for
+Feria she with tears and reproaches upbraided him for
+his supposed intention, and said that she herself was
+going to write to her husband telling him all about
+it. “When the ambassador from Sweden first came,”
+writes Feria, “she was in great trouble, fearing that
+your Majesty would blame her for not having carried
+through that affair last year [<i>i.e.</i>, the marriage of
+Elizabeth with Savoy]. Since then, however, Madam
+Elizabeth has replied that she will not marry; and
+the Queen is more tranquil, but she is intensely
+impassioned in the matter; and one of the reasons
+for her grief at the pregnancy having turned out
+fallacious is the fear that it will cause you to press
+her in this other business [<i>i.e.</i>, the marriage of Elizabeth].
+Both Figueroa and I think that your Majesty
+ought to do so <i>apropos</i> of the coming of this Swedish
+ambassador and the failure of the pregnancy. But
+it is necessary that such pressure should not come
+at the same time as the matter of the land armament,
+or it will upset the business altogether. In short,
+Sire, I believe that the Queen will not stand in
+the way of her [<i>i.e.</i>, Elizabeth] being Queen if God
+does not send you children.”&#x2060;<a id="FNanchor_128" href="#Footnote_128" class="fnanchor">[128]</a>&#x2060;</p>
+
+<p>Already Elizabeth’s sun was seen to be in the
+ascendant, and, regardless of the feelings of her sister
+the Queen, it suited Spanish policy to ensure her
+marriage, if possible, with a nominee dependent upon
+Philip. How anxious Philip personally was not to
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_166">[166]</span>lose touch of Elizabeth at this juncture is seen in his
+reply at the end of May to a suggestion of Feria
+that the latter should go to Hatfield and pay his
+respects to her before he left England: “What you
+say about visiting Madam Elizabeth before you
+depart appears to me to be very wise, for the
+reasons you point out, and I am writing to the
+Queen, saying that I have ordered you to go. You
+will act accordingly; and I have no doubt that when
+the Queen sees the firmness with which I write on
+the subject she will consent.”&#x2060;<a id="FNanchor_129" href="#Footnote_129" class="fnanchor">[129]</a> Philip’s fiery and
+impetuous ambassador Feria went considerably
+beyond his master in his high-handed dealing with
+the English Government; for Philip’s methods were
+diplomatic and far-seeing, and his object was not to
+ride roughshod over his wife’s country, as Feria
+would have done, but to use its resources for his
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_167">[167]</span>ends, as if without design, and to perpetrate his
+hold upon it after his wife’s death.</p>
+
+<p>Mary, still suffering from her usual indispositions,
+persuaded herself in May that Philip was coming over
+to see her again. It was, as Feria said, unreasonable;
+for Philip was overweighted with business, arranging
+the summer campaigns and a thousand other things:
+but Mary, full of hope again, caused herself to be carried
+to St. James’s to be ready to receive her husband, and
+had horses and lodgings prepared for him from Dover
+to Gravesend and an escort of ships at Dover to
+convey him across. Feria told her blankly that the
+King was too busy to come, and again pressed her
+about raising the land army to reinforce Philip in
+Flanders. He found her less ready in the matter
+than he had hoped—“for the Cardinal and Council
+persuade her as they like”—and she wearily suggested
+that Clinton should go to Brussels to discuss the
+matter with the King. “This,” said Feria, “was
+only because they think that I push them too hard;
+and they believe they can deal more easily with your
+Majesty, their real object being to upset the scheme
+altogether;” and the ambassador continues by recommending
+the King when Clinton arrived in Brussels
+to deal with him high-handedly, blaming the Council
+angrily for their slackness in the past. Clinton was
+evidently the most pliant tool of all; and yet, even of
+him, Feria writes: “Nothing that he says will be
+true, unless he thinks it will be investigated. I have
+had no end of trouble about this, for they do nothing
+but lie and prevaricate.”</p>
+
+<p>All this haughty pressure on the part of Feria, and
+the servile compliance of Paget and the rest of the
+Spanish clique, in order to bully the English into
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_168">[168]</span>raising a large force to join Philip’s army on the pretext
+of recovering Calais, was seen by the politic King
+to be unwise. The English fleet, with its seven thousand
+soldiers on board, might be useful for him in many
+ways, and he made much of Clinton when he saw him
+in Brussels, urging him to have the fleet provisioned
+and ready for service whenever ordered from June to
+September; but the raising of a land army of Englishmen
+did not suit him: in the first place because it
+would pledge him to a regular campaign against the
+French in Calais for the ultimate benefit of England
+alone, to the neglect of the Flemish frontier that
+concerned him most, and secondly, as he says,
+because “the English, as they would arm unwillingly,
+however much they were pressed and encouraged,
+would not be of much use. I can even see that they
+might cause more inconvenience than otherwise.
+Either they might come so badly organised and weak
+as to be easily defeated, which would be most injurious,
+or they might force me to go to their rescue, and upset
+my own plans.” The King was of opinion that the
+English had much better concentrate their land
+strength on the Scottish frontier and in Ireland, so
+long as he was allowed to do as he liked with the
+English fleet.</p>
+
+<p>The meaning of this is made abundantly clear, and
+Philip’s own foresight vindicated by the sequel. If the
+English Council were encouraged to employ all their
+own forces on the Scottish Border it was foreseen that
+they would not need the three thousand or more
+German auxiliaries which were now mustering on the
+Rhine under the leader Wallerdun, much of the money
+for them having been already disbursed by the English
+special agents in Flanders, Sir William Pickering and
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_169">[169]</span>others. Feria, in his letter of 18th May to the King,
+says: “I understand that these people already repent of
+having asked for the three thousand Germans, for their
+view now is only to defend their own shores, and the
+Scots will not trouble them. They have said nothing to
+me about it yet, but I know that what I say is true....
+If they do not want to bring these 3,000 Germans
+over, your Majesty might consider whether you will
+ask for them for yourself.” This, although it was
+exactly what Philip himself desired and intended, was
+only effected after much wrangling about the money
+spent and the responsibility incurred by the English
+Council. Philip, writing on the 10th June, instructs
+Feria cunningly to manage so that the Council may
+be got to propose that the German mercenaries might
+be taken off their hands as a favour; but if they could
+not be got to see it in this light that the Queen should
+be told in confidence that the King needed the
+Germans very much. The Council proved recalcitrant;
+for, as they said, they had spent already a large sum
+upon the mercenaries, and might need them; but they
+had to give way before the pressure of the Queen and
+Feria, insisting ultimately, however, that Philip should
+pay the sum of £2,000 for which Gresham had made
+himself responsible but had not paid for the arms
+supplied. The recruiting money of the Germans
+and first month’s pay was lost.</p>
+
+<p>Relations between the imperious Feria and the
+English Council became daily more strained, every
+unimportant point was made a question of dignity by
+the ambassador,&#x2060;<a id="FNanchor_130" href="#Footnote_130" class="fnanchor">[130]</a> and the sick, disconsolate Queen
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_170">[170]</span>between the jarring elements, wishing to conciliate
+both sides, was rendered doubly unhappy. From
+Feria’s contemptuous and insulting references to Pole
+it is evident that the Cardinal declined to become an
+instrument for purely Spanish ends; whilst all the rest
+of the Councillors are dismissed by the ambassador in
+his letters to the King as lying rascals intent only
+upon plunder. Looking beyond Feria’s intemperate,
+angry words, the principal sin of the Councillors in
+his eyes seems to have been a disinclination to
+squander money of which the nation was so sorely in
+need upon raising forces without some assurance that
+they would be used for English ends. Already people
+were grumbling that the powerful fleet under Clinton
+was to be merely an auxiliary of Philip in the war, at
+his entire disposal, and the continued bad fortune that
+followed the Spanish arms increased the anger in
+England at being thus tied to the tail of Philip in the
+war, without any attempt being made by him to
+recover the lost English fortresses.</p>
+
+<p>So far from doing this, indeed, news came early in
+July that Dunkirk, one of the most useful of his ports,
+within a few miles of Calais, had been captured by the
+French, as well as Thionville, an important fortress.
+Mary was panic-stricken at the news, and summoned
+Feria from Durham House to say that she must at
+once send off a courier to Philip to know the truth.
+Feria made light of the news, and said it was not
+worth while to send in such haste, and the overburdened
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_171">[171]</span>Queen broke out in angry reproaches at
+his indifference. How could her merchants send their
+wool to Flanders, she asked, if Dunkirk was in
+French hands? and yet Feria treated the matter
+as of no importance. But when the ambassador
+suggested that the English fleets in Plymouth and
+Dover should at once sail to Dunkirk to help the
+King, Mary eagerly assented, though the Council at
+once vetoed it; for, said they, the French have also
+captured Alderney, and it behoved the admiral to go
+there first. “And really, to tell your Majesty the
+truth,” wrote Feria, “I did not dare to contradict
+them, for I saw that if but four French ships were to
+land their companies in England they would overturn
+everything.” This was written in July, and shortly
+afterwards Feria, having hectored the English Queen
+and Council thus into placing the English fleet almost
+entirely at Philip’s disposal, and having raised and
+paid three thousand German mercenaries which he had
+appropriated, took his leave and returned to Flanders,
+first visiting Elizabeth at Hatfield, much, he says, to
+her and his pleasure: “for reasons which I will tell
+your Majesty when I see you.”</p>
+
+<p>Mary now was a mere shadow. The cruel persecutions
+and the loss of Calais together had completely
+destroyed the belief of the people in her power to rule
+England for its own benefit. Her father and grandfather,
+and even the greatly inferior Northumberland,
+had managed to maintain the balance of power
+between the two great Continental rivals upon which
+the importance of England depended. Mary from
+the first day of her accession, as we have seen, had
+neglected this essential point in English policy, and
+had ended by becoming a mere satellite of the
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_172">[172]</span>Spanish King, involving her country thus in a ruinous
+war, in which it had lost much and had nothing to
+gain. The Council, against which Feria raged so
+savagely, was, it is true, after the death of Gardiner,
+composed of men of no commanding ability; but it
+had done its best to prevent the utter subjection of
+England to Philip’s aims. The success of its efforts
+was not great; for as Feria’s correspondence shows
+the most active members of the Council were bought
+body and soul by Spain, and Mary was in most cases
+ready to back up Feria’s arrogant hectoring with her
+royal authority. For her, in her forlorn condition, the
+first consideration was to please her husband and prevent
+the Catholic power, upon which she increasingly
+depended, from collapse.</p>
+
+<p>Her great hope was that Philip might be lured back
+again to her side to live in prosperity and peace.
+Again and again her fond hopes were disappointed,
+and, a prey to a constitutional disorder, she sank
+deeper and deeper in despondency. After Feria left
+her in July she continued ailing, whilst those around
+her, seeing the approach of the inevitable change,
+busied themselves in plans which might, if they were
+fortunate, save them from disaster in the future. For
+men of all opinions recognised that it was not alone a
+woman who was dying, but a political and religious
+system that had failed; and vengeance was sharpening
+its knife, whilst those who had thus made England the
+servant of a foreigner and a prey to the bigots were
+trembling for the wrath to come.</p>
+
+<p>Early in September a fever came to add to the
+Queen’s ailments, and this, being an unusual symptom
+with her, caused grave anxiety; but Philip’s Flemish
+councillor Dassonleville, who was in London to inquire
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_173">[173]</span>whether any league was being negotiated between
+England, Sweden, and Denmark, wrote early in
+October that both the Queen and Cardinal Pole were
+better than they had been since the beginning of their
+maladies. Parliament met at Westminster on the 5th
+November, and in it resounded loud complaints, bold
+and unsuppressed now, of the cost and damage to
+England caused by the war undertaken to please King
+Philip, and suggestions were made that the peace
+negotiations already in progress should be actively
+pushed. The great question, moreover, that was
+occupying all minds was that of the succession to the
+Crown when the Queen should die. “If your Majesty
+could have been present it would have been of the
+greatest importance in moving the Parliament to your
+desires,” wrote Dassonleville. “But if that be impossible,
+and important affairs should detain you in
+Flanders, the coming of the Count de Feria, who is
+much liked here,&#x2060;<a id="FNanchor_131" href="#Footnote_131" class="fnanchor">[131]</a> would serve, nevertheless, to direct
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_174">[174]</span>affairs so far as the time will allow. Many of the
+Council are beginning to understand how necessary
+the alliance of Flanders is to this realm, the salvation
+of which depends upon it, as England cannot alone
+withstand for long the efforts of its old enemies, the
+French and Scots, without the aid of your Majesty.
+The common people do not understand it yet, and
+talk of allying the Lady Elizabeth with the Earls of
+Westmorland or Arundel, and sometimes with a Prince
+of Sweden or Denmark, so inconstant are they.”&#x2060;<a id="FNanchor_132" href="#Footnote_132" class="fnanchor">[132]</a>&#x2060;</p>
+
+<p>It is quite evident that when Dassonleville speaks
+of the impossibility of England holding its own without
+Philip’s aid he meant under the existing system.
+In this, of course, he was right; but he overlooked
+the fact that if the country freed itself from the
+Spanish connection, which had dragged it down, and
+once more dexterously held the balance between the
+two Powers, neither would attack it, because neither
+would be benefited by weakening a possible useful
+ally. But the English people were quite awake to
+the alternative if Dassonleville was not, and were
+looking anxiously away from the sad sufferer who had
+failed as a Queen and was awaiting extinction in St.
+James’s, to the demure, self-controlled young woman
+who bided her time so patiently and so confidently at
+Hatfield. She knew now she would not have to wait
+long. “Sire,” continued Dassonleville, “the Queen
+has had some good intervals since her grave malady;
+and for some days past has been quieter from her
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_175">[175]</span>paroxysms. The issue of her illness is as yet
+uncertain. The people make her out to be worse
+than the doctors say, and rumour says that a change
+is so imminent that it will cause the enemy to be
+the more obstinate about the restoration of Calais.
+Nevertheless, if your Majesty insists upon not making
+peace without it, they will have to put up with it.”&#x2060;<a id="FNanchor_133" href="#Footnote_133" class="fnanchor">[133]</a>&#x2060;</p>
+
+<p>This was written on the 6th November; but
+before the letter was despatched Dassonleville heard
+from Paget that the Queen’s malady being recognised
+as grave, the Council had requested her to make
+some pronouncement with regard to the succession.
+Mary, feeling the hand of death upon her, consented
+to a deputation of the Council waiting upon the
+Princess at Hatfield on the morrow, to tell her that
+the Queen was willing that she should succeed when
+she (Mary) should die, only begging two things of
+her—one to maintain the old religion, and the other to
+pay the debts she (Mary) had incurred. It was
+known by this that the gravest anticipations of the
+people were justified. Ten days before this Philip
+had learnt that his wife was not likely to live, and he
+had at once instructed Feria to start for England, for
+the special purpose of pushing forward urgently the
+question of Elizabeth’s marriage, which was now seen
+to be the only means by which he might still hold
+England. As has been already explained in previous
+pages, Mary had on each former occasion when the
+matter had been urged firmly stood out against it, as
+well as Elizabeth herself. Once the Queen had been
+won over for a day to the Savoy project, but Cardinal
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_176">[176]</span>Pole had changed her mind, and nothing had been
+done. The bold offer of the Swedish prince had
+shown to Mary as well as to Philip the danger of
+Elizabeth’s accepting a Protestant marriage; and even
+at this late hour Philip determined to make a desperate
+effort through Feria to win Elizabeth for a nominee
+who would suit him. Suriano, the Venetian ambassador
+with Philip, writes&#x2060;<a id="FNanchor_134" href="#Footnote_134" class="fnanchor">[134]</a> with regard to Feria’s mission:
+“The Count’s instructions are that he is to try
+and dispose the Queen to consent to Lady Elizabeth’s
+marriage as her sister, and with the prospect of
+succeeding to the Crown. This negotiation is being
+conducted with the utmost secrecy, as they suspect
+that were the French to learn of it they would easily
+find means to thwart the project, as the greater part
+of England is opposed to the Queen and most hostile
+to King Philip and his party, whilst strongly inclined
+to Lady Elizabeth, who was always attached to the
+French faction rather than the other.” Feria tarried
+a few days in Flanders when the news came that
+Mary was somewhat better; but Dassonleville’s and
+Cordova’s letters, foreshadowing, as they did, Mary’s
+rapid passing, sent him hurrying across to England
+in order to perform his mission before she should die.
+The great obstacle to the marriage with Savoy—apart,
+of course, from Elizabeth’s own reluctance—had
+now disappeared, for Mary had recognised her sister
+as her successor, without which her marriage would
+have been useless to Philip.</p>
+
+<p>Feria arrived in London on the 9th November, and
+he found England in a turmoil. Whispers spread
+every few days that the Queen was indeed dead, and
+that her Council only kept back the news until King
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_177">[177]</span>Philip should come with the strong hand. “Every
+man’s mynde was then travayled with a strange
+confusione,” says Hayward, who lived through the
+crisis, “all things being immoderately eyther dreaded
+or desired. Every report was greedily both inquired
+and received, all truthes suspected, diverse tales
+believed, many improbable conjectures hatched and
+nourished. Invasion of strangers, civil dissentions,
+the doubtfull dispositione of the succeeding prince,
+were cast in every man’s conceite as present perills;
+but noe man did buysy his witts in contriving
+remedyes.” Whilst her people were anxiously looking
+to the future, some with dread and some with
+hope, the Queen lay in anguish waiting for the end.
+It was only five years since, full of faith and belief
+in her system, she had passed over ruined ambitions
+amidst the acclamations of the people to the throne of
+her fathers. In that short time, with the best of
+intentions, she had sapped the basis of England’s
+international importance, she had opened wide the
+doors of religious persecution, and, so far as she
+could, had laid the resources of her country at the
+feet of her foreign husband. She was leaving
+England poorer in possessions, in power and in spirit,
+than it had been at any time since her grandfather
+brought to an end the civil strife of a century. She
+had sacrificed her people’s welfare and happiness,
+as well as her own popularity, by obstinately ignoring
+accomplished facts and leaning upon a foreign Power
+to enable her to restore a state of things that was
+dead.</p>
+
+<p>The Queen was only partially conscious and unable
+to read Philip’s letter when Feria came to bring her a
+message from her husband, and he lost no time in
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_178">[178]</span>travelling to Hatfield on his principal mission. Elizabeth
+had been so wary and diplomatic in her difficult
+circumstances that she was as yet an unknown
+quantity; and doubtless the crafty men of the world
+who proposed to win her for Spain anticipated no
+great difficulty from this reticent young woman of five-and-twenty,
+who had accepted Catholicism so readily.
+The country was profoundly divided, and it was
+thought that the new Queen—as Dassonleville wrote,
+in good faith—would be unable to establish her
+authority without help from abroad. It was therefore,
+on the face of it, not an extravagant presumption
+that she might prefer to follow her sister’s lead
+and adhere to the traditional policy of England in
+allying herself with the sovereign of Spain and
+Flanders.</p>
+
+<p>When Feria arrived at Hatfield he received his
+first surprise. Before starting from London he had
+summoned the Council, and in Philip’s name had
+approved of Elizabeth as the heir to the Crown.
+Believing that this would enable him to claim
+Elizabeth’s thanks, he began at Hatfield to enlarge
+upon the service Philip had done her in thus securing
+to her the succession. So long as high-flown compliment
+had been the staple of conversation Elizabeth
+had given Feria as good as he had brought; but the
+moment he bespoke her gratitude she stopped him,
+and said that she would owe her Crown to no one
+but her people; and when he broadly hinted at the
+advantage to her of a marriage with her Spanish
+brother-in-law or a nominee of his she evaded the
+suggestion dexterously.&#x2060;<a id="FNanchor_135" href="#Footnote_135" class="fnanchor">[135]</a> All through the interview
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_179">[179]</span>she showed a determination to resist any attempts
+to place her in the tutelage of Philip. She answered
+Feria, indeed, somewhat tartly at one point, that
+her sister had lost her people’s love by marrying
+a foreigner; and the ambassador left her already
+convinced that she would be no docile instrument
+in his master’s hands, as her sister had been.</p>
+
+<p>Mary and Pole lay dying at the same time, fortified
+by the rites of their Church, whose services were
+celebrated ceaselessly before their weary eyes. With
+the Queen there were few now to do her reverence,
+for most of her courtiers and Councillors were flocking
+to Hatfield to worship the rising sun; but Mrs.
+Clarencius, the Countess of Feria (Jane Dormer,
+Mary’s favourite maid of honour), and a few other
+faithful friends stood by her to the last. On
+the morning of the 16th November the Council
+assembled in her room, and Cordell, the Master of
+the Rolls, read aloud the Queen’s will, although
+Mary was unconscious at the time. Feria asserts
+that when the reader reached the bequests to her
+personal attendants the Council desired him to omit
+that portion. In any case, little attention was afterwards
+paid to the Queen’s testament, for there were
+none who loved or mourned the forlorn woman.
+Before dawn on the 17th November Mass was celebrated
+in the dying chamber in the Palace of St.
+James. Like her mother on her death-bed in similar
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_180">[180]</span>circumstances, Mary followed the sacred office
+devoutly, in the full possession now of her faculties,
+making the responses audibly and fervently. When
+the celebrant appealed to “the Lamb of God who
+took upon Himself the sins of the world,” Mary
+answered clearly “<i>Miserere nobis, Miserere nobis, Dona
+nobis pacem</i>.”&#x2060;<a id="FNanchor_136" href="#Footnote_136" class="fnanchor">[136]</a> These cries for mercy, for mercy and
+peace, were the last words of unhappy Mary
+Tudor. A few moments afterwards, as the priest
+held up before her the Sacramental Host, her eyes
+flushed with tears, and then closed for ever. Philip
+had no longer any footing in England. He must win
+one again by force or favour, unless Spain was to
+surrender her proud supremacy and Catholicism cease
+to rule the world.</p>
+
+<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop" aria-hidden="true">
+
+<div class="chapter">
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_181">[181]</span></p>
+
+<h2 class="nobreak" id="CHAPTER_V">CHAPTER V<br>
+<span class="smaller">1558-1565</span></h2>
+
+<p>Accession of Elizabeth—The beginning of the long duel—Feria
+urges Philip to use force—Philip’s many difficulties—He offers his
+hand to Elizabeth—The Peace of Cateau Cambresis—The Franco-Spanish
+Alliance—Fears of a Catholic League—Philip marries a French
+Princess—English Catholics appeal to Philip—Mary Stuart claims the
+Crown of England—War with Scotland—Philip’s efforts to effect a
+reconciliation—Bishop Quadra—His relations with Leicester—Intrigue
+for a Catholic reaction in England—Mary Stuart approaches Philip—Disgrace
+and death of Quadra—A war of tariffs—Guzman de Silva,
+ambassador—The interviews of Bayonne—Failure of the Catholic
+League</p>
+
+</div>
+
+<p>Though Mary’s death had long been foreseen,
+Feria was distracted when it came, for change
+was on all sides, and each change unfavourable
+to Spanish interests. “It is very early,” he wrote,
+“to talk about marriage yet; but the confusion and
+instability of these people in all their affairs make it
+necessary for us to be the more alert, so as not to lose
+the opportunities that may offer, and especially in the
+matter of marriage.... The new Queen and the
+people hold themselves free from your Majesty, and
+will listen to any ambassadors who may come to treat
+of marriage. Your Majesty understands better than I
+how important it is that this affair should go through
+your hands, which will be difficult except with great
+negotiations and expenditure.” He continues by
+urging Philip not to allow the Emperor Ferdinand
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_182">[182]</span>to offer the hand of either of his sons to Elizabeth,
+and opines that the English would not favour Savoy,
+whilst, he says, the nobles recognise that it would be
+impossible for the Queen to marry an Englishman.
+This was, of course, preliminary to the suggestion of
+Feria that Philip should marry Elizabeth himself.
+“The more I think of this business the more certain
+I am that everything depends upon the husband this
+woman may take. If he be a suitable one, religious
+matters will go on well, and the realm will remain
+friendly with your Majesty; but if not, all will be
+spoilt. If she decides to marry out of the country
+she will at once fix her eyes upon your Majesty,
+although some of them here will be sure to pitch
+upon the Archduke Ferdinand.”&#x2060;<a id="FNanchor_137" href="#Footnote_137" class="fnanchor">[137]</a>&#x2060;</p>
+
+<p>Feria, who had lorded over Mary’s Council, found
+the members now sorely changed. They had mostly
+been bribed heavily by him, and the ambassador
+roundly abuses them for their ingratitude. They
+were indeed, such of them as were included in
+Elizabeth’s Council, too anxious to clear themselves
+from the odium of the past to smile upon the
+unpopular Spanish connection; though secretly Lord
+William Howard, Clinton, and Paget promised their
+services to Feria. As for the people at large, the
+death of Mary was to them as if a crushing weight
+had been lifted from their hearts. Even as she lay
+dying, the sacred things—the images, relics, and the
+like—of which she had enforced the veneration, were
+openly slighted; and Feria wrote a few days after her
+death: “The people are wagging their tongues a
+good deal about the Queen’s having sent great sums
+of money to your Majesty, and that I have sent you
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_183">[183]</span>200,000 ducats since I came. They say that it is
+through your Majesty that the country is in such
+want, and that Calais was lost; and also that through
+your not coming to see the Queen she died of grief.”</p>
+
+<p>Under Cecil’s guidance Elizabeth’s first steps were
+prudent and wise in the extreme. The religious
+burnings were at once stopped, and those persons
+who were imprisoned on the charge of heresy were
+enlarged on their own recognisances; but most of the
+members of Mary’s Catholic Council were retained,
+though reinforced by seven new Protestant Councillors,
+Cecil and Parry being given the most influential
+duties. But, moderate though the new rulers were,
+the Catholics, and especially the Spanish party, were
+in dismay. Only a week after the Queen’s accession
+Feria wrote to Philip: “The kingdom is entirely in
+the hands of young folks, heretics, and traitors, and
+the Queen favours no man who served her sister. The
+old people and the Catholics are dissatisfied, but dare
+not open their lips. The Queen seems to me incomparably
+more feared than her sister was, and gives her
+orders as absolutely as her father did.”</p>
+
+<p>In the meanwhile the new Queen heard Mass, and
+made no change in religious observance, but she
+turned her back upon Bonner when he went to greet
+her with the other Bishops, and took care to show
+that, Catholic or Protestant, she was not going to be
+the submissive tool of either Spain or France, though
+she professed a desire to be friendly with both.
+“These people,” wrote Feria, “try to make it known
+everywhere that your Majesty will have no more influence
+here than if you had not married the late Queen,
+and they persuade the present Queen not to be intimate
+with me. As she is much taken up with the people,
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_184">[184]</span>she does as they wish her to do, and treats foreigners
+slightingly. I have therefore decided to go slowly
+until things settle down and I see who takes the lead.
+Up to the present nothing is certain, and every one
+talks as his wishes lead him. I wonder they have
+not sent me crazy. The whole point is the husband
+she chooses, and we must try by money arrangements
+that he shall be one agreeable to your Majesty.”</p>
+
+<p>Elizabeth declined to receive personally either Feria
+or Dassonleville until she approached London, though
+Feria sent her an amiable message by Lady Clinton
+when she arrived at the Charter House, and a splendid
+ring from Philip by Controller Parry. At the
+Charter House on the following day the ambassador
+first saluted the Queen. He was a gallant, handsome
+gentleman, one of the first nobles in Spain; and
+Elizabeth was most gracious to him, taking off her
+glove as soon as he entered the room, in order that
+he might kiss her hand. The chamber was crowded
+with people, and it was, of course, no time for political
+business. He was only in England, he assured her,
+in order to serve her and let her royal brother-in-law
+know how best he might gratify her wishes, so as to
+help forward the good understanding already existing.
+Feria ventured to touch lightly upon religion, hoping
+that she would be careful on that point; but to this
+she gave a broad reply, which Feria thought equivocal.
+When he left her she had almost allayed his fears, so
+fine was her diplomacy, and he sent her that day by
+Lady Clinton two more rings that had belonged to
+Mary—“as I saw she was so fond of her jewels, and
+I thought best to give her even the poorest of them.”</p>
+
+<p>He saw her again three days afterwards at Somerset
+House, where she was staying, and told her that
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_185">[185]</span>a truce had been settled between France and Spain
+during the peace negotiations. She showed her
+suspicions in a moment, thinking that the intention
+was to isolate her and leave her at hostilities with
+France. By means of Cecil, however, Feria persuaded
+her that her fears were unfounded; and in
+another conversation she exerted all her blandishments
+upon him to convince him that her leanings
+were not towards the French, whilst he further
+delighted her by telling her that he had at Whitehall
+and at her disposal a casket of jewels that had
+belonged to her sister. In this sort of intercourse
+Elizabeth was a match for any one living. It was
+not until Feria tried to pledge her to anything that
+he found out his powerlessness. He had occupied
+the royal residence called Durham Place, in the
+Strand, as a dwelling house, but he had also apartments
+at Whitehall, and he tried hard to obtain a
+renewal of these, “although I am much afraid they
+will not give it to me. I have little chance of talking
+to people unless I am inside the Palace, and they
+are so suspicious of me that, as the late Chancellor
+(Heath) plainly told me, nobody dares to speak to
+me.... They are very glad to be free of your
+Majesty, as though you had done them harm instead
+of good. Although in several of my letters to your
+Majesty I have said how small a party you have
+here, I am never satisfied that I have said enough to
+describe things as they really are. I am so isolated
+from them that I am much embarrassed and puzzled
+to get the means of discovering what is going on; for
+truly they run away from me as if I were the devil.
+The best way will be for me to get my foot into the
+Palace, so as to speak oftener with the Queen, as she
+is a woman very fond of argument.”</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_186">[186]</span></p>
+
+<p>The great question for the Spaniards was Elizabeth’s
+marriage. If she married a Protestant or a
+man open to French influence, the effect upon
+Spanish interests might be disastrous. The gossip
+on the subject at Court shifted from day to day—sometimes
+an English suitor, sometimes Prince Eric,
+sometimes one of the Archdukes, Philip’s cousins,
+being the favourite. Savoy was always rejected by
+public voice, because of the fear that he might
+drag England into war with France to recover his
+dominions. None of the suitors mentioned except
+Savoy would have suited Spanish ends. The Archdukes,
+if they would accept the absolute dictation of
+their cousin Philip, would have been the least objectionable
+of the foreign Princes: but Philip was not
+on very good terms with the Austrian branch of his
+family at this time; for he was still sore about the
+succession to the Empire, and the Archdukes were
+too much dependent upon the Lutherans to please
+him. So the conviction grew in Feria’s mind that
+the only satisfactory solution would be for Philip to
+marry Elizabeth himself. He proposed to appeal to
+her pride, and to suggest that it would be beneath
+her to match less splendidly than her sister. Little
+did either he or his master understand the subtle
+mind with which they had to deal. Elizabeth was,
+of course, anxious to keep on good terms with them,
+and indeed to restore England to its former position
+as the balancing power, but, smile and coquette as
+she might, she would never allow herself to be drawn
+into a position from which she could not retreat.</p>
+
+<p>Feria—impatient, scornful, and proud—began to tire
+of this inconclusive dallying, especially as he saw,
+both at Court and outside, that the Protestants were
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_187">[187]</span>growing bolder, and the Queen herself was relaxing
+her orthodox observance. He complained bitterly
+to Philip that everything was hidden from him, and
+that he could learn nothing, though the Queen said
+that he knew too much about English affairs; that
+he was proud, and that she would be glad if he were
+recalled. “I am afraid,” he wrote, “that one fine
+day we shall find this woman married, and I shall be
+the last man to learn anything about it.... I overlook
+many things and try not to take offence or to
+appear inquisitive; but their enmity and evil consciences
+make them so suspicious of me that they
+think I know everything, and in return for all my
+efforts to please, I believe that they would like to see
+me thrown into the river—that is to say, the Queen
+and her friends would—for the Catholics and goodly
+people are glad that your Majesty should gain ground
+here.”</p>
+
+<p>The fear that Elizabeth would slip through their
+fingers was accentuated for the Spaniards by the idea
+that her proceedings in religion might induce the Pope
+to listen to French prompting and excommunicate her,
+declaring her throne forfeit to the next Catholic heir,
+Mary of Scotland, Dauphiness of France. Anything
+would have suited Philip better than that, and
+it appears to have been this consideration which
+finally moved him to dazzle the new Queen, and
+cut out all the other suitors by proposing formally
+to become her husband himself. Elizabeth had, of
+course, in her two previous conversations with Feria,
+understood his veiled allusions to the subject; and
+when he had pressed his demand for rooms in the
+Palace of Whitehall, Elizabeth, with prudish modesty,
+sent word by Cecil that, as she was unmarried and
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_188">[188]</span>Feria might be her suitor, it would be improper for
+him to sleep under the same roof. Feria, recognising
+the absurdity of the alleged reason, believed that the
+refusal was owing to French intrigue, and urged his
+master to act promptly. “Your Majesty must get
+the affair into your own grasp. We must look to it
+at once that the King of France does not get in and
+spoil the crop that your Majesty has sown here.”
+Thus abjured, Philip took the plunge, once more in a
+pure spirit of martyrdom—not this time on account
+of disparity of age or lack of attraction on the part
+of his bride-elect, but rather because of her doubtful
+orthodoxy.</p>
+
+<p>It is difficult to understand how so sagacious a man
+as Philip can have been so blind to the character of his
+sister-in-law as to have believed that an offer made
+in the spirit displayed in his letter to his ambassador
+could have been accepted by her. On 10th January,
+1559, the King wrote thus to Feria: “I highly
+approve of the course you have adopted in persuading
+her and the Council that it is not to her
+interest to marry a subject. As regards myself, if
+she should broach the subject to you, you should
+treat it in such a way as neither to accept nor reject
+the suggestion entirely. In a matter of such grave
+importance it was necessary for me to take counsel
+and consider it maturely in all its bearings, before
+I sent you my decision. Many great obstacles
+present themselves, and it is difficult for me to
+reconcile my conscience to it, as I am obliged to
+reside in my other dominions, and consequently
+could not be much in England, which, apparently,
+is what they fear; and also because the Queen has
+not been sound in religion, and it would not look
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_189">[189]</span>well for me to marry her unless she were a Catholic.
+Besides this, such a marriage would appear like
+entering upon a perpetual war with France, seeing
+the claims that the Queen of Scots has to the English
+Crown. The urgent need for my presence in Spain,
+which is greater than I can say here, and the heavy
+expense I should be put to in England by reason of
+the costly entertainment necessary to the people there,
+together with the fact that my Treasury is so utterly
+exhausted as to be unable to meet the most pressing
+ordinary expenditure, much less new and onerous
+burdens: bearing in mind these and many other
+difficulties no less grave, ... I nevertheless cannot
+lose sight of the enormous importance of such a match
+to Christianity and the preservation of religion, which
+has been restored in England by the help of God.
+Seeing the importance that the country should not
+relapse into its former errors, which would cause to
+our neighbouring dominions serious dangers and
+difficulties, I have decided to put aside all other
+considerations which might be urged against it, and
+am resolved to render this service to God, and offer
+to marry the Queen of England; and I will use
+every possible effort to effect this, if it can be done
+on the conditions that will be explained to you. The
+first and most important is that you should satisfy
+yourself that the Queen will profess the same religion
+that I do, the same that I ever shall hold, and that
+she will persevere in the same and uphold it in the
+country, doing with that end all that may appear
+necessary to me. She will have to obtain secret
+absolution from the Pope and the necessary dispensation,
+so that when I marry her she will be a
+Catholic, which she has not hitherto been. In this
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_190">[190]</span>way it is evident and manifest that I am serving the
+Lord in marrying her, and that she has been converted
+by my act. You will not propose any
+conditions until you see how the Queen is disposed
+towards the matter itself; and mark well that you
+must first broach the subject alone, as she has
+already opened the door to such an approach.”&#x2060;<a id="FNanchor_138" href="#Footnote_138" class="fnanchor">[138]</a>
+Later Philip mentions that the clause in his marriage
+treaty with Mary granting Flanders to the issue of
+the marriage could not be conceded in the case of
+Elizabeth.</p>
+
+<p>There are few letters extant that reveal so clearly
+as this does the character of Philip. As he points
+out in his long preamble, the objections to the match
+are numerous and grave. Elizabeth was of doubtful
+orthodoxy, excommunicate and officially declared a
+bastard, the daughter of a woman whom Catholic
+Spaniards looked upon as the personification of evil,
+and yet to marry her the proudest monarch on earth
+and the champion of the Church omnipotent was
+ready to salve his conscience, sacrifice personal desires
+and lavish upon a people he loathed the money wrung
+painfully from the Castilian subjects that he loved.
+The talk of his sacrifice to God no doubt was sincerely
+uttered and believed by himself, because he ever
+identified his political aims with the cause of the
+Almighty; but the real reason for his willingness to
+marry Elizabeth in spite of everything was primarily
+to prevent England from slipping away from his grasp
+to the irreparable injury of his cause. If England
+became a Protestant power under Elizabeth, he
+foresaw that it would reinforce the elements in his own
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_191">[191]</span>dominions with which his great struggle was even now
+visible on the horizon; if it became Catholic under
+Mary Stuart, matters would be still worse for him,
+because his great rival France would then hold the
+whip hand over him for ever from across the Channel.
+It was a dire predicament for a proud, devout monarch
+to find himself in, and of the two great evils that
+threatened, Philip proposed to choose the lesser in
+marrying Elizabeth “for the greater glory of God.”</p>
+
+<p>But it takes two persons to make a marriage, and
+Elizabeth, unlike her sister, had no notion of allowing
+herself and England to be made the tools of another’s
+ambitions, for she had ambitions of her own, and in
+most cases they were not identical with those of her
+brother-in-law. In one particular alone they coincided,
+namely, in the need for excluding the French from
+gaining control of England by means of Mary Stuart
+or otherwise, and this was the point that restrained
+Philip from proceeding to extremities with Elizabeth
+for thirty years of provocation. Feria, who was in
+closer touch with the progress of affairs in England
+than his master, must have seen the impracticability
+of proposing for Elizabeth’s hand in the spirit of his
+instructions, and, although he saw her in the little
+chamber at Whitehall on the eve of the opening of
+Parliament on the 25th January, where she chatted
+very affably with him, he did not venture to mention
+the question of marriage, as he had been told that
+Parliament would press her to choose a husband, and
+thought that he had better wait until then. But Philip
+was impatient, the English Peace Commissioners at
+Cateau Cambresis, who had now been joined by Lord
+William Howard, were standing out firmly for the
+restoration of Calais as a condition of the general
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_192">[192]</span>peace.&#x2060;<a id="FNanchor_139" href="#Footnote_139" class="fnanchor">[139]</a> If Elizabeth showed herself ready to become
+Philip’s wife and the obedient tool of his policy, he
+was willing to make a stand too on the subject of
+Calais; but he was determined not to be kept at war
+for the sake of the English if Elizabeth persevered
+in her proposed Parliamentary action with regard to
+religious reform, and he peremptorily instructed Feria
+to remonstrate earnestly with her on the subject, and
+to tell her from him, “as a good and true brother,
+who really wishes her well, both on account of our
+relationship and because I wish to see her firmly
+established on the throne, that I warn her to ponder
+deeply the evils which may result to England, particularly
+so early in her reign, from any change in
+religion.... You will enforce this by all the good
+arguments and persuasions that you can employ, ...
+but if you can obtain no success in that way you will
+consider whether it will be well to press the Queen by
+saying that if this change is made, all idea of my
+marriage with her must be broken off. If she has any
+thoughts that way this may be effective.”&#x2060;<a id="FNanchor_140" href="#Footnote_140" class="fnanchor">[140]</a>&#x2060;</p>
+
+<figure class="figcenter illowp58" id="illus06" style="max-width: 34.375em;">
+  <img class="w100" src="images/illus06.jpg" alt="">
+  <figcaption>
+    <p>QUEEN ELIZABETH</p>
+    <p>FROM A PAINTING BY ZUCCHERO IN THE NATIONAL PORTRAIT GALLERY</p>
+  </figcaption>
+</figure>
+
+<p>Feria was in a quandary, for he knew how impossible
+it was, seeing Elizabeth’s temper, to deal with her in
+this way. After two or three inconclusive interviews
+with the Queen, in which the question of the religious
+changes was pressed and the marriage broadly hinted
+at, Feria came to close quarters with her. She began
+with her usual professions of disinclination to marry
+at all, and was proceeding, as he feared, to decline
+her brother-in-law’s proposal, when the ambassador
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_193">[193]</span>stopped her and said he did not want an answer then.
+After some coquettish verbal fencing she promised him
+that she would give him a good answer if she gave
+him one at all. And then came the serious part of the
+business. Howard had written to her that Alba had
+said that they (the Spaniards) could not stand out for
+Calais any longer, but must make peace in any case.&#x2060;<a id="FNanchor_141" href="#Footnote_141" class="fnanchor">[141]</a>&#x2060;</p>
+
+<p>Elizabeth worked herself up into a rage about this,
+and began to storm about Mary of Scotland’s claims
+upon England. She was not so poor that she could
+not get what money and soldiers she needed to hold
+her own, she said. Her people were all grumbling,
+she declared, at the waste of money upon the fleet for
+Philip’s service and other heavy expenditure the late
+Queen had incurred for him; and Feria had much ado
+to enforce his view that England owed a deep debt
+of gratitude to Philip, and the unreasonableness of
+expecting that he would keep at war with France for
+the sake of a single town like Calais. He was afraid
+even to speak about the religious point for fear of
+exacerbating their relations: “Yet, although I plainly
+see her going to perdition, it seems to me that if the
+marriage can be carried through, the rest will soon be
+arranged in accordance with the glory of God and the
+wishes of your Majesty. If the marriage do not take
+place, all I could say to the Queen about religion would
+be of little avail, as she is so badly advised by the
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_194">[194]</span>heretics who surround her, and it might even prejudice
+the principal matter” (<i>i.e.</i>, the marriage).</p>
+
+<p>Events thereafter moved apace. To the Queen’s
+indignation she was forced to consent to a peace with
+France, postponing the restitution of Calais for eight
+years, to be followed by a peace with Scotland. The
+Act of Supremacy and the Act of Uniformity were
+passed; and every day, notwithstanding Elizabeth’s
+diplomatic professions of attachment to Spain and its
+King, the hold of the latter over England became
+less powerful. Philip had to make up his mind rapidly
+after the religious changes in the English Parliament
+had been made. It was clear to him then that Elizabeth
+would be no fit instrument to his ends. Feria
+was telling him hotly that “the only way to deal with
+these heretics is sword in hand,” and Alba, in
+Flanders, was for coercing Elizabeth before she grew
+strong enough to resist Spain and the English Catholics
+combined.</p>
+
+<p>But Philip hated war, and had a supreme belief in
+his own diplomatic methods. He was face to face,
+moreover, with a new development. Always before
+France had been the insatiable rival of his house, and
+France had been a solid instrument in the hands of its
+King. But the Reformation was already confusing
+the traditional boundaries. Henry II. was growing
+apprehensive of the increasing spread of Calvinism in
+his own dominions, and a solution after Philip’s own
+heart was devised by the Churchmen that drew the
+Catholic rivals together to face the new danger of
+Protestantism throughout Europe. England was no
+longer to be the balancing power between them, but
+the enemy of both, so long as she remained Protestant.
+To cement this hopeful attempt to combine Europe
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_195">[195]</span>politically on new lines Philip was to marry the eldest
+daughter of France, the Princess Elizabeth of Valois,
+who, so long as he had hopes of marrying Elizabeth,
+had been destined for his only son Don Carlos.</p>
+
+<p>The close union of France and Spain caused, as
+usual, a wave of alarm to pass over England. Paget
+and the Spanish party in Elizabeth’s Court were for
+continuing the war against France at any cost and
+clinging to Philip as the sole chance of safety&#x2060;<a id="FNanchor_142" href="#Footnote_142" class="fnanchor">[142]</a>&#x2060;; and,
+although the Queen and Cecil would not go so far as
+that, they did their best to mollify Feria and his
+master. When the ambassador saw the Queen on
+the 7th April, 1559 (the day that the news of the signing
+of the peace of Cateau Cambresis came to London)
+she was pouting and coquettishly aggrieved that Philip
+should have engaged himself to be married to any one
+but her, as she had given him no answer yet. Feria
+retorted crossly that the King could not wait four
+months for her answer, and when Cecil told him that
+they were quite willing to continue the war against
+France if Philip liked, the ambassador answered him
+rudely, and “I left them that day as bitter as gall.”
+Again and again the angry ambassador complained
+and remonstrated with the Queen about the religious
+changes and the licence now taken by the people.
+But she outwitted him at every point, kept up an
+elaborate pretence of negotiations to marry one of the
+Austrian Archdukes, who would depend entirely on
+Philip, and personally assured Feria that she was as
+good a Catholic as her father, the only point upon
+which she differed from the Spaniards being the
+supremacy of the Pope.</p>
+
+<p>Thus England freed herself from Spanish tutelage
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_196">[196]</span>within six months of Elizabeth’s accession. Feria
+said she “was a daughter of the devil and her chief
+ministers the greatest scoundrels and heretics in the
+land,” and when he went back to join his master in
+Flanders he breathed fire and slaughter against
+England and the Queen, whose diplomacy had stultified
+all his efforts. He had done his best to persuade
+Philip to pluck a quarrel with England that should
+give him an excuse for armed intervention, the deposition
+of Elizabeth by the Pope, and the patronage of
+Catharine Grey as a pretender for Elizabeth’s throne
+with the aid of the English Catholics, who, he assured
+Philip, were all in his favour.&#x2060;<a id="FNanchor_143" href="#Footnote_143" class="fnanchor">[143]</a> But Philip thought that
+he had found a better way than by war and rejected
+the advice of his fiery councillors. To represent him
+in England there remained at Elizabeth’s Court the
+best possible instrument that could have been selected
+in the circumstances, the Bishop of Aquila, Alvaro de
+la Quadra, a supple, patient, unscrupulous old ecclesiastic,
+who had lived long in Italy and was an adept at
+sly, stealthy diplomacy, which so cleverly used religion
+as the stalking-horse of politics. Bishop Jewel calls
+him “a clever, crafty, old fox”; and he needed all his
+cunning, for his task for the next five years until it
+broke his heart was to keep Elizabeth, heretic though
+she might be, from joining either the Protestants or
+the French against Philip.</p>
+
+<p>For even before the ink was dry that ratified the
+peace of Cateau Cambresis, before the pompous
+ceremonies in England, France, and Spain that celebrated
+it were finished, a stroke of Fate had rendered
+the union between the two great Catholic Powers
+unstable, and old political traditions were reasserting
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_197">[197]</span>themselves. I have told elsewhere&#x2060;<a id="FNanchor_144" href="#Footnote_144" class="fnanchor">[144]</a> of the ill-fated
+feast in Paris, when stern Alba wedded in June, 1559,
+as proxy for his master, the beautiful Valois Princess
+of fourteen. How her father, the gallant Henry, was
+stricken down mortally at the joust that followed, and
+how the rise of his long-neglected wife, Catharine de
+Medici, able and ambitious, soon made the Catholic
+League a hollow pretence. She needed not the dominance
+of the Guises and their Catholic friends, but so
+nicely to balance them against the Huguenots that she
+herself might hold the scale. She did not send her
+sweet daughter to Spain as a pledge for the extirpation
+of Protestantism root and branch, as had been
+intended, but to cajole Philip into helping her personally
+to hold her own as ruler of France, whichever
+faction was paramount, and to win, if possible, the heir
+of Spain for her younger daughter, so that her hold
+over the country might be perpetuated.</p>
+
+<p>The accession also of young Francis II. and Mary
+Stuart to the throne of France, under the dominion of
+their ambitious Guise uncles, had driven a great wedge
+into the unity of the Catholic League. The Guises,
+who led the Catholic party in France, were now for a
+short time masters, on behalf of the young King and
+his wife, of the national resources, and were prepared
+to use them in furthering their Scottish niece’s claims
+to the English throne. This naturally drew Philip
+more to the side of Elizabeth, however perverse she
+might be, and, from the very first, rendered abortive
+the Catholic League secretly cemented by the treaty of
+Cateau Cambresis. When the death of Francis II.,
+after his short reign, threw the Guises into the background
+and made Catharine de Medici Regent of
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_198">[198]</span>France, matters were hardly improved. Philip was
+always a bad hand at playing another’s game, and
+though his young French wife lived happily with him,
+for he was a good husband, the purpose of her going
+to Spain was never achieved, and Philip was as
+anxious after his French marriage as before it to
+prevent his mother-in-law and his English sister-in-law
+from making common cause against him. They,
+knowing this as well as he, could, and did, always
+checkmate or paralyse him when they pleased by
+simulating friendship with each other, either by
+marriage talk or by a pretence of common interest.
+Whilst Catharine de Medici lived this was the
+problem of Europe, and to Philip it proved an insoluble
+one.</p>
+
+<p>Feria and Alba were for ever advocating the high
+hand with Elizabeth, but Philip knew that his hollow
+union with France had drawn all Protestants together,
+so that if he aided the English Catholics to depose
+Elizabeth and crush Protestantism in her country, not
+only would Catholic France be against him, but the
+Lutheran Germans would be disturbed, and perhaps
+he might let loose the storm, of which the mutterings
+were already audible, over his own Netherlands. So,
+in spite of the Bishop of Aquila’s soft hints and
+Feria’s warlike advice, Philip decided, notwithstanding
+Elizabeth’s religious recalcitrancy, upon a policy of
+palliation and suavity in England. “You must,” he
+instructed his ambassador, “keep mainly in view by
+all means to avoid a rupture. I have already pointed
+out the importance of this, but it is so great that I
+cannot be satisfied without repeating it many times.”
+But yet he was ready even thus early if Elizabeth’s
+subjects attacked her for her religious measures to
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_199">[199]</span>take full advantage of the opportunity for his own
+advantage, and so to prevent the French from establishing
+themselves in England. With these pacific
+instructions, therefore, he sent the great sum of
+60,000 crowns “to gain friends,” and says, “I have
+also ordered, in case of need, that money shall be
+raised to fit out a fleet at short notice, so that it
+may be ready to carry men over to England if
+required.”</p>
+
+<p>The difference between Feria’s arrogant methods
+and the Bishop’s blandness was soon seen in his intercourse
+with the Queen. Of her and her advisers in his
+letters to Philip he has nothing but violent abuse; but
+he was all tolerant kindness when he was with her,
+and got quite friendly with the “heretic” Cecil. He
+was lodged in Durham Place, as Feria had been, and
+was in close touch with Lady Mary Sidney and her
+brother, Lord Robert Dudley, who was soon to be
+created Earl of Leicester. During all the comedy of
+pretended marriage negotiations with the Archduke
+Charles the Bishop dexterously aided or hindered the
+progress as the interests of Philip seemed to dictate.
+If the Archduke was to come as a thoroughgoing
+Catholic and obedient servant of Spain well and good,
+but the moment there was any talk of his making
+religious concessions or appearing under Lutheran
+auspices, then the wily Bishop smiled upon the
+perennial second string of Lord Robert Dudley. In
+the meanwhile he was hand in glove with the discontented
+and dismayed English Catholics, gaining
+friends amongst them by money promises and blandishments,
+whilst his spies were busy discovering the
+weak points on the East Coast towards Flanders,
+making lists of the Catholic and disaffected English
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_200">[200]</span>gentry, and whispering to them of the armed aid that
+in case of need would be sent by the Catholic King.
+To Philip the Bishop wrote often with affected
+humility, but with studied significance, saying how
+surprised the English Catholics were that he made no
+move to help them. “Your Majesty,” he wrote, “is
+the only hope of the godly and the dread of the wicked,
+if the latter are not to be allowed time to combat and
+weaken the Catholic party.”&#x2060;<a id="FNanchor_145" href="#Footnote_145" class="fnanchor">[145]</a>&#x2060;</p>
+
+<p>But Philip was powerless to stir a finger to help
+them, much as they might cry to him. The death of
+Henry II. and the accession of Mary Stuart’s husband,
+as has been pointed out, had suddenly changed the
+situation. The claims of the Queen of Scots to the
+English throne, and the despatch of a strong French
+force to Leith to succour the Regent Mary of Lorraine,
+hardly pressed as she was by the rebels subsidised by
+Elizabeth, precipitated the eventuality that Philip
+dreaded most—a war in Scotland between France and
+the Queen of England. If in such a war the latter
+were beaten by the Guises, then farewell to Spanish
+influence in England, however Catholic the country
+might become. Yet Philip dared not fight on the
+behalf of heresy against the Catholic French element
+and the Guises, or the Huguenots would become all-powerful;
+whilst if he interfered in England at all to
+Elizabeth’s detriment his action would draw together
+in close unity the powerful Protestant party in
+England, the majority of the Scots who were
+Reformers, the Huguenots of France, who were
+panting for revenge on the Guises, and the Lutherans
+of Germany and Holland. With such a combination
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_201">[201]</span>as this behind her Elizabeth might adopt a stronger
+anti-Catholic attitude than ever.</p>
+
+<p>But what Philip dreaded even more than this was
+the encouragement that such a strong combination of
+Protestants would give to the Flemings, who were
+already straining in the leash to escape from the
+Spanish religious system. Philip sent envoys to
+England and France to urge, both by persuasion and
+threats, that the peace should be kept (March, 1560),
+but, as usual, his step was too late to prevent hostilities.
+The Bishop of Aquila, in his private letters to
+Feria, was scornful of his master’s methods. “If
+these envoys from his Majesty are only coming to talk,
+they will do more harm than good, as the Catholics
+here expect much more than that.... The Queen is
+greatly alarmed, and this is the time to do what ought
+to have been done before; but if we are always to be
+on the defensive and to palliate everything, I can only
+pray for patience, though I well know we shall never
+have such an opportunity again. All here are with us,
+and the very heretics are sick of it.”&#x2060;<a id="FNanchor_146" href="#Footnote_146" class="fnanchor">[146]</a> The Bishop
+dared not write in this strain to Philip, though he said
+as much as he could; but the King saw, if his advisers
+did not, that he could not take up arms against
+Elizabeth without playing the French game, and it
+was equally impossible for him to fight his Catholic
+French allies on behalf of the heretic Queen. All he
+could do, therefore, was talk.</p>
+
+<p>The result of the short war in Scotland was favourable
+to Elizabeth, and the pressing danger passed;
+but Philip’s threat to aid the French if she insisted
+upon continuing the hostilities brought home to
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_202">[202]</span>Elizabeth and her minister that the Catholic League
+was still a danger to them. An attempt was made to
+persuade the Spaniards that the Queen would really
+marry the Archduke at once and follow Philip’s
+advice, the object being to weaken the friendship
+between Spain and France; but Lord Robert
+Dudley’s philandering was now so open, and Elizabeth
+so obviously fond of him, that the new pretence about
+the Archduke and her sudden Catholic professions
+deceived nobody.&#x2060;<a id="FNanchor_147" href="#Footnote_147" class="fnanchor">[147]</a> Even Cecil lost heart at the
+difficulties created by this infatuation of the Queen for
+Dudley, and the Spanish ambassador chuckled with
+delight that the “heretics” were falling out amongst
+themselves and the Catholic cause was looking
+brighter.</p>
+
+<p>As soon as the death of Dudley’s wife set him free
+he made an attempt, which for a time hoodwinked
+Bishop Quadra, to gain the support of Spain for his
+suit, and even wily Philip believed that England was
+going to fall under his sway again by means of the
+Queen’s lover, a belief that proved that he still failed
+to gauge Elizabeth’s true character. The intermediary
+in this case was Sir Henry Sidney, who, being a
+kinsman of the English Countess of Feria and the
+husband of Robert Dudley’s sister, was <i>persona grata</i>
+at Durham House. He came to Bishop Quadra late
+in January, 1561, and after much circumlocution
+remarked that he was surprised that it had not been
+suggested to Philip that the opportunity offered “for
+gaining over Lord Robert by extending a hand to
+him now in the matter of his marriage with the
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_203">[203]</span>Queen, and he would thereafter serve and obey your
+Majesty like one of your own vassals.” The Bishop
+was cool about it, for Dudley’s character was bad, and
+many evil tales were afloat about his wife’s recent
+death. The King of Spain, said the Bishop, had no
+need to win the Queen of England’s goodwill. She
+had not, moreover, shown herself very ready hitherto
+to take his advice upon anything, and it was not sure
+that she would do so in the matter of her marriage
+with Lord Robert. Sidney admitted that the rumours
+about the foul play upon Amy Robsart were generally
+believed, but he said they were untrue. The Queen,
+however, was really in love with Robert, and was
+most anxious to settle the religious question by the
+help of him as her husband. Yes, said the Bishop,
+that no doubt is very praiseworthy and necessary;
+but he did not see why the religious matter should be
+mixed up with so mundane a business as marrying
+Dudley. It ought to be undertaken whether the
+Queen was married or single. Sidney quite agreed.
+Matters in the country were in a bad way, he admitted,
+but the Queen and Robert were anxious to put things
+right, and he swore most solemnly that they intended
+to restore the Catholic religion in England by means
+of a General Council of the Church, in which England
+would join if King Philip would patronise the bridegroom
+and urge Elizabeth to marry him. The Bishop
+reminded Sidney that he had been led astray several
+times before by such talk when the Queen wanted for
+her own ends to appear friendly to Spain. It was,
+moreover, very improper to make religion the excuse.
+If Lord Robert repented of his heresy and wanted to
+recant there was nothing to prevent him from doing so
+without bargaining about it, and the interview ended
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_204">[204]</span>by Sidney’s promising to bring Lord Robert himself
+to Durham House to satisfy the Bishop of his <i>bonâ
+fides</i>.</p>
+
+<p>In his letter to the King the Churchman expresses
+himself as being much shocked at the barefacedness
+of the proposal; but he goes on to say that he believes
+that it is only by this means that the Queen can be
+brought round to the Spanish side. The gossip
+about her and Dudley, he says, is so scandalous that
+she will not dare to marry him without some strong
+support; and there was no price she would not pay to
+obtain it. Such a tendency as that shown in Sidney’s
+proposal would, of course, be strenuously opposed by
+most of Elizabeth’s advisers; and Paget, with Cecil
+and his friends, attempted a diversion by strongly advocating
+a close alliance with France, where the young
+King Francis II. had recently died, and Catharine de
+Medici had become supreme. The Dudley intrigue
+with Spain, however, went on, though probably, as we
+see now, without the full knowledge of the Queen.
+Lord Robert at length came with Sidney to see the
+Bishop on the 13th February, and professed his readiness
+to be the humble servant of King Philip if he
+would recommend the Queen to marry him. Quadra
+was cautious. He had no special instructions, he
+said, and the King was now in Spain, a long way off;
+but he would promise Dudley that he would, the next
+time he saw the Queen, urge her to marry; and if she
+mentioned any particular person he (the Bishop) would
+enlarge upon Lord Robert’s good qualities and King
+Philip’s affection for him.</p>
+
+<p>Two days later the smooth-tongued old Bishop
+found himself alone with the Queen, and ventured to
+say how glad he was to hear that her marriage was
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_205">[205]</span>seriously under discussion at last. If she wished to
+consult the King of Spain on the matter the Bishop
+was very much at her service, though no instructions
+from Spain had been sent to him. The Queen talked
+wide of the subject for some time; but she said at
+last that she knew she was no angel, and would make
+the Bishop her confessor. She would not deny that
+she had some affection for Lord Robert for his good
+qualities, but had not decided to marry him or any one
+else. But she saw every day the necessity for her
+marriage, and that to satisfy the English humour it was
+desirable that she should marry an Englishman. What
+would the King of Spain think, she asked, if she
+married one of her servants? The Bishop said he did
+not know, but would ask if she directed him to do so;
+and then he launched out into warm praise of Dudley.
+Elizabeth promised to do nothing without Philip’s
+advice, and told the Bishop that when the time came
+she would speak to him on the subject. The Bishop,
+in relating the interview, says that he humoured her
+thus “because he saw the heretics so busy forming
+combinations with England, France, Scotland, and
+Germany, and, above all, because your Majesty’s
+neighbouring States are so pressed that a perverse
+decision of this woman might prejudice them, though
+she herself were ruined by it.”&#x2060;<a id="FNanchor_148" href="#Footnote_148" class="fnanchor">[148]</a>&#x2060;</p>
+
+<p>The Bishop, for all his sanctimonious horror that
+religion should be used in political bargaining, was
+really quite willing to carry through the deal and
+to patronise the marriage of Elizabeth and Dudley
+if he were assured of the payment. That Dudley
+was ready to promise anything and everything is also
+certain, but it is more than doubtful whether Elizabeth
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_206">[206]</span>was aware of what he was promising. It suited her
+at the moment to meet the Catholic league between
+France and Spain, hollow as it was, by threatening
+combinations of Protestants; whilst at the same time,
+as a second string to her bow, cajoling the Spaniards
+into the idea that she was willing to be reconciled to
+them, and had Catholic leanings. When Bishop
+Quadra saw Dudley the next day Lord Robert was
+profuse in his thanks, for he knew from the Queen
+word for word what had passed. It had only been
+timidity that had prevented the Queen from deciding
+on the spot, he said, and he begged the Bishop to
+revert to the subject when he saw her again. His
+promises knew no bounds. Everything in England,
+even religion, he said, should be put into the hands of
+King Philip; and if the sending of a representative to
+the Council of the Church were not enough he would
+go himself. To this the Bishop replied that he would
+do his best to forward matters, but again, in shocked
+tones, he begged Lord Robert not to mention religion
+in the matter on any account. What the Queen and
+Dudley did about <i>that</i> concerned their own consciences.
+Of course the Catholic King would be delighted to see
+all these religious dissensions settled, but it should not
+be a matter of bargain. “I am thus cautious with
+these people, because if they are playing false, which
+is quite possible, I do not wish to give them the opportunity
+of saying that we offered them your Majesty’s
+favour in return for their changing their religion.”</p>
+
+<p>At the same time the Bishop urged upon his master
+that the moment had now come for action: either this
+bargain must be struck with Dudley, or help must be
+given to the enemies of the existing <i>régime</i> to revolutionise
+England. “To let these affairs drift at the
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_207">[207]</span>mercy of chance neither secures England to us nor
+punishes evil, and must end in disadvantage to your
+Majesty.” Philip was just as sanctimonious in profession
+and as pliable in practice as his ambassador.
+“Our principal aim,” he wrote in reply, “is directed
+to the service of our Lord, the maintenance of religion,
+and the settlement and pacification of England, and,
+as we see that Sidney’s proposals tend to this, and
+further bearing in mind that God if He wills can
+extract good from evil, we have decided that the
+negotiation suggested by Sidney should be listened
+to.” Dudley was to be helped to marry the Queen,
+but “the bargain and its payment must be clearly set
+forth in writing signed by Elizabeth herself, and she
+must give some earnest of her sincerity by liberating
+the Catholics she has in prison, she must undertake
+to send Catholic bishops and ambassadors to the
+Council of the Church, and submit herself unconditionally
+to its decisions. And, besides all this, she
+must begin by giving full toleration to Catholic
+worship.”</p>
+
+<p>This, again, shows that Philip was utterly at sea as
+regards the real condition of England at the time, and
+was still ignorant of Elizabeth’s character and position.
+Such demands as those he formulated as a preliminary
+were utterly out of the question, even as a final concession.
+Before this letter was received in London
+the insincerity of Elizabeth in the matter began to
+appear. The Earl of Bedford was sent to France,
+ostensibly to condole with Catharine for the death of
+Francis II.; but also to suggest that the French
+bishops—and especially those of Huguenot leaning—should
+join her in sending representatives to the
+Council, but not at Trent, as had been agreed, but
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_208">[208]</span>somewhere else on this side of the Alps. The cleverness
+of this move is apparent. Catharine and Elizabeth
+would in such case seem to be making common cause,
+which would paralyse Philip; and at the same time
+the Catholics in England would be tranquillised with
+the idea that a Council of the Church would settle
+matters to their liking. Catharine, however, did not
+jump at the bait, as just then in the first days of her
+Regency she did not wish to quarrel with her Spanish
+son-in-law, or to drive the Catholic Guises to desperation
+by seeming to join with Elizabeth against them.</p>
+
+<p>As soon as this became evident the English Queen
+grew cool about the Council, much to Dudley’s annoyance,
+who still tried to keep her up to the mark. She
+sent Cecil to the Spanish Bishop, asking him to move
+Philip to write to her recommending her to marry
+an Englishman, hinting at the same time that this
+was in Philip’s interest, as she might otherwise marry
+a foreign enemy of his. Cecil said that her idea was
+to bring Philip’s letter before a committee of peers,
+prelates, and commoners, all friends of Dudley, and
+they would recommend the marriage. This was all very
+well, said the Bishop, but how about Lord Robert’s
+religious pledges? But Cecil had no intention, nor
+probably had the Queen, of carrying out any such
+promises; and this new proposal was really intended
+to upset Dudley’s plan. So, gradually, a barrier of
+limitations and conditions was introduced by Cecil,
+which made the affair impossible. The Anglican and
+Lutheran bishops were to sit in the Council; certain
+points of doctrine must be settled beforehand; the
+Pope or his legate might be President but not ruler of
+the Council; and the place of meeting must be mutually
+agreed upon by all the princes. Dudley alternately
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_209">[209]</span>fumed and sulked at this diversion by his opponents,
+and tried desperately to keep the Spanish Bishop in
+hand. It had, of course, been evident to the latter at
+once that Philip’s attitude as shown in his instructions
+was impossible. “Elizabeth,” he said, “had not
+entered into the business so humbly and submissively
+that he could lay down the law to her and insist upon
+her pledging herself in writing”; besides, it would be
+most unwise to give the “heretics” the opportunity, if
+they were playing false, of proving that they had got
+Philip to bargain for his political help in return for
+religious concessions.</p>
+
+<figure class="figcenter illowp58" id="illus07" style="max-width: 34.375em;">
+  <img class="w100" src="images/illus07.jpg" alt="">
+  <figcaption>
+    <p>ROBERT DUDLEY, EARL OF LEICESTER</p>
+    <p>FROM A PAINTING AT THE NATIONAL PORTRAIT GALLERY</p>
+  </figcaption>
+</figure>
+
+<p>In the meanwhile, encouraged by this philandering,
+a Papal Nuncio was hurrying across Europe to be
+ready at a moment’s notice to sail from Flanders to
+England and invite the representatives of Elizabeth
+to the Council of Trent. This Nuncio, the Abbé
+Martinengo, was to be received at Greenwich
+privately, and not to go through the streets of London,
+which it was thought would not be safe. Dudley was
+again in the seventh heaven of blissful anticipation,
+and ready, if he was the Queen’s husband, to lay England
+and the faith he had professed at Philip’s feet.
+He would restore the Catholic Church, he promised,
+the Queen should give a good answer to the Nuncio
+about the Council of the Church, and some of the Protestant
+bishops even, he said, were beginning to waver.
+But Cecil saw which way matters were tending, and
+promptly stepped in with another diversion. Protestant
+feeling in England was already becoming excited at
+the rumour that a Papal Nuncio was on his way to see
+the Queen, and Bishop Quadra found himself a prey
+to intense unpopularity for having, it was said, plotted to
+bring about a Catholic revolution. The Nuncio was
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_210">[210]</span>informed that he would not be allowed to land in
+England (April, 1561), Sidney was hurried off to his
+post in Wales, Dudley retired before the storm, and
+Cecil, triumphant, had the satisfaction of knowing that
+he had prevented England from being dragged into
+Philip’s clutches again by the ambition of a worthless
+courtier, aided by the Queen’s momentary weakness.</p>
+
+<p>Bishop Quadra was deeply mortified by the way in
+which he had been misled, and became more desirous
+than ever that strong measures should be taken to aid
+the Catholics to rebel against Elizabeth. After unsuccessfully
+approaching the French Huguenots to
+obtain help from them for his marriage with the
+Queen, Dudley had the impudence, in January, 1562, to
+approach Quadra again and offer his servile obedience
+to Spain in return for the aid of King Philip towards
+his marriage; but the bait was stale, for, as the Bishop
+wrote, the Catholics thoroughly distrusted Dudley
+now, and he was of no use any longer as a Spanish
+instrument.</p>
+
+<p>Though Philip had failed again to secure England
+as a satellite, the need for his doing so was as urgent as
+ever, for the Netherlands were seething in discontent,
+the Huguenots in France were being supported for
+the time by the Regent Catharine, and it looked as if
+the stronger coming combination in Europe would not
+be Catholic but Protestant. To counteract this threatening
+state of affairs it was necessary for Philip to try
+a new tack. The massacre of Vassy had precipitated
+the opening of the first war of religion in France
+(March, 1562), and this made it expedient for him to
+strengthen the Guises. So a proposal, upon which,
+when Cardinal Lorraine had made it a year before,
+he had looked upon coldly, was now regarded with
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_211">[211]</span>favour. This was no less than the marriage of the
+widowed Mary Stuart, now in Scotland, and on ill
+terms with Catharine, with Philip’s heir, Don Carlos.
+It was not such a match as the Spanish King in
+ordinary circumstances would have considered adequate
+for his son; but as Mary was the Catholic heiress of
+England, and might by a turn of the wheel become
+Queen of Britain she was a useful countercheck to
+Protestant combinations.</p>
+
+<p>As soon as the project got wind Elizabeth, Catharine
+de Medici, and the Scottish Protestants, led by the
+Earl of Murray, sought an antidote to the threatened
+evil. The Darnley match was positively patronised
+both by Elizabeth and Catharine, and Lethington
+posted off to London eager to negotiate a friendly
+understanding between England and Scotland before
+his Catholic mistress should fall into the marriage
+net of Spain. But the war between Catholics and
+Protestants in France was now blazing fiercely, and
+the Guises were fighting for their lives, unable to help
+their niece or interfere in any way with Elizabeth’s
+game in Scotland. This made her for the time the
+mistress of the situation, and she could afford to deal
+high-handedly with the Queen of Scots, especially after
+the Duke of Guise himself had been assassinated before
+Orleans (February, 1563). She threw all her power
+on the Huguenot side in the struggle, allowing English
+contingents to join in the fight and subsiding Condé
+with money. Mary Stuart’s Protestant advisers had
+tried hard to negotiate an alliance between England
+and Scotland on Protestant lines in conjunction with
+the recognition of Mary as Elizabeth’s heiress under
+the same auspices; and once more Lethington went
+to London, in February, 1563, to urge his point. He
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_212">[212]</span>found the Queen coolly evasive, for she had nothing
+to fear from Mary or her French kinsmen now, and
+she knew that Philip would not dare to attack her or
+interfere forcibly in Scotland whilst the Protestants in
+France were in the ascendant.</p>
+
+<p>Lethington, of course with Mary’s acquiescence,
+then shifted his ground. He and Murray had always
+been strong partisans of England, with the idea of
+securing the succession to Mary of a Protestant
+Britain; but, out of patience at last with this new
+rebuff from Elizabeth, they determined to throw over
+England and Protestantism, and marry Mary to a
+nominee of Philip and defy Elizabeth to do her worst.
+So, at dead of night, again and again, Lethington, the
+Scottish minister, landed from his boat at the dark
+stairs of Durham House, and remained for hours
+closeted with Bishop Quadra. The Bishop himself
+was daily growing more bitter against Elizabeth.
+She had now openly aided the French Protestants
+against the Catholics. She had treated him personally
+with marked contumely, raiding his house on
+the pretext that people other than his own servants
+attended Mass there, for she knew she could do all
+this now with impunity, because Philip could not afford
+to quarrel with her whilst the Catholics in France
+were in a bad way. So the Bishop listened eagerly
+as the Scot told him how the Queen of England
+had deceived his mistress, and now again had evaded
+the question of her succession; how she had artfully
+stepped in by intrigue, and had rendered abortive
+all the negotiations for the marriage of Mary with
+a fitting foreign prince, and had tried to drive her into
+some unworthy marriage. “Had she not better accept
+any marriage that the Queen of England proposes
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_213">[213]</span>for her?” asked Quadra, as a feeler, “if in return
+she obtains her recognition as the heiress of the
+English Crown?” No, replied Lethington, emphatically.
+They had made up their mind that the only
+way was to force Elizabeth, by marrying Mary to a
+powerful Catholic prince, with sufficient force behind
+him to maintain the rights of the Queen of Scots.
+And then, after a little fencing on both sides, he
+proposed that Don Carlos should become King
+Consort of Scotland, and afterwards of Great Britain,
+with Mary for his wife. Mary was, he said, quite
+resolved never to marry a Protestant or to accept
+any husband on the bidding of the Queen of England,
+and if her approaches to Spain were not well
+received she would offer to marry her young brother-in-law,
+Charles IX.</p>
+
+<p>This latter declaration, we may well suppose,
+was only for the purpose of forcing the hand of
+Philip, for the match would certainly not have been
+allowed by Catharine de Medici. The old Bishop,
+aware of this, passed it over with a smile, and
+said that there was nothing the Queen of England
+dreaded more than a marriage between Mary Stuart
+and a friend of Spain. She had been at infinite pains
+lately to make them believe that she was a Catholic,
+but now that her friends the Huguenots were in the
+ascendant she had become less anxious to conciliate
+them. But were not the Scots Protestants too? he
+asked. Lethington, Protestant and friend of Knox
+though he was, minimised the difference between the
+creed of Scotland and Spain. Religion, he assured the
+Spaniard, was not really at the bottom of their trouble
+in Scotland. Both Elizabeth and Catharine, he said,
+were in mortal fear of the marriage of Don Carlos and
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_214">[214]</span>Mary of Scotland, as well they might be; for not only
+would the Prince thus win the most chaste and beautiful
+bride in the world, “but he would also succeed to
+almost universal monarchy by adding to the dominions
+already possessed by your Majesty two entire islands,
+this and Ireland, the possession of which would give
+no trouble whatever, having regard to the attachment
+which the Catholics bear to this marriage and the
+union of England and Scotland.”</p>
+
+<p>Bishop Quadra, well aware of the vast importance
+of such a declaration from one of the leaders of the
+Scottish Protestants, tried to extract precise religious
+pledges from him. But Lethington had said all he
+wished to say in the four hours’ conference, and the
+Bishop, full of encouragement, promised to obtain
+promptly the King’s answer to the proposal. Lethington’s
+next move was to approach the discontented
+English Catholic nobles, already in a ferment at
+Dudley’s insolence and Cecil’s religious policy.
+Almost to a man they assured the Scot of their
+enthusiastic support of a Spanish marriage for Mary
+and the acceptance of the revolutionary changes that
+such a marriage would produce in England. “Only
+let her marry the heir of Spain and we will salute
+her as our leader,” they said. This could only mean
+that with Spanish aid Mary and Carlos were to be
+placed upon the throne of a united Britain, and that
+Philip would regain the paramountcy he had lost.
+Elizabeth’s spies soon got wind of all this, and her
+counter move was a most extraordinary one—no
+other, indeed, than to offer Dudley as Mary’s husband,
+with the assurance of her succession to the English
+Crown after Elizabeth’s death without issue. It was
+a mere feint and never meant seriously by Elizabeth,
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_215">[215]</span>but it divided Scottish opinion and unsettled poor
+Mary herself, and shows how much more than a
+match Elizabeth was for Philip in diplomacy.</p>
+
+<p>Whilst she, with consummate skill and daring, was
+ready with such a diversion as this, the Spanish
+King was pondering, considering, discussing, and
+receiving reports upon every phase of the Scottish
+offer. The opportunity was a supreme one for him,
+and if he had been prompt and bold to seize the chance
+he might have won England and Scotland by this
+means. It is true that Don Carlos was a weak, half-witted
+boy of degenerate type, though this was not
+generally known at the time, but it would have been
+sufficient to betroth him to Mary for his father to have
+gained a right to interfere in Scotland. The Catholics
+of England were on the alert for any such opportunity,
+and the Scots, as we have seen by Lethington’s action,
+were ready to welcome any power strong enough
+to defend their country from the intrigues by which
+Elizabeth sought to sap the independence of their
+ancient realm.</p>
+
+<p>But promptitude was impossible where Philip was
+concerned. It took him three months to answer the
+important letter of Bishop Quadra telling him of
+Lethington’s offer, and when the reply came to London,
+in June, 1563, it was thoroughly characteristic of the
+writer. As usual, he wanted to pledge everybody else
+up to the hilt, whilst himself remaining free behind
+bland generalities. His greatest praise was for the
+Bishop’s prudence in hearing what Lethington had said
+without giving him any plain answer. “And seeing
+that the bringing about of this marriage may perhaps
+be the beginning of a reformation in religious matters
+in England, I have decided to entertain the negotiation
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_216">[216]</span>You will have it conducted in the same way that it
+has been commenced if you consider that safe and
+secret, telling them [the Scots] to inform you of all
+the engagements and understandings they have in
+England; and you, who know how valuable such
+knowledge will be to me, will keep me fully informed
+of everything. You will advise me step by step of
+all that happens, but without settling anything except
+to discover the particulars referred to above, until I
+send you instructions. You may tell them of my
+intentions, but urge them above all to use the utmost
+secrecy in the business and all connected with it, as
+all the benefit to be derived depends absolutely upon
+nothing being heard of it until it is an accomplished
+fact. If it becomes known that I am concerned in
+any such negotiations, the French will be greatly
+alarmed and will spare no efforts to frustrate them—or
+at least to counteract any profitable result that may
+arise. As for that Queen of England and her heretics,
+they are so deeply concerned that it is easy to judge
+what they would do if they heard of it; so, as I say,
+it is absolutely necessary that you should keep secret
+and urge secrecy upon all persons with whom you
+treat.” Philip knew that Cardinal Lorraine was now
+pressing his niece to marry the Archduke Charles,
+Elizabeth’s former suitor; but Lethington had scouted
+him as being useless for their purpose, as being poor
+and powerless, and Philip was willing to cut out his
+own close kinsman if he could thus gain England and
+Scotland for his son, or rather for himself,&#x2060;<a id="FNanchor_149" href="#Footnote_149" class="fnanchor">[149]</a> and above
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_217">[217]</span>all avoid another French domination of Scotland,
+which was threatened by Mary’s pretended willingness
+to marry the King of France.</p>
+
+<p>When Philip’s letter arrived in London the old
+Bishop was under a cloud. He was accused of holding
+communication with Arthur Pole in the Tower.
+It was known that he had been receiving in Durham
+House emissaries of the Irish Catholics; and Cecil’s
+spies reported that suspicious boats came often at
+night to the water gate. To make matters worse,
+one day in May a hanger-on of the Bishop’s household,
+an Italian serving lad, had shot at from the back
+gate of Durham House a Huguenot captain who was
+swaggering down the Strand towards Whitehall.
+The would-be assassin had taken refuge in the house,
+and had sought sanctuary in the Bishop’s own chamber,
+whence he was smuggled away by boat by the servants
+and escaped. Search and violation of diplomatic
+domicile by the officers of the law followed. The
+Bishop’s servants were interrogated, the house itself
+placed in the custody of an officer of the Queen, and
+the old Bishop, with bitterness in his heart, found
+himself shunned by all and powerless.&#x2060;<a id="FNanchor_150" href="#Footnote_150" class="fnanchor">[150]</a>&#x2060;</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_218">[218]</span></p>
+
+<p>So when Philip’s impossible instructions reached the
+Bishop, affairs had changed. Lethington had been
+plainly told by Elizabeth that she was well aware
+that he was plotting to marry his mistress to Don
+Carlos or the Archduke, but that if she married
+either she must face her enmity, whereas if she
+married a friend of England she would make her
+the heir to her throne. Lethington and the Scots
+were therefore already wavering, for the fear was
+that if Mary wedded a Spanish nominee, Elizabeth
+would make Darnley her heir. The Catholics, too,
+not unnaturally, seeing the Countess of Lennox,
+Darnley’s mother, suddenly taken into high favour
+with Elizabeth, were thinking what an ideal arrangement
+it would be to marry Mary and her cousin
+Darnley with Elizabeth’s blessing, and the assured
+joint succession to her crown. The Bishop knew all
+this, and had well nigh lost heart when Philip’s letter
+arrived. He saw how impossible his master’s methods
+were in the face of Elizabeth’s rapid changes of policy
+and fertility of resource; for how could he keep the
+English Catholics in hand and learn all their combinations,
+or even get them to make any, on vague secret
+encouragement which might mean nothing? To the
+Duke of Alba he wrote: “The remedy is a weak one
+for so dangerous a malady. When they see that
+instead of giving them a firm reply we come only
+with halting proposals and inquiries, I know not
+what they will think. It is useless to ask them to
+give me information as to the amount of support the
+Queen of Scots can rely upon in England for the
+information of his Majesty. Lethington knows well
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_219">[219]</span>that all this has been done long ago, for, of course,
+I could not hide my communications from him. We
+have been approached by the same people about the
+marriage ... and they have given to Lethington
+lists of the Catholics and others who would raise
+troops for the Queen of Scots.”</p>
+
+<p>Almost hopeless of success, therefore, the Bishop
+sent one of his most confidential servants to Scotland
+to tell Mary verbally that the ambassador had a very
+important communication for her if she would send a
+trustworthy agent to London to receive it. This
+messenger, Luis de Paz, left London in the middle of
+July, 1563, and eventually reached Mary whilst she was
+travelling in the Western Highlands. She had been
+ardently expecting Philip’s answer, and had with
+difficulty held off the other suitors, the Archduke
+Charles and Eric of Sweden, until it arrived. She
+gave to Quadra’s messenger a favourable verbal reply,
+but before he reached Langley, in Buckinghamshire,
+where the Bishop was staying, the old Spanish Churchman
+was dying. He had plaintively written to Alba
+shortly before that it was impossible to conduct affairs
+in England on Philip’s lines. He had done his best
+but had been beaten. The English scorned and contemned
+him. He had been expelled from the Queen’s
+house; he saw his master’s cause daily waning in
+England, and he knew that only bold, prompt action
+would regain the lost ground. The hopelessness of
+moving Philip to such action broke the old man’s
+heart. Luis de Paz had just time to whisper Mary’s
+message to him, and the dying man grieved sorely,
+he said, that he should thus drop just when he might
+hope to have succeeded. “I can do no more,” he
+sighed, just before he passed away, and Spanish
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_220">[220]</span>influence in England was cast further into the background
+by his death; for Durham Place during his
+residence there had been the secret trysting-place of
+all those who hated Elizabeth’s rule. In the absence
+of any diplomatic channel through which Mary might
+work the great combination that she dreamed was to
+give her the crown of Britain under Philip’s protection,
+the clever, strong diplomacy of Elizabeth carried
+all before it. Dudley and Darnley were alternately
+dangled before Mary’s eyes and then withdrawn,
+until at length came the Lennox <i>coup d’état</i> and the
+marriage of the Queen of Scots with her cousin
+Darnley, which for a time took her out of the market.</p>
+
+<p>In the meanwhile every day that passed made it
+more difficult, and yet more necessary, for the King
+of Spain to gain the friendship or control of England.
+Affairs were going worse and worse with him in the
+Netherlands, where the struggle was assuming the
+character of a duel to the death between the old traditions
+of Flemish self-government and the newer
+absolutism which had already been fixed upon Castile
+and now threatened the ancient patrimony of Burgundy
+under Philip. The Reformed religion, or, indeed,
+any assertion of the lay right of judgment in matters
+of faith, was to Philip the embodiment of a rebellious
+spirit against the absolute centralised authority which
+was the essence of his system of government, and as
+such had to be crushed at any cost or sacrifice.
+Almost openly the English Protestants were sympathising
+with their Flemish brethren, and many
+Protestant refugees were flocking into England to
+establish their industries and seek security under a
+Protestant Queen. Boldness and good fortune had
+enabled Elizabeth, on the other hand, to take advantage
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_221">[221]</span>of the jealousy of her neighbours and to gather
+around her the growing Protestant party which welcomed
+the national independence she had attained in
+so few years, whilst Philip’s hesitancy had succeeded
+entirely in disheartening the English Catholics, who
+had at first looked upon him as their champion.</p>
+
+<p>The attitude of Elizabeth throughout her intercourse
+with the Spanish ambassadors had been such,
+that she had been able to beguile them when it suited
+her, and to checkmate them at pleasure; for whilst
+they had to wait for tardy instructions, which when
+they came always enjoined impracticable conditions,
+Elizabeth was opportunist and able to change her
+tack at an hour’s notice, to the utter confusion of her
+slow antagonist. The hard treatment of Catholics in
+England and the welcome accorded to the Flemish
+Protestant refugees had been met by Philip by the
+cruel persecution in Spain of Englishmen, upon the
+barest suspicion of heterodoxy; and this had been
+resented by the recrudescence of the pillage of Spanish
+and Flemish ships at sea by English rovers. Not
+content with this, Elizabeth attempted to foster the
+new Flemish industries in England by imposing restrictions
+upon the entrance into her ports of certain
+manufactured goods coming from Flanders. In
+retaliation the Spanish rulers began a regular war of
+tariffs against England; and this, by the middle of
+1564, had resulted in a general prohibition being
+issued on both sides, which practically forbade commercial
+intercourse altogether. Envoys went backwards
+and forwards for months, trying unsuccessfully
+to arrange matters; and in these efforts the Flemings
+were much more anxious than the English; for the
+latter had secured a good inlet for their cloths to the
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_222">[222]</span>Continent through Embden, and Elizabeth had given
+permission for unrestricted export to all other countries
+but Flanders and Spain.</p>
+
+<p>The Flemish merchants, on the other hand, were
+almost bankrupt by the loss of the English trade,
+and were clamorous to Philip to remedy the matter.&#x2060;<a id="FNanchor_151" href="#Footnote_151" class="fnanchor">[151]</a>
+Elizabeth could afford to stand firm and resist all
+attempts to force her into an inferior position in the
+negotiations. She had taken Philip’s measure by this
+time, and knew that whilst his own Netherlands were
+seething in revolt, and the Catholic party in France
+were held in check by the Huguenots, he dared not
+seriously injure her. So at last it was not the Queen
+of England, but Philip, who had to speak humbly; and
+in June, 1564, there arrived in London a Spanish
+ambassador of rank, a canon of Toledo, Diego
+Guzman de Silva, on a new errand. His instructions
+were precise, and his position was quite distinct from
+that formerly held by haughty Feria and of Bishop
+Quadra. They had both had for their mission the
+forcing of a policy upon a new unstable Queen, whilst
+Guzman was sent to seek a redress of grievances, and
+by diplomacy and moderation to compass what threats
+and retaliation had failed to accomplish. Philip’s
+hands, indeed, were then too full of his own troubles,
+both in the Mediterranean and Flanders, for him to
+hope to rule other countries, and bitter as it must
+have been for him, and still more bitter for the statesmen
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_223">[223]</span>of the Alba school, he was forced to speak mildly
+through his new ambassador to the heretic Queen to
+prevent the ruin of his Catholic Flemish subjects.
+To this pass had he been brought in six years from
+the time when in the days of Mary he had worked his
+will in England almost unchecked.</p>
+
+<p>Guzman was instructed to make vigorous remonstrance
+to the English Government with regard to the
+grievances inflicted on Spanish and Flemish trade in
+many ways; but he was warned that when he saw
+Queen Elizabeth he was “to compliment her with the
+fairest words you can use.” “You will tell her, as I
+write to her, that I send you to reside near her as my
+ordinary ambassador, with orders to try to please her
+in all things, as, in effect, we wish you to do, using
+every possible effort to that end, and to strive to
+preserve her friendship towards us, and our mutual
+alliance. You will assure her that nothing will be
+wanting on my part to this end, as she well knows by
+the acts we have hitherto done, and the offers we have
+made to her.” The ambassador was instructed to
+win over Lord Robert Dudley, “who is so great a
+favourite of the Queen, and can influence her to the
+extent you have been informed. With kindness you
+will try to gain him, and will also strive to make the
+friendship of the Queen’s Councillors and officers
+through whose hands affairs pass, so that you may
+the more readily guide them in the way desired.”
+His mission was primarily concerned with securing
+the restoration of Flemish trade and the reopening
+of the ports on both sides, though he was also to
+watch closely the coming and going of “heretics”
+between England and the Netherlands, to persuade
+Elizabeth, if possible, to extend toleration to the
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_224">[224]</span>Catholic worship in England,&#x2060;<a id="FNanchor_152" href="#Footnote_152" class="fnanchor">[152]</a> and he was to spy out
+the Spanish Protestants who had sought refuge there.</p>
+
+<p>But, although he said nothing to his new ambassador,
+it is evident that Philip was not inclined
+to accept as permanent his present state of powerlessness
+in England, and was patiently biding his
+time until circumstances allowed him to obtain control
+once more. This is seen by the stress laid upon the
+importance of gaining Leicester to the Spanish cause,
+and still more by the instruction that Guzman was
+stealthily to encourage the hopes of the English
+Catholics, “with such dissimulation and dexterity as
+to give no cause for suspicion to the Queen or her
+advisers, as it is evident that much evil might follow
+if the contrary were the case.” Guzman was an
+amiable, easy-going Churchman in favour of peace,
+and very soon managed to get affairs upon a more
+friendly footing. The marriage juggle, by which Elizabeth
+balanced her own supposed marriage against
+that of Mary Stuart; the prospective bridegrooms,
+the Archduke Charles, Don Carlos, Don Juan of
+Austria, the boy King of France, with Leicester
+always in reserve, being often changed or transferred
+from one Queen to the other, were looked
+upon by Guzman with somewhat scornful amusement.
+He quite understood that these ever-varying
+phases of advance and recession obeyed the passing
+political need of Elizabeth and Catharine de Medici,
+and he was never greatly perturbed by them.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_225">[225]</span></p>
+
+<p>Elizabeth was all graciousness when she received
+Guzman’s first visit at Richmond on the 22nd June,
+1564. He had had no need to seek Dudley, who
+had begun to cultivate his friendship as soon as he
+arrived, for what purpose we shall see presently; and
+the more to do him honour, on the arrival of the ambassador
+at the palace landing-stage, young Darnley,
+of the blood royal, was awaiting him, to lead him to
+the Queen. She was standing, listening to a keyed
+instrument, when he entered the presence chamber,
+led by Lord Chamberlain Howard; and as soon as
+she saw him she came forward and embraced him
+warmly. Speaking at first in Italian and later in
+Latin, she expressed her delight at his coming: “As
+there were some friendly countries trying to make
+her believe that your Majesty would never again
+have a representative here, and she was glad that
+they had turned out false prophets. She said I
+should be treated and considered commensurately
+with the deep interest which for many reasons she
+took in your Majesty’s affairs.” Then, as a diversion,
+she displayed much curiosity about the mental and
+physical qualities of young Don Carlos, and talked
+some prurient nonsense about Philip’s widowed sister,
+Juana, whom she said she might marry, she (Elizabeth)
+being the husband and Juana the wife. To
+impress the ambassador the more with her desire
+to be friendly, and to attract attention, as usual, to
+her own charms, she said that the King, her good
+brother, “had seen her when she was sorrowful,
+distressed, ill-treated, imprisoned, and afflicted, and
+that she had grown greatly since then, and even
+gave me to understand that she had greatly changed
+in appearance.” She promised the ambassador a
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_226">[226]</span>prompt settlement of all grievances, and affectionately
+embracing him again, handed the somewhat dazzled
+cleric over to the hospitable care of her courtiers.
+Dudley, Pembroke, Northampton, Clinton, Howard,
+and Cecil “came separately and embraced me, congratulating
+me on my arrival, and expressing their
+pleasure at my coming;” and so, with much suave
+compliment, Guzman, surprised at the warmth of
+his reception, was conducted by Darnley to his
+barge again.</p>
+
+<p>All this new-born delight in Spaniards on the part
+of Elizabeth and her courtiers was, of course, not
+without its reason. The fact is that, after all her
+aid to Condé and his Huguenots, peace had been
+made in France upon terms which gave predominance
+to the Catholics; and she considered that Condé had
+betrayed her in this, as, indeed, he had. Cardinal
+Lorraine, the bitter enemy of Elizabeth, was now
+Catharine de Medici’s henchman, and was busy negotiating
+a renewal of the Catholic League, which boded
+ill for England and Protestantism if it succeeded.
+A meeting was to take place between Catharine and
+her daughter, Elizabeth, Philip’s wife, with Alba and
+Lorraine in the background, to settle an accord between
+France and Spain for the utter extermination of Protestantism
+throughout the world; and even the Bourbon
+Huguenot princes of France had been temporarily
+silenced. In the circumstances Elizabeth naturally
+wooed Spain violently, and before Guzman had been
+in England a week he found himself in the centre
+of a real or feigned conspiracy of the unprincipled
+Dudley, to introduce Catholicism into England under
+Spanish protection, and depose Elizabeth’s Protestant
+minister, Cecil. On the pretext that Cecil had helped
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_227">[227]</span>in the production of a book by John Hales in favour
+of Catharine Grey’s claim to the succession, Dudley’s
+friends secretly urged Guzman to recommend Elizabeth
+to dismiss and punish Cecil, “as if he were out
+of the way, the affairs of your Majesty would be more
+favourably dealt with, and religious questions as well,
+because Cecil and his friends are those who persecute
+the Catholics and dislike your Majesty, whereas the
+other man is regarded as faithful, and the rest of the
+Catholics so consider him, and have adopted him as
+their instrument.”</p>
+
+<p>Dudley again was willing to become the humble
+servant of Philip if Cecil could be got out of the way
+by Guzman’s aid. He hoped still, he told Guzman,
+to marry the Queen; “he had an understanding
+already with the Pope, and a person was in Rome
+to represent him.” When, however, Guzman asked
+for details of exactly what Lord Robert promised to
+do with regard to religion, the answers were vague,
+and the example of Bishop Quadra, moreover, was
+not lost on his successor. The ambassador knew
+that Philip was not ready to attack the English Protestants
+yet, or on the shifty word of Dudley, but he
+prepared the ground cleverly for future action. The
+first thing, he told the conspirators, was to bring the
+Queen into close friendship with the King of Spain,
+and with the Catholics through him, as otherwise she
+would not dare to dismiss her Protestant ministers.
+“All people think,” he wrote to the King, “that the
+only remedy for the religious trouble is to get these
+people turned out of power, as they are the mainstay
+of the heretics, Lord Robert having the Catholics all
+on his side; and I tell them that they must take these
+things [<i>i.e.</i>, the need for fortifying Elizabeth by the
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_228">[228]</span>friendship of Spain] into consideration when they are
+seeking a remedy, and that plenty of opportunities
+will offer themselves, if needed later, to raise war or
+stop trade.&#x2060;<a id="FNanchor_153" href="#Footnote_153" class="fnanchor">[153]</a> The Catholics are much disturbed, and
+as they have no other idea than this they will not
+abandon it until they see some way of gaining their
+point. Certainly, from what I hear, they are very
+numerous if they dared to show, or had a leader.”</p>
+
+<p>But desirous as the Queen was to curry favour
+with the Catholic-Spanish party, and infatuated as
+she might be with Dudley, she could not dispense
+with Cecil’s services, and Dudley’s hopes again
+decreased, notwithstanding Philip’s sympathy expressed
+through Guzman, who was instructed to offer
+him all the aid he sought; but only on a distinct
+promise fully to restore the Catholic religion in
+England in the event of his marriage.&#x2060;<a id="FNanchor_154" href="#Footnote_154" class="fnanchor">[154]</a> This Dudley
+could not do, though by innuendo he promised much,
+and thus Cecil remained unmolested. Elizabeth on
+this occasion was probably a party to Dudley’s action,
+for she carried matters almost as far with Guzman
+herself. She went out of her way several times to
+hint broadly at her desire to enter into negotiations
+for her marriage with Don Carlos, without the slightest
+intention, of course, of ever doing so, even if the health
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_229">[229]</span>of the Prince had made such a match possible. She
+assured Guzman that she was really a Catholic at
+heart, “although she had concealed her real feelings
+in order to prevail with her subjects.”&#x2060;<a id="FNanchor_155" href="#Footnote_155" class="fnanchor">[155]</a> Some weeks
+later she ordered a crucifix and ornaments to be placed
+upon the altar in her chapel, and Guzman told her
+that the preachers were slandering her for it, whereupon
+she said that she would order crosses to be
+placed in all the churches in the realm.&#x2060;<a id="FNanchor_156" href="#Footnote_156" class="fnanchor">[156]</a>&#x2060;</p>
+
+<figure class="figcenter illowp58" id="illus08" style="max-width: 34.375em;">
+  <img class="w100" src="images/illus08.jpg" alt="">
+  <figcaption>
+    <p>WILLIAM CECIL, LORD BURGHLEY</p>
+    <p>FROM THE PAINTING BY MARC GHEERAEDTS IN THE NATIONAL PORTRAIT GALLERY</p>
+  </figcaption>
+</figure>
+
+<p>Elizabeth, indeed, was seriously alarmed at the
+impending Catholic League, and in addition to redressing
+the Spanish trade grievances and lavishing endless
+blandishments upon Guzman, she made a desperate
+bid to draw Catharine de Medici to her side by opening
+negotiations for her own marriage with the boy
+King of France—negotiations as insincere, doubtless,
+as the rest, but directed to the same end, namely, the
+diversion of France and Spain from their threatening
+friendship, as were also the attempts to revive the
+now almost outworn subject of the Queens match
+with the Austrian Archduke. The constant changes
+perfectly bewildered Guzman, who found Dudley
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_230">[230]</span>(now created Earl of Leicester) blowing hot and
+cold. The Catholics, on the one hand, were smiled
+upon by the Queen, and on the other strong measures
+were being proposed by Cecil and his friends to stay
+the growth of “papistry.” But though Philip wrote
+on behalf of the Catholic English bishops in prison,
+and Guzman urged for the toleration of Catholic
+worship, no practical concessions could be obtained
+from Elizabeth, much as she might smile and suggest
+to Guzman, with whom she had grown personally
+very intimate.</p>
+
+<p>In the meanwhile the elaborate preparations for the
+settlement of the Catholic League by the meeting of
+the Queens of France and Spain at Bayonne went on,
+and rumours came to England which caused Elizabeth
+additional alarm late in 1564, that Philip himself
+was coming to Flanders in the following year to bring
+his Flemish subjects into due subjection. Elizabeth’s
+amiability then grew more intense than ever. “How
+much she wished her dear brother could stay in one
+of her ports, that she might regale him!” and Guzman
+was the object of her constant affectionate solicitude
+at the numerous balls, feasts, and tourneys to which
+she invited him, often deploring that his master was
+not there, too, to enjoy the fun. It must be confessed
+that, to judge by the relations between Guzman and
+the French ambassador in England (de Foix), the
+coming national alliance between their respective
+countries did not look promising. De Foix had
+Huguenot leanings, and Guzman always resented
+his presence at Court at the same time as himself,
+Elizabeth on several occasions having the greatest
+difficulty in keeping the peace between them, when
+by some inadvertence they met in her presence.
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_231">[231]</span>Indeed, as was soon afterwards proved, the national
+jealousy of France and Spain and the personal
+interests of Catharine overrode the Catholic religious
+object of the League so perseveringly promoted by
+Cardinal Lorraine and Alba.</p>
+
+<p>On Ash Wednesday, 1565, Elizabeth listened to
+an open-air sermon preached by Dr. Nowell, Dean
+of Saint Paul’s, an ardent Reformer, who probably was
+not a politician. In the course of his sermon he
+condemned the veneration of images, and Elizabeth
+angrily told him not to talk upon that subject.
+Nowell either did not hear her or did not choose
+to regard the rebuke, and continued, when the
+Queen again raised her voice and peremptorily
+commanded him to pass to another subject, as that
+one was worn out. Soon afterwards de Foix, in
+conversation with Guzman, remarked that the
+Queen might have avoided so public and marked
+an interruption of the preacher. The Spaniard was
+of another opinion. “I think quite differently,” he
+said. “Those who sin publicly must be publicly
+rebuked; and as this Queen does, so might your
+most Christian King do it: when he gets older he
+will, I fear, be likely to make more account of the
+heretics.”</p>
+
+<p>The much feared interview of Bayonne, which
+the warlike party in Spain hoped would result in
+the crushing of Protestantism and the eventual submission
+of England to Spanish dictation, took place
+in these not very encouraging circumstances in
+May, 1565. Elizabeth, as a diversion, had been
+for months negotiating with Catharine for a French
+marriage, and the Queen Regent of France was
+taken aback when she saw at Bayonne the articles
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_232">[232]</span>which she was expected to sign. The total extermination
+of Protestantism in France and the world
+over would have meant her personal political extinction,
+and probably that of her son’s realm; for
+Philip in that case would have been paramount.
+What she wanted was not this, but to be able to
+play the Guises off against the Bourbons, and keep
+Elizabeth always as a potential ally when the
+Catholics grew too strong to suit her. At Bayonne,
+therefore, whilst she ostensibly acceded to everything
+dictated by Alba and Lorraine, and led her devoutly
+Catholic and hispanolised daughter to believe that
+France with all its national power would support
+her husband’s objects, Catharine no sooner turned
+her face towards Paris than she began to introduce
+all sorts of conditions and limitations which stultified
+the whole plan of the Catholic League, whilst she
+became more warmly interested than ever in the
+talk of Elizabeth’s marriage with one of her sons.</p>
+
+<p>The result of the much discussed conferences of
+Bayonne, in which Philip personally had never been
+very sanguine, finally disillusioned him as to the practicability
+of a league with his artful mother-in-law
+which should make him master of Europe. He had
+thenceforward no other policy open to him than to
+revert to the traditional national affinities that had
+obtained before the religious changes in Europe. He
+must win England to his side by fair means or foul.
+For seven years he had tried to isolate her by means
+of a Catholic league and he had failed: he had spoken
+arrogantly through Feria, he had tried subtlety
+through Bishop Quadra, and he had essayed friendly
+cordiality by means of Guzman. Elizabeth, when it
+suited her, had been amiability itself, she had languished
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_233">[233]</span>for a Spanish husband, she had pretended
+more than once to be a Catholic, she had smiled,
+pouted, or frowned, as her aims for the moment
+required; but, notwithstanding all this, the English
+Catholic bishops were still in durance, Catholic
+worship was still proscribed, and Philip was further
+off than ever he had been from controlling English
+statecraft for his own ends.</p>
+
+<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop" aria-hidden="true">
+
+<div class="chapter">
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_234">[234]</span></p>
+
+<h2 class="nobreak" id="CHAPTER_VI">CHAPTER VI<br>
+<span class="smaller">1565-1569</span></h2>
+
+<p>Mary Stuart marries Darnley—Their intrigues with Philip through
+Guzman—Plan to promote revolution in England in favour of Mary—Expulsion
+of the English ambassador from Spain—Recall of Guzman—Don
+Gerau de Spes ambassador—His character—Commences conspiring
+at once—His turbulent behaviour—Seizure of Philip’s treasure
+in England—Indignation of de Spes—His imprudent and disastrous
+action—Alba stops trade—Strained relations—Proposed declaration of
+war against England—The views of Philip and Alba—The Norfolk plot—The
+Northern rebellion</p>
+
+</div>
+
+<p>In July, 1565, Mary Stuart had been swept by
+her passion along the rapids that led to her
+marriage with Darnley and her ruin. Up to
+this period her policy had been consistent and
+sagacious, directed mainly to the recognition of her
+present or prospective right to succeed to the throne
+of England. She had tried to attain the end alternately
+by the only two means open to her, by
+seeking marriage with a Catholic prince strong
+enough to enforce her claims, and by winning
+Elizabeth’s acknowledgment of them by submission
+to her will. So long as she was under the influence
+of Cardinal Lorraine, and the Guises were powerful,
+her main efforts had been in the first direction, but
+after her arrival in Scotland the influence of Murray
+and Lethington had led her into the second course.
+In a former chapter it has been related how, despairing
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_235">[235]</span>of obtaining recognition from Elizabeth, Mary
+and her Protestant Anglophil advisers had on one
+occasion, in 1563, reverted to her earlier plans, and
+had attempted to secure Philip’s aid through her
+marriage with Don Carlos. She had never since
+quite abandoned this hope—her only one in this
+direction, since Guise was dead and Catharine de
+Medici was her deadly enemy. It is true that she had
+satisfied herself before Darnley arrived in Scotland
+that Don Carlos was unlikely or unfit to be a
+husband for her,&#x2060;<a id="FNanchor_157" href="#Footnote_157" class="fnanchor">[157]</a> but prudence would have dictated
+delay in her marriage in order that Philip might
+have provided her with another Consort who would
+take with him the support of Spain. But Mary lost
+her head, if not her heart, when she saw “the long
+lad” Darnley, and took the step which made it, at
+first sight, appear the more difficult for Philip to help
+her, and which yet alienated from her Murray and the
+Protestants and brought her into open enmity with
+the Queen of England. On the other hand, the
+wedding of both the Catholic claimants to the Crown
+of England consolidated the Catholic elements in the
+north, making Elizabeth’s position more dangerous
+than at any time since her accession, and Mary had
+undoubtedly not lost sight of this feature, which she
+saw might yet enable her to obtain Spanish support
+when the time for action came.</p>
+
+<p>On the 24th March, 1565, four months before the
+Darnley marriage, though the prospective bridegroom
+was already in Scotland, a servant of the Lennoxes,
+named Fowler, came to Guzman in London with a
+letter from Mary Queen of Scots. He had been
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_236">[236]</span>sent from Scotland, he said, by the Queen, ostensibly
+to obtain from Elizabeth a passport for Secretary
+Lethington to visit England, but really to ask the
+Spanish ambassador whether he had instructions to
+discuss with her a certain business that had formerly
+been broached to King Philip through his predecessor,
+Bishop Quadra, as if so she would send Lethington
+to see him. Guzman did not know Mary’s handwriting
+and was suspicious, especially as he was
+aware that Don Carlos could on no account marry
+Mary; so that Fowler, who said he could not return
+to Scotland without an answer, proposed to prove his
+<i>bonâ fides</i> by showing his mistress’s letter to Luis de
+Paz, a Spanish merchant, who knew her handwriting.
+On the morrow Guzman was satisfied of Fowler’s
+honesty, and as he heard alarming news of a plan to
+marry Mary to her French brother-in-law, he hesitated
+no longer but sent the messenger Fowler back to
+Scotland with a letter for Mary, asking her to send
+Lethington to confer with him.</p>
+
+<p>A few days afterwards Guzman got a further hint
+from Darnley’s mother, the Countess of Lennox, of
+what was really in the wind. She sent to tell him how
+kind Mary was to her son in Scotland, and that the
+French ambassador had come to her promising all
+French help and support to Darnley if the Queen of
+Scots married him. The Countess in her message
+to Guzman affected to distrust this French offer,
+which probably she herself had invented, “as she
+knows the French way of dealing,” and said “that
+she and her children had no other refuge but the
+King of Spain, to whom she and they will ever
+remain faithful. She begs me to address your
+Majesty in their favour, so that in case the Queen
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_237">[237]</span>of Scots should open negotiations about Lord
+Darnley, or in the event of this Queen’s death,
+they may look to your Majesty for support.” A
+week or two later the Countess of Lennox returned
+to the charge. She prayed Guzman to assure
+Lethington, when he arrived in London, “that
+your Majesty desired to favour her, as she believes
+that it would help her son’s business very much.
+She thinks he may marry the Queen of Scots, who
+rests her claim to this country more on the support
+of your Majesty than on anything else, especially
+as the Queen-mother of France is very much against
+her.” This seemed to Guzman important, and he
+did his best to assure Lady Lennox by hints of
+the sympathy that Mary and Darnley might expect
+from Spain. “As I have said on many occasions,”
+he continued in his letter to Philip, “it should be
+borne in mind that, in addition to the Queen of
+Scotland’s great claims to this realm, she has
+certainly here a very strong party, and it is highly
+desirable in many respects that she should be
+reckoned with in the interest of affairs that so
+deeply concern us. The English ports are necessary
+for the passage of trade between Spain and
+Flanders, &amp;c.; and, besides this, these English
+are beginning to navigate largely, and may interfere
+with us in the Indies, upon which they look
+greedily, unless they are prevented from sailing.”</p>
+
+<p>Even mild, conciliatory Guzman was thus already
+joining those who looked eagerly for the ejection of
+Elizabeth and the substitution of Mary Stuart as
+Queen of a Catholic Britain under Spanish control.
+When Lethington arrived in London, therefore, on
+the 24th April, 1565, Guzman was quite prepared
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_238">[238]</span>for the approaches he knew would be made. The
+two first met at some formal occasion at the French
+Embassy, and as they went along the road together
+on their way home, Lethington tried to arouse the
+fears of the Spaniard by hinting that Elizabeth was
+fishing for a French husband; but Guzman parried
+that by saying that in such case it would go hard
+with the Queen of Scots, who would then be on
+bad terms with both England and France. The
+next day, 25th April, the Scottish Secretary of State
+unmasked his batteries. Closeted secretly with Guzman
+at Paget House in the Strand, he explained
+how Mary had always desired to lean upon Spanish
+support alone, how she had bidden for the hand of
+Don Carlos, and had waited two years for Philip’s
+answer. Now there were thoughts of the Countess
+of Lennox’s son, since the King of Spain, it was
+feared, might have other views for Don Carlos.
+Lord Darnley had many advantages, but if the
+King of Spain gave her any hopes of Don Carlos
+the Queen would not conclude the proposed marriage
+with Darnley. Guzman replied that the King had
+not pursued the negotiations for Don Carlos because
+he had heard that Cardinal Lorraine had practically
+arranged with the Emperor for Mary to wed the
+Archduke Charles. After much conversation and
+explanation on this point, in which Cardinal Lorraine’s
+betrayal of his niece was made clear, Guzman
+cautiously expressed approval of Darnley, as he
+says, “trying to keep them in a good humour in
+view of eventualities.”</p>
+
+<p>But this was not enough for Lethington. Setting
+forth the enmity that the Darnley match might draw
+upon Mary from the Queen of England, he continued,
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_239">[239]</span>“All this would cause grave evil, but could be
+remedied by the King of Spain taking my Queen
+and her affairs under his protection, in the assurance
+that at all times and in every matter they shall be
+considered as his own.... Such an arrangement
+would have to be treated with the utmost secrecy
+until the opportune moment arrived. There is no
+doubt whatever that the majority of the [English]
+gentry and common people are attached to my
+Queen, and I can promise positively that she will
+follow the wishes of your master in everything.”
+Lethington then suggested that, as the despatch of
+an ambassador from Scotland to Spain might alarm
+Elizabeth, the King of Spain might authorise Guzman
+to conclude a secret agreement by which Mary and
+her future husband should be bound absolutely to
+Spain in return for Philip’s support, or otherwise that
+the affair might be carried through by Mary’s ambassador
+in Paris (Beton, Archbishop of Glasgow) and
+the Spanish representative there.</p>
+
+<p>Once again we see here that the exigencies of
+the position had driven the Protestant Lethington to
+place Scotland and, if possible, England, under the
+tutelage of the King of Spain, if no other way could
+be found to enforce the claim of Mary to the English
+Crown. The course he took was dictated by the
+highest diplomacy, whatever might be said for its
+religious consistency. Failing Don Carlos and the
+King of France, who are now out of the question,
+Darnley was, in fact, the only man who could unite
+the English Catholics in Mary’s cause and attract
+foreign support to her claims. Lethington and Mary
+knew that Philip’s vital political need was a submissive
+England, and that Scotland was only interesting to
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_240">[240]</span>him as contributing to that end. If Philip, by means
+of Mary and the Lennoxes, could obtain command of
+the powerful Catholic elements in England united in
+favour of the two legitimate heirs to the Crown, with
+the added advantage of a permanent base of operations
+in Scotland, he might find himself by the death
+or deposition of Elizabeth, which might be brought
+about at any time, the virtual master of Great Britain.
+No wonder, therefore, that Guzman smiled upon
+Lethington’s important mission, and promised to send
+post haste to Spain for the King’s decision.</p>
+
+<p>Whilst Elizabeth was making frantic efforts to
+prevent Mary’s marriage, and to keep up an appearance
+of negotiating for her own union with Don Carlos
+or the Archduke, and Leicester was again trying to
+win Spanish support for his suit by Catholic professions,
+Philip recognised that the offer made by Lethington
+to Guzman at last gave him a real opportunity
+of carrying through his plans for subjugating England
+by means of a subsidised Catholic rising in favour of
+Mary and Darnley. The suggestion was one after
+his own heart, and he accepted it with alacrity.
+Although cautiously, he was gradually coming round
+to the view that had been urged by Feria in the first
+days of Elizabeth’s reign, that England would have
+to be dealt with by force, only now, and for years
+afterwards, he wanted it to be the force of others
+wielded for his benefit. The King’s answer to Guzman
+was unusually decided and emphatic for him:
+“Your news has been very pleasing to me, and on
+the assumption that the marriage of the Queen and
+Darnley has really gone so far as they say, the
+bridegroom and his parents being such good Catholics
+and our affectionate servitors, and having in view the
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_241">[241]</span>Queen’s good claims to the Crown of England, to
+which Darnley also pretends, we have decided that,
+the marriage is one favourable to our interests, and
+should be promoted and supported to the full extent
+of our power. We have thought well to assure the
+Queen of Scotland and Lord Darnley’s party, which
+we believe is a large one in the country, that this is
+our will and determination, and that if they will be
+ruled by our advice, and will not be precipitate, but
+will patiently await a favourable juncture, when any
+attempt to frustrate their plans would be useless, I
+will then assist and aid them in the object they have
+in view. I have instructed the Duke of Alba to
+write to this effect to the Scottish ambassador in
+Paris; but I think well to advise you also that
+you may know my views and keep them quite
+secret from the Queen of England and her friends,
+seeing the great danger that would result to this
+business and all our affairs if it were known. You
+may assure Lady Margaret of the sympathy and
+goodwill I bear to her son and towards the successful
+accomplishment of the project, in order that they may
+be satisfied, and know that they may depend upon
+me, and so be able to entertain and encourage the
+Catholics and their party in England.”&#x2060;<a id="FNanchor_158" href="#Footnote_158" class="fnanchor">[158]</a>&#x2060;</p>
+
+<p>Philip foresaw the danger of Elizabeth’s being
+driven by the fear of a Catholic coalition against
+her to adopt Catharine Grey, or some other Protestant,
+as her successor, and he enforced upon Guzman, the
+Lennoxes, and the Scottish and English Catholics,
+the closest secrecy, and especially that every means
+should be employed to prevent a rival successor being
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_242">[242]</span>brought forward. At the same time there is in the
+King’s letter to his ambassador no concealment of
+the intention to use this union of Mary Stuart and
+Darnley to foment a Catholic revolt in England which
+shall sweep Elizabeth aside. “You will,” he writes,
+“keep in good intelligence with their party in
+England and with the Catholics, which is the same
+thing, and try by all means in your power to animate
+and encourage them to carry the business into effect,
+promising them what I have said. But it must all be
+done so dexterously and adroitly that it shall not
+become public or reach the Queen’s ears, or evil
+results will ensue.”</p>
+
+<p>Anxious as Philip might be for secrecy, it was
+difficult to attain where so many people were concerned.
+Already Murray and the Scottish Protestant
+nobles had fallen away from Mary on the mere
+rumour of a Catholic Darnley match, and were looking
+askance at the Queen’s new Catholic friends. The
+Lennoxes, even the Earl himself, retorted foolishly
+by boasting of the support of the King of Spain,&#x2060;<a id="FNanchor_159" href="#Footnote_159" class="fnanchor">[159]</a>
+which made matters infinitely worse and gave rise
+to alarming whispers in Scotland that religious persecution
+at the point, mayhap, of Spanish pikes might
+be the outcome of this godless wooing. Darnley,
+who was still ill in bed, was as imprudent as his
+father; threatened to break the Duke of Chatelherault’s
+head as soon as he could get up, and
+vapoured about his coming greatness under foreign
+auspices that would enable him to snap his fingers
+even at the Queen of England. Nor was Mary
+herself much more cautious in her utterances, and
+the English agent, Randolph, attributed her new-born
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_243">[243]</span>pride and indifference to the effects of some devilish
+enchantment.</p>
+
+<p>But though she was deeply infatuated with “the
+young fool,” Mary would not marry him until she
+had received a reply to her advances to Philip. The
+match with Darnley was to give her, she hoped,
+the English Crown, but it could only be done with
+the aid of Spain. So, tired almost of waiting, she
+seized upon a hollow pretext to send James Hay,
+of Balmerino, to London to see Guzman, and learn
+if he had any news for her. On the very day that
+Hay first saw the Spanish ambassador Philip’s important
+letter had arrived in London. The Scot had just
+been violently snubbed by Elizabeth, and all his
+requests refused contumeliously, as no doubt he had
+foreseen they would be; his real reason for coming
+south at all, indeed, being to obtain the sanction not of
+the Queen of England but the King of Spain to
+Mary’s marriage with Darnley. The reply from
+Philip that Guzman gave to Balmerino was indeed
+a welcome one. “He appeared delighted with it,
+and said that his Queen desired nothing so much as
+that she should follow your Majesty’s orders in all
+things, without swerving a hair’s breadth, and that you
+should take her under your protection. I urged him
+to try to get his Queen to manage her affairs prudently,
+and not to strike until a good opportunity presented
+itself.”</p>
+
+<p>Hay only stayed in London one day longer, for he
+knew that the great wish of Mary’s heart was now
+to be granted; and though to the English partisans
+and the Protestants in Scotland he deplored “the
+evil success of his long journey,” it must have been
+with a merry heart beneath his doublet that he carried
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_244">[244]</span>his welcome message to Holyrood on the 7th July,
+1565. Two days afterwards Mary was secretly
+married to Darnley, though the public wedding was
+deferred until the 29th; and the great conspiracy
+against Elizabeth and Protestantism was then complete.
+Mary was so infatuated with Darnley at the
+time that she would probably have married him in
+any case, but her caprice for him and her determination
+to supplant Elizabeth had thus led her to
+promise the submission of herself and her realms to
+the dictation of a foreign monarch, the traditional foe
+of France that she pretended to love so well; a
+monarch whose first object was to gain command of
+the policy and resources of Scotland and England by
+exterminating the religion of a large proportion of the
+people. It was a triumph for her that her marriage
+with the man for whom she was temporarily crazy
+should be instrumental in gaining what she had striven
+so hard for since she left France, namely, the
+support of Spain; but indoctrinated though she was
+by the cynical teaching of her uncle, Cardinal Lorraine,
+she can hardly have realised the turpitude
+of the act of treachery she was committing. She had
+been cherished and beloved even by her Protestant
+subjects, and yet the step she was taking would lead,
+if she were successful in her object, to the employment
+of the hideous methods of Spanish religious coercion
+to crush their religious liberty, to the subordination of
+the land of her birth, and of England over which she
+aspired to rule, to the interests of a foreign nation, and
+would involve the ruin or death of another Queen
+closely related to her.</p>
+
+<p>On the other hand, it must be allowed on Mary’s
+behalf that her circumstances were exceptionally
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_245">[245]</span>difficult. The political system of Catharine de Medici
+had deprived Scotland of the strong ally that for
+centuries had been its main protection against the
+aggression of England, whilst the spread of Protestantism
+in Scotland had created a new bond of union
+between the country and Elizabeth’s government. In
+order to be able to rule Scotland peacefully in these
+circumstances it was necessary either that the sovereign
+should accept frankly the Reformed doctrines and
+become more or less a vassal of England, or else
+make common cause with the great enemy of the
+Reformation, submit to the dictation of Spain with all
+it involved, and restore the lost balance of power
+in Europe to Philip’s advantage by uniting England
+and Scotland under Catholic rule. The effect would
+have been to reduce France to a secondary position,
+to secure supremacy for the papal Church, and to
+place Europe at the bidding of Philip II. Between
+these two alternatives Mary chose that to which her
+Guisan and Catholic traditions led her, and, reprehensible
+as her choice may seem to the political ethics
+of to-day, it was in the circumstances the most natural
+course for her to take.</p>
+
+<p>There was no hesitation or weakness in Mary’s
+attitude as soon as she had taken the step and married
+Darnley with the blessing of Philip. Knox thundered
+his denunciations from the pulpit, but whimpered and
+“longed to depart” when the guns of Edinburgh
+Castle began to speak; Murray, with his 1,200 men-at-arms,
+meaning mischief, waxed lachrymose when he
+found that the burgesses shrank from open disloyalty
+to the Queen, and that Elizabeth dared not help him
+now to rebel against the friend and ally of Spain.
+Mary, on the other hand, was confident and energetic.
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_246">[246]</span>Keeping the saddle through the foulest weather, and
+over execrable paths, she rode almost alone, armed,
+and eager to meet her rebellious brother and his
+supporters. This was the eventuality which she had
+foreseen when she had ensured Catholic support from
+abroad on her marriage with Darnley, and she lost no
+time in claiming it.</p>
+
+<p>All the North of England was on the alert and
+ready for action in her favour if success were assured
+by the aid they looked for from Philip; and to the
+Pope Mary appealed even before her marriage was
+publicly celebrated. The Protestants, she wrote,
+were in arms against her, the Queen of England
+was in desperation: if his Holiness would send a
+force of 12,000 men to Scotland for six months the
+religion of Rome might be restored permanently. It
+was too much for the Pope to do without Philip’s
+connivance, so he put off Mary’s envoy with
+fair words until the reply could come from
+Spain.&#x2060;<a id="FNanchor_160" href="#Footnote_160" class="fnanchor">[160]</a> To Philip himself she also wrote shortly
+before her public marriage (24th July, 1565): “I
+have given notice to your ambassador of all that has
+taken place, on the assurance that in the event of my
+urgently needing your succour and assistance, which I
+do, your Majesty will grant them to me in order to
+maintain the faith, with which object you raise such
+great forces against the Turk. I can truly say that
+no war is more dangerous to Christianity nor more
+pernicious to the obedience due to princes than that
+moved by these new evangelists (God grant that you
+may never be troubled with them in your dominions),
+and I therefore beg your Majesty, for this reason, and
+in consideration of the desire I have and always have
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_247">[247]</span>had to bind myself to you against all the world, to
+instruct your ambassador to uphold the rights of the
+Earl of Lennox’s son and my own in England, and to
+order him to declare to the Queen of England that
+you will not allow anything to be done to our
+disadvantage.”&#x2060;<a id="FNanchor_161" href="#Footnote_161" class="fnanchor">[161]</a>&#x2060;</p>
+
+<p>There is no doubt that a vast Catholic conspiracy,
+especially in the North of England, was in existence
+at this time, full of hope, encouraged by the agents of
+the Countess of Lennox, that the aid of Philip sent to
+Mary would enable them to shake off the yoke of
+Elizabeth and her Protestant ministers. The constant
+injunctions of the King of Spain that everything must
+be kept inviolably secret, and no move made until
+success was ensured, had been powerless, as usual,
+to close the mouths of elated people who thought
+that their days of tribulation were soon to end.
+Before Mary’s public marriage the eager English
+Catholics also sent their own emissary to the Spanish
+Regent of Flanders, Philip’s sister, the Duchess of
+Parma, to confer with her, and thence to proceed to
+Scotland. The man they chose was one Francis
+Yaxley, who had filled several bureaucratic posts in
+the English Court, especially that of Clerk of the
+Signet during Philip’s stay in England. He had
+been a friend of Bishop Quadra and a follower
+of Cecil, but at this time was a professed Catholic
+attached to the Lennox party. He knew foreign
+countries, and had even been in Spain; so that he
+was considered to be a good instrument for bringing
+into accord the English Catholics, the Scottish Queen,
+and King Philip. Guzman, giving notice to the King
+of his going to Flanders, says that “he is a person
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_248">[248]</span>well acquainted with affairs here and will be able to
+give the Queen of Scotland a great deal of information.
+They (<i>i.e.</i>, the English Catholics) say that he
+is a devoted servant of your Majesty.”&#x2060;<a id="FNanchor_162" href="#Footnote_162" class="fnanchor">[162]</a>&#x2060;</p>
+
+<p>Exactly what this man arranged in Flanders before
+proceeding to Scotland is not known, but when he
+arrived, in August, at Leith, Randolph, the English
+agent in Edinburgh, knew enough to suspect him.
+“His errand I yet know not,” he wrote to Cecil,
+“and would I knew what might be said to such
+‘gestes’ who come for little good.”&#x2060;<a id="FNanchor_163" href="#Footnote_163" class="fnanchor">[163]</a> Whatever
+message Yaxley brought it was a welcome one to
+Mary and her husband, Darnley particularly “rejoicing
+and imparting all his affairs to him.” Yaxley
+is represented by the English agent as imposing upon
+Darnley and his “yong company,” by his boastful
+talk, “as a fit man to send abroad, as he knew so
+well the Courts of Spain and England, besides his
+acquaintance in Flanders and at Brussels, that he
+doubted not to accomplish any commission. So he
+is to pass secretly to the Duchess of Aerschot
+[Mary’s aunt], who shall procure him audience of
+the Regent, to whom he shall declare that this
+Queen ... will commit herself, her husband, and
+her country to his [King Philip’s] protection, and,
+seeing the Queen of England disposed to marry
+the French King, the rather to maintain her [Mary’s]
+estate she and her husband will remit all her titles to
+England to the King of Spain’s judgment; and if
+the Duchess of Parma thought meet he is to pass
+with these offers to Spain.... He [Yaxley] told his
+secret friends the names of many noblemen and
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_249">[249]</span>gentlemen of good power in England ready to follow
+the King of Spain’s directions for the alteration of
+religion.”&#x2060;<a id="FNanchor_164" href="#Footnote_164" class="fnanchor">[164]</a>&#x2060;</p>
+
+<p>Before Yaxley left again—not, as this letter says,
+to Flanders, but direct to Spain from Dumbarton—he
+renounced his English citizenship to become a
+Scotsman. “The Queen and her husband,” wrote
+Randolph, “have sent him ambassador to Spain;
+he embarked three days past [<i>i.e.</i>, 17th September].
+It passes my power to know his commission, but it
+is for little good.”&#x2060;<a id="FNanchor_165" href="#Footnote_165" class="fnanchor">[165]</a> What Randolph could not
+fathom is to some extent divulged to us by the
+letter Mary wrote to Philip by Yaxley; although, of
+course, his verbal message was more precise as to
+what was required and intended. “Monsieur mon
+bon frère,” she writes from Glasgow on the 10th September,
+“the earnestness you have always displayed
+in the maintenance of our Catholic faith has caused
+me previously to crave your favours and aid, foreseeing
+that which has now happened in this realm of mine,
+tending to the entire ruin of the Catholics and the
+establishment of these unhappy errors. In resisting
+them my husband and myself will be in peril of losing
+our Crown, and by the same means our claims elsewhere,
+unless we have the help of one of the great
+Christian princes. Bearing this in mind, and seeing
+the energy with which you have proceeded in your
+own States, and especially the firmness with which
+you have upheld those who have depended upon your
+favour, we have thought well to address you, in
+preference to any others, to ask for your counsel,
+and for your help and support. With this end we
+have sent this gentleman, an Englishman and a
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_250">[250]</span>faithful servant of my husband and myself, with
+ample charge to render to you an account of the
+condition of our affairs, of which he has full knowledge;
+praying you to give credit to his words as
+if they were our own, and to send him back with all
+speed, as the case is so pressing as to touch both
+our Crown and the liberty of the Church for ever.
+To maintain this we will spare neither life nor
+estate, with your support and counsel.”&#x2060;<a id="FNanchor_166" href="#Footnote_166" class="fnanchor">[166]</a>&#x2060;</p>
+
+<p>Elizabeth’s Government were fully informed through
+their spies of the grave purport of Yaxley’s mission;
+and Catharine, who was almost as apprehensive of a
+Spanish domination of Scotland and England as
+Elizabeth herself, made an attempt by means of a
+special ambassador (Castelnau de la Mauvissière) to
+win Mary away from dependence upon Philip by new
+professions of friendship towards her. Mary, however,
+was in no humble frame of mind now, and
+would brook no interference either from her mother-in-law
+in France or her cousin in England, with both
+of whom she had long scores to settle. She would
+listen to no suggestions of a reconciliation with
+Murray, and she plainly threatened the French
+ambassador that if his King did not at once help
+her to punish the rebels she would invoke the aid
+of the King of Spain. The position was a triumphant
+one for Mary so long as she depended upon Spanish
+help; and if Philip had been prompt and such armed
+aid had been sent to Scotland before Murray
+succumbed, Elizabeth might have been deposed and
+Philip have obtained the control of Britain.</p>
+
+<p>Elizabeth for once was really alarmed. There was
+the confident talk now of Philip’s coming with a great
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_251">[251]</span>fleet and army to Flanders, which pessimists in
+England thought might be used against this country.
+So whilst Mary of Scotland, in full hope of Philip’s
+support, was defying England, Elizabeth was afraid
+of stirring a finger to help Murray and the Protestants
+ostensibly, for fear of bringing Spaniards or French
+Catholics, or both, into North Britain; in which case
+her own crown would have been in dire danger.
+Guzman saw Elizabeth on the 16th September, and
+found her full of complaints of the ingratitude of the
+Queen of Scots and the Lennoxes, to whom she had
+been so kind and meant so well. The present
+rebellion in Scotland was not really about religion at
+all, she said, and Mary only pretended that it was, in
+order to enlist the help of foreign princes. “Well,
+that may be,” replied Guzman drily, “but in any case
+it is very inexpedient, and sets a bad example to help
+rebellious subjects in their disobedience.” “Oh,” cried
+Elizabeth, quite shocked at the idea, “God forbid that
+<i>I</i> should ever help disobedient subjects, unless I saw
+very good reason why they should not be made to
+suffer without a hearing!” Elizabeth, indeed, who
+was sending money secretly to Murray, and throwing
+the blame for everything upon the Lennoxes and
+Darnley, was now quite apologetic at the attitude into
+which she was forced by events and by Mary’s appeal
+to Spain. So powerless was she at this juncture that
+she had to sit idly by whilst Murray and his adherents
+fled across the Border (13th October, 1565) before
+Mary’s threatened vengeance, and she was even forced
+to feign anger and indignation at his rebellion when
+he sought audience in England of the Queen whose
+stalking-horse he had been.</p>
+
+<p>Ignorant, of course, of Murray’s collapse, Yaxley
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_252">[252]</span>duly arrived at Segovia, where Philip was, on the
+23rd October, 1565, and gave his letter and verbal
+message to the King. Fortunately Philip repeated
+this message to Guzman in his letter to him, written
+on the following day, and we are thus able to understand
+exactly how far Mary was willing to go in her
+ambitious plans. “The first thing,” writes Philip,
+“was to assure us in fair words of the great hope
+and confidence they reposed in me, desiring to govern
+themselves by my direction alone, and to do nothing
+without my consent and pleasure: for this reason they
+wish to inform me of the need in which they are, and
+assure us of their zealous desire to establish their
+realm anew under the Christian religion, and to join
+other Christian princes with that object. Not having
+sufficient forces of their own they begged me to aid
+them as a Christian monarch; and, in order to induce
+me to do so, the envoy set forth the danger in which
+the Queen and King of Scotland were, by reason of
+the heretics, stimulated and favoured by the English
+with men and money; so that the said sovereigns
+might easily fall into the hands of the rebels, and
+be conveyed abroad, leaving the State unprotected,
+unless I, in whom after God they put their trust,
+aided them with money and troops. If I would
+consent to do this it would not only be the means
+of destroying the rebels, but would confirm the King
+and Queen in their hope of succeeding to the English
+throne, and would banish their fear that the heretics
+would oust them, the real heirs, and elect some heretic
+instead. They promised that if they obtained the
+succession of the Crown by my means they would
+renew more closely the alliance and league between
+England and our house against the world, and leave
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_253">[253]</span>all other friends for us. They also begged us to
+write urgent letters to the Queen of England, first
+asking her to release Lady Margaret (Lennox),
+and secondly to desist from aiding the Scottish
+rebels.”&#x2060;<a id="FNanchor_167" href="#Footnote_167" class="fnanchor">[167]</a> Yaxley also asked that an accredited
+Spanish ambassador might be sent to Scotland to
+arrange a binding treaty and to advise Mary and
+her husband as to their proceedings.</p>
+
+<p>Philip was not ready yet for heroic measures in
+Great Britain, for he was busy planning the deadly
+blow he hoped to deal upon his disaffected Flemings.
+But he sent back by Yaxley cordial letters to Mary
+and Darnley, and told them to consult either Guzman
+or the Spanish ambassador in Paris when they were
+in doubt how to proceed. What advice was to be
+given to them in such case is seen in the King’s
+instructions to Guzman. “They should confine themselves
+for the present to punishing the rebels and
+pacifying the kingdom. When they have done this,
+and affairs have settled down, they could look
+further ahead than at present.” Philip was equally
+cautious in other directions. He did not want to tie
+himself openly or formally to Mary until he was quite
+sure that she would be a fit and obedient instrument
+for him to obtain command of England. She must,
+with her husband, for this purpose be able to command
+the united support of the English Catholic party, and
+Philip must be quite sure that her French relatives
+were not to influence her in any way. So he declined
+to negotiate a formal treaty or to write to Elizabeth
+about Lady Lennox, and even confined his present
+assistance to a sum of money, no less than 20,000
+crowns, which was to be secretly handed to Yaxley by
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_254">[254]</span>a Spanish banker, who himself did not know its
+destination, outside Antwerp.</p>
+
+<p>With this answer Yaxley travelled post-haste to
+Flanders, and duly took ship in Antwerp bound for
+the port of Leith with this large sum of money on his
+person. This was about the 20th November, 1565.
+The season was a terribly tempestuous one, and at
+some time in December, from the wreck of a Flemish
+ship, there was cast up by the sea upon the coast of
+Northumberland the drowned body of Yaxley with his
+treasure upon him. Guzman was alarmed when he
+heard of it, more for the letters and papers from
+Philip that the man bore than for the money, as they
+would divulge the whole plot; but if the letters were
+found, which it is probable they were, they were not
+delivered to Elizabeth. The Earl of Northumberland
+was a Catholic noble and secretly an adherent of
+Mary’s, as will be seen later; but, although his
+attachment to her might prompt him to keep or
+destroy letters compromising her, it was not proof
+against his claiming the money upon the dead man,
+which he seized in virtue of his territorial rights;
+although he had angry disputes and lawsuits with the
+Lord Admiral on the subject, who also claimed the
+salvage. Mary herself sent Melville to ask Northumberland
+for the delivery of the money intended for
+her. “But all my entreaties were ineffectual; he
+altogether refused to give any part thereof to the
+Queen (of Scots), albeit he was himself a Catholic and
+professed secretly to be her friend.”&#x2060;<a id="FNanchor_168" href="#Footnote_168" class="fnanchor">[168]</a>&#x2060;</p>
+
+<p>At about the same time the Pope sent to Mary, by
+Philip’s permission, a similar sum of 20,000 crowns,
+and promised a subsidy of 4,000 crowns a month to
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_255">[255]</span>pay troops to suppress the rebellion. But Murray
+was in England and the revolt practically at an end
+by this time. Elizabeth was protesting with injured
+innocence that nothing was further from her thoughts
+than subsidising trouble in her dear sister’s realm;
+whilst Mary, taking Philip’s advice to heart, was
+diplomatically biding her time for the great blow to be
+struck that would give her the Crown of England.
+She once more turned a smiling face upon Randolph,
+and readily agreed now to receive special ambassadors
+from Elizabeth to settle all disputes between them.
+The rebels, all but Murray and Kirkaldy of Grange,
+were received into favour again, and to please and
+lull Elizabeth into false security, Darnley was ostentatiously
+neglected by his wife. Kirkaldy, dour and
+unbending, warned the English that Mary was fooling
+them. “Send as many ambassadors as ye please to
+our Queen, they shall receive proud answers, for she
+thinks to have a force ready as soon as ye do, besides
+her hope of friendship [of the Catholics] in England, of
+which she brags not a little, so driving time is to her
+advantage.”&#x2060;<a id="FNanchor_169" href="#Footnote_169" class="fnanchor">[169]</a> Kirkaldy was right, as events proved.
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_256">[256]</span>Mary was temporising as Philip advised her to do,
+counting upon the aid of Spain, the Pope, and the
+English Catholics when the hour should strike. But
+for her the hour never did strike. Her evil star led
+her along the path which ended in England and
+martyrdom.</p>
+
+<p>The tragedy of Rizzio, the vicious foolishness of
+Darnley, the levity of Mary, and the falsity of Murray
+and Morton, destroyed for a time the great dream, once
+so promising in appearance, that the Queen of Scots
+would mount the Catholic throne of Britain by the aid
+of Spain. When Mary was in Lochleven and her
+infant son had been adopted as their King by the
+nobles, Elizabeth and Catharine vied with each other
+in their loud expressions of sympathy with a Queen
+thus contemned by her subjects, the object in both cases
+being to obtain, if possible, either through Mary or her
+persecutors, a pretext to interfere in Scotland, and thus
+to frustrate the Spanish combination. Murray, who was
+not in Scotland when Darnley was murdered, found
+himself assiduously courted, by the French especially,
+on his way home, and had a long friendly interview
+even with Guzman in London. After the first shock
+of dismay caused to the Catholics by the marriage of
+Mary to Bothwell—a divorced man and a Protestant—public
+opinion on their part agreed to regard her as
+innocent of the crimes laid to her charge; and when,
+on the unhappy 16th May, 1568, Mary, weeping with
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_257">[257]</span>grief and bitter disappointment, bade a last farewell to
+the land of her fathers to claim the hospitality of her
+bitterest enemy, her party in the north still founded
+their hopes upon her, notwithstanding the black suspicion
+that hung over her, whilst she was unsubdued
+and full of plans for future triumph over her enemies.</p>
+
+<p>In her first letter to Elizabeth she struck a high but
+unwise note, claiming admission to the Queen’s
+presence and English aid to subdue her rebel subjects,
+failing which she demanded leave to go to France or
+Spain and obtain assistance there. Elizabeth refused
+both requests, for whilst she was kept in England the
+unhappy Mary had nothing to offer in return; but
+Knollys, who took the message, warned the Queen of
+England that the Catholic gentry were flocking to
+salute the fugitive, whose presence in the north was
+a danger, and Mary sent indignant and imprudent
+messages by Lord Herries to Elizabeth threatening
+to appeal to her great Catholic friends on the Continent.
+This attitude sealed Mary’s fate and determined
+her imprisonment. Lord Herries talked
+openly, even in Elizabeth’s palace, of his plans for
+claiming Catholic aid for his mistress; and although
+Guzman used all his deft persuasions to soften the
+English Queen, Elizabeth explained to him quite
+cogently again and again that she dared not allow
+Mary to bring foreign Catholic forces into Britain,
+nor from a safe refuge on the Continent to organise
+disaffection in England.</p>
+
+<p>Elizabeth, with ample reason, was at the time in a
+panic at Philip’s action in Flanders. For many
+months the pretence had been kept up that the King
+himself was coming to the Netherlands to pacify discontent.
+Great forces had been raised in Italy, Spain,
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_258">[258]</span>and Germany, and a strong fleet fitted out, to the
+great alarm of the English, who feared that at last the
+time for Philip’s vengeance had arrived, although
+Elizabeth had tremblingly tried to keep up the pretence
+to Guzman that she was delighted at “her good
+brother’s” coming. At last when all was ready, in
+the autumn of 1567, vast sums of money collected, and
+the troops under arms, no longer a royal escort but a
+strong avenging army, Philip announced that he would
+not go to Flanders himself but would send the terrible
+Duke of Alba. Then all the world knew what was
+meant—war to the knife until Protestantism and
+political liberty were crushed in the Netherlands. It
+was clear to Huguenots, Lutherans, and Anglicans
+that the time of trial and struggle was at hand, and
+mutual messages and promises of support crossed
+from one to the other, for they all knew that if the
+King of Spain were victorious over dissent in his own
+land the turn of the others would come. Elizabeth’s
+retort to Alba’s proceedings was, as usual, both bold
+and diplomatic. She once more made strenuous efforts
+to reopen the negotiations for her marriage with the
+Archduke, she cajoled Guzman again into the belief
+that she was not in accord with the proceedings of
+her Reformed bishops; and whilst all England was
+thrilling with sympathy for the oppressed Flemings
+she made the most elaborate protestations to the
+Spanish ambassador that she had not helped and
+would not help them in their resistance.&#x2060;<a id="FNanchor_170" href="#Footnote_170" class="fnanchor">[170]</a> But at the
+same time Elizabeth, by a policy of alternate severity
+and leniency towards them, convinced the English
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_259">[259]</span>Catholic party that their future treatment depended
+alone upon their gaining her goodwill.</p>
+
+<p>The first suppression of revolt in Flanders effected
+by Alba on his arrival coincided with a change in
+Philip’s policy towards England, probably under the
+influence of the warlike party now dominant in his
+counsels. Guzman, as we have seen, had always
+spoken fair to Elizabeth and Cecil, though he often
+complained to his master of having to deal with
+“heretics” thus. But from Madrid now a harsher
+note was struck. The English spies in Spain reported
+that all the talk now was of the coming conquest of
+England, and of Catholic combinations to overthrow
+the Queen; and in February Elizabeth learnt from a
+messenger sent by her ambassador in Spain, Dr. Man,
+Dean of Gloucester, to inform her of the imprisonment
+of Don Carlos, that the household of her ambassador
+had not been allowed to celebrate Protestant worship
+in the embassy building. Dr. Man was a notoriously
+foolish, babbling person, and, as Philip averred, had
+openly scoffed at a religious procession, and had
+spoken at dinner before Spaniards disrespectfully of
+the Catholic faith. The Duke of Feria had been sent
+to warn him, which we may be sure he did haughtily
+enough,&#x2060;<a id="FNanchor_171" href="#Footnote_171" class="fnanchor">[171]</a> and Philip, on Man’s first arrival in Madrid,
+appears to have told him harshly “that he must
+conduct himself as his predecessors had done.” The
+Inquisition had, so Philip declared, complained of him,
+and he was said to have acted “simply as a perverse
+dogmatiser.”</p>
+
+<p>However this may have been, the prohibition of his
+own national worship within the embassy walls was a
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_260">[260]</span>violation of diplomatic privilege, though Philip said
+that other English ambassadors (meaning Challoner)
+had put up with it; and when Elizabeth heard of it
+she was violently angry. Cecil went to Guzman and
+told him heatedly that unless the English ambassador
+in Madrid had the same privileges conceded to him as
+those that Guzman enjoyed in London, he would
+immediately be withdrawn. Philip, said Elizabeth,
+might do as he liked with his own subjects, but he
+should not persecute hers. The complaint, of course,
+went to Madrid, and at the same time a letter to Dr.
+Man from the irate Elizabeth ordering him to demand
+immediate satisfaction from the King. Philip was
+ready for it and gave him no opportunity. In a
+violent letter to Guzman, entirely unlike his previous
+tone towards England, he tells his ambassador that
+he has banished Man from Madrid, and refused to
+have any more intercourse with him. He had, says
+the King, even tried to proselytise in Spain; and if
+he had not been an ambassador the Inquisition would
+have made short work of him. If Elizabeth did not
+recall him at once, he would be expelled from Spain.
+When Guzman waited upon Elizabeth early in May,
+1568, with this message and handed her his new letter
+of credence, he watched her face closely. “When she
+came to the latter part about the ambassador she
+changed colour and seemed annoyed, asking me what
+it meant.” Guzman, as gently as he could, gave her
+the rough message, and said that a gentleman was on
+the way from Spain to explain matters. In the meanwhile,
+amongst other things, he might tell her that this
+precious ambassador of hers had publicly called the
+Pope a “canting little monk!” “Oh! there is nothing
+in that,” said the Queen, but Guzman thought otherwise.
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_261">[261]</span>She had not dealt with Bishop Quadra so harshly, she
+said, although she found he was positively plotting
+against her. “She therefore grieved that her ambassador
+should be treated as he had been, especially as at this
+time suspicions and comments would arise therefrom.
+This way of treating ambassadors was a forerunner of
+greater unpleasantness, particularly coming as it did
+on the top of the news of the Catholic league against
+her, and I should hear next day what would be said
+in London about it.”</p>
+
+<p>A week or so after this came the news that Man
+had been expelled from Madrid with every circumstance
+of insult, and Guzman, anxious to hear what
+the English would think of it, called upon Cecil. He
+found the minister in a furious passion at the outrage
+upon international courtesy. Such a thing, he said,
+had never been heard of before unless a pretext for
+war was sought, and it was a great piece of disrespect
+and an insult to the Queen, showing a desire
+to pick a quarrel with her, as had already been stated
+in certain quarters, and it now behoved the Queen to
+be prepared. It is certain that this incident, almost
+coinciding as it did with Mary Stuart’s arrival in England
+and her open threats to appeal to the Catholic
+Powers for aid, greatly perturbed and alarmed Elizabeth.
+The war of religion in France was again in
+full swing, and her friends the Huguenots had their
+hands full and could not help her, the Flemings
+were temporarily crushed under the iron heel of
+Alba, and the Catholics of the North of England
+were in a ferment at the coming of the Queen of
+Scots.</p>
+
+<p>In spite, therefore, of Guzman’s remonstrances, the
+flail fell upon the backs of the English Catholics, and
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_262">[262]</span>for the first time Guzman himself was treated with
+harshness. Cecil told him “that the Council regarded
+him with suspicion, and the Queen did the
+same.” The ambassador was gentler and more conciliatory
+than ever; but in the new situation created
+he was not the man for the place. In February,
+1568, he had earnestly begged the King to recall
+him on the pretext of ill-health and lack of means.
+At that time, before Mary Stuart’s arrival in England,
+the relations between England and Spain were not
+abnormally strained, for Mary, being deposed and
+imprisoned, was powerless. Philip sent no answer
+to the ambassador’s request for several months; but
+in May, when the prospect was no longer “quiet
+and friendly,” he sent to Guzman his letter of dismissal.
+The King at this time needed a rough,
+overbearing man to support his strong action with
+regard to the English ambassador. The communications
+that had passed between Philip and Mary
+Stuart, and the reports he had received as to the
+attitude of the English Catholics of the north from
+the Lennoxes and others, had convinced him that an
+opportunity offered for dealing his blow. Guzman
+had continued gently to encourage the Queen of
+Scotland’s agent, Fleming, but neither his instructions
+nor his disposition allowed him to go beyond bare
+expressions of sympathy. “I have shown him great
+goodwill, and have in general terms assured him of
+your Majesty’s sincere affection for his Queen, as I
+am letting the Catholics, her friends, understand.”&#x2060;<a id="FNanchor_172" href="#Footnote_172" class="fnanchor">[172]</a>
+But Guzman went no further than this.</p>
+
+<p>Philip always chose his instruments carefully, with a
+view for the precise task he confided to them. He
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_263">[263]</span>had sent Guzman to London to tranquillise Elizabeth
+by cordiality and a show of simple frankness, at a
+time when trade was suspended and she was deeply
+irritated at the intrigues of Bishop Quadra. The
+ambassador had done his work admirably, but now
+another phase had to be dealt with, and a different
+man was required. To some extent, perhaps, Guzman’s
+recall may have been influenced by his own
+remark that Catholics are exposed to much danger to
+the purity of their faith by living so long amongst
+heretics, in answer to which the King told him that
+he was not to join in religious discussions with
+enemies of the Church; but the choice of his successor
+was certainly made with a view to an alteration
+in the attitude in future to be adopted towards Elizabeth
+by her brother-in-law. All hope of bringing her
+round to a Catholic policy was now quite abandoned.
+To invade and conquer her country, as Feria had
+proposed, when it might have been done, in the first
+days of her reign, was not at present in Philip’s
+power. But he had a famous general and a powerful
+army a few hours only from her shores, and she
+might be frightened into a humble and tolerant mood,
+perhaps, by a rough-tongued bully with such a force
+to threaten with. Besides, reports had told the King
+that the Catholics of the North of England were
+yearning for his coming to liberate their country
+from the yoke of heresy, and a bold zealot was
+needed to organise them into a fit instrument for
+Philip’s future purpose.</p>
+
+<p>Such a man, though without the subtlety and
+secrecy required, was found in Don Gerau de Spes,
+a haughty Catalan knight of the Alba school, as
+intolerant as Feria himself. It was no part of Philip’s
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_264">[264]</span>intention yet to quarrel openly with Elizabeth, and the
+instructions he gave to his new ambassador were, as
+will be seen presently, entirely pacific; but the King
+was really in great trepidation as to the way in which
+the Queen would take the expulsion of her ambassador,
+and de Spes’s first task was to frighten her into
+humility, and into desisting from countenancing the
+open aid that was flowing over from England to the
+Flemish rebels. When Guzman went to Hatfield
+to announce to the Queen his recall he found her
+troubled and suspicious at the rumours that had
+reached her as to the reasons for the change. “She
+showed more sorrow than I expected, and, changing
+colour, told me that she was grieved to the bottom of
+her heart that there should be any change, as she was
+so greatly pleased with my procedure. She said she
+had always shown me how pleased she was with me,
+and hoped to God there was no mystery behind this
+change.”</p>
+
+<p>The supple ambassador tranquillised her. She
+knew, he said, what poor health he had, and how
+badly the English climate suited him. There was
+no other mystery behind his going than that. She
+was coquettishly aggrieved, too, at his wanting to
+leave her, as they had been such friends; and besides,
+there was all this talk about a Catholic league against
+her! Guzman again reassured her; but when he got
+back to London he found Cecil less easy to calm.
+He had been told alarming stories by his spies,
+most of which we now know were untrue, and after
+assuring Guzman of the grief that his recall would
+cause to the Queen, he continued that “it confirmed
+what he had heard from various quarters, that
+Cardinal Lorraine had arranged a treaty with the
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_265">[265]</span>Duke of Alba respecting this country and the Queen
+of Scots, which had been negotiated through me
+[<i>i.e.</i>, Guzman] as they could not trust the French
+ambassador. It was said, also, that the Queen of
+Scots herself was in communication with me and
+sent me letters for your Majesty. It was asserted
+that, now that I had arranged it all, I wished to
+leave in order that my successor, and not myself,
+should witness the carrying out of the plan.”&#x2060;<a id="FNanchor_173" href="#Footnote_173" class="fnanchor">[173]</a>
+Guzman knew that a letter to him enclosing one
+from Mary to Philip had fallen into Cecil’s hands, so
+he had to be dexterous in his management of the
+situation. He affected to laugh at such assertions
+as absurd;&#x2060;<a id="FNanchor_174" href="#Footnote_174" class="fnanchor">[174]</a> and the interview ended by the highest
+praise being bestowed upon Guzman, who, said Cecil,
+had absolutely gained the Queen’s confidence; and
+many dubious questions were put by Cecil as to what
+sort of a person Don Gerau de Spes was.</p>
+
+<p>Don Gerau soon showed this for himself. He was
+instructed by Philip to explain to Elizabeth the misdeeds
+of Dr. Man that had led to his expulsion, and
+to exonerate the Duke and Duchess of Feria, and
+especially the English relatives of the latter, from
+any blame in the matter. He was also to watch
+the introduction of warlike stores into England and
+keep in touch with the Duke of Alba in Flanders;
+but he is emphatically enjoined “to serve and
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_266">[266]</span>gratify the Queen on every possible occasion, trying
+to keep her on good terms, and assuring her
+from me that I will always return her friendship as
+her good neighbour and brother.” De Spes, however,
+must have carried secret instructions in addition
+to this, because when he was passing through Paris,
+Mary Stuarts ambassador, the Archbishop of Glasgow,
+recommended to him the care of the imprisoned
+Queen’s affairs, “as she founded all her hopes on your
+Majesty’s favour,” and, in reply, de Spes said that he
+had orders to do everything he could for her. There
+is no such clause in his public instructions, and it is
+most unlikely that any ambassador of Philip would
+have dared to plunge without instructions into conspiracies
+against the Government to which he was
+accredited, as de Spes did immediately after his
+arrival in England.</p>
+
+<p>Before crossing the Channel, de Spes had a conference
+with the Duke of Alba at Utrecht, where a
+long list of Philip’s grievances against Elizabeth were
+discussed. The indictment was a grave one, the
+injuries said to be inflicted by the English upon
+Spaniards and Flemings amounting in value, it was
+computed, to 300,000 ducats a year; and it is certain
+that at this interview between the two fiery
+Spaniards plans for revenging and amending this
+state of things were canvassed and agreed upon.
+In England at the time there resided a Spanish
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_267">[267]</span>merchant, ambitious to fill a diplomatic <i>rôle</i>, and,
+although he had lived in London for thirty years
+at least, he was as zealous and intolerant in religious
+affairs as de Spes, or even Philip himself.
+This man, of whom we shall hear much presently,
+Antonio de Guaras, anxious to ingratiate himself,
+had sent to de Spes in Flanders two broadsheets
+that had just been published in England attacking
+Philip’s system and the communications that it was
+known passed between the English Catholics and
+the King of Spain. Such papers, of course, had
+been published in Guzman’s time, but he had wisely
+passed them by or minimised their importance. To
+de Spes they served as a spark to the tinder of his
+passion, and he arrived in England fuming with rage
+at the insolence of the heretics.</p>
+
+<p>As de Spes rode from Dover towards London, with
+a long train of Spanish residents in England at his
+heels, early in September, 1568, he was overtaken by
+a Scottish gentleman (probably James Beton) on his
+way from Paris in the service of the imprisoned Mary,
+with whom he was going to seek an interview. De
+Spes listened eagerly to his story of the ill-treatment
+of Mary by the “heretics,” and told him that he had
+letters in London from King Philip to her. He had
+enough prudence to tell the Scot when, after their
+arrival in the capital, he came for the King’s letter
+to take to Mary that it would be wise that he, as
+Spanish ambassador, should not be seen too prominently
+in her interests; but he associated himself at
+once in all the Scottish Queen’s plans to escape from
+her bondage, and sent her warm messages of encouragement.
+Almost at the same time (15th September)
+Philip himself was writing from the Escorial an
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_268">[268]</span>important letter to the Duke of Alba. The Queen
+of Scots, he said, had written praying for his help
+to extricate her from Elizabeth’s hands, and professing
+her readiness to die in defence of the faith.&#x2060;<a id="FNanchor_175" href="#Footnote_175" class="fnanchor">[175]</a> “I have
+refrained from arriving at any decision or answering
+her autograph letter ... until you tell me what you
+think of the business, and in what way and to what
+extent I should assist her. I beg you to write to
+me by the first opportunity on the matter, and in
+the meanwhile to encourage the Queen the best you
+can to persevere firmly in her saintly purpose; for
+whilst she does so God will not abandon her.”&#x2060;<a id="FNanchor_176" href="#Footnote_176" class="fnanchor">[176]</a> It
+is obvious from this that Philip had not decided yet
+to help Mary, but only to encourage her until affairs
+appeared to him propitious, and we shall be able to
+judge, therefore, to what extent the zeal of de Spes
+precipitated matters.</p>
+
+<p>Elizabeth was making a progress through Hampshire,
+and Guzman presented his successor to her at
+Newbury on the 12th September, 1568. To the scornful
+anger of de Spes, Cardinal Chatillon, the Huguenot
+brother of Coligny, was also seeking audience of the
+Queen, and being feasted and made much of in the
+interval by Sir Thomas Gresham at his house in
+London. That a Cardinal, a prince of the Catholic
+Church, followed by a wife and family and with
+several bishops at his side as unorthodox as he,
+should be ruffling about the streets of London in
+cape and sword and jewelled cap, shocked de Spes
+gravely; but that he should be asking, and obtaining,
+arms from the Tower of London and money and
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_269">[269]</span>English volunteers to fight against the Catholics and
+the King in France made the Spaniard more bitter
+than anything else. The new ambassador had not
+been installed in Paget House&#x2060;<a id="FNanchor_177" href="#Footnote_177" class="fnanchor">[177]</a> a fortnight before
+Mary Stuart’s emissaries were in close conference
+with him. One of them came to him early in
+October disguised as a merchant, saying that he was
+bearing letters from her to the Duke of Alba in
+Flanders. The Conference of York, which had been
+summoned to decide Mary’s guilt or innocence of the
+murder of her husband, was already gathering, and
+the Scottish Queen herself was at Bolton. How
+eager de Spes was even thus early to engage in plots
+in her favour is seen in the letter he wrote to the
+King on the 9th October giving him this news.
+“Where she is the Catholics are more numerous than
+in any part of the country. She knows how to
+ingratiate herself with her keepers, and has many
+sympathisers on her side. It will not be difficult to
+release her, and even to raise a great revolt against
+this Queen; but it will be more prudent that your
+Majesty should not appear in this, and I will do
+nothing until I receive orders from your Majesty or
+the Duke.”&#x2060;<a id="FNanchor_178" href="#Footnote_178" class="fnanchor">[178]</a>&#x2060;</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_270">[270]</span></p>
+
+<p>All this foregathering with Scottish agents on the
+part of de Spes was not lost upon the English
+Government, whose spies reported everything. De
+Spes says that Cecil sneeringly asked Beton (the
+nephew of the Archbishop of Glasgow, who was in
+London on his way from Paris to see Mary)
+“whether he had been with his complaints to the
+new Spanish ambassador yet, and how often he went
+to Paget House.” In these circumstances it is not
+surprising that relations grew rapidly acrimonious
+between Philip’s ambassador and Elizabeth’s
+ministers. He pressed with boldness and persistence
+the claims of the Spanish shipmasters for the
+depredations committed by English rovers, and by
+the Huguenots and Dutch rebels who took shelter in
+English ports; and to these claims Cecil retorted by
+bringing up the old grievance of Dr. Man’s expulsion,
+and certain insulting references to the Queen of
+England contained in a recently published Spanish
+book by Dr. Illescas on Pontifical History. To make
+matters worse, de Spes did not confine himself to the
+redress of Spanish grievances, but made himself the
+champion of Catholics generally. A Portuguese
+envoy, Dr. Alvarez, was in London to ask Elizabeth
+to forbid English ships to go to the coast of Guinea,
+where Hawkins had been slave-trading, and suddenly
+one morning the Bishop of London’s men appeared
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_271">[271]</span>before the house in which Alvarez lived and demanded
+that certain Englishmen then attending Mass
+there should be delivered to them for punishment.
+The Portuguese refused to surrender them, and the
+house was soon surrounded by a threatening crowd.
+Word was carried to de Spes, who immediately sent
+off one of his household to demand of the Lord
+Mayor (Sir Roger Martin) the dispersal of the mob.
+“What is the cause of the gathering?” asked the
+chief magistrate, and when the Spaniard told him
+that it was a question of Catholic worship, Sir Roger
+burst out in a rage that he would rather send his men
+to reinforce the mob than to disperse it in such a case.</p>
+
+<p>The presence of such a firebrand ambassador as
+this in London, in constant communication, as
+Elizabeth’s ministers knew, with all the elements of
+disaffection in England, and in close correspondence
+with the terrible Duke of Alba in Flanders, convinced
+the English Government that evil plans were brewing.
+It was known that Philip’s principal difficulty was
+money. The expense of the campaigns in Flanders
+and the constant wars in the Mediterranean had
+exhausted the resources of Castile, and Philip’s credit
+was as bad as could be. Alba’s troops were unpaid
+and growing mutinous, committing outrage and depredations
+upon Catholics as much as upon Protestants.
+The Duke had pressed, again and again, for money
+from Spain, and the English spies in Flanders had
+continued to send alarmist reports, all premature as
+we see now, but then believed to be true, of the
+hostile intentions of Alba against England as soon as
+he had crushed the Dutchmen and obtained the
+needed resources from Spain.</p>
+
+<p>Chance threw into Elizabeth’s way a means of
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_272">[272]</span>paralysing Alba for a time and rendering impossible
+the plans to injure her that she knew were hatching.
+Philip had, with infinite difficulty, managed to contract,
+at usurious rates, a loan of money from Genoese
+bankers, and, with his characteristic caution, he had
+stipulated that the money should be delivered by
+the lenders to the agents of the Duke of Alba in
+Antwerp. The Channel was infested with Huguenot
+privateers and pirates of all sorts on the look out for
+ships flying the Spanish flag, and the Dutch
+“Beggars” blockaded the Belgian coast. The ships,
+six or seven of them, which were bringing Philip’s
+borrowed treasure were known to have sailed late in
+November, and the rovers were all on the alert for
+them when they came. Finding themselves chased,
+the treasure ships ran into English ports, some into
+Plymouth, some to Falmouth, and the largest of them
+into Southampton, in order to escape their pursuers
+and claim official English protection. Even in port
+the privateers threatened the fugitives, and two of the
+treasure ships, swift Biscay cutters, fearing that the
+heretics on shore were as dangerous as their colleagues
+afloat, boldly ran the blockade of pirates and
+escaped, eventually arriving safely in Antwerp.
+But the others, and especially the big ship in
+Southampton with £31,000 in money on board,
+could only cling desperately to the English port
+authorities, whilst they sent swift messengers to
+Benedict Spinola, the famous Genoese banker in
+London, the agent and partner of the lenders, praying
+him to obtain safety for them.</p>
+
+<p>Spinola, being, of course, interested in the treasure,
+went at once to de Spes, and asked him to request
+officially of the Queen’s Council that the money
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_273">[273]</span>should be protected effectively in the English ports,
+and, if necessary, landed and conveyed overland to
+Dover for transmission to Antwerp under English
+convoy. De Spes lost no time, and on the 29th
+November saw the Queen, who readily promised
+him a passport to carry the money overland, or, if
+the Genoese preferred it, she would have the ships
+convoyed to their destination. Satisfied with this,
+de Spes wrote to Alba for instructions as to which
+course to follow. In the meanwhile Admiral Wynter
+was leaving the Thames with an English squadron to
+relieve the Huguenots besieged by the King of France
+in Rochelle, and on the way he looked into the Channel
+ports to ensure the safety of the treasure ships. Before
+Wynter sailed finally from England Spinola, who
+was interested, as great financiers are to-day, in many
+enterprises, wrote to him that he had just received
+word that rumours were current in Spain of a great
+disaster having happened on the coast of Mexico
+to Captain John Hawkins, the bold English sailor
+who had on more than one occasion braved the
+Spanish prohibition and had conducted successful trading
+expeditions to the Spanish colonies. De Spes
+had been bitterly complaining of this, and it was
+feared, said Spinola, that the Hawkins expedition, in
+which he had an interest, had been attacked and
+annihilated by the Spanish authorities.</p>
+
+<p>When Wynter received Spinola’s news on the 2nd
+December he was in Plymouth, assuring himself of
+the safety of the Spanish treasure ships there.
+Wynter naturally told the evil news he had learned
+from Spinola to William Hawkins, the brother of
+John, who lived in Plymouth, and William at once
+wrote to Cecil, who was also interested in the venture,
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_274">[274]</span>suggesting that Spinola should be questioned, and if
+it turned out that the Spaniards had attacked the
+English trading expedition, the money in the ships
+now being protected by English guns should be
+seized in reprisal. This letter was written on the 3rd
+December, the day after the safe conduct had been
+signed by Elizabeth for bringing the treasure overland
+to Dover, and before Cecil can have received it this
+safe conduct was on its way in the hands of de Spes’s
+agents to Southampton, and so to Plymouth and
+Falmouth. Cecil’s messengers, however, were not far
+behind, and, in spite of the protest of the Spanish
+captain, Horsey, the Governor of the Isle of Wight,
+by Cecil’s secret orders, landed the treasure from the
+ship at Southampton and placed it in the keeping of
+the mayor of the town. Similar action was taken
+with the treasure at Plymouth and Falmouth, and
+when the news reached de Spes in London he at
+once jumped at the conclusion that the rumours were
+true that he had heard at Court to the effect that
+some of the Queen’s Council and her Huguenot friends
+had been urging her to keep the treasure for her own
+purposes.</p>
+
+<p>Spinola, a resident in London, dependent largely
+upon Elizabeth’s goodwill and Cecil’s friendship, had,
+indeed, let out in conversation not only what he had
+heard about the Spanish attack upon John Hawkins’s
+expedition in Mexico, but also that the Genoese
+financiers were responsible for the money advanced to
+Philip until it was handed to the Spanish authorities
+in Flanders. “In that case,” said Elizabeth, “I can
+borrow it myself; for my credit is quite as good as
+that of the King of Spain.” Rash de Spes, however,
+did not wait for any such public avowal. To his
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_275">[275]</span>intemperate and insolent protests Cecil and the other
+Councillors would only say that the money was quite
+safe, and for the present no other answer with regard
+to it could be given to him. This was on the 21st
+December and the ambassador at once sent a special
+courier to Alba with a letter praying, in burning indignation,
+that all English property and that of Spinola
+on Spanish soil should be seized.&#x2060;<a id="FNanchor_179" href="#Footnote_179" class="fnanchor">[179]</a> Nothing more
+unwise than this can be conceived; for no sooner
+had Alba made the confiscatory proclamation than
+Elizabeth not only justified thereby her seizure of the
+money, now openly avowed, but at once confiscated
+all Spanish and Flemish property in England, including
+the ships that had brought the money.</p>
+
+<p>De Spes had been saying for weeks past that the
+best way to bring the Queen to her knees, and to
+force her into the arms of Spain, would be to stop
+all English trade; and when he had sent to Alba the
+unwise advice to make the seizure of English
+property he still believed that such a measure would
+dismay the “heretic” Government. So far from
+doing that it placed Elizabeth technically in the
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_276">[276]</span>right; for up to that point she had not openly avowed
+her intention of keeping the loan money;
+and the value of Spanish-Flemish property in
+England was immensely greater than that of English
+property in Philip’s dominions. The news of the
+seizure of the loan money fell upon Alba and his
+master like a death sentence. Without this money to
+pay his troops Alba was almost in despair, and Philip
+had exhausted his last rag of credit in raising the
+loan. In vain de Spes raged and fumed. Cecil and
+his mistress were perfectly cool about it; for they saw
+that the impetuousness of their opponents had put
+them in the right, and the large sum of ready money
+they had seized strengthened them as it proportionately
+weakened Philip. De Spes’s house was placed
+under guard; and a threatening mob in the City of
+London breathed vengeance upon the foreigners, and
+especially Spaniards, most of whom had fled into
+hiding. To make matters worse, a cipher letter from
+de Spes to Alba was intercepted and deciphered, full
+of violent and insulting references to Cecil, and other
+letters to Spanish friends in Flanders containing
+foolish abuse of the Queen herself.&#x2060;<a id="FNanchor_180" href="#Footnote_180" class="fnanchor">[180]</a> Called upon
+peremptorily for explanation of these references, the
+ambassador could only palliate, disavow, and explain
+that he did not mean what he said; and he himself
+was placed under arrest and forbidden access to the
+Court.</p>
+
+<p>Even then, when the dire consequences of his
+imprudence must have been patent to him, he was in
+close cipher correspondence with Mary Stuart, who
+sent him news, which he took care to exaggerate,
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_277">[277]</span>of Protestant plots being formed to murder King
+Philip. Writing to the King on the 8th January,
+1569, he says, after pressing him to foment dissatisfaction
+in England by stopping all trade: “In the
+meanwhile means will be found to bring this country
+to its senses and subdue it to the Catholic faith.
+Those who have spoken to me about a rising for the
+Queen of Scots will not fail to return to the subject,&#x2060;<a id="FNanchor_181" href="#Footnote_181" class="fnanchor">[181]</a>
+and I will inform the Duke [Alba], as your Majesty
+orders. Pray do not consider me or my safety, but
+take the best course for your Majesty’s interests....
+These heretic knaves of the Council are going headlong
+to perdition, incited by Cecil, who is indescribably
+crazy in his zeal for heresy.” Later in the same letter
+de Spes tells how his own prediction came true
+and the conspirators did seek him. “The Earl of
+Northumberland came to see me disguised at four
+o’clock this morning, and is ready to serve your
+Majesty. I sent a post yesterday to the Duke by
+an Englishman who has secret communication with
+Flanders.... At midnight last night the Bishop of
+Ross came to offer the goodwill of his mistress
+[<i>i.e.</i>, Mary Stuart] and of many gentlemen of this
+country, and I have reported this to the Duke [of
+Alba]. The Queen of Scotland told my servant
+to convey to me the following words: ‘Tell the
+ambassador that if his master will help me I shall be
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_278">[278]</span>Queen of England in three months, and Mass shall be
+said throughout the land.’”&#x2060;<a id="FNanchor_182" href="#Footnote_182" class="fnanchor">[182]</a>&#x2060;</p>
+
+<p>It will be seen that before de Spes had been in
+England four months he had forced King Philip into
+a position of hardly veiled hostility towards England,
+at the very period when his lack of resources and the
+recrudescence of the war in the Netherlands made
+it impossible for him to attempt coercion upon
+Elizabeth. Alba himself was dismayed at the unexpectedly
+bold action of the English Government
+in seizing the treasure and embargoing all Spanish-Flemish
+property in England. The Flemish burghers,
+already sorely distressed by the civil war, were almost
+in open revolt at this stoppage of the rich English
+trade and the embargo of their property in England,
+and Alba, hard as he might be, was forced to make an
+attempt to reason with Elizabeth by means of some
+more pliable instrument than de Spes. The person
+chosen was the garrulous Flemish lawyer, Dassonleville,
+who had come to England just before Queen Mary
+Tudor’s death, but he found himself more contemptuously
+treated even than de Spes. Who was he,
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_279">[279]</span>the Council asked, that he should seek audience of a
+Queen with a letter of credence from a person who, so
+far as she knew, was not a sovereign? Nothing
+wounded proud Alba so much as this slight, and poor
+Dassonleville was denied audience, and was placed
+under arrest in the house of the Sheriff of London.</p>
+
+<p>By this time no less than 700,000 ducats worth of
+Flemish ships and property had been seized in
+England, besides Philip’s treasure of a million; and
+the Spaniards, especially Alba, were bitterly regretting
+the deplorable diplomacy of de Spes. Philip, who
+hated to come to prompt decisions, was now face
+to face with a crisis. In obedience to the clamours of
+his ambassador he had stopped all trade between his
+dominions and England; by which, instead of its bringing
+Elizabeth to her knees, his subjects suffered much
+more than the English. It was evident, however,
+that this state of things could not continue indefinitely,
+and he was driven by these circumstances,
+at the very time when he was more hardly pressed
+than ever, to consider whether he could now conquer
+England by means of the English Catholics and Mary
+Stuart. For such a conquest to be of use to him
+it was necessary to be quite sure that Mary should be
+free from French influence, and that the new Catholic
+Government should look to him alone for orders.</p>
+
+<p>When, therefore, he received news from Alba and
+de Spes of the seizures he wrote to the former:
+“Don Gerau urges the opportunity which now
+presents itself to remedy religious affairs in that
+country by deposing the present Queen and giving
+the crown to the Queen of Scots, who will immediately
+be joined by all the Catholics. Please
+inquire what foundation there is for this, and what
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_280">[280]</span>success would probably attend such a plan; as if there
+is anything in it, I should be glad to carry it out. It
+appears to me that, after my special obligation to
+maintain my own dominions in our holy faith, I
+am bound to make every effort to restore and preserve
+it in England, as in former times. If there is any good
+grounds for the suggestion, no time more opportune than
+the present could be found ... and in order not to miss
+the chance, I have thought well to refer the decision to
+you. If you think the opportunity will be lost by waiting
+to consult me you may at once take the steps you may
+see fitting.” It was not often that Philip went so far as
+this in a prompt decision, and to de Spes he was
+equally decided. “If what you suggest about taking
+the crown away from the Queen were successful, it
+would certainly be of great moment, and I would help
+it most willingly, in order to redress religion, and
+shelter and console the Catholics, who, I am convinced,
+are very numerous. You will learn all you
+can about this thoroughly and advise me and the
+Duke of Alba fully.”&#x2060;<a id="FNanchor_183" href="#Footnote_183" class="fnanchor">[183]</a>&#x2060;</p>
+
+<p>In the meanwhile the conspiracy, by far the most
+dangerous that Elizabeth ever had to face, was
+developing in London. Cecil, who, in fact, was the
+most pacific of ministers, is represented by the Spanish
+party as the firebrand, determined to precipitate a war
+with Spain. This was certainly not the case. He,
+with his cool head, understood how far he might
+go now that Philip was powerless to attack England.
+The seizure of the money destined to pay Alba’s
+troops had made all the difference, and Cecil and
+his mistress knew that they might for the present defy
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_281">[281]</span>Spain with impunity. The news of the attack upon
+Hawkins’s expedition at San Juan de Lua was now
+confirmed and added to the determination of the
+English Protestant party to get even with a Power
+which, for the time at all events, was disabled for
+harm. But the conservative elements, the old English
+nobility, with their strong Catholic leanings, their
+traditions of awed regard for the alliance of the House
+of Burgundy and Spain, and with their long-standing
+jealousy of Cecil, saw in his present action a dangerous
+provocation to a Power they dreaded, and a possible
+opportunity of supplanting him and his party in the
+counsels of the Queen.</p>
+
+<p>On several occasions the nobles of this party had
+expressed to de Spes their annoyance at the seizure of
+the treasure; and we have seen that the Earl of
+Northumberland, the powerful Catholic head of the
+House of Percy, had sought him out secretly in the
+dead of night to make disloyal offers to him. The
+Duke of Norfolk, unhappily for himself, had also
+been drawn into these questionable intrigues by his
+father-in-law, the Earl of Arundel. Late in February,
+1569, Norfolk and Arundel sent a Florentine banker
+in London, one Ridolfi, a great friend of de Spes
+and the Pope’s agent in England, to tell the Spanish
+ambassador that they had put up with Cecil’s impertinences
+and violence in seizing the treasure so far
+because they were not strong enough to resist him.
+“But they are gathering their friends, and letting the
+public know what is going on, in the hope and belief
+that they will be able to turn out the present accursed
+Government and raise a Catholic one, bringing the
+Queen to consent thereto. They think you [<i>i.e.</i>, the
+Duke of Alba] will support them in this, and that the
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_282">[282]</span>country will not lose the friendship of our King.” The
+object of this conspiracy was to capture (and probably
+kill) Cecil; and, although the nobles euphemistically
+professed to believe that Elizabeth would consent to
+a entire revolution in her religion and policy, it is
+evident that the intention of the majority was to
+depose her in favour of Mary Stuart. On the
+2nd April de Spes writes: “The Duke of Norfolk
+and the Earl of Arundel wish to serve your Majesty.
+They have many friends and adherents in the country,
+and when they hear that your Majesty will accept their
+goodwill, they will declare themselves more openly at
+a convenient opportunity. The Duke of Alba ...
+orders me to entertain and caress them on your
+Majesty’s behalf, and says that he expects shortly
+your Majesty’s decision as to what is to be done....
+If your Majesty orders measures to be taken for
+the conversion of the kingdom and the punishment of
+these insolent heretics and barefaced thieves, I do not
+think it will be difficult to bring them to subjection, or
+at least to change the Government and religion....
+Many Catholics write to me secretly, saying that the
+moment they see your Majesty’s standard raised in
+this country they will all rise to serve you.”</p>
+
+<p>But Cecil was too wary to be caught by such weaklings
+as Norfolk and Arundel, and by pretending to
+fall into their views for a time about the reconciliation
+and concessions to the Spaniards, he managed a few
+weeks after the above letter was written to throw the
+plans of the conspirators into confusion by dividing
+their counsels. In the meanwhile Alba (on the 10th
+March) had to tell Philip some unpleasant truths in
+answer to his suggestion that English affairs should
+be taken in hand and settled on the impracticable
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_283">[283]</span>lines suggested by feather-headed de Spes. “I know
+not,” Alba wrote to the King, “whether an open
+rupture with England at the present time will be
+advantageous, considering the condition of your
+treasury, and these States being so exhausted with
+the war and late disturbances, and so lacking of ships
+and many other things necessary for a fresh war; and
+it would certainly be a grave loss of dignity, with your
+Majesty’s power, to return to the old negotiations.
+All things considered, I think it would be best to
+adopt a gentle course, writing to the Queen that,
+seeing the close friendship and alliance that have so
+long existed between the two countries, particularly
+between her father and the Emperor, and your
+brotherly affection for her, even though she should
+desire to quarrel, you will not consent to do so, and
+that it shall never be said that the tie that binds you
+together has been loosened.”</p>
+
+<p>To this lame and impotent conclusion had even
+warlike Alba been brought by the inevitable logic of
+events. Elizabeth had seized the treasure, imprisoned
+two ambassadors, embargoed all Spanish property in
+her realms; she had at the time hundreds of Spanish
+sailors and others in gaol, and she rejected with
+contumely all attempts of the Spaniards to reconcile
+her on the basis of mutual concessions. The Dutch
+and the Huguenots depended now largely upon her
+support, and the English Catholics were made to feel
+more painfully than ever that appeals to their powerful
+friends upon the Continent could not protect them
+from the hard rule of their own Sovereign. And yet,
+withal, Alba had to confess that the only course now
+open to him was to speak fair, until at some future
+time a safe opportunity for injuring Elizabeth might
+arrive.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_284">[284]</span></p>
+
+<p>Up to this time since Philip had faced the necessity
+for winning England by other means than moral
+suasion, the projects for doing so had always run upon
+the lines of subsidising and supporting the revolt of
+the Catholic party in the interests of the Queen of
+Scots; and in this direction, but later with an ominous
+addition to the programme, the next attempts
+developed. During the sitting of the Conference of
+York in October, 1568, to investigate the charges
+against Mary relative to the murder of Darnley, the
+Duke of Norfolk had suggested to Lethington the
+desirability of hushing up the ugly business as against
+the Queen of Scots; and on the following day he had
+a long, private conversation with Murray to the same
+effect. Thomas Howard, fourth Duke of Norfolk,
+son of the martyred Surrey, was the greatest noble in
+England, a kinsman of the Queen, and up to this time
+ostensibly a Protestant. Personally, he was popular,
+for his manners were kindly and his possessions great,
+but, as events proved, he was as weak and unstable as
+he was ambitious. At this time he was about thirty-three
+years of age, and his wife, the daughter of the
+Earl of Arundel, and widow of Lord Dacre, had died.
+Such a man, with his personal prestige and his powerful
+name, was a fit instrument for stronger spirits than
+himself. In conversation with Murray at York,
+Norfolk said that Queen Elizabeth herself would not
+consider the subject of the succession, but it was
+necessary for the nobles of England to look ahead.
+“What could be Murray’s motive,” he asked, “in
+coming to England to blacken Queen Mary’s
+character and thus injuring her chances of the English
+succession?”</p>
+
+<p>As a consequence of these efforts of Norfolk, it was
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_285">[285]</span>agreed with Murray and Lethington to make the
+Conference of York abortive, and Mary was informed
+of this by a letter from Norfolk.&#x2060;<a id="FNanchor_184" href="#Footnote_184" class="fnanchor">[184]</a> In the course of
+the subsequent negotiations a few days afterwards,
+Lethington remarked that as Norfolk showed himself
+so much in favour of Mary, the whisper he had heard
+about the possibility of his marriage to her was probably
+true, and, according to Norfolk, earnestly
+advocated the match.&#x2060;<a id="FNanchor_185" href="#Footnote_185" class="fnanchor">[185]</a> Norfolk listened, for the
+prospect of the matrimonial Crown of England was a
+tempting one, and his sister, Lady Scrope, who was
+with Mary at Bolton, had no difficulty in obtaining
+the Scottish Queen’s acceptance of a suggestion which
+seemed to secure for her cause the higher nobility of
+England, who were anxious to overthrow the Cecils,
+and Bacons, and Hunsdons, and other new men, who
+now ruled England. De Spes was very soon
+approached, and, of course, warmly approved of the
+plan to marry Norfolk to the Queen of Scots, whilst
+a close and affectionate correspondence was carried on
+between Mary and her new suitor. For a time the
+plan was frustrated by the alarm of Leicester, when
+he suspected the real object of it, and by the dexterity
+of Cecil, as has already been described.</p>
+
+<p>Norfolk and Arundel had, however, never lost touch
+of de Spes, both of them constantly importuning him
+for money in return for their efforts in favour of the
+Spaniards in the seizure dispute. The Bishop of Ross,
+Mary’s busy agent, also kept the matter alive with
+de Spes. Norfolk, Arundel, Lumley, Northumberland,
+Cumberland, Montagu, Dacre, Morley, and many
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_286">[286]</span>other Catholic nobles, de Spes wrote to Alba, were
+ready to join in the conspiracy to release Mary and
+place England under the control of King Philip, if
+some armed demonstration were made on their behalf
+from Flanders. But Alba, as he plaintively assured
+King Philip, was powerless to assail, or even to offend,
+Elizabeth further, until she could be persuaded to
+surrender the vast quantity of Spanish-Flemish property
+she now held. Until then, he said, they must
+speak fair and softly to her, though the English and
+other Protestant privateers were capturing and
+plundering every Spanish ship they came across.</p>
+
+<p>In the meanwhile de Spes, still in disgrace and
+forbidden from Court, could only plot impotently
+through the Bishop of Ross and Italian intermediaries,
+many of them spies. The coming and
+going of such folk and the constant news sent by
+de Spes of the progress of the conspiracy, fairly
+alarmed Alba, who was now chiefly concerned in
+getting some of the confiscated property restored and
+trade reopened. In July he sent to de Spes, though
+he could ill spare it, the six thousand crowns bribe
+demanded by Norfolk, Arundel, and Lumley for their
+efforts in favour of the Spanish claims, and for the
+first time he spoke firmly to de Spes about his constant
+plotting. “I must again repeat,” he said, “to
+you, most emphatically, that you are not, on any
+account, to entertain approaches to you against the
+Queen or her Councillors, or anything touching them.
+On the contrary, if people come to you with such talk,
+you must be so reticent that they may never be able
+to say that any minister of the King has given ear to
+it.” At this very time the imprudent ambassador was
+almost daily or nightly closeted with some agent of
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_287">[287]</span>the conspirators, and was warmly seconding their plans.
+But as pacific, almost humble, representations by other
+agents came from Alba to the English Government,
+in hope of some arrangement for the restitution,
+Elizabeth assumed a gentler attitude; though she
+gave up not an atom of her plunder, and she partially
+released de Spes from his imprisonment.</p>
+
+<p>In the comparative remoteness of Winchester
+House, in Southwark, which he now rented, the
+Spanish ambassador, as imprudent as ever, found it
+easier than before to carry on his plots for the subjection
+of England; and, regardless of Alba’s stern
+injunction quoted above, he became more active and
+mischievous than ever. On the 25th July, 1569, he
+wrote to the King that the Bishop of Ross had been
+to see him at three o’clock that morning “to assure
+me of the wish of the Duke of Norfolk to serve your
+Majesty. He said he was a Catholic, and has the
+support, even in London, of many merchants and
+aldermen. I will report everything to the Duke of
+Alba and follow his instructions.” Shortly before this,
+Mary herself, in one of her many affectionate letters
+to Norfolk, had intimated that she was in communication
+with the Duke of Alba; and de Spes followed
+up the letter by an assurance that everything was
+almost ready for the great <i>coup</i>. Whilst Norfolk was
+thus playing the game of Spain and pretending to be
+a Catholic, he was full of Protestant professions to
+Murray, and to the French ambassador, La Mothe
+Fénélon, and he avowed himself at the same time the
+devoted servant of Catharine de Medici. A majority
+of the English Council had met in caucus and had
+decided in favour of Norfolk’s marriage with Mary;
+and although it is probable that most of the members
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_288">[288]</span>were not aware of the plot behind the match, it is
+certain that neither Mary nor her intended husband
+deceived themselves with regard to the ultimate aim.
+Nor was there any concealment on the part of the
+Spaniards. Alba sent Mary a subsidy of 10,000
+ducats in August (she had asked for 30,000 or 40,000),
+and at the same date de Spes wrote to the King: “I
+believe some great event will happen here soon, as
+the people are much dissatisfied and distressed for
+want of trade, and these gentlemen of Nonsuch have
+some new imaginations in their heads.”&#x2060;<a id="FNanchor_186" href="#Footnote_186" class="fnanchor">[186]</a>&#x2060;</p>
+
+<p>The “new imaginations,” whatever they were, hardly
+suited Philip. He had through life a distinct repugnance
+to associating himself with the French in any of
+his plans with regard to England. Norfolk and his
+friends, doubtless in good faith, desired by means of
+Mary Stuart to change the government and religion
+of England, with or without the deposition of Elizabeth,
+and in order to do so they were glad to obtain
+support from any quarter they could. They had
+primarily no desire to hand England, bound hard and
+fast, to Spain, which was alone what Philip wanted.
+It is certain that Mary herself was willing to do so,
+because she knew that no effective armed aid could
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_289">[289]</span>come to her from France, divided as that country was
+religiously and with her enemy Catharine dominant.
+Whilst Norfolk and his friends, therefore, were bidding
+for support on all sides and obtaining it, Mary
+was endeavouring with her might to keep the
+Spaniards, upon whom alone she depended, from slipping
+away from her. By the Bishop of Ross she
+begged de Spes to obtain Philip’s consent to her
+marriage with Norfolk, and the ambassador, in relating
+this to the King, wrote: “The business is so far forward
+that it will be difficult now to prevent it, and if
+it is to be done I think it had better be with your
+Majesty’s consent, which cannot fail to be of great
+advantage to them, and will bind them more closely
+to your Majesty’s service. The Queen of Scots says
+that if she were at liberty, or could get such help as
+would enable her to bring her country into submission,
+she would deliver herself and her son entirely into your
+Majesty’s hands; but that now she is obliged to sail
+with the wind, though she will never depart from your
+Majesty’s wishes.”</p>
+
+<p>Philip, indeed, was growing doubtful of the way
+the affair was progressing, and of de Spes’s management
+of it. “If the marriage of the Duke of Norfolk
+and the Queen of Scots,” he wrote, “is effected in the
+way, and with the objects you are informed, there is no
+doubt that it would be of great importance for the
+restoration of our true Faith in England, and would
+console the good Catholics now so oppressed. I
+desire these objects warmly, as you know; but they
+[the conspirators] must be very careful how they
+undertake the business, for if they make a mistake
+they will all be ruined. You did well in referring
+them to the Duke of Alba. You will limit yourself to
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_290">[290]</span>this, in accordance with your orders, which you will
+not exceed.” Philip distrusted Norfolk, who up to
+that time had been a Protestant, and the Duke’s
+approaches to the French completed the King’s
+coolness towards him. But before this letter of
+Philip’s reached London the miserable Norfolk had
+collapsed. Leicester, who had been a party to the
+plan, again took fright when he began to understand
+the object behind it, and this time made a clean
+breast of it to the Queen herself.</p>
+
+<p>Suddenly the blow fell. Mary Stuart’s prison was
+made closer, and Norfolk and the conservative lords
+were peremptorily summoned before the Queen at
+Windsor. The Duke, protesting his unalterable
+loyalty to Elizabeth, travelled in deadly fear as far as
+London, and on the day of his arrival at Howard
+House a messenger from the Earl of Northumberland
+came secretly to de Spes. Making a private sign,
+which had been agreed upon as a proof of genuineness,
+he said “that the Earl of Northumberland and
+his friends in the North had agreed to liberate the
+Queen of Scotland and establish the Catholic religion,
+returning to the amity and alliance with your Majesty
+which they so much desire. The Earl wished to
+know if your Majesty would approve of this, as he
+would undertake nothing that was not in your
+interest.” To this de Spes dared not say more than
+that he would write to the Duke of Alba about it.
+“The Duke of Norfolk,” he adds, “is here preparing
+all his friends.” So far from doing this, Norfolk was
+malingering in a panic, and two days later fled to
+Kenninghall, whimpering in a pitiable letter to Elizabeth
+that he never meant any harm. On his honour,
+he never dealt with the Queen of Scots further than
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_291">[291]</span>he declared to the Queen and some of her Council.
+Such lying and prevarication was scorned by the irate
+Elizabeth. Ill or well, she wrote in a rage, Norfolk
+must come to her instantly, and, trembling with fear,
+the poor wretch went as slow as he dared to Windsor,
+there with lachrymose repentance to be ordered into
+arrest with Arundel, Lumley, Pembroke, and all the
+rest of his accomplices who were within Elizabeth’s
+reach.</p>
+
+<p>It is clear that notwithstanding de Spes’s constant
+predictions of immediate coming success, and his
+repeated assurances that Elizabeth and her friends
+would be swept aside as a consequence of this plan,
+Philip was never greatly deceived by it. Alba had
+told him that he was powerless for the present, and he
+knew England sufficiently well to see that unless a
+large and well-organised force was used at the critical
+moment by him, an attempt to revolutionise England
+in his interests would fail. The trail of deadly
+deliberation, moreover, palsied every act of his life.
+At some time in August, 1569, when Mary Stuart’s
+appeals were reaching him, he instructed Alba to
+obtain full particulars of the military possibilities of
+the situation in England, in order that any action he
+might decide to take later should be effectual. A half-dozen
+or more envoys of various sorts, official and unofficial,
+had been sent over one after the other to try
+by some means to effect a mutual restitution of the
+seizures—Genoese financiers, Flemish diplomatists,
+and even Protestant merchants—but all without effect.
+On receiving the King’s orders, however, Alba
+instructed another embassy, surely the strangest for
+such a purpose ever seen, to go to England and
+endeavour to make terms with Elizabeth or bribe her
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_292">[292]</span>advisers. The leader was one of Alba’s most trusted
+Italian generals, Ciappino Vitelli, and he was to be
+accompanied by fifty experienced military officers,
+with a couple of official secretaries for appearance’
+sake. That their mission was not that which
+ostensibly appeared is clear from the fact that at
+the same time Alba sent another unofficial envoy—the
+Genoese merchant mariner Fiesco—to attempt to gain
+a restitution by the private bribery of Leicester and
+Cecil. Cecil and the Queen laughed at the idea of
+such an embassy as that of this fire-eating Ciappino
+coming to settle a commercial dispute, and when the
+party arrived at Calais for embarkation for England,
+Cobham, the Governor of Dover Castle, sent word
+that only Ciappino Vitelli himself and a small suite
+would be received. A still smaller number was
+allowed to proceed beyond Dover, and another
+detachment was stayed at Canterbury; so that by the
+time the gouty, obese, old Italian general was received
+by the Queen at Kingston-on-Thames, not even
+de Spes being allowed to accompany him to the
+presence, the military object of the mission was
+cleverly frustrated. The plague was raging in London,
+and Ciappino never entered the capital; and his interview
+with the Queen was mainly taken up by her
+angry complaint of the insolence of the Duke of Alba.
+After many days of quibbling, he was told that his
+powers were insufficient, and was politely invited to
+get out of the country as quickly as possible, his
+despatches to Alba being intercepted and read at
+Dover.</p>
+
+<p>It was indeed time that so dangerous a guest should
+be promptly asked to depart; for this was the most
+critical juncture of Elizabeth’s reign and her Crown
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_293">[293]</span>trembled in the balance. All the lords were not so
+pusillanimous as Norfolk. Both Dacre and Northumberland
+had formally notified to de Spes that they
+were ready to take up arms in Philip’s service. For
+many months the imprudent ambassador had been
+going beyond his instructions and encouraging these
+nobles to expect effective aid from Philip. If only
+a small number of arquebusiers were sent to them
+from Flanders, said Northumberland and Westmorland,
+they would undertake to release Mary, subdue the
+North of England, restore Catholic worship, and make
+friends with Spain. “I feel sure,” wrote de Spes, “that
+they will attempt the task; and it will be better effected
+by them than by the Duke of Norfolk, as they are
+better fitted for it, and the Queen of Scots will have
+greater freedom in the choice of a husband.”</p>
+
+<p>The questionable attitude of Westmorland and
+Northumberland caused Elizabeth to summon them
+to her presence. They disobeyed and, raising their
+standard, marched into Durham in force on the 14th
+November. Destroying the communion table in the
+cathedral, they caused Mass to be solemnly celebrated;
+and then pushing rapidly onward towards Ripon,
+Wetherby and Tadcaster, they finally assembled on
+Clifford Moor. The Earl of Sussex, the Queen’s Lieutenant
+in York, was for a time reduced to act on the
+defensive; and now, if Alba had been prompt and Philip
+ready, it is possible that the die might have been cast a
+winning number; and Mary Stuart, rescued from Tutbury,
+whither she had been rapidly carried, might have
+been made Queen of a Catholic Britain, under Spanish
+protection. When news came to de Spes of the southward
+march of the lords and their renewed prayers for
+aid from Flanders, he wrote to the King: “I have on
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_294">[294]</span>several occasions written to your Majesty of the goodwill
+of these nobles, and I have given a letter in cipher
+to the gentleman they are sending to the Duke of
+Alba to ask for aid. They beg for prompt reply,
+as communications will soon be stopped.... It is
+certain that there has never been so good an opportunity
+either of punishing those who have so grievously
+opposed your Majesty’s interests, or of restoring the
+Catholic religion, in which consists the maintenance
+of our old alliance and friendship with this country.”
+To Alba de Spes wrote in jubilant strain on the
+1st December. “The rebels,” he said, “were twelve
+thousand strong and were marching to release
+Mary and give battle to the Queen’s forces;” but
+he ominously adds that none of their confederates
+have yet risen. Ciappino Vitelli was still lingering
+at Colebrook, near Windsor, on the pretext of gout,
+though messages were being sent to him from the
+Queen that she considered his continued stay in
+England highly suspicious, as indeed it was, considering
+that he told de Spes, who doubtless conveyed
+it to the rebels, that they ought to march straight
+to London, where nothing could withstand them,
+seeing the confusion at Court, whilst their other
+friends would have a greater chance of moving.</p>
+
+<p>And de Spes, the man who, before all others,
+had led these unfortunate lords to believe that Spanish
+aid would not fail them, was obliged, now that the
+crisis had come, to assure the Duke of Alba that
+he would “do nothing without orders from your
+Excellency.” The northern lords could not wait
+for Philip’s leaden pondering, nor upon Alba’s need,
+and, disheartened at the lack of response, they
+fell into disunion and wasted the precious time
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_295">[295]</span>besieging Barnard Castle until the approach of Sussex
+with a newly organised army struck them with panic
+and they fled to Scotland—Northumberland to be
+sold basely to the English and to the scaffold;
+Westmorland, more unfortunate still, to seek lifelong
+exile in Spanish lands—a pathetic, poverty-stricken
+pensioner upon Philip’s irregular bounty,
+striving to earn his poor living by joining in plots to
+hand his native country over to the King of Spain.
+The rebellion in the North, for a time so threatening,
+was begun, as we have seen, without due preparation
+and conducted without ability to an inglorious termination.&#x2060;<a id="FNanchor_187" href="#Footnote_187" class="fnanchor">[187]</a>
+But not a little of the blame for the
+miserable fiasco must be laid at the door of de Spes,
+who for months had been holding out hopes—as we see
+now, without authority—that an armed Spanish force
+from Flanders would be ready to support the rising.
+Alas! English Catholics, even after this first hard
+lesson, had yet to learn that Philip’s aid was not so
+lightly given, or given at all, without ample assurance
+that he alone should reap the harvest of success
+without incurring the penalties of failure.</p>
+
+<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop" aria-hidden="true">
+
+<div class="chapter">
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_296">[296]</span></p>
+
+<h2 class="nobreak" id="CHAPTER_VII">CHAPTER VII<br>
+<span class="smaller">1570-1578</span></h2>
+
+<p>Desperation of Alba—Fresh Catholic conspiracies—De Spes’s complicity—Alba
+and the Ridolfi plot—Discovery—The revenge of John
+Hawkins—De Spes outwitted—His expulsion from England—Guaras
+appointed Spanish Agent—Reopening of trade—Guaras’ intrigues with
+Mary Stuart and Don Juan of Austria—The plot discovered—Imprisonment
+of Guaras—Fall of Don Juan—Bernardino de Mendoza
+appointed ambassador in England</p>
+
+</div>
+
+<p>Alba was driven well nigh to desperation by the
+contemptuous treatment extended to Ciappino
+in England and the evident determination of
+Elizabeth to hold her ground with regard to the
+property she had seized. Something must be done,
+and that quickly, he wrote to the King. If they
+exclude our ships from English ports, even for shelter,
+intercourse by sea between Spain and Flanders must
+cease, and we shall be absolutely obliged to commence
+hostilities. “Your Majesty’s present urgent
+needs are better known to you than to any one, and
+here the pressure is very great. The past wars,
+the emigration of the people, the stoppage of trade,
+and the general want of confidence here, all convince
+me that a rupture with England at present would
+be most inopportune; but if the English force it upon
+us, we cannot avoid it;” and the grim Duke, who had
+drowned Flanders in blood, had tamely to propose
+to his master, as the only way now open to them,
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_297">[297]</span>that Elizabeth should be more mildly treated than
+ever, in the hope that at least she would allow Spanish
+ships to shelter in her ports, whilst the plundered
+Flemish merchants were allowed to go over to
+England unofficially and make the best terms they
+individually could to rescue their property.</p>
+
+<p>Nor was Philip much more stout-hearted than
+his general. Whilst the northern nobles were yet
+in arms in Yorkshire, he wrote to Alba thus: “English
+affairs are going on in a way that may make
+it necessary, after all, to bring that Queen to do by
+force what she refuses to reason. Her duty is so
+plain that doubtless God causes her to ignore it,
+in order that by these means His holy religion may
+be restored in England and the Catholics and good
+Christians rescued from the thraldom in which they
+live. In case her obstinacy and hardness of heart
+should continue, therefore, you will consider the
+best direction to be given to our action. We here
+think that the best course will be to encourage
+with money and secret favour the Catholics of
+the North, and to help those in Ireland to take up
+arms against the heretics, to deliver the crown to
+the Queen of Scots to whom it belongs by succession.... This
+is only mentioned at present that
+you may know what is passing in our minds here
+[<i>i.e.</i>, in Spain], and that with your great prudence
+and a full consideration of affairs in general, you
+may ponder what is best to be done. What you
+say is very true; we are beginning to lose prestige
+by delaying so long to provide a remedy for the
+great grievance done by this woman to us.”&#x2060;<a id="FNanchor_188" href="#Footnote_188" class="fnanchor">[188]</a>&#x2060;</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_298">[298]</span></p>
+
+<p>Mary Stuart, closely watched and in prison, alone
+never lost heart or courage. Norfolk’s weak poltroonery,
+the disastrous collapse of the northern lords,
+the slow hesitancy of Philip, were all met by her
+with confident predictions of coming success, if only
+the King of Spain would take her cause in hand.
+Letter after letter went from her and from the restless
+Bishop of Ross in her name to Philip and Alba.
+“The Queen is in good heart,” the Bishop of Ross
+assured de Spes, “and the principal Catholics of
+this country have sent me word not to desist from
+the first intention, for that, as soon as they learn
+that they will have foreign help, and arrangements
+are made for it to reach them, they will rise and stand
+out until this country is Catholic and the succession
+assured to Queen Mary.” This was soon after the
+flight of the northern lords (18th January, 1570), and
+at the same time a warm love correspondence was
+passing between Mary and Norfolk, she with honeyed
+words, and at serious risk to herself, urging him
+not to abandon the great plan that was to make them
+both free and great,&#x2060;<a id="FNanchor_189" href="#Footnote_189" class="fnanchor">[189]</a> though he was still a prisoner
+in the Tower.</p>
+
+<p>Meanwhile the dangerous attempt at a Catholic
+rebellion in England and the known confidence of
+the Queen of Scots had drawn the Protestants of
+Europe together: a close union existed between
+Elizabeth and the Lutheran Princes of Germany,
+whilst Hans Casimir and other mercenary leaders
+were raising troops subsidised by England and the
+Huguenots to renew the religious war in France.
+The privateers in the Channel were more aggressive
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_299">[299]</span>than ever, and Cardinal Chatillon still flaunted his
+unecclesiastical equipment at the English Court.
+Hardly a letter was written by de Spes at the time
+(1570) that does not contain some suggestion for
+striking at Elizabeth’s power. The Queen of Scots
+might be captured by a <i>coup de main</i> and carried
+off to Spain, as she herself suggested; the Bishop
+of Ross assures him that a few Spanish troops landed
+in Scotland might easily overturn the new Regent
+Lennox;&#x2060;<a id="FNanchor_190" href="#Footnote_190" class="fnanchor">[190]</a> a small force sent to aid the Irish rebels
+would enable them to expel the English; “and it
+looks as if the enterprise might be effected in both
+islands at the same time, for in Ireland most of the
+nation will rise as soon as they see your Majesty’s
+flag on the coast, and no resistance would be made
+except in Dublin and the fortresses.”</p>
+
+<p>To all these suggestions of his intemperate ambassador
+Philip had still no answer but to enjoin
+prudence and secrecy. Information, pledges, assurances
+without end were requested, whilst Philip
+pondered and considered. Everything was referred
+to the Duke of Alba for decision, and Alba would not
+move without specific orders; whilst in this deadlock
+the Spanish commerce was swept from the seas and
+the legendary power of the Catholic King was made
+a mock and derision of the heretics. Once Philip’s
+hands were nearly forced by the impatience of Mary’s
+friends. The more extreme school of English and
+Scottish Catholics had been urging for some time
+that a Papal Bull of Deprivation against Elizabeth
+should be obtained, in order that Mary’s immediate
+claim to the Crown of England might be regularised.
+Philip had gently put aside all such requests or left
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_300">[300]</span>them unanswered. He was not yet ready for
+Elizabeth’s forcible deposition; for, as we have seen,
+his cumbrous methods forbade prompt action, and
+he had no intention of ousting Elizabeth until he
+had made himself quite certain that he, and he alone,
+would be master of England under her successor.
+But the action of the Scottish and Guisan Catholics
+in Rome, greatly to Philip’s annoyance, procured
+the Bull from the Pope over Philip’s head; and de
+Spes’s chaplain, Father Berga, doubtless with the full
+connivance of the ambassador, who was apparently
+incapable of understanding high politics, persuaded
+John Felton to court martyrdom by fixing the Pope’s
+Bull on the Bishop of London’s door on Corpus Christi
+Day late in May, 1570. De Spes, in the innocence
+of his heart, wrote off in jubilant strain to Philip,
+recording the event and foretelling all sorts of great
+consequences from it. But the King had nothing
+but condemnation and annoyance that his plans
+should thus be interfered with by the meddling of
+priests, and de Spes had to read some very plain
+talk from his master, whilst the share of his fugitive
+chaplain in the outrage still further brought the
+ambassador and his master into the black books
+of Elizabeth.</p>
+
+<p>The bold action of Felton, however, frightened
+the Government into a milder attitude towards the
+moderate English Catholics, and the mustering of
+a strong fleet in Spanish Flanders, for the purpose
+of conveying to Spain Philip’s fourth wife, Anna of
+Austria, heightened the alarm. Elizabeth was so
+much perturbed that she kept her room for days
+together, bewailing the vengeance that she thought
+at last was about to fall upon her for all her
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_301">[301]</span>provocations of her brother-in-law. Cecil (now Lord
+Burghley) appears to have been the great object of
+his mistress’s wrath. To him, she cried, alone was
+due the trouble in which she found herself. Here,
+thanks to Cecil’s policy, she said, was a great army
+and fleet ready to attack her in the Channel, and
+Philip was causing another force to be mustered in
+Spain under the traitor Stukeley to invade Ireland.
+But this was only a momentary weakness, which
+even steadfast Burghley himself shared to the
+extremity of preparing for timely flight with such
+portable property as he could gather.&#x2060;<a id="FNanchor_191" href="#Footnote_191" class="fnanchor">[191]</a> The unwonted
+fit of despair did not last long. English
+forces were got together rapidly, the English conservative
+and moderate Catholics were conciliated,
+and the Duke of Norfolk was released from the
+Tower to only nominal arrest in his own house;
+for if the conservative nobles of his party considered
+themselves absolved by the Pope’s Bull from their
+oath of allegiance to the Queen, then, indeed, might
+Elizabeth tremble. This was on the 4th August,
+and, on the 23rd June previous, the Duke of Norfolk
+had made in writing the most abject submission to
+the Queen, pledging himself “freely, voluntarily,
+and absolutely, by my allegiance to your Majesty,
+my Sovereign Lady, never to offend your Highness,
+but do utterly renounce and revoke all that which
+on my part any wise hath passed, with a full intention
+never to deal in that cause of marriage
+with the Queen of Scots, nor in any other cause
+belonging to her.”&#x2060;<a id="FNanchor_192" href="#Footnote_192" class="fnanchor">[192]</a> Even Mary herself was now
+smiled upon by Elizabeth, and negotiations for a
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_302">[302]</span>reconciliation were opened with her; for the Spanish
+fleet was still in English waters, and a peace between
+the warring parties had been patched up in France.</p>
+
+<p>With these numerous signs of yielding on the part
+of the Protestants, it is not surprising that the Spanish
+partisans should pluck up courage. De Spes, raging
+with wounded pride at the indignities continually
+heaped upon him,&#x2060;<a id="FNanchor_193" href="#Footnote_193" class="fnanchor">[193]</a> all of which, Philip told him, he
+must bear patiently, never ceased to plot with the
+Bishop of Ross and Mary Stuart. On the 2nd
+September he wrote to Philip details of another
+dangerous conspiracy that had been broached to
+him by Mary through the Bishop of Ross. The
+Catholics, he said, feeling themselves now absolved
+from their allegiance to Elizabeth by the Pope’s
+Bull, were willing to rise. The sons of the Earl
+of Derby and the gentry of Lancashire were ready
+to release Mary—one of the Earl of Shrewsbury’s
+sons having also been brought into the plan, which
+would make it easy, as Mary was in Shrewsbury’s
+keeping. This combination looked askance at Norfolk
+as a doubtful Catholic and a backslider, though it was
+joined by his kinsmen Arundel and Lumley, as well
+as by the thoroughgoing Catholics, Southampton,
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_303">[303]</span>Worcester, and Montagu (Sir Anthony Browne).
+The plan now advanced was for a Spanish fleet to
+go to the Stanley country, the Isle of Man, or the
+Lancashire coast, and carry Mary Stuart thence to
+safety. The scheme, however, was thrown away by
+the kidnapping and forcible abduction to England
+of Dr. Story, the English Catholic Agent in Antwerp,
+who upon the rack had torn from him all he knew,
+which was not much, of the communications on the
+subject that had passed between Mary Stuart’s friends
+and the Duke of Alba. The ostentatious but insincere
+negotiations going on between Elizabeth and the
+Queen of Scots, and the redoubled vigilance of Cecil’s
+Government, completed the impracticability of this
+scheme, and then once more Norfolk took the lead.</p>
+
+<p>On the 15th October de Spes wrote to the King
+that approaches were being made by the French to
+marry the young Duke of Anjou to Mary, this, of
+course, being one of Catharine’s tricks to frustrate the
+Spanish attempts to dominate Britain through the
+Queen of Scots. “It may be,” says de Spes, “that
+the Queen [Mary] will consent, but it will not please
+the majority of the English people, and it certainly
+does not please me. The Catholics are not very much
+in favour of the marriage with the Duke of Norfolk,
+as they are uncertain about his orthodoxy, although
+Arundel and Lumley assert that he will be obedient to
+the Church. His desire to reign may well lead him
+from bad paths to good ones. The Duke [of Norfolk]
+himself has been very cool about this marriage, but he
+now seems to wish to renew the project, particularly
+as he expects shortly to be quite at liberty, in accordance
+with the Queen’s promise to him. If your
+Majesty’s wishes are to be represented ... the
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_304">[304]</span>Bishop of Ross will be a good negotiator, and I could
+conduct the matter with him or with Ridolfi, who has
+been in communication with them; and if it should be
+necessary for the Duke of Norfolk to bind himself
+separately to other conditions, steps may be taken at
+once in the matter. Pray your Majesty send me
+orders, for it is certain that the release and marriage
+of the Queen of Scots carries with it the tranquillisation
+of Flanders and the restoration of religion
+in this country.”</p>
+
+<p>Philip, in answer to this and many similar hints, had
+nothing but vague expressions of sympathy to send in
+reply, with fresh orders to his ambassador to follow
+strictly the instructions of the Duke of Alba. For
+months, until the Spanish fleet had passed harmlessly
+down Channel, the hollow negotiations between
+Elizabeth and Mary went on, and a similar pretence
+of conferences with regard to the reopening of trade
+with the Duke of Alba, whilst Elizabeth checkmated
+the French advances to Mary Stuart by herself
+suddenly displaying a desire to marry the boy Duke
+of Anjou. “They think,” wrote de Spes early in
+February, 1571, “that with this talk about the
+marriage of the Queen [Elizabeth] with the Duke of
+Anjou we shall be afraid to offend them, and the
+pirates are more welcomed than ever, whilst the Queen
+of Scot’s business is being delayed. It is true that so
+far as the Catholics are concerned matters were never
+more favourable than now. I did not dare to accept
+their offers, in the face of the Duke of Alba’s instructions;
+but whenever his Majesty wishes, a great
+service can be done to God, and at the same time the
+safety of the Netherlands secured and the throne of
+Spain aggrandised. The position of the King’s
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_305">[305]</span>ambassador here does not add much to his dignity.... I
+have suffered more than can be imagined.”&#x2060;<a id="FNanchor_194" href="#Footnote_194" class="fnanchor">[194]</a>
+De Spes had his personal grudge as well as his
+Catholic zeal now to spur him on to vengeance. The
+irresponsiveness of his master and of Alba to the
+repeated suggestions that armed aid should be sent to
+the English Catholics suggested for the first time a
+viler method by which Elizabeth, the main obstacle to
+the Anglo-Spanish alliance, might be removed. The
+above letter is different from any that had preceded it,
+and was written privately, not to the King, as usual,
+but to his Secretary, Zayas. A “great service might
+be done to God whenever his Majesty wished.” It
+was no longer dependent, apparently, upon the ability
+of Philip to send large armed forces, though they
+might be needed later to hold the conquest.</p>
+
+<p>We will see from other sources what this new feature
+in the plan was. Two days after de Spes wrote the
+above letter, on the 8th February, 1571, Mary, who
+had learnt that the ambassador could do nothing, as
+he says, but refer the conspirators to the Duke of
+Alba, wrote as follows to the Bishop of Ross.&#x2060;<a id="FNanchor_195" href="#Footnote_195" class="fnanchor">[195]</a> After
+saying that she would, as soon as she was released, go
+to Spain and throw herself entirely upon the protection
+of Philip, she proceeds: “I would advise to send some
+faithful man towards the King of Spain whom he
+might trust, to make him understand the state of my
+realm, and also of the friends I have here, their deliberations
+and the means they may have to set themselves
+to the fields and saist [<i>i.e.</i>, obtain possession]
+them of me, if the said King of Spain will embrace
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_306">[306]</span>and sustain my cause and theirs. I think Ridolfi may
+best acquit himself of this charge securely ... under
+colour of his own traffic.” She continues by saying
+that Philip’s fears of Norfolk’s orthodoxy must be
+banished. “I see no other means but to assure them
+of the Duke, for that is the knot of the matter. My
+whole hope is in the Catholics of this realm.” When
+the Bishop of Ross transmitted this proposal to
+Norfolk the latter at once acquiesced in the despatch
+of Ridolfi to Flanders, Spain, and Rome,&#x2060;<a id="FNanchor_196" href="#Footnote_196" class="fnanchor">[196]</a> for the
+purpose of demanding aid to seize and depose
+Elizabeth; and on the 10th March de Spes wrote to the
+King, “The Queen of Scotland, the Duke of Norfolk,
+and the Catholic leaders have wisely resolved to send
+a gentleman to your Majesty, who will see the Duke
+of Alba first, but without the knowledge of the French.
+I have, after much difficulty, obtained a copy of his
+instructions, and send them herewith.”</p>
+
+<p>On the 25th March Ridolfi was ready to start, and
+de Spes wrote to Philip: “The Queen of Scots and
+the Duke of Norfolk, in the names of many other
+lords and gentlemen attached to your Majesty’s
+interests, and the promotion of the Catholic faith, are
+sending Rodolfo Ridolfi, a Florentine gentleman, to
+offer their services to your Majesty, and to represent
+to you that the time is now ripe to take a step of
+great benefit to Christendom, as Ridolfi will set forth
+to your Majesty. The letter of credence from the
+Duke [of Norfolk] is written in the cipher that I sent
+Zayas, in case the letter is intercepted ...;” whilst to
+Secretary Zayas, de Spes wrote at the same time: “The
+bearer is Rodolfo Ridolfi, whom the Queen of Scots and
+the Duke of Norfolk are sending to his Majesty....
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_307">[307]</span>It is necessary that he should have audience of his
+Majesty with the utmost secrecy, as you will be able
+to arrange, on so important a matter as this.”&#x2060;<a id="FNanchor_197" href="#Footnote_197" class="fnanchor">[197]</a> Almost
+simultaneously Henry Cobham was sent to Spain by
+Elizabeth in order ostensibly to negotiate direct about
+the seizures, but really to ascertain how far Philip was
+helping the Irish rebels, and de Spes does not conceal
+his glee that “these thieves and pirates” will find,
+“though they send ambassadors and play their old
+tricks,” and he (de Spes) “is still mixing his words
+with honey,” “all this will not hinder what his
+Majesty will decide to do.”&#x2060;<a id="FNanchor_198" href="#Footnote_198" class="fnanchor">[198]</a>&#x2060;</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_308">[308]</span></p>
+
+<p>Ridolfi arrived in Brussels at the beginning of April,
+and his mission was discussed exhaustively by Alba
+and his Council. The long report which Alba thereupon
+sent to Philip is a State paper of the highest
+interest, because it not only sets forth fully the
+whole position, but for the first time formulates clearly
+the plan of murdering Elizabeth as a political measure.
+We have traced in previous pages how the provocation
+had grown, how the powerlessness of the Spaniards
+to vindicate their prestige and their interests had embittered
+them. In all the previous suggestions for the
+substitution of Mary Stuart for Elizabeth on the
+English throne, it is true that there could have been
+little doubt as to what would have been the fate of
+the deposed Queen at the hands of the victors; but
+in Alba’s minute to Philip the killing of Elizabeth as
+a preliminary measure is recommended as a condition
+of Spanish support. Alba sets forth with great prolixity
+the pros and cons of the position, the saintly
+character of the objects, the liberation of the captive
+Mary, and the restoration of the faith in England.
+Norfolk, he says, will undertake to rise and hold his
+own country for forty days after liberating the Queen
+of Scots if Philip will promise before the expiration
+of that time to send him 6,000 arquebusiers. He
+has means, he says, to seize the Tower of London
+and secure the person of Elizabeth, and he and Mary
+will look alone to the King of Spain for guidance.
+Alba, as usual, is full of doubts, limitations, and misgivings.
+Suppose after the Spanish aid had been
+sent the enterprise were to fail! Not only would the
+Queen of Scots and Norfolk lose their heads, but the
+Catholic religion would be utterly crushed thenceforward
+in England, and Elizabeth would throw
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_309">[309]</span>herself entirely into the hands of France. Ridolfi, too,
+seemed to Alba rather a talkative person for such a
+mission. He had to pass through France: what if
+he opened his mouth too wide there, or in Rome?
+Besides, the Pope himself was rather too fond of
+consulting French Cardinals....</p>
+
+<figure class="figcenter illowp51" id="illus09" style="max-width: 34.375em;">
+  <img class="w100" src="images/illus09.jpg" alt="">
+  <figcaption>
+    <p>FERNANDO ALVAREZ DE TOLEDO, THIRD DUKE OF ALBA</p>
+  </figcaption>
+</figure>
+
+<p>And so on, and so forth, until at last Alba gives to
+Philip his final recommendation. Ridolfi was to be
+warned that the French must have nothing whatever
+to do with the affair, and he was to be sent on his way
+to Rome and Madrid. The King is recommended to
+embark the 6,000 men required for England in the
+fleet being prepared in Spain to bring out the new
+Governor of Flanders, Medina Celi; but that on no
+account should the aid be sent to England on the
+conditions proposed by Norfolk and Mary, for fear of
+failure. “But in case that the Queen of England
+should first have died, <i>either of natural death or
+otherwise</i>, or the confederates had seized and secured
+her person without your Majesty having had anything
+to do with it, then I should find no objection whatever
+to it, for the affair would be quite on another footing.”
+“Everything,” added Alba, “should be prepared
+secretly in Flanders, but no move should be made
+until Elizabeth was dead, <i>naturally or otherwise</i>. As
+soon as <i>that</i> happened your Majesty ought not to miss
+such a fine opportunity to attain the end desired—the
+restoration of our holy Catholic faith and the future
+tranquillity of your dominions.”&#x2060;<a id="FNanchor_199" href="#Footnote_199" class="fnanchor">[199]</a>&#x2060;</p>
+
+<p>Whilst Ridolfi, duly warned to be secret, went on
+his way to Rome, where the Pope heartily blessed his
+mission, and thence to Madrid, where he arrived in
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_310">[310]</span>the last days of June, evil fell upon the project in England.
+The Flemish Secretary of the Bishop of Ross,
+Charles Bailly, had accompanied Ridolfi to Flanders,
+in order to bring back news of the reception of
+Norfolk’s proposals by Alba. The latter had, of
+course, not gone beyond general approval in his
+intercourse with Ridolfi, the murder condition being
+reserved for Philip’s own consideration; but he had
+said enough to prove conclusively that he regarded
+with sympathy, and hoped to aid, a project intended
+to depose Elizabeth in favour of Mary and Norfolk.
+Bailly wrote letters in cipher at Ridolfi’s dictation,
+giving Alba’s provisional answers to the Bishop of
+Ross and two other correspondents identified by
+numbers only. Bailly, who had been closely watched
+by Cecil’s spies in Flanders, carried the letters to
+England himself, and on the 15th April de Spes
+reports to the King that this man had been stopped at
+Dover and his packets taken from him. The letters
+he bore were in cipher, which of itself was suspicious;
+but in addition to this, every movement of Ridolfi in
+Brussels was known to Elizabeth’s Government, and
+the Secretary’s coming had been looked for. The
+packet of letters was given into the custody of Lord
+Cobham, the Governor of Dover Castle, until the
+Council in London should send instructions, whilst the
+unhappy youth, Bailly, was sent to the Marshalsea in
+Southwark pending inquiries.</p>
+
+<p>The Cobhams belonged to the party of conservative
+nobles, ready to turn against Elizabeth the moment
+she was in danger, and by a trick of one of the
+younger brothers, Thomas—they were notoriously a
+turbulent lot—the precious packet of letters was
+spirited away to the Spanish ambassador in London
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_311">[311]</span>and a dummy packet substituted for it. When this
+was opened with great anticipation before the Queen’s
+Council in London, to their dismay they found nothing
+but a confused jumble written in the same cipher.
+But they were not to be baulked. At least they had
+Charles Bailly safe under lock and bars, and the rack
+might induce him to talk. He began by making a
+grave mistake, writing letters—of course intercepted—to
+the Bishop of Ross that, now that the real letters had
+reached their destination without being deciphered,
+they had nothing to fear; that though they tore him
+to pieces on the rack he would confess nothing; and
+he begged the Bishop to tell him what answers he
+should give to his examiners. The Bishop, claiming
+ecclesiastical and diplomatic immunity, was just as
+imprudent as his secretary, urging him to stand firm
+and defy the English and gain the lasting gratitude of
+Mary. The poor wretch knew little of the details of
+Ridolfi’s mission, but he had written the cipher
+letters he bore; and gradually the agony of torture
+wrung from him all he knew.&#x2060;<a id="FNanchor_200" href="#Footnote_200" class="fnanchor">[200]</a> Every day he sent
+fresh appealing letters to the Bishop of Ross, with the
+only result at length of lodging the Bishop himself in
+the Tower, threatened with the rack, notwithstanding
+his mitre and diplomatic position. Bailly deposed
+that Alba had received Ridolfi favourably, and had sent
+him on to Rome and Madrid to demand armed help
+in England for the two persons whose identity had
+been concealed by numbers.</p>
+
+<p>For some time the authorities could get no further
+than this. Of course they knew that the two persons
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_312">[312]</span>unnamed were Mary and Norfolk, but they needed
+legal proof, and gradually Cecil’s net was widened and
+swept into gaol one after the other of the confidants
+and tools of the plotters. In August a false follower
+of Norfolk brought to the Council a bag of £600
+with a cipher letter that had been entrusted to him
+by Norfolk’s secretary to forward to Lord Herries,
+the leader of Mary’s Catholic friends in Scotland.
+Curiously enough this sum of money had been
+received from the French ambassador, so it is clear
+that Mary and Norfolk were playing false and doing
+what Alba dreaded most, namely, bringing the French
+into the business. But this fact made matters no
+better from the point of view of the English Council,
+and suddenly the Duke of Norfolk, the first noble
+in England, found himself in prison with all his confidential
+servants. The torture did its fell work promptly,
+and the secrets of the underlings were drawn from
+them, implicating the Duke beyond redemption. The
+Bishop of Ross, seeing his most secret papers deciphered,
+became almost loquacious in his fright, and
+went out of his way to vituperate his unhappy
+mistress.</p>
+
+<p>Norfolk collapsed as abjectly as before. He had
+hoped at first, he said, to wed Mary by Elizabeth’s
+permission. He was sorry and repentant for having
+acted so falsely after he had promised not to do so, and
+would never do it again. He had not really been a
+Catholic, he said, and now submitted himself entirely
+to her Majesty’s mercy. He had never, he solemnly
+avowed, intended to bring foreign troops into England,
+or to touch the sacred person of his revered sovereign.
+It was all the fault of the Bishop of Ross, of Mary,
+of anybody but himself, ... and so, with such sorry
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_313">[313]</span>lies as this, the most beloved and highest noble in
+England whined for mercy and his bare life. Elizabeth
+was loath to sacrifice him, for he was her cousin and
+the head of a powerful group of Englishmen, but at
+length the Protestant influences around her were too
+strong for her to resist, and Norfolk’s head fell on
+Tower Hill on the 2nd June, 1572.</p>
+
+<p>Before this happened, Philip’s Council in Madrid
+had exhaustively discussed Alba’s recommendation
+that the murder of Elizabeth should precede the
+sending of Spanish forces to England. They not
+only approved fully of it, but laid down that the act
+should be committed, not in London, but whilst the
+Queen was on a progress. Much sanctimonious talk
+there was in the Council about the sacredness of the
+cause excusing the means, and even the Pope’s Nuncio
+smiled upon the nefarious plan and called it righteous.
+As for Philip himself, he was perfectly willing, and
+said that the whole thing now turned upon the ability
+to get the money together for the purpose, “and it
+would be a great pity to miss so important a matter
+or so small an amount, as later it would cost so much
+more.”&#x2060;<a id="FNanchor_201" href="#Footnote_201" class="fnanchor">[201]</a> It is probably true, as was urged for them,
+that neither Mary nor Norfolk consented in so
+many words to this openly avowed condition of the
+Spaniards to make the prior murder of Elizabeth
+a condition of armed aid being sent from Flanders.
+The proposal was certainly not contained in the
+instructions carried by Ridolfi from Norfolk, though it
+is, in my opinion, indicated in the letter from de Spes
+to Zayas of 25th March quoted on an earlier page.
+It is first put clearly in black and white by Alba
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_314">[314]</span>himself, and warmly adopted by Philip and his
+Council. But though Mary and Norfolk were not
+therefore necessarily parties to the proposed crime,
+there can be no doubt in the mind of any reasonable
+person what would have befallen Elizabeth if success
+had attended the attempt, and Norfolk had carried out
+the pledge he gave to Alba to seize the Tower of
+London and secure the person of the Queen.</p>
+
+<p>We have here, however, not to deal with the culpability
+of the English actors so much as with that of
+the Catholic King, so full of saintly professions and so
+devoutly pious himself, who in his helplessness and
+desperation was willing at last, in order to extricate
+himself from a political impasse, to consent to treason
+and murder as a means to righteousness. In the
+letter Philip wrote to de Spes (4th August, 1571)—in
+ignorance, of course, of the collapse of the plot—he
+conveys his intention to patronise the murder of
+Elizabeth in the following characteristic words:
+“After carrying the whole question before Almighty
+God, whose cause it is, and in whom we trust for the
+guidance and direction of the affair better than human
+prudence can effect or understand, since the object is
+entirely, purely, and simply directed to His glory and
+service and the exaltation of His holy faith, I have
+resolved to adopt the course which you will learn from
+the Duke of Alba, to whom I write about it at great
+length. In conformity therewith and the orders he
+will give to you, you will act in the business with the
+discretion, dexterity, suavity and prudence which we
+expect of you, keeping in close communication with the
+Duke (of Alba) and carrying out his orders explicitly.”&#x2060;<a id="FNanchor_202" href="#Footnote_202" class="fnanchor">[202]</a>&#x2060;</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_315">[315]</span></p>
+
+<p>As the damning facts were gradually wrung out of
+the miserable accomplices in the plot, during the
+summer and autumn of 1571 the position of de Spes
+became daily more impossible in England. His name
+was constantly cropping up in the depositions, and
+every deponent had some evidence to give of his
+activity in forwarding this conspiracy to overturn the
+Government to which he was accredited. Even then,
+semi-prisoner as he was, and himself in danger of
+punishment or ignominious expulsion, he never ceased
+to plot; and his eagerness made him and his master
+an easy prey to an amusing piece of successful mystification
+that any person less blinded by hate than he
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_316">[316]</span>would have seen through at once. It will be recollected
+that John Hawkins’s trading expedition to Central
+America had been treacherously attacked by a superior
+Spanish force at St. Juan de Lua, Mexico, in October,
+1568, Hawkins with difficulty escaping with only two
+tiny ships. Property of great value and over a
+hundred men had been captured by the Spaniards and
+sent to Seville, the unfortunate sailors being delivered
+to the Inquisition and condemned to slavery. John
+Hawkins was the last man in the world to reconcile
+himself tamely to such a loss; and through a Catholic
+friend of his, George Fitzwilliam, a kinsman of the
+Duchess of Feria, he opened negotiations in Spain for
+the release of his sailors and the return of his property,
+on condition that he deserted the English service with
+the Queen’s fleet of fourteen armed ships, and joined
+that of the King of Spain for the invasion of England
+in favour of Mary Stuart.</p>
+
+<p>Poor Mary, as usual, was easily hoodwinked, as
+indeed was Fitzwilliam himself at first, and the Ferias
+eagerly listened to the suggestion of apostasy of such
+a man as John Hawkins. Fitzwilliam returned to
+London from Spain with an encouraging answer and
+tokens for the Queen of Scots, in order that she might
+be asked to assure the Ferias and Philip of the
+genuineness of Hawkins’s offer. Cecil, who was behind
+Hawkins in the whole negotiation and enjoyed the
+position almost as much as the great sailor, smoothed
+over the difficulties of access to Mary, who, only too
+ready to believe in the honesty of others, sent him
+back to Spain with all sorts of assurances, letters for
+Philip and the Ferias, and a beautiful missal bound in
+gold for the Duchess of Feria, wherein she had
+written “<i>Absit nobis gloriari nisi in cruce Domini nostri
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_317">[317]</span>Jesu Christi.—Marie R.</i>” When Fitzwilliam came to
+him, de Spes was easily drawn into the plan, and
+became enthusiastically certain of the <i>bonâ fides</i> of
+Hawkins. The more he sees of him, he says, the
+more convinced he is of his honesty. He is a
+Catholic, and very ambitious; and only once, and then
+but for a moment, did the gullible ambassador somewhat
+distrust Cecil’s complaisancy in allowing Fitzwilliam
+easy access to Mary Stuart, and to run
+backwards and forwards unimpeded between England
+and the coast of Spain.</p>
+
+<p>Fitzwilliam again returned early in September to
+England entirely successful in his mission, and
+Hawkins wrote full of glee to Lord Burghley. The
+King and the Duke of Feria had jumped at
+Hawkins’s offer, his sailors had all been released
+and embarked for England, and the agreement
+between Hawkins and the Spaniards with orders
+for a great sum of money to be paid to Hawkins
+had been sent to de Spes, who was to forward the
+enterprise with all diligence. “The design is,” wrote
+Hawkins, “that my power should join with the Duke
+of Alba’s power, which he doth secretly provide in
+Flanders, as well as with the power which cometh
+with the Duke of Medina from Spain, and so all
+together to invade this realm and set up the Queen
+of Scots. They have practised with us for the burning
+of Her Majesty’s ships; therefore there should be
+some good care had of them; but not so as to appear
+that anything is discovered.... The King hath
+sent a ruby of good price to the Queen of Scots, with
+letters also, which in my judgment were good to
+be delivered. The letters be of no importance, but
+his message by word is to comfort her and say that he
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_318">[318]</span>hath now none other care than to place her in her
+own. It were good, also, that the ambassador (de
+Spes) did make request unto your Lordship that Fitzwilliam
+may have access to the Queen of Scots to
+render thanks to her for the delivery of our prisoners
+[<i>i.e.</i>, in Spain] now at liberty. It will be a good
+colour for your Lordship to confer with him more
+largely. I have sent your Lordship a copy of my
+<i>pardon</i> from the King of Spain, in the very order and
+manner I have it. The Duke of Medina and the
+Duke of Alba hath, each, one of the same <i>pardons</i>
+more amplified to present to me; although this be
+large enough! with very great titles and honours from
+the King: from which God deliver me!... Their
+practices be very mischievous, and they be never idle.
+But God I hope will confound them and turn their
+devices upon their own necks.”&#x2060;<a id="FNanchor_203" href="#Footnote_203" class="fnanchor">[203]</a>&#x2060;</p>
+
+<p>There was no limit to the credulity of de Spes.
+The great sum of money passed from him to
+Hawkins, but though the fourteen ships that the latter
+had promised to the King of Spain came not, for the
+discovery of the Ridolfi treason upset for the time the
+whole plan of murder and invasion, the ambassador
+never lost faith in Hawkins and Fitzwilliam. Norfolk
+was condemned to death, Mary Stuart, herself in
+closer confinement than ever, was in dire danger of
+the block, de Spes threatened and insulted hourly, and
+his henchman, Luis de Paz, haled to prison, and
+Antonio de Guaras, his close friend, not daring to
+leave his house for many months together, and yet
+de Spes firmly believed that John Hawkins, an
+Englishman if ever there was one, was only waiting
+the signal from the King of Spain to desert with the
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_319">[319]</span>English fleet and join his country’s enemies. At
+length, on the 14th December, Elizabeth determined
+she would have no more of de Spes. His complicity
+in the Ridolfi plot had been made absolutely clear;
+his pernicious activity had been watched for three
+years, and every effort had been made to drive him
+out of England without avail. So, on the 14th December,
+1571, the Lords of the Council summoned him
+to Westminster. Lord Burghley spoke and told him
+that repeated requests had been made to the King of
+Spain to withdraw him, and now the Queen wished to
+know when he was going, as she did not want him in
+England. De Spes replied defiantly that he knew
+nothing about her wants. When he received proper
+instructions from his own Sovereign to go he would
+go, and not before.</p>
+
+<p>A long statement of all his misdeeds in England
+was then read to him in Spanish, to which he replied
+that much of it was false, and he desired to send
+an answer to it. “Oh no!” quoth Cecil, “your King
+would have no reply from Dr. Man, and our Queen
+will have none from you.” Then, after a few more
+heated words, the ambassador was told roughly that
+he would have to leave England in three days, and in
+the meanwhile he would be in charge of Henry
+Knollys. Could he send a courier to his King? he
+asked. No; that would take too long, he was told.
+To the Duke of Alba, then? Certainly not; they
+cared nothing for the Duke of Alba, replied Burghley.
+“It was impossible to leave,” objected de Spes, “until
+I send and get money from Antwerp to pay my debts.”
+“We will lend you the money you need,” replied Cecil;
+and at last de Spes had to make the best of it.
+Lagging on the road as long as he could upon all
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_320">[320]</span>sorts of pretexts, his servants imprisoned and he himself
+threatened and insulted at every step, the
+ambassador of Spain was at last hustled out of England,
+fuming with rage and full of hare-brained projects
+by which, with the help of Hawkins, the King of
+Spain might be avenged on the heretic Queen and
+become the master of England.</p>
+
+<p>The Huguenots were now in unrestrained power in
+France, and Elizabeth, as usual when she was in fear
+of Spain, was carrying on a desperate flirtation with
+the Duke of Anjou, and surpassing herself in her
+blandishment to Catharine de Medici. Simultaneously
+with the expulsion of de Spes from England, the
+Spanish ambassador in Paris, Don Francés de Alava,
+found France similarly uncongenial to him; for he
+had been plotting against the Huguenots as de Spes
+had plotted against the Protestants, and had fled in
+disguise to Flanders, so that Philip found himself
+alienated both from England and France at the same
+time, a position that always made him uneasy, especially
+now that not only a marriage but a national
+alliance was in full negotiation between Elizabeth and
+Catharine.&#x2060;<a id="FNanchor_204" href="#Footnote_204" class="fnanchor">[204]</a> For the next six months the farcical
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_321">[321]</span>political courtship of the young Duke of Alençon, the
+boy brother of Anjou and the King of France, was
+carried on furiously by the middle-aged Queen of
+England as an antidote for the unappeasable anger of
+Spain. But with her usual diplomacy, now that she
+had worked her will in everything, Elizabeth thought
+best not to drive Philip into violent courses against
+her. She had seized his million ducats and all the
+property of his subjects in England, she had
+unmasked all his plots, had expelled his ambassador,
+flouted his great viceroy Alba, her subjects
+had harried Spanish ships on every sea, and helped
+unchecked the Dutch rebels who defied him; but she
+did not wish to go to war with him if she could help
+it, especially if she could gain all she wanted without
+doing so.</p>
+
+<p>When the Spanish ambassador in Paris was about
+to escape, Walsingham, the English ambassador,
+had gone and congratulated him upon the great
+naval victory over the Turks in the Mediterranean
+that King Philip’s brother, Don Juan, had just
+gained at Lepanto; and then, after asking many
+curious questions about Don Juan, Walsingham had
+said to Don Francés, as if in joke, “This sounds like
+a marriage, does it not?” The Spaniard retorted in
+the same tone, “Yes; let you and I manage it
+together.” With this opening Walsingham became
+serious, and enlarged upon Elizabeth’s personal
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_322">[322]</span>obligations and liking for her Spanish brother-in-law,
+and the turpitude of certain ministers in sowing discord
+between them. If it were not for the obstacle of
+religion, he continued, the marriage hinted at might
+take place. It was, of course, mere talk, and was
+intended to be no more; but Walsingham spoke with
+a purpose, and knew that his mistress thought it time
+to repair some of the broken ties that held her country
+to Spain.</p>
+
+<p>More marked and authoritative approaches were
+made simultaneously in England itself. The man
+who had been instructed by Alba to keep an eye
+on Spanish affairs unofficially when de Spes left
+England was Antonio de Guaras, an Aragonese
+merchant living on Dowgate Hill, Thames Street.
+He had been established in London for many years
+as a prosperous importer of Spanish produce, and had
+a perfect craze for writing descriptions of public events
+and taking part in public affairs; a zealous busybody,
+whose flamboyant patriotism and Catholicism had
+made him the friend and companion of successive
+Spanish ambassadors, especially of de Spes. In the
+anti-Catholic excitement in May, 1569, his house had
+been raided by the officers of the law deputed to
+destroy superstitious images, and a considerable stock
+of church ornaments of this description seized. One
+half of the stock was piled into a heap before Guaras’
+door and burnt, the other half being similarly treated
+by the Standard in Cheapside; whilst the people, who
+only a dozen years before, under Mary, had been so
+devoutly Catholic, cried in derision that they were
+burning the Spanish gods.&#x2060;<a id="FNanchor_205" href="#Footnote_205" class="fnanchor">[205]</a> Since that time, as
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_323">[323]</span>Guaras had been the principal importer of such wares
+from Spain, he had shown himself as little as possible
+in the streets to avoid unpleasantness, though of
+course he, like so many other Spaniards interested,
+had tried his hand again and again to make some
+private arrangement for the ransom of the Spanish
+commercial property seized by the English.</p>
+
+<p>The Flemish noble Zweveghem, and the Genoese
+merchant Fiesco, who had both been negotiating in
+London about the seizures, were packed off at the
+same time as de Spes, for Elizabeth and Cecil were
+bent upon making the demonstration as political and
+public as possible; but though it did not suit the economical
+Queen to disgorge what she had taken, she
+had no wish to drive Philip to extremities, and the
+stoppage of the great English cloth trade with Flanders
+and of the importation of Spanish produce into
+England was causing serious distress in the country.
+So, having thoroughly humbled the Spaniards, whose
+hands were fuller than ever now with the capture of
+Brille by the Beggars and the rising of all Zeeland,
+supported by ample English aid, Elizabeth thought
+that the time had come for her to unbend a little to
+her sorely pressed brother-in-law. Walsingham’s half
+joking colloquy with Alava in Paris, in January, 1572,
+had been a straw cast into the air; the warning of the
+Dutch privateer fleet out of Dover, though ostensibly
+to satisfy the remonstrances of the Hamburg
+merchants, was another; and in March Guaras, a
+mere merchant, hitherto so unpopular, suddenly found
+himself made much of by emissaries from the Court.
+Friends of Cecil told him that the Queen was only
+too willing to come to an amicable arrangement about
+trade, and any person who brought it about would be
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_324">[324]</span>doing a great service to God and to both countries.
+What a pity it was that there was no person
+accredited in London who could undertake it! Would
+Guaras convey these expressions to Alba? If so, the
+interlocutor would approach Lord Burghley.</p>
+
+<p>After many hints of this sort Burghley himself sent
+for Guaras, and told him that they were anxious to
+settle matters. “He spoke of your Majesty’s person
+with due reverence, confessing to me that they had
+always hitherto feared and suspected greatly that the
+Duke of Alba, being a declared enemy, might oppose
+a settlement, but they had lately been informed that
+the evil did not arise with him entirely, but from
+certain persons in your Majesty’s Court, mentioning
+the late Duke of Feria, who, he said, though ostensibly
+a good friend of the Queen, was in matters of State
+her enemy.” Guaras, who loved to play the statesman,
+boasted somewhat of his master’s greatness and
+of the benefit his friendship would bring to England,
+but, of course, in diplomacy he was no match for Cecil,
+who firmly put him into his place. Thenceforward for
+weeks the game of advance and retire on the part of
+Cecil went on. Sometimes Guaras would go home to
+Thames Street in the seventh heaven of delight, with
+the idea that he was settling great national affairs
+where professional diplomatists had failed; at other
+times he would stand for hours in Cecil’s anterooms of
+Whitehall, only to be passed by silently with a cold
+nod when the Minister came out.</p>
+
+<p>When at last it was agreed (8th April) that Zweveghem,
+the Flemish Councillor, should come again to
+England and settle matters, Guaras, much pleased at his
+success, entered his barge from Whitehall stairs to
+return home with the friend who served as his intermediary
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_325">[325]</span>with Lord Burghley. As the boat pushed off into
+the stream, he says, “I saw the Queen approaching the
+landing-place of the Palace in her barge, in which, the
+day being fine, she had been taking the air in company
+with my Lord of Leicester and many other gentlemen,
+and followed by a large number of boats filled with
+people who wished to see her Majesty. We, being
+amongst the press of people, stayed our boat to look
+upon her, and when I made my bow like the rest, the
+Queen, as usual, saluted the people, and noticing me,
+either because she recognised me or because I was
+a foreigner or some one told her my name, to the
+surprise of every one, I being such a humble person,
+she, calling out to me in Italian, my boat being somewhat
+distant from hers out of respect to her, asked me
+very gaily and graciously if I was coming from the
+Court and had seen Lord Burghley I knelt, as was
+my duty, and replied, ‘Yes, Madam, at your Majesty’s
+service.’ As the boats approached the landing-place
+her Majesty’s barge was delayed a moment, when she
+smilingly seemed to desire to say something more
+to me, whereupon I endeavoured to bring my boat
+alongside the Queen’s barge, and she turned towards
+me and asked, ‘When were you with Lord Burghley?’
+to which I replied, ‘Madam, I have just left him,’
+whereupon she waved her hand several times, apparently
+with great pleasure, and said, ‘That is all
+right,’ and her barge then proceeded, she bidding
+me farewell with so many signs of pleasure and
+favour that people noticed it much, and I was more
+surprised than any one to receive these favours from
+the Queen, to whom I have never rendered any
+service.”&#x2060;<a id="FNanchor_206" href="#Footnote_206" class="fnanchor">[206]</a>&#x2060;</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_326">[326]</span></p>
+
+<p>Elizabeth had no intention, however, of allowing
+the Spaniards, and particularly Alba, to assume any
+airs of superiority on the strength of her willingness to
+negotiate about trade. When Zweveghem saw her a
+few days afterwards, sent by Alba to discuss terms,
+she thought that his tone was too haughty, and that
+he seemed to assume that she was pleading for an
+arrangement. Guaras, of course, had to bear the
+blame. It was at once said that he had misrepresented
+matters to Alba, and there was nothing but
+black looks for him. “Tell Guaras,” said Burghley,
+“that if he wants to come and see me let him come, or
+stay away, as he likes.... If the Duke of Alba, through
+Guaras, pretends to be willing for peace and concord,
+whilst on the other hand through Zweveghem he
+treats the matter in a different spirit, it is clear that,
+however good our intentions may be, theirs are not
+equally so.” Alba was in no melting mood now,
+for English men and arms were being poured into
+Zeeland, and the Huguenots also were helping the
+Netherlanders against him. The Dutch privateers
+were still sheltered in English ports, whilst Constable
+Montmorenci, and one of the most splendid embassies
+that ever represented France, was in England for the
+ratification of the offensive and defensive alliance of
+the two countries that had been signed at Blois on the
+12th April. By it the Spanish Netherlands were to
+be partitioned, the ancient rivals were never to quarrel
+again, the Huguenot Navarre was to marry the King
+of France’s sister. Elizabeth might, perhaps, marry
+young Alençon, but in any case she and Catharine,
+with the Huguenots, were bound together for ever to
+resist the arrogance of Spain. All this was gall and
+wormwood to Alba, and, busy as he was with his
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_327">[327]</span>bloody work, it is no wonder that he was now in
+no hurry to respond to the English approaches for
+a settlement, and Guaras for a time found himself
+cold-shouldered.</p>
+
+<p>The affection between the French and English,
+however, was too pronounced to last very long. The
+offensive and defensive alliance against Spain had
+given to the Huguenots more power than quite suited
+Catharine, and the Colignys and their friends of the
+“religion” were speaking too boldly to please her.
+The Emperor (whose daughter the young King
+Charles IX. had married), the Pope, and the Doge
+of Venice sent to remonstrate with the Most Christian
+King for thus joining rebels and heretics against good
+Catholics, whilst the Gondis, Biragos, and Guises were
+whispering to Catharine that she was provoking Philip
+too far. So, as the summer of 1572 wore on, the
+messages sent from France to England grew cooler,
+and Charles IX. began to cry off the bargain for the
+joint action with Elizabeth in the Spanish Netherlands.
+But still Catharine pushed industriously
+the love-making of her favourite boy Alençon
+with Elizabeth, in order that England and the
+Huguenots might not be driven into open opposition
+to her. A pretty lad named La Mole, one of
+the <i>mignons</i>, was sent to England in July, ostensibly
+to do the vicarious love-making for Alençon, but really
+to discourage the idea of any act of overt hostility on
+the part of France in the Spanish States,&#x2060;<a id="FNanchor_207" href="#Footnote_207" class="fnanchor">[207]</a> and thus
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_328">[328]</span>practically to withdraw from the much-lauded treaty
+of alliance, of which the ink was hardly dry.</p>
+
+<p>La Mole performed the philandering part of his
+mission entirely to Elizabeth’s satisfaction. She was
+on her progress to Kenilworth, and carried the young
+French gallant along with her from place to place,
+exerting all her mature witcheries upon him, but
+keenly alive and not a little apprehensive at the
+way in which she had been thrown over with regard
+to the alliance. The danger to her was great,
+for she had been drawn into a position of open
+hostility to the Spaniards in Flanders on the
+strength of the alliance with France, and now found
+herself alone. So she told everybody, and most
+people believed her this time, that she meant to
+marry the French prince without fail, and when she
+bade goodbye to La Mole at Kenilworth, he went
+on his homeward way loaded with sweet messages
+for the Prince and rich presents for himself.</p>
+
+<p>He arrived in London on the 27th August on his
+way to France; and on the same day there landed
+at Rye two couriers from Paris, one with letters from
+Walsingham to the Queen, the other with official
+despatches to the French ambassador. The latter
+were seized by the port authorities and sent in
+haste to the Queen at Kenilworth; but secret
+though they were kept, ill tidings fly fast, and soon
+there sped through England, none knew how or
+whence, the dread news that the Papists had banded
+together to slaughter Protestants throughout the
+world. On the fated day of Navarre’s wedding in
+Paris—the day of Saint Bartholomew—the storm
+had burst. Hounded on by the King himself and
+by his mother, slaughter unchecked had swept
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_329">[329]</span>across the capital. The noble Coligny had fallen
+first, and then every citizen but those who wore the
+badge of Guise was hounded to his death. Through
+France the tale of horror ran, across the Channel to
+Protestant England fled thousands of Huguenots,
+dreading the general massacre that portended; and
+when Elizabeth suspended her pastime at Kenilworth
+to read the despatch that brought the news, her brow
+clouded and her heart sank; for it seemed now that, at
+last, all her clever tricks had failed and catastrophe
+loomed over her and England. For the league
+of Bayonne had produced its baleful fruit at last.&#x2060;<a id="FNanchor_208" href="#Footnote_208" class="fnanchor">[208]</a>
+The alliance and friendship just so ostentatiously
+concluded with France was but a fraud and a blind,
+the marriage talk with Alençon was all a lie: Catharine
+and her son, after all, had made common cause with
+Philip and the Guises, and England stood alone
+opposed to united Catholicism pledged to wholesale
+massacre.</p>
+
+<p>In a day the orgy of St. Bartholomew had changed
+the political aspect. The French, lately so caressed
+in England, were now regarded as monsters of falsity.
+Elizabeth, in deep mourning, after long delay received
+the French ambassador coldly, and contemptuously
+listened to his palliations and explanations; for she
+knew that the Guises were now paramount in France,
+and from them she had nothing but enmity to expect.
+But dismay was not allowed to dominate the counsels
+of Elizabeth for very long. When such a combination
+as this existed between the ancient enemies Spain and
+France, England’s safety depended upon sowing discord
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_330">[330]</span>between them. This was never very difficult, for
+their interests nationally were always antagonistic, and
+their antipathies were stronger than their affinities.&#x2060;<a id="FNanchor_209" href="#Footnote_209" class="fnanchor">[209]</a>
+At the first flush of the news Philip and the Spaniards
+were overjoyed that so many heretics should be
+butchered, and Guaras from London, writing to the
+Duke of Alba on the 30th August says: “God grant
+that it may be true, and that these rebel heretics may
+have met with this bad end”; and the national consequences
+were not lost upon him, even thus early,
+for though he was but a meddling merchant, he
+had far clearer ideas of policy than had de Spes.
+“Since the news came we hear no more of English
+soldiers going over to Flanders. This last affair,
+indeed, will give them something else to think about.
+If the news from Paris be true, the league between
+these people [<i>i.e.</i>, the English] and the French will
+probably come to nothing, as the people are already
+murmuring that they cannot trust Frenchmen.”</p>
+
+<p>Elizabeth, indeed, had been badly betrayed by
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_331">[331]</span>the French. She had been drawn into hostility to
+Philip in Flanders, and had been left in the lurch.
+To her alone now could the Prince of Orange look
+for help, since the French had deserted him; and
+though she had no intention of allowing the Dutch
+Protestants to be crushed by Alba, Elizabeth saw that
+in future all she did to help them must be done without
+an open national rupture between England and
+Spain. Immediately, therefore, her tone changed.
+Not only were the Dutch rebels ostentatiously disavowed
+by her, but the somewhat bewildered Guaras
+found himself once more a <i>persona grata</i> at Court.&#x2060;<a id="FNanchor_210" href="#Footnote_210" class="fnanchor">[210]</a>
+Early in October the Duke of Alba sent him his cool
+and tardy reply with regard to the proposed negotiations
+for reopening trade. When Guaras appeared
+at Windsor with the despatch he found Burghley all
+smiles. “On that very day, he said, and on many
+other previous occasions the Queen had said to him
+she wondered why Guaras did not come to Court with
+the reply. They were much surprised to have received
+no answer to the offer made by the Queen to withdraw
+the Englishmen from Flanders, who, he said,
+only went there to resist the Frenchmen, who
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_332">[332]</span>might try to gain a footing.... When I told him I
+had a letter for the Queen he seemed greatly delighted
+and asked me to show it to him. When he read the
+superscripture he said, ‘Although it comes tardily
+and the Queen is unwell, I will take it to her at once,
+because I know how pleased she will be to know that
+you have come with the message.’”&#x2060;<a id="FNanchor_211" href="#Footnote_211" class="fnanchor">[211]</a>&#x2060;</p>
+
+<p>Thenceforward for a time no one was more welcome
+at Court than Guaras. A fortnight after the above
+letter was written the French ambassador, La Mothe,
+remarked: “Guaras ... the Spaniard, is much
+better attended to and more favourably received at
+this Court than he used to be. He has great hopes
+of getting them to withdraw all the English from
+Flushing and Flanders, as well as of arranging the
+disputes about commercial intercourse.”&#x2060;<a id="FNanchor_212" href="#Footnote_212" class="fnanchor">[212]</a> All was not
+plain sailing yet, for Alba was hard and Elizabeth
+stood out firmly for religious toleration for Englishmen
+in Spain, which claim from the first was scouted as
+preposterous by the Spaniards, and in the end was
+almost the only point upon which the English had to
+give way. But the constant more or less covert
+aid in men and money sent from England to support
+Orange, and the fear that if driven too far
+Elizabeth might at last yield to the arguments and
+persuasions of the Dutch that she would assume the
+protection of Holland and Zeeland, brought down even
+Alba’s pride; and early in the spring of 1573 trade was
+reopened, on terms greatly in favour of Elizabeth,
+since her subjects again obtained an open market for
+their cloths, whilst she kept practically the greater part
+of the property she had seized.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_333">[333]</span></p>
+
+<p>Gradually Guaras, though in somewhat more
+humble fashion than de Spes, immersed himself in
+intrigues on behalf of Spain, many of them doubtless
+proposed to him in good faith, but others, as we know
+now, mere traps set for him by Lord Burghley’s contrivance,
+into which he easily fell to his own ultimate
+undoing. Several English captains were in close
+negotiation with him for months for the betrayal to
+the Spaniards of Flushing, Caunfer, and other strong
+places, for the murder of the Prince of Orange, and
+other schemes. But it is evident that these advances
+through him were received with doubt and caution by
+Philip and Alba, who probably doubted his discretion,
+for when a group of English captains had to be finally
+negotiated with for the capture of Flushing a special
+envoy, a merchant seaman named Zubiaur, was sent to
+England for the purpose with strict orders that Guaras
+should know nothing whatever of it; and even whilst
+Guaras was acting as <i>chargé d’affaires</i> of Spain a
+Portuguese spy (Fogaza) in Spanish pay reported all
+his movements to the authorities at Madrid.</p>
+
+<p>By the end of 1573 it was patent to all the world
+that Alba’s reign of blood had failed. The stern old
+chief had been beaten indeed by Elizabeth’s seizure of
+the treasure, and he never recovered from the blow.
+Forced to raise money somehow, for Philip was
+bankrupt both in credit and in means, Alba imposed
+upon rich Flanders and Brabant the “tenth penny”
+that had ruined Castile. Then all the Netherlanders
+rose. It was no longer a question of local government
+or even of faith, but of moneybags; and
+Catholic and Protestant alike rebelled against spoliation
+and the destruction of Flemish prosperity. Indignant
+remonstrances went to Philip, and the Spanish
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_334">[334]</span>Council even angrily condemned Alba’s measure.
+“Neither the heads smitten off nor the privileges
+abolished have aroused so much resistance as this,”
+wrote Alba: but he needed money for the King’s
+service, and money he must have. Thus he found
+himself face to face, not with a faction in revolt, but
+with an outraged and united nation, and through 1572
+the grim old Duke stuck to his guns. First he
+crushed the south, sweeping the Huguenot auxiliaries
+aside and submitting all those who raised the
+slightest protest to ruthless slaughter.</p>
+
+<p>Brabant and Flanders, bloodless, could fight against
+him no more, but Holland and Zeeland were made of
+sterner stuff. Money and men in abundance came to
+them from England, and all the silver ducats scattered
+by Guaras and all Elizabeth’s protestations of friendship
+for her dear brother in Spain could not stop
+them; until at last Philip grew angry and impatient
+at the useless slaughter, and Alba, heartbroken, went
+into disgrace, whilst a viceroy of widely different type
+came with the olive-branch in hand to win back at
+least Catholic Brabant and Flanders to Philip’s rule
+again by almost any concessions. There was, indeed,
+no other way for Philip now, for he had come to the
+end of his resources, and his troubles were not
+confined to the Protestant Netherlands.</p>
+
+<p>His brilliant young brother, Don Juan of Austria,
+in command of the combined Christian fleet, had
+sailed from Messina in September, 1571, and had
+broken the Moslem power in the Mediterranean that
+had for so long been a thorn in the side of Spain.
+All Catholic Christendom lost its head over Don
+Juan: his enthusiasm, his gallantry, his personal
+beauty made him in the eyes of his contemporaries
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_335">[335]</span>a very paladin of the Cross. Philip, religious though
+he might be, was cold and reticent, appealing little to
+the imagination of men. But this young Prince, his
+brother, splendid beyond words and with some of the
+military ability of his father the Emperor, might be
+the man destined by God for the final victory of the
+Cross over all its enemies. Don Juan not only carried
+away others, but was carried away himself. To
+follow up his victory by the conquest of Constantinople
+and the Holy Land, and to become a new
+Constantine, seemed to him and to the Catholics, who
+idolised him, an easily realisable vision. If not that,
+then why not Christianise Africa, re-establish the
+empire of Carthage with Don Juan as its sovereign?</p>
+
+<p>But all this meant vast sums of money, and to
+such suggestions Philip turned an irresponsive ear.
+Clamour as Don Juan and his friends might, no
+assistance could be got from Spain for his wild
+schemes; for King Philip had other things to do
+than conquer vast new empires for his base brother,
+whilst his own Netherlands were slipping from his
+grasp and Elizabeth of England openly defied him.
+Then Don Juan, disobeying orders, seized and fortified
+Tunis on his own account. All appeals for
+support to Philip were sternly refused, and within a
+year the city was recaptured by the Turk and the eight
+thousand Spaniards in it slaughtered. Don Juan in
+despair remained in Italy, full still of high dreams
+if heroic conquest for the faith. He was surrounded,
+as before, by advisers as flighty and hot-headed as
+himself; and it occurred to some of them if he was
+not to be allowed to become a Christian Emperor
+of the East, there was in the West another empire
+in the hands of heretics, still awaiting its champion
+who should restore it to the Church.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_336">[336]</span></p>
+
+<p>Guaras wrote to Philip’s Secretary, Zayas, as early
+as November, 1574, saying, “The Queen of Scotland
+founds all her hopes upon his Majesty after God, and
+by a letter she has written to an influential friend, who
+read it to me, it is certain that there is nothing she
+desires more than to accept the proposition about Don
+Juan of Austria,&#x2060;<a id="FNanchor_213" href="#Footnote_213" class="fnanchor">[213]</a> she having been persuaded by this
+person and others that it would benefit Christendom
+greatly. If it be his Majesty’s wish that this matter
+should be considered, and communications have to be
+carried on with the Queen about it, this cipher can be
+utilised for the purpose, it being so obscure and without
+an alphabet that no one can decipher it.... If
+this happy event could be brought about, she would
+be a saintly, chaste, and Catholic Princess, the greatest
+lady on earth, for England, Scotland, and Ireland
+are indeed a vast empire.... If his Majesty will
+graciously allow a letter for her contentment in this
+business to be written, an opportunity might occur for
+her rescue. If consent is given on our part this
+project would undoubtedly be executed. She writes
+herself about it to the person I have mentioned, and
+desires above all things that her son should marry
+the elder Infanta, for which purpose she will consent
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_337">[337]</span>that the man who holds him should carry him to
+Spain.”</p>
+
+<p>Philip had heard stories similar to this before, and
+was not ready yet for another plot depending upon the
+English Catholics. Requesens, the new Viceroy of
+Flanders, did his best, but he was surrounded by
+unconquerable difficulties from the first, legacies, most
+of them, from the <i>régime</i> of Alba. Many of the
+Flemish seamen were disloyal and the Catholic clergy
+disaffected, whilst the mercantile classes were nearly
+beggared and in deep discontent. But, withal, the
+Walloons and Southern States were pacified, though
+Holland and Zeeland were as stubborn as ever.
+Requesens’ principal difficulty, as usual, was want
+of money; and the Catholic Flemings insisted that
+if they were to remain loyal to Spain the unpaid,
+murderous rabble of foreign soldiers who were
+terrorising friends and enemies alike must be withdrawn
+from Flanders. But Philip could not pay
+them, and they would not budge without their wage,
+for the rich houses of the burghers were always
+there for plunder. In the midst of this <i>impasse</i>, when
+things were at their worst, Requesens died, in March,
+1576, and Philip, glad to get his brother away from
+Italy, ordered him to hurry direct to Flanders and
+carry out the policy of pacification at any cost or
+sacrifice. The troops were to be sent away, the
+burghers conciliated, and, if possible, the Dutch won
+over by promises of large concessions.</p>
+
+<p>To Don Juan, with his heart aflame with high
+ambitions, concessions and conciliation of heretics were
+utterly repugnant; but the mission seemed to open
+a sure road to the great plan we have seen hinted
+at in Guaras’ letter of November, 1574. Pope
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_338">[338]</span>Gregory XIII. was as ready as Don Juan for such
+an enterprise, and sent his Nuncio to Philip to pray
+him to allow his brother to swoop down upon England
+with the troops from Flanders, release and marry
+Mary Stuart, and with her become sovereign of a
+Britain Catholic and a faithful ally of Spain. Philip,
+as was his wont when he disapproved of a plan, was
+vaguely benevolent, but he hated priestly interference
+in his plans, and distrusted the Vatican where the
+French priests had so much to say. Worst of all,
+Don Juan disobeyed orders and came to Spain to
+press his plans for capturing England, and the delay
+thus caused was fatal. Before he could reach the
+Flemish frontier the Italian and Spanish troops had
+thrown off all restraint and had sacked Antwerp.
+The Catholic Flemings and Walloons were forced to
+make common cause with Orange, who assumed the
+lead in the Government, and all Netherlanders stood
+shoulder to shoulder against the ravishers and spoilers
+of their homes. When Don Juan came, therefore, he
+was told that he would only be admitted on conditions
+to be dictated by the States. Among these conditions
+was that the mutinous troops should not be sent away
+by sea, for the plan to invade England with them was
+well known by Orange, but should march out overland.
+Don Juan protested and raved in vain. Philip
+coldly ordered him to accede to any terms consistent
+with Spanish sovereignty over Flanders; and at last,
+in the early spring of 1577, he made his “joyous
+entry” into Brussels with a heart steeped in hate
+of the Flemings, whose firmness had destroyed his
+great dream of capturing England for the Cross and
+marrying the imprisoned Catholic Queen, like the
+hero of a fairy tale.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_339">[339]</span></p>
+
+<p>In these fine plans Guaras was a zealous and a
+willing agent, and Mary Stuart, as usual, an eager
+participant, all their intrigues being perfectly well
+known to Cecil through his spies. Cecil, indeed,
+had become quite friendly with Guaras,&#x2060;<a id="FNanchor_214" href="#Footnote_214" class="fnanchor">[214]</a> and thus,
+without being suspected, kept his eye on all his
+proceedings. The letters the merchant wrote to
+Spain were frequently intercepted, and although the
+pride of Guaras in his cipher was justified and most of
+the contents are still undeciphered, sufficient was read
+to prove that he was plotting ceaselessly with England’s
+enemies. Letters, too, were known to be passing by
+means of Guaras between Mary Stuart and Don
+Juan; and even the Flemish Catholic nobles, who had
+now for a time deserted the Spanish cause and were
+appealing to Elizabeth for aid, were constantly warning
+the English of the plans that were being so
+industriously forwarded by Guaras.</p>
+
+<p>That Mary Stuart and Don Juan at this time
+understood each other perfectly, though Philip, for
+reasons already pointed out, was irresponsive to their
+appeals, is seen in an important letter written by
+Mary to the conspirator Charles Paget long afterwards
+(May, 1586) at the time when she was implicated
+in the plot that ended in her death. Paget was
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_340">[340]</span>instructed to discover through Mendoza, the Spanish
+ambassador in Paris, whether Philip was then (1586)
+ready to attack England, which, she says, “to me
+seemeth the surest and readiest way for him whereby
+to rid himself altogether of the Queen’s malice against
+him. So as now he doth find himself constrained to
+come to the same remedies which in Don John of
+Austria’s time were propounded unto him, which I
+doubt he shall not find presently in these parts of such
+strength and virtue as if he had applied them in time
+and place.... I remember that Don John was
+always stiff in this opinion that there was no other
+means in the world whereby to set up again the King’s
+affairs in the Low Countries, and to assure his States
+in all other parts, than in re-establishing this realm
+under God and a Prince his friend; for, so much as
+Don John foresaw right well that this Queen would
+not fail to break with him, and give him, as she
+hath done, the first blow.”&#x2060;<a id="FNanchor_215" href="#Footnote_215" class="fnanchor">[215]</a>&#x2060;</p>
+
+<p>Guaras had many hints and warnings which he
+failed to regard, both from Cecil and the Queen
+herself. In his letter of 29th March, 1575, he gives
+an account of one such hint. “The Queen was
+walking,” he says, “a long way from the Palace of
+Richmond, where she is staying, surrounded by her
+courtiers and nobles, when, catching sight of me from
+afar, she called me by name and welcomed me.”
+He had to ask her permission to buy some cannon in
+England for the Flemish Government, to which
+she gave him an amiable reply, and he continued to
+walk through the park a few steps behind her chatting
+with her alone. She was full of her witcheries and
+compliments to Spaniards, with whom for the moment
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_341">[341]</span>it suited to be friends, but told Guaras that she was
+annoyed at the way her subjects in Spain were
+treated by the Inquisition. She grew somewhat
+vehement about it and said, “I promise ye my
+father would not have put up with it, and if the
+matter is not amended I shall be obliged to arrest
+some of the King of Spain’s subjects and treat them in
+the same way.” Having given this hint, she grew
+gracious again and said: “You know full well, old
+wine, old bread, and old friends should be valued,
+and if only to let these Frenchmen see, who are
+wrangling as to whether our friendship is firm or not,
+there is good reason to show undisguisedly the
+kindly feeling which inwardly exists.” This, of
+course, referred to the attempts of the French to
+interfere in Flanders, which always made Elizabeth
+smile upon Spaniards;&#x2060;<a id="FNanchor_216" href="#Footnote_216" class="fnanchor">[216]</a> and when Guaras handsomely
+returned the compliment the Queen suddenly
+turned upon him, and shot the bolt she had been
+preparing all along: “You say you wish to serve me,
+Guaras; will you tell me the truth? They say that a
+certain Scottish prisoner of mine has sent you a token
+of friendship in the form of a painted lion; is it
+true?” Poor Guaras could only protest that he had
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_342">[342]</span>never received any such token, as he had not; but the
+hint, and the more pointed one about the arrest,
+certainly did not abate his activity as a go-between for
+Mary and Don Juan.</p>
+
+<p>So long as the danger of French interference in
+Flanders lasted Elizabeth dared not do anything very
+unpleasant to Spain; but as soon as that difficulty was
+banished by new negotiations for the marriage of
+Elizabeth and Alençon, Guaras began to find his
+position less comfortable. In November, 1575,
+Egremont Ratcliff, the brother of the Earl of Sussex,
+who had been a fugitive in Flanders and Italy since
+the northern rebellion, came to England, with a
+story of Don Juan’s plans in conjunction with
+Mary Stuart, and in this, of course, Guaras was
+involved. His fresh negotiations, too, early in
+1576 for the betrayal by the English Catholics of
+certain of the Zeeland fortresses to the Spaniards
+was discovered. The Flemish Catholic nobles were
+now in England praying for support against Philip’s
+soldiery, and Elizabeth was in mortal fear of
+French aid being given to them on the one hand
+and of Don Juan’s reported plans against England
+on the other, whilst Guaras in his correspondence
+grew more and more bitter and violent as he saw
+the fruition of his hopes gradually disappear before
+Elizabeth’s amiability to the Catholic Flemish
+nobles and the united opposition now offered to
+Don Juan’s ambitions.</p>
+
+<p>But in the circumstances Elizabeth did not dare
+yet to proceed to extremities with Spaniards; and
+one case amusingly shows that these high political
+considerations somewhat bewildered administrative
+officers, who could not follow such frequent changes
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_343">[343]</span>of attitude. A Portuguese ambassador, Giraldi,
+had been for some time in England endeavouring
+to arrange some open questions relative to the
+depredations of the Protestant privateers; and late
+in 1576 the Recorder of London, Sir William
+Fleetwood, a zealous Catholic-baiter, with the
+Sheriffs, considered it his duty to surround with his
+posse the house of the Portuguese envoy for the
+purpose of catching and arresting unauthorised
+persons there hearing Mass. They forced an entry
+after a stiff fight with the Portuguese porter, Mr.
+Recorder Fleetwood being rather seriously mauled
+in the affray, and loudly broke in upon the sacred
+service by summoning all English people to come
+out in custody. Immediately the foreigners present,
+indignant at the interruption, drew their daggers
+and swords, and made as if to attack the officers,
+but were appeased by the sheriffs until the ladies
+had withdrawn. Having allowed the members of
+the embassy to depart, the officers then examined
+the other foreigners: “and trulie they most despitefully
+against all civilitie used such lewd words in
+their language against us, that if our company had
+understande them there might have chanced great
+harm. ‘Sirs,’ I saide to them, ‘I see no remedie
+but you must goe to prison, for most of you be free
+denizens.’ And then I willed the officers to lay
+hand on them, and immediately every man suddenly
+most humbly put off his cap, and began to be sutors
+and sought favour; and so on their submission
+we suffered them to depart, all save Antonio de
+Guaras, who was not willing to go from us, but
+kept us company.” After sending the English
+subjects off to prison and scolding some of their own
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_344">[344]</span>constables for accepting “singing cakes” from the
+priest at the altar, Fleetwood and Sheriff Barnes
+stood in the gallery looking down upon the altar.
+“And then Antonio Guaras tooke me by the hand
+to see the altar how trim it was. And I said to
+Guaras, ‘Sir, if I had done my duty here to you
+and to the Queen upon All Hallowes Day last I
+had taken two hundred, and as many more on
+All Souls.’ ‘Ho! Sir,’ said Guaras unto me: ‘become
+of this religion, and surely you will like it well,
+and I will be readie means to make you a good
+Christian.’ And so we went near the altar, where
+neither he nor I touched any manner of thing; and
+so we bade the priest farewell, who gently saluted
+us, and I suddenlie looked back and saw the priest
+shake his head mumbling out words that sounded
+like <i>Diable</i> and <i>male croix</i>, or to that effect. Then
+said I to Mr. Sheriff, ‘Let us depart, for the priest
+doth curse us.’ And so we departed, and Antonio
+Guaras brought us to the utter gate, where the
+Sheriff and I invited him to dynner with us; but
+he departed back to hear the profaned Mass. The
+aforesaid Guaras at this business said that he himself
+was an ambassador of a greater person than —— and
+so did shake his head. ‘What!’ quoth I, ‘do you
+mean a greater personage than our mistress?’ ‘Na,
+na,’ said he, ‘I mean not so.’ ‘No,’ quoth I, ‘it were
+not best for you to make comparisons with the
+Queen our mistress. Whose ambassador are ye,
+then?’ quoth I, ‘the Pope’s?’ And then he departed
+further off in anger. This Guaras was a very busy
+fellow in this action.”&#x2060;<a id="FNanchor_217" href="#Footnote_217" class="fnanchor">[217]</a>&#x2060;</p>
+
+<p>Neither Giraldi nor Guaras was disposed to allow
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_345">[345]</span>their diplomatic privileges to be violated in this
+fashion, however; and in consequence of their
+vehement complaints Fleetwood had to submit to
+a severe scolding from the Council and was sent
+to the Fleet. But Guaras’ immunity was not
+to last much longer. Elizabeth, before many months
+were over, found herself assiduously courted by the
+French, and assured by Catharine that Alençon
+would do nothing in Flanders but with the co-operation
+of England—it was hoped as Elizabeth’s
+husband. Don Juan also, during the time that he
+remained in negotiation with the States, was only
+too anxious to win Elizabeth’s help, or at least
+neutrality; so that when suspicion against Guaras
+became certainty she had no hesitation in closing
+the toils around him. In January, 1577, Sir
+Amyas Paulet, the English ambassador in Paris,
+reported that a dependent of Guaras, a Spanish
+tailor, named Damian Dela, a resident in London,
+had passed through Paris with some highly suspicious
+letters for King Philip. We know now
+that the King was firmly against Don Juan’s plans
+to invade England; but this, of course, was not
+known at the time, and Paulet advised Burghley
+to put Guaras to the torture to discover what was
+going on. This only made the English Government
+more vigilant; but in the spring of 1577
+Secretary Wilson was sent to Flanders to endeavour
+to bring about an agreement between the States
+and Don Juan. The latter, when jocosely twitted
+by Wilson on his wish to marry the Queen of
+Scots, somewhat ungallantly ridiculed the idea as
+preposterous; but whilst Wilson was in the Low
+Countries he managed to obtain through St.
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_346">[346]</span>Aldegonde possession of some intercepted letters
+from Guaras on the matter. The cipher was
+difficult, and only some words could be read; but
+they were enough to prove that Guaras was in
+constant communication with Mary Stuart and Don
+Juan, and Wilson wrote to Cecil expressing his
+surprise that an unofficial person like Guaras should
+be allowed to act more scandalously than any
+accredited ambassador would be allowed to do.</p>
+
+<p>From that time, May, 1577, Guaras was watched
+almost night and day, and most of his letters
+intercepted, though not many could be read. On
+the 28th September, 1577, he proposed to Zayas,
+King Philip’s secretary, that he should be allowed
+to arrange for the kidnapping and conveyance to
+Spain of some of the important Catholic Flemish
+nobles then in England, or to promote a revolt
+in Ireland; and he continues by saying, “I have
+received the enclosed letters from the Queen of
+Scotland. I have perfectly safe means of sending
+and receiving letters for her, and the world is
+praying that God may be preserving her for some
+great service to the fear of this Queen and her
+friends. I am encouraging her with letters of
+comfort until she can be served by acts.”&#x2060;<a id="FNanchor_218" href="#Footnote_218" class="fnanchor">[218]</a> On the
+4th October Guaras wrote another inflammatory
+letter to Zayas, detailing the plans which he said
+had been agreed upon by England and the Flemish
+nobles to throw off the Spanish yoke for good by
+the aid of Elizabeth. He passionately cries for
+prompt reprisals upon the English, but he complains
+that his letters are read, and he fears his
+ciphers may be discovered.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_347">[347]</span></p>
+
+<p>At midnight on the 19th October, 1577, the
+Sheriff of London with an armed force appeared
+before the house of Guaras in Thames Street. In
+the Queen’s name entrance was forced and Guaras
+placed under arrest, all his papers being seized, and he
+himself a few days later placed in solitary confinement
+in Newgate. His clerk, in conveying the news to
+Zayas, understood the gravity of the affair, for
+from the first the authorities refused to acknowledge
+the prisoner’s diplomatic status. “God deliver us
+from these troubles,” he wrote, “for I promise your
+worship that unless some remedy be sent from Spain
+my master Antonio de Guaras will find himself in dire
+trouble, as will all of us in his house, for we are sore
+distressed. With all earnestness I supplicate you
+to let his Majesty know, in the hope that delivery
+may be sent to us.” Guaras himself writes from
+prison in hot indignation. He had, he says, placed
+the letters from the Queen of Scots and King Philip
+in a safe place, and they had not been captured, but
+he knows that much of his correspondence has been
+sent to England by the Flemish nobles, and, reading
+between the lines, one sees that the poor wretch
+is in mortal fear, though he passionately protests his
+innocence whilst vituperating his captors.</p>
+
+<p>No consideration or mercy was shown to him,
+and now that he was under lock and key all sorts
+of claims and accusations were made against him.&#x2060;<a id="FNanchor_219" href="#Footnote_219" class="fnanchor">[219]</a>
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_348">[348]</span>To add to his trouble he, who for thirty years at
+least had been looked upon as a wealthy merchant,
+was found to be well-nigh penniless. Philip was
+always a bad paymaster, and the 500 ducats a year he
+allowed to Guaras had been embargoed or stopped in
+Spain for some time previously. The great sum
+of 20,000 crowns, promised to him for his services
+in negotiating the reopening of trade, was never
+paid to him, though for the rest of his life he was
+petitioning piteously for it. Damian Dela, his tailor-steward,
+was arrested at the same time as his master
+and lodged in Newgate, whereupon Recorder Fleetwood,
+examining him in November, he revealed the
+sad condition of Guaras’ finances: “I finde that he
+hath not a groat to bless him withal. His household
+stuff is not worth forty shillings. He is in my
+opinion <i>Iro Pauperior</i>, and were it not that libertie
+is sweet I know not where in his own country he
+should have like entertainment.” By Fleetwood
+Guaras sent beseeching messages for mercy to
+Burghley, “his only hope and trust”; but it was not
+the Cecil way to befriend fallen men, and Guaras
+appealed to his former crony in vain.</p>
+
+<p>Slowly the act of accusation against Guaras was
+elaborated. Such portions of his letters as could be
+read were brought up against him,&#x2060;<a id="FNanchor_220" href="#Footnote_220" class="fnanchor">[220]</a> his servants, one
+and all, were interrogated, whilst he himself was almost
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_349">[349]</span>driven crazy by threats of the rack and the scaffold.
+The questions administered to him in prison are
+amongst Lord Burghley’s papers and at Simancas,
+and show the charges brought against him: “What
+letters had passed between you and the Scots Queen?”
+“What do you know of their contents and of the
+negotiations between her and Don Juan?” “How
+far did Don Juan proceed in the marriage treaty with
+the Queen of Scots?” “In the cipher between you
+and Don Juan, who were intended by the numbers 82,
+29, and 38?” “What practices have been intended
+for disquieting the realm, and who were the principal
+authors?”&#x2060;<a id="FNanchor_221" href="#Footnote_221" class="fnanchor">[221]</a> and many other questions of the same
+sort. In June, 1578, the case against him for conspiring
+against the State in favour of Mary Stuart
+was held to be proven, and the unfortunate man was
+lodged in the Tower, threatened now with death.
+To all interrogatories Guaras had answered haughtily
+that he was the diplomatic representative of the
+Catholic King, who would heavily avenge any injury
+done to him; but Philip had other cares to occupy
+him than to avenge a meddling merchant’s plots, of
+which he (Philip) had never approved.</p>
+
+<p>It was more important now than ever that Elizabeth
+should be conciliated. Don Juan, in despair at
+his hateful position and at the cold irresponsiveness of
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_350">[350]</span>his brother, had in February, 1578, cast all considerations
+to the winds, had fortified himself in Namur, and
+had defied the States to do their worst. Philip, by the
+rash impetuosity of his brother, thus found it necessary
+to fight not only for the maintenance of orthodoxy in
+his Netherlands dominions, but for his sovereignty.
+The Archduke Mathias, one of his own kin, had been
+invited by the Flemings to accept the Catholic Crown
+of Flanders, and on his failure to unite the country,
+Alençon, the French Prince, had bidden for the prize.
+If Elizabeth could be won over by Orange to help or
+co-operate with the French in Flanders, then nothing
+could save Philip’s sovereignty; and so, until the
+great Alexander Farnese, Don Juan’s successor, with
+warcraft and diplomacy combined, was able gradually
+to separate the Catholic Flemings from the Protestant
+Dutchmen, it behoved Philip at any sacrifice to win
+again the good graces of Elizabeth, to arouse her
+jealousy of French interference in Flanders, and hold
+her, notwithstanding all that had passed, to the traditional
+alliance with his House with the ancient
+object. Nor was Elizabeth loath to meet her brother-in-law
+half-way this time, for a French domination in
+Flanders she could never allow, and whilst on the one
+hand she conjured the danger by befooling Alençon
+into the firm belief that she would marry him if he
+would obey her, on the other she held out her hand
+to Philip. Wilkes, the Clerk of the Privy Council,
+was sent off to Spain to vindicate the Queen’s action
+in Flanders: to say how hard she had tried to bring
+about peace, notwithstanding Don Juan’s impracticability,
+to beg for Don Juan’s recall,&#x2060;<a id="FNanchor_222" href="#Footnote_222" class="fnanchor">[222]</a> and to urge that
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_351">[351]</span>some sort of peace should be brought about with the
+States on the basis that Don Juan had violated, failing
+which she will be obliged, as before, to aid those who
+are battling for freedom of conscience.</p>
+
+<p>It was a bitter pill for Philip that he should have
+to brook Elizabeth’s interference between his rebel
+subjects and himself, and he treated Wilkes in very
+high and mighty fashion, on the pretext that his rank
+was inadequate for such a mission. But he made
+amends by sending to England, hard upon Wilkes’
+heels, a scion of one of the noblest houses in Spain
+as his ambassador. Soldier, author, diplomatist, and
+courtier, Don Bernardino de Mendoza, a man with the
+pride of Lucifer and the intolerance of St. Dominic,
+was entrusted with a mission of humility to the Queen
+of all the “heretics.” No apology had ever been sent
+by Elizabeth for the expulsion of de Spes, or for the
+seizure of the treasure; Guaras was a close prisoner,
+daily threatened with torture, and his claim to diplomatic
+privilege laughed at; yet the King of Spain
+was obliged to swallow his pride, and send an
+ambassador who was almost a suppliant to beg
+Elizabeth not to help his revolted subjects.</p>
+
+<p>The change of position between the two sovereigns
+since the beginning of the Queen’s reign is nowhere
+so clearly seen as by a comparison of the instructions
+of Mendoza with the attitude of Feria and his master,
+described in the earlier pages of the present volume.
+Mendoza’s mission was piteously apologetic. Don
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_352">[352]</span>Juan and the Spanish troops should be withdrawn. It
+was all a mistake about the abrogation of the edict of
+toleration. The States should have all they demanded
+if they would only be loyal and Catholic, and Elizabeth
+was appealed to earnestly not to aid rebellion in
+her good brother’s States. Mendoza was directed to
+“endeavour to keep her in a good humour, and convinced
+of our friendship, banishing the distrust of us
+which she now appears to entertain, and for which
+we have given her no good cause.” The English
+ministers were all to be heavily bribed, and at any
+cost, the new ambassador was instructed, English
+neutrality was to be secured.</p>
+
+<p>Mendoza passed through Paris on his way to
+England in February, and found the French Court
+in dismay. Young Alençon had escaped his brother’s
+vigilance, and, with a force of Huguenots and German
+mercenaries, was on the Flemish frontier in full
+negotiation with the Prince of Orange and the Protestants
+to assume the sovereignty as a rival to
+Mathias, the nominee of the Catholics. Don Juan
+had just won the battle of Gembloux against the
+united rebel States, and was known to be intriguing
+with the Guises against Elizabeth, though not, as was
+thought in England, with Philip’s connivance; and
+the Queen of England found herself in perplexity
+between two fires. The Marquis d’Havrey, the
+Flemish Catholic noble representing the States, was
+assuring her that unless she sent an army over at
+once, under Leicester or his brother, to help them,
+they must hand themselves over to Alençon and the
+Frenchmen, which she was determined to prevent,
+cost what it might;&#x2060;<a id="FNanchor_223" href="#Footnote_223" class="fnanchor">[223]</a> whilst, on the other hand, she
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_353">[353]</span>was told from all quarters that the Kings of Spain
+and France, with the Pope, Don Juan, and the Guises,
+were all united and determined to crush her for once
+and for all. Her problem was how to save Orange
+and the Protestants in Holland from being overwhelmed,
+without dragging England into a war with
+Philip; to prevent the French, even Huguenots, from
+gaining a footing in the Low Countries, and to avert
+a Catholic coalition against her. By what consummate
+diplomacy she contrived to attain her ends will
+be seen in the next chapter, which recounts her
+intercourse with Bernardino de Mendoza as Philip’s
+ambassador.</p>
+
+<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop" aria-hidden="true">
+
+<div class="chapter">
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_354">[354]</span></p>
+
+<h2 class="nobreak" id="CHAPTER_VIII">CHAPTER VIII<br>
+<span class="smaller">1578-1584</span></h2>
+
+<p>Mendoza and Elizabeth—His haughty behaviour—The French in
+Flanders—Elizabeth’s approaches to Philip—The Spanish designs on
+Portugal—Renewed plots of Mary Stuart—Appeals to Philip to aid her
+in England—Philip’s attitude towards Guisan co-operation with him
+in Britain—The Jesuit mission—Mendoza and the Catholic plot in Scotland—Elizabeth
+aids the Portuguese pretender—Anger of Mendoza—His
+altercation with Elizabeth—Progress of the plots—Collapse of
+Lennox—The interference of Guise in the plans—The jealousy between
+English Catholic exiles and the Scots—Development of the Anglo-Spanish
+plans and intended exclusion of Guise—Arrest of Francis
+Throckmorton—Discovery of the plot—Expulsion of Mendoza—Philip
+faces the inevitable and slowly prepares for a war of invasion</p>
+
+</div>
+
+<p>On the 16th March, 1578, Mendoza sat on a
+low stool by Elizabeth’s side, under the
+canopy in the Palace of Greenwich. He
+was a man already of mature age, of stately port,
+strong and masterful as became a dashing cavalry
+leader, but he spoke on this occasion, his first formal
+audience of Elizabeth, in silken tones, as he tried
+his best to excuse Don Juan’s breach of faith with
+the States. The Queen, on her side, had nothing
+but complaints and protests. Her aim was to be
+made a party to the new pacification, either as
+arbitrator or mediator, because, she said, that she
+would have to provide the financial guarantee offered
+by the States. But it was not Philip’s intention to
+allow her thus to come between him and his subjects,
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_355">[355]</span>and this point was always evaded, cleverly as she
+urged it. But upon the main point she and Mendoza
+soon agreed. If Philip would make the concessions
+to the States that he now promised, and they refused
+to submit, she herself would help to punish them; and
+as for the French, she would take care they were
+never masters of Flanders, with or without Don Juan.
+It was noticed that as soon as the Queen said that she
+would help to punish the States if they did not accept
+the terms promised by Philip, Leicester hurriedly left
+the chamber, it was whispered to write by special
+courier to Flanders that Havrey should at once
+return to England and represent the rebel view of
+the situation.</p>
+
+<p>“I am glad to see you again,”&#x2060;<a id="FNanchor_224" href="#Footnote_224" class="fnanchor">[224]</a> said the Queen,
+after the business talk was finished, “although I
+have been told that the real object of your coming
+is to plan many things to my injury; but even if
+you were not a minister of my good brother, I do
+not think that you would do me much harm.” Needless
+to say, Mendoza loudly proclaimed his devotion
+to her, and for a time all went harmoniously between
+them. Alençon from the frontier sent to Elizabeth
+lovelorn epistles of devotion, which she looked at
+for a time with some distrust, believing that this
+might be a trap whereby the French, as a nation,
+were endeavouring to gain a footing in Flanders to
+her prejudice. Of one thing she was quite determined,
+namely, that for every Frenchman who entered
+Flanders an Englishman should enter too; and to
+all Mendoza’s remonstrances at the aid in men and
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_356">[356]</span>money that constantly flowed over to the Netherlands,
+Elizabeth had the answer ready that they
+went as much in Philip’s interest as her own, to
+prevent the country from falling into the hands of
+the French. To Orange, whom she constantly upbraided
+for welcoming French aid, her scolding
+reproaches meant little, for, as he said, he cared
+not whence came the help by means of which he
+could fight the Spaniards, and if he obtained, as he
+did, forces from Alençon and from Elizabeth too,
+he was willing to put up with the Englishwoman’s
+hard words.</p>
+
+<p>She did not mince matters with Mendoza, either.
+“By God!” she shouted, “if the edict of toleration is
+not re-granted to the States I will help them against
+you whilst I have a man left in England.” Mendoza
+drily remarked that she was helping them pretty effectually
+already, “and that, grateful as I was for her
+kindness to me, I could not help telling her that
+your Majesty had very long arms, and that if need
+arose their strength would be felt in any country
+upon which they were placed. She swallowed
+this,” says Mendoza, “with rather a wry face, and
+said she did not consider these people to be rebels,
+as they were satisfied with what your Majesty had
+granted to them before, and she would not allow
+either the French to set foot in the States nor the
+Spaniards to oppress them.” Thus surely but slowly
+Elizabeth worked her way; but with the inevitable
+consequence of convincing Mendoza, as all other
+Spanish ambassadors in turn had been convinced,
+that force against Elizabeth was their only remedy,
+since in diplomacy she was more than a match for
+the cast-iron methods of their master.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_357">[357]</span></p>
+
+<p>To Mendoza’s intercession for the unhappy Guaras,
+with whom the new ambassador had little sympathy
+as a plebeian and bungler in State affairs, Elizabeth
+replied angrily that if he had been a subject of any
+other King but Philip she would have hanged him
+long ago, as he had been plotting against her with
+the Queen of Scots and English rebels. She would
+get rid of him, she said, by and by, when she had
+squeezed some more information from him. Once,
+in June, 1578, Guaras was brought out of prison
+and told by the Council that he would have to leave
+the country in ten days; but, instead of accepting
+the decision humbly, he raised an altercation, again
+claiming diplomatic privilege, with the result that
+he was promptly sent to solitary confinement in the
+Tower again, though both Mendoza and Don Juan
+had received money from Spain to be spent in bribes
+for his help and defence.&#x2060;<a id="FNanchor_225" href="#Footnote_225" class="fnanchor">[225]</a>&#x2060;</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_358">[358]</span></p>
+
+<p>Generally speaking, the parties in Elizabeth’s Court
+were now sharply divided in policy, and Mendoza
+promptly found who were his friends and who his
+foes. Cecil and Sussex, particularly, with Controller
+Crofts in a humbler way, were opposed to the open
+provocation of Spain by the support of the Flemish
+rebels; Leicester and Walsingham, whom Mendoza
+rarely mentions without the epithet “devilish heretic,”
+being determined, if possible, to bring matters to a
+crisis between Elizabeth and Philip whilst the war
+in the Netherlands paralysed the latter. Elizabeth
+herself leant now to one side, now to another, always
+balancing counsel against counsel. How suddenly
+and convincingly she could change is seen in her
+attitude towards Mendoza directly she heard that
+Alençon and his French force, mainly Huguenots,
+had crossed the frontier into Flanders early in July,
+1578, at the request of the States, and had thrown
+themselves into Mons. Alençon had long been trying
+to convince the Queen that upon her alone, and not
+upon his brother the King of France, would he
+depend in everything, and his professions of love
+for her were unabated, but this alarmed her.</p>
+
+<p>To some extent her distrust of Alençon had been
+overcome of late, particularly as a large number of
+English troops and Germans in her pay were in
+Flanders as an antidote to him; but only a few
+days after the startling news of Alençon’s invasion
+reached England, Mendoza writes (19th July, 1578):
+“The Queen has been very suspicious of me hitherto,
+as she has been assured that I had come to
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_359">[359]</span>perform I know not what, nor what bad office; but
+she is beginning to be undeceived, and is turning
+her eyes now more towards his Majesty. Some of
+the ministers, too, have begun to get friendly with
+me, and I can assure you [Zayas] that if his Majesty
+wishes to retain their goodwill, I see a way of doing
+it.... God knows the trouble I have had in getting
+her and her ministers so far, as they always want to
+see something substantial beforehand,&#x2060;<a id="FNanchor_226" href="#Footnote_226" class="fnanchor">[226]</a> this being the
+natural character of the people. I am told by a
+person in the Palace that, even in the matter of
+giving me audience readily, the Queen has been
+considerably influenced by the presents of gloves
+and perfumes I gave her when I arrived.”</p>
+
+<p>It is true that Elizabeth was a glutton for presents,
+and her Councillors had itching palms for Spanish gold,
+but there were other reasons just then besides self-interest
+that made them smile upon Philip’s ambassador.
+Not only was there a French army on Flemish
+soil, but from all sides there came to England
+alarming news of some great Catholic combination
+against Elizabeth; the Spaniards were known to be
+supporting the Desmond rebellion in Ireland;&#x2060;<a id="FNanchor_227" href="#Footnote_227" class="fnanchor">[227]</a> and
+at a day’s notice, until she had got Alençon completely
+under her thumb by the farcical marriage
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_360">[360]</span>negotiations with him personally, she thought fit to
+smile upon Mendoza, and treat the moderate English
+Catholics with unwonted mildness. “I never see the
+Queen now,” writes Mendoza in September, 1578,
+“without her telling me how glad she is for me to
+be here. She gives me audience freely, and, thank
+God! I have her now in an excellent humour, whilst
+the Englishmen in general are not bad friends with
+me, as they think I shall not do anything against
+them in case of a disturbance.”</p>
+
+<p>On another occasion in September, 1578, when
+Elizabeth was sounding Mendoza about sending an
+English ambassador to Spain, she said to him: “If
+you were a knave, you should not have stayed here
+so long; ... if you had been here years ago, things
+would not have reached such a condition as they did,
+by reason of Don Gerau de Spes”; and when he
+went to see her at Richmond on her return from an
+autumn progress, she became quite coquettish with
+him. She thought, she said, he must have run away
+and left her it was so long since she had seen him;
+and, though she was somewhat aggrieved that she
+was to have no part in the pending peace negotiations
+between Philip and the Flemings, she told him
+that “she liked his manner of procedure.” “I did not
+inspire her with suspicion; and if a favourable peace
+was made in the Netherlands by any means, she was
+quite content not to have been a mediator, being quite
+satisfied with my explanations.” Then, turning to
+him, she broached the subject really uppermost in her
+mind, namely, her much-talked-of marriage with the
+young French Prince. Did Mendoza think she ought
+to marry him? The courtly ambassador was sure she
+would act wisely in any case; but he knew, as she
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_361">[361]</span>did, that all the French wished was to prevent her
+prosperity and quietude. “I hope when you see the
+end you will approve of it,” said Elizabeth, doubtless
+smiling in her sleeve; for she alone knew what she
+intended the end to be, though Philip himself shrewdly
+guessed that “it was all pastime, and she would never
+marry any man.”</p>
+
+<p>But through all this amiability to the Spaniard,
+English aid still found its way abundantly across the
+North Sea to the Protestants in arms; and Hans
+Casinir, with 20,000 soldiers, was in Elizabeth’s pay
+in the States. Philip, much as his ambassador might
+humour Elizabeth and bribe her ministers, was no
+nearer than before to the complete control of English
+policy, which alone would serve his purpose. Don
+Juan had died brokenhearted at his miserable failure
+on 1st October, and this made matters somewhat easier
+for his brother Philip, as it removed the principal
+obstacle to the reconciliation of the Catholic Flemings
+to the Spanish rule. The absolute dissociation of the
+King of France from his brother Alençon’s eccentric
+vagaries in Flanders, and Elizabeth’s clever beguilement
+of the young man, also satisfied the King of
+Spain that once more affairs were reverting to the
+old groove, in which he would have against him not
+Catholics, but only the Protestant elements of which
+Elizabeth was the main supporter.</p>
+
+<p>Again, therefore, he was able to face the problem
+of his “good sister’s” overthrow. All his attempts
+previously in this direction had been disastrous for
+his instruments and discomfiting for himself. He
+had subsidised Mary Stuart, before and since her
+incarceration; he had ineffectively supported the
+English Catholics to rebel; he had consented to
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_362">[362]</span>Elizabeth’s murder preparatory to his armed intervention
+in England; he had countenanced Stukeley’s wild
+plans to capture Ireland, and supported the Desmond
+disaffection in Munster; he had tried to bring Elizabeth
+to her knees by stopping trade, with the result
+of nearly ruining his own subjects—but all these
+means had failed. Philip’s advisers for twenty years
+had never ceased to assure him that he must boldly
+carry the war into his enemy’s camp if he would
+succeed—that to win all he must risk something;
+but he had gone on still believing in the infallibility
+of his own methods, which always aimed at binding
+others whilst himself remaining vaguely pledged or
+not pledged at all. Philip would only play when he
+held all the winning cards, and, much as his ambassadors
+urged upon him a policy of force towards his
+sister-in-law, he was determined to wait until Fate had
+dealt them to him.</p>
+
+<p>In August, 1578, only a few weeks before the
+death of Don Juan relieved him from his worst
+dilemma in Catholic Flanders, his rash young nephew,
+King Sebastian of Portugal, was killed in battle in
+Morocco. His heir was the old childless Cardinal
+Don Henrique, and amongst the many subsequent
+claimants Philip was the strongest. With the added
+power and great wealth of Portugal, the King of
+Spain might conquer heresy yet by force, and defy
+both England and France if needs be, for, with the
+harbours of Spain, Portugal, and the Islands closed
+to them, French and English ships would be unable
+to sail far from their own shores. The danger at
+once drew Catharine and Elizabeth together, but
+they could do nothing effectual yet, and all Philip’s
+plans were laid carefully to seize the throne of
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_363">[363]</span>Portugal when the aged king should die. It was
+necessary, amongst other things, for him to provide
+that both Elizabeth and Catharine, when that event
+happened, should have their hands full at home, and
+the effect of his manœuvres is noticeable almost
+immediately.</p>
+
+<p>Mendoza had been instructed to use the greatest
+caution in all approaches to him on behalf of the
+imprisoned Mary Stuart; but in January, 1579,
+Zayas wrote to him, saying that negotiations had
+been opened by Beton, Archbishop of Glasgow,
+Mary’s ambassador in Paris, and the Spanish ambassador
+there. “If,” he said, “Philip would provide
+enough money to raise four thousand troops, great
+things might be done for her and for the Catholic religion.
+His Majesty is very well disposed towards it;
+but nothing, as yet, has been decided, because, in good
+truth, the matter could only be undertaken on very
+safe grounds, and with the assurance that the effect
+would be produced, as otherwise it would be <i>oleum
+et operam perdere</i>. Send us your opinion on it.”&#x2060;<a id="FNanchor_228" href="#Footnote_228" class="fnanchor">[228]</a>
+The French intrigues in Scotland at this period (1579)
+had somewhat aroused the apprehensions both of
+Philip and Elizabeth, for Guise had sent young
+Lennox d’Aubigny, the Franco-Scot Stuart, to woo
+his cousin James, and he had succeeded beyond the
+wildest expectations. Philip was willing enough to
+foster Guise’s ambitions to the extent of setting
+him against Catharine and the Huguenots; but any
+attempt at Guisan interference in Great Britain
+without his direction always alarmed him, so Mendoza
+lost no opportunity of whispering to Elizabeth
+distrust of French aims in Scotland.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_364">[364]</span></p>
+
+<p>At the same time, still further to divert Elizabeth
+from interfering with his Portuguese plans, Philip
+allowed himself to be persuaded to help James Fitzmaurice
+and the Pope’s Nuncio, Dr. Sanders, to
+land a small Spanish and Italian force in Ireland in
+the summer of 1579. The expedition was routed and
+pursued, Dr. Sanders dying miserably of want and
+exposure; but when heartrending appeals from the
+Irish were sent to Philip for further aid, he dared
+not make open war upon England for their sake—that
+was no part of his plan yet. All he could consent
+to do was to join with the Pope in defraying
+the expenses of a formidable expedition, not under
+the Spanish but the Papal flag, sailing from a Spanish
+port, with eight thousand soldiers to invade Ireland,
+and hold the Catholic West for the Desmonds. The
+affair was mismanaged, and all the invaders were
+slaughtered at Smerwick, Dingle Bay (November,
+1580); but Mendoza never heard the last of it
+from Elizabeth, who in future excused all her interference
+in Flanders by pointing to this kind act of
+her “good brother.” It was a hint to Elizabeth
+that she was vulnerable, not only in Scotland
+by French intrigue, but in Ireland also, and that
+it behoved her to look to her own safety before
+attacking others.</p>
+
+<p>Mendoza had much cold water to throw upon the
+suggestion of Beton and the Spanish ambassador in
+Paris (with whom he was at feud) as to the subsidising
+of a rising of Catholics in favour of Mary Stuart. He,
+true Spaniard as he was, looked askance at any plan
+of the sort in which a Frenchman had a part. But
+early in 1580 the matter entered a new phase. Elizabeth,
+for the first time in her reign, found herself
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_365">[365]</span>unpopular, in consequence of the general belief that
+she really intended to marry the young French Prince;
+the great Jesuit propaganda was busily making ready
+to spread through England the young missionaries,
+who in the true spirit of martyrdom had pledged their
+lives to bring back England and Scotland to the Faith;
+the power of Morton in Scotland was waning fast,
+and Lennox was in the ascendant. Everywhere the
+Catholic cause had taken new hope, thanks in great
+measure to the encouragement of Philip, in order that
+when the time came he might have a free hand in
+Portugal.</p>
+
+<p>But whilst the King of Spain was quite ready to
+utilise these priestly and other auxiliaries for his ends,
+though most of them had no idea that politics had any
+part in their propaganda, he himself would make no
+move to capture England until he knew that he, and
+no one else, would enjoy the benefit of success if
+success were attained. So long as the Pope and Guise
+were the leaders of the movement, Philip gave it his
+blessing but no more, and on the 11th February, 1580,
+the old Archbishop of Glasgow, in Paris, seeing this,
+visited Vargas Mexia, the Spanish ambassador, and
+made a distinct step in advance. The Duke of Guise and
+he, he said, had persuaded Mary Stuart to place herself
+without reserve in the hands of his Catholic Majesty;
+and the Archbishop produced a letter from Mary to
+that effect, saying that she had arranged for her son
+to be captured and sent to Spain, that Philip might
+marry him to his liking. Guise himself came secretly
+to Vargas Mexia soon afterwards, and told him that
+he had everything arranged now by the aid of the
+Scottish Catholics to overthrow Elizabeth, and if
+Philip would subsidise the affair, he (Guise) would
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_366">[366]</span>undertake to prevent any French national interference.&#x2060;<a id="FNanchor_229" href="#Footnote_229" class="fnanchor">[229]</a>
+As for Mary herself, said the Archbishop, “she was
+determined not to leave her prison until she left it to
+be Queen of England.” Philips attitude changed at
+once on hearing this; and when a Catholic Scot,
+Fernihurst, was sent to Madrid by the party, he gave
+him a cordial reply, leaving in Mary’s hands the
+arrangement for the capture and deportation of James.
+But before anything could be done, the overthrow of
+Morton in Scotland and the rise of Catholic Lennox
+d’Aubigny to supreme power gave a far wider scope
+to the plan.</p>
+
+<p>The great conspiracy of 1569-70 against Elizabeth
+had failed, owing to lack of complete co-operation of
+the various Catholic elements: the present attempt
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_367">[367]</span>seemed to promise an organisation of greater ramifications
+and more intimate combination. This was owing
+in great part to a new feature now first introduced.
+Those who watched the debarkation at Dover of the
+passengers from a skiff that had arrived from Calais
+on the 12th June, 1580, saw leap upon the shore a
+swashbuckling young captain, such as many who
+came from the Flemish war. He was a man of five-and-thirty,
+clad in a buff military coat covered with
+gold lace, and had a great, clanking rapier hung upon
+his hip, whilst a fine feather flaunted in his wide-brimmed
+hat. With him came a soldier-servant of
+humbler mien, and, after being duly searched and
+coming through the ordeal successfully, the two
+travellers swaggered upon their way.&#x2060;<a id="FNanchor_230" href="#Footnote_230" class="fnanchor">[230]</a> The captain
+told the searcher who kindly procured him a horse
+that a friend of his, an English jeweller living at St.
+Omer, would follow him to England in a day or two.
+The jeweller, Mr. Edmunds, duly came, and also went
+on his road to Gravesend, and so by tilt-boat to
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_368">[368]</span>London, there to be lost like his military forerunner in
+the crowds of the capital. The captain came not to
+rest from the wars against the Spaniards in Flanders,
+but to conquer England again for the Faith, for he was
+Father Robert Parsons the Jesuit, and the jeweller
+Edmunds, who followed, sold, not jewels alone, but his
+own life for the task to which he had been dedicated
+by the Church, for he was Edmund Campion.</p>
+
+<p>These three young men were but the advance guard
+of an army of Jesuit missionaries who soon flocked
+over from the seminaries of Rheims and Rome to
+strengthen the resistance of the sorely tried Catholics
+of England and Scotland. Wherever these zealous
+clerics reached, the power of Elizabeth over her subjects
+was weakened. There were many Catholics who had
+grown tired of persecution, and were willing to
+purchase peace by open compliance with the Queen’s
+laws. More there were who would have been fully
+content with even limited toleration for their observance.
+But to these fiery young spirits toleration was
+a more deadly blow than persecution, and although up
+to this time the secular priests had been willing to
+concede to Catholics some appearance of outward
+conformity, the attendance at Protestant service was
+now forbidden to those of the old Faith. The result
+was almost at once a recrudescence of the persecutions
+against Catholics in a crueller form than ever, with the
+inevitable result of raising a stronger and more
+fanatical religious spirit than had existed amongst the
+Catholics in England since the early days of Elizabeth’s
+reign.</p>
+
+<figure class="figcenter illowp58" id="illus10" style="max-width: 34.375em;">
+  <img class="w100" src="images/illus10.jpg" alt="">
+  <figcaption>
+    <p>ROBERT PARSONS, S.J.</p>
+    <p>1546-1610</p>
+  </figcaption>
+</figure>
+
+<p>Needless to say, Mendoza soon got into touch with
+the new fighting element in the struggle against
+Elizabeth. The ambassador’s feigned politeness
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_369">[369]</span>towards Elizabeth had been strained almost to breaking
+point by the news of Drake’s terrible depredations
+in the Pacific; and he had already fallen in his correspondence
+with his master into the same heated tone
+of indignation as his predecessors had done, urging
+the King to prompt reprisals upon these “insolent
+heretics.” When Drake himself arrived with his vast
+booty, and was effusively received by the Queen,
+Mendoza’s angry violence of word, and his open
+threats, earned for him exclusion from the Queen’s
+presence. He was offered, indeed, a bribe of 50,000
+crowns to moderate his tone, but he replied in a rage,
+“that he would pay more than that sum himself to
+punish so great a thief as Drake.”&#x2060;<a id="FNanchor_231" href="#Footnote_231" class="fnanchor">[231]</a>&#x2060;</p>
+
+<p>Almost daily Mendoza’s indignation with Elizabeth
+became more heated. Amongst other causes of complaint
+was one that for the first time brought him into
+an acrimonious squabble with Elizabeth herself, though
+the occasion was a small one. The ambassador had
+been trapped into one of the usual bogus plots,
+ostensibly to betray Flushing, but really to cheat and
+betray him, and he had paid a large sum of money
+and given much information to certain Dutchmen for
+the purpose. One of the conspirators had left his son,
+a child, in Mendoza’s hands as a hostage, and when
+the fraud was complete, on the 4th June, 1581, during
+the ambassador’s absence, his house in the Strand was
+forcibly entered by London constables accompanied
+by the Secretary of the Prince of Orange, and the
+young hostage was taken from the custody of the
+Spaniards. The household drew their swords and
+attacked the authorities, but before the affray had
+proceeded far the ambassador himself appeared.
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_370">[370]</span>Learning that the officers were acting under the
+authority of the Council, he ordered his servants to
+put up their weapons and angrily protested against
+this violation of his domicile.</p>
+
+<p>Mendoza had avoided appearing at Court during
+the warm philandering with Alençon and the French
+that was going on, fearing that Elizabeth might, with
+her usual artfulness, get better terms from the French
+by pretending that the Spaniards were seeking her.
+But this new insult overcame all other considerations.
+In a violent temper Mendoza demanded immediate
+reparation from the Queen. She must receive him
+at once, he said, and apologise, or he would leave the
+country and lay the matter before his master for
+redress. Elizabeth was anxious not to have an altercation
+with him whilst the special French embassy as
+well as Alençon’s <i>mignons</i> filled her Court, and by
+flattery and cajolery she managed to defer the unpleasant
+interview until the French embassy had gone.
+On the 17th June, Elizabeth stood in the gallery of
+Whitehall overlooking the river, when Mendoza, who
+had landed at the private stairs, was led to her by
+Hatton, the captain of the guard. Fearing that the
+Spaniard might use angry words, she took him into a
+window embrasure out of earshot of the only two
+persons in the gallery, Sussex and Hatton, and at
+once anticipated him by complaining bitterly that
+King Philip had helped these knaves of Irish rebels
+by sending a large body of soldiers to them. Mendoza
+said he must leave that subject for another time, and
+launched into angry invective of the treatment to
+which he had been subjected. He had, he said, been
+denied rights recognised even amongst savages to the
+ambassadors of kings. He had expected to hear that
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_371">[371]</span>she had hanged the constables the next morning; but
+as she had not done so, he supposed they had told
+the truth when they said they acted in her name.</p>
+
+<p>Calling Sussex and Leicester to her, she ordered
+that inquiry should be made in the matter, and then
+once more started her Irish grievance, again forcing
+Mendoza to take the defensive. He made the best
+of matters, and retorted with Drake’s plunder and her
+constant aid to the Netherlanders, ending by a scarcely
+veiled threat that unless she mended her behaviour
+towards his master, especially in her attitude towards
+Portugal, his vengeance would fall upon her. Elizabeth
+was rather cowed at this, and said she did not want to
+quarrel with her good brother; the King of France
+had done more harm in the matter of Portugal than
+she had. To this Mendoza retorted curtly that if the
+King of France did evil that was no reason why she
+should. Mendoza afterwards snubbed and hectored
+Cecil and the Council, and left the Palace in no very
+pacific frame of mind. “If I had not shown spirit,”
+he wrote to the King, in giving him an account of the
+interview, “which is the thing that moves the Queen
+and her ministers most, such is their insolence that
+probably I should never have been able to get conference
+with them. This attitude alone has enabled me
+to hold my own with them until now, thus gaining
+time for matters to develop themselves.”&#x2060;<a id="FNanchor_232" href="#Footnote_232" class="fnanchor">[232]</a> Notwithstanding
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_372">[372]</span>his self-satisfaction, it is clear that Mendoza
+got the worst of the interview with the Queen, for
+although she was compliant on the unimportant point
+of the violation of domicile, the boy was never
+restored, and she assumed the position of the injured
+party about Ireland, as well as preventing Mendoza
+from making a formal reclamation about Drake’s
+plunder.</p>
+
+<p>But soon there came a new grievance to exacerbate
+the irritation of the Spaniards. Alba had
+been summoned from his retirement to conquer
+Portugal for Philip on the death of the old Cardinal
+King. The many claimants to the Crown were
+mostly timid and unready, whilst Philip’s power was irresistible,
+and Alba marched through Portugal, with the
+King in his wake, brushing aside such slight attempts
+as were made to stay him in the interests of the only
+Portuguese claimant who showed fight at all—the
+doubtfully legitimate Don Antonio, Prior of Ocrato,
+who had at first been accepted by his countrymen as
+their Sovereign. He had fled before Alba’s advance,
+and had been a fugitive for months past—some said
+in Brazil, some in Azores, and some in France.
+Wherever he was, he carried with him jewels of
+inestimable value, and such a man in the hands of
+Philip’s enemies might be made a powerful weapon
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_373">[373]</span>against the King of Spain. Rumour was busy as to
+Don Antonio’s movements, and Mendoza’s spies had
+much to tell, most of which was untrue. But it was
+noticed at the end of June, 1581, that Elizabeth’s
+Portuguese-Jew physician, Lopez, was very busy and
+important, posting backwards and forwards between
+London and Dover, and soon Mendoza learnt that a
+party of Portuguese had landed there, amongst whom
+one was treated with marked respect and consideration.
+He was described as being “under the middle
+height, very dark and thin, with a spare face, a
+grizzled beard, and greenish-grey eyes.”</p>
+
+<p>This man Mendoza, from the description, at once
+recognised as Don Antonio, the so-called King of
+Portugal, proclaimed by Philip a rebel with a heavy
+price upon his head. Before even he had had
+time to verify his suspicions, Mendoza peremptorily
+demanded audience of Elizabeth to complain of her
+thus sheltering the Pretender. The Queen’s ministers,
+through the Earl of Sussex, flatly refused him access
+to their mistress for any such purpose unless he
+brought fresh special letters from Philip; and as, he
+says, he was determined to have no more <i>pros</i> and <i>cons</i>
+with intermediaries who simply talk nonsense and then
+repudiate what they say, blaming the messengers, he
+wrote a haughty letter to Elizabeth herself, threatening
+to leave England instantly unless audience was
+accorded to him. Elizabeth was hunting at Eltham
+when the letter was handed to her, and as she read
+it she changed countenance. Through Hatton, who
+was by her side, she replied to the bearer, “that if
+the ambassador, for reasons of health or other private
+causes, wished for his passports he could have them;
+but that the Queen had not the slightest desire that
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_374">[374]</span>he should leave her Court, or that she should break
+with the King of Spain.”</p>
+
+<p>Two or three days afterwards, however, thanks
+to Cecil, Mendoza was led up a secret stair into
+the Queen’s private chamber, where she was with
+Leicester, Sussex, Hatton, and Walsingham. “I
+suppose,” began Elizabeth as soon as she saw
+him, “you have come to give me some satisfaction
+about Ireland.” “That, your Majesty,” he replied,
+“as I told you before, is a matter concerning
+the Pope, not my master.” She had, he continued,
+refused to receive him for nearly a year,
+pending her investigation of the case. Elizabeth
+angrily swore that she had never sent him such a
+message. Until he could bring her a fresh letter
+from Philip excusing this Irish business, she would
+have no more to say to him; and she thought that
+he had done his master a poor service in giving her
+the answer he had done. “If I have done ill to my
+master, madam,” he replied, “I have a head to pay
+for it; and although as the King’s minister I am
+bound to render an account to him of my acts, I
+thank God that He has granted me such a noble
+ancestry as alone would prevent me from failing in
+my duty to my Sovereign, if for no other reason but
+to leave unsullied the scutcheon of Mendoza.”&#x2060;<a id="FNanchor_233" href="#Footnote_233" class="fnanchor">[233]</a> “She
+screamed out louder than before at this, saying that I
+was to blame for everything that had happened, to
+which I replied smilingly that she was speaking as a
+lady, those of her sex usually displaying most annoyance
+at the things that were done in their interest.
+It was no small service I had done her, I said, in
+patiently awaiting her pleasure so long.”</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_375">[375]</span></p>
+
+<p>In the heated altercation that ensued, Mendoza
+seized an opportunity of mentioning the real object
+of his visit, namely, the arrival of Don Antonio. She
+prevaricated for a long time, and finally retorted that
+if Don Antonio was in England, the rebel Earl of
+Westmorland was not only in King Philip’s dominions
+but enjoyed a pension from him. She had not made
+up her mind yet, she said, whether she should help
+the Portuguese or not, but she was determined not to
+surrender any one to be killed; and if she did not
+choose to give him up it would not be she, but Philip,
+who had first violated the old treaties. Upon this
+Mendoza made a formal demand for the surrender
+of Don Antonio in accordance with the international
+agreement, and was curtly refused.</p>
+
+<p>Thus every day the breach between Elizabeth and
+her brother-in-law grew wider, and Mendoza followed
+in the footsteps of de Spes and Guaras. Don Antonio
+was welcomed at Court with royal honours, and was very
+soon borrowing money on his jewels to fit out expeditions
+to the Azores, which still held out in his favour.
+The Queen herself blew hot and cold. If Antonio
+succeeded in capturing the throne of Portugal again,
+she wished him to be beholden to her for it and not
+to the French, whilst she was determined not to be
+drawn into open war with Philip for him unless she
+could manœuvre the King of France into the same
+position. Philip wrote to Elizabeth himself, begging
+her to expel or surrender the rebel Pretender, and
+Mendoza continued to press her, often intemperately,
+on the subject; but she always countered with
+Ireland, the refugee Desmonds, Ridolfi, and the
+Earl of Westmorland; and usually succeeded in
+getting up a wrangle with the heated ambassador,
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_376">[376]</span>which placed him at a disadvantage. To prevent
+Philip from proceeding to extremities against her,
+and to keep the King of France from breaking
+away, the marriage dealings with Alençon were
+carried by her to a point from which all observers
+believed she could never extricate herself. But her
+tactics, risky as they really were at this time, were
+successful in their main object, namely, in weakening
+Philip’s power on every hand, and making it impracticable
+for him to avenge himself by force.</p>
+
+<p>The English Catholic party had already felt the
+cruel consequences of the renewed Jesuit activity.
+Campion, the most fearless of the young missionaries,
+with two brethren, suffered cruel martyrdom with unshaken
+constancy in December, 1581, and scores of
+other priests and laymen were under sentence of
+death,&#x2060;<a id="FNanchor_234" href="#Footnote_234" class="fnanchor">[234]</a> whilst throughout the country recusants were
+hunted with merciless vigour, not, of course, for
+religion, said Elizabeth’s officers, but as disobedient
+and disloyal subjects. Most of the active Catholic
+nobles were now in exile, and it was clear that no
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_377">[377]</span>armed rising in England against the Queen’s Government
+was now possible, except with very powerful help
+from abroad. But in Scotland matters were entirely
+different. Morton had fallen, and the half-French
+Lennox d’Aubigny, a Catholic, was the most powerful
+force in the country. His French ancestry had
+caused the Spaniards to look askance at him for a
+time; but the declaration of Guise to the Spanish
+ambassador in Paris, that Mary Stuart in future would
+look alone to Philip for direction, somewhat disarmed
+Mendoza, and, despairing of striking at Elizabeth by
+other means, the ambassador turned to this quarter to
+aid him in his vengeance.</p>
+
+<p>Philip had commanded him to continue to console
+and encourage the imprisoned Mary, and in September,
+1581, referring to his correspondence with
+her, the ambassador opens a new chapter in his
+activities in England. He has, he says, been trying
+in every way—of course, through the Jesuit missionaries
+mainly—to convince the Scots how advantageous
+it would be for King James if Scotland were formally
+to return to the Catholic Church; but for fear of
+driving Elizabeth into the arms of the French, if
+she knew it, he has had, he says, to work very
+cautiously and secretly. He then goes on to say
+that he had just held a private meeting with some
+leading English Catholics, especially the brothers
+Tresham, and had urged upon them that the best
+way to cause trouble to Elizabeth would be for
+Scotland to submit to the Holy See. Even if Philip’s
+other cares allowed of his sending a large force to
+England, such a course would be impossible owing
+to French jealousy. Yes, admitted the Treshams
+sorrowfully, the English Catholics were now so
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_378">[378]</span>downhearted and crushed that a rising in England
+was impossible unless King Philip sent a great fleet
+and army fit to conquer the country, which they saw
+he could not do. The Irish, too, were not to be
+depended upon, and they agreed that the only way
+to gain England now was by winning Scotland first
+for the Church.</p>
+
+<p>The idea took root, and a meeting of six English
+Catholic peers and several gentlemen thereupon took
+a joint oath of fidelity to devote all their means
+and energies to this end. The confederates, with
+Mendoza’s approval, despatched one of the senior
+Jesuit missioners, Father Creighton, to Scotland to
+broach the matter to Lennox d’Aubigny, saying
+that if James would embrace the Church the English
+Catholics would rise, have him proclaimed heir of
+England, and release his mother, but if he refused
+they promised to adopt another candidate as Elizabeth’s
+successor. D’Aubigny was to be entertained
+with the notion that help would be forthcoming from
+France and the Pope, as well as from Philip; but
+this was only intended to be a blind, for Mendoza
+specially warned the plotters that nothing should be
+said to Frenchmen about it, “in order to prevent
+it from being hindered by the fear that it is a plan
+of your Majesty alone.” “They agree with me in
+this, as they are all Spanish and Catholic at heart,
+and do not wish to have anything to do with
+France.”</p>
+
+<p>Creighton went on his way to Scotland in disguise,
+and in the meanwhile the relations between Elizabeth
+and Mendoza became more strained than ever.
+Philip had instructed him in October to address the
+Queen strongly about the unconcealed encouragement
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_379">[379]</span>she was giving to Don Antonio. For some
+time Mendoza asked for audience in vain. Elizabeth
+was at Nonsuch, and all sorts of excuses were
+given for her declining to receive him. Mendoza,
+chafing under what he calls “her insolent and outrageous”
+treatment of him, at last sent a servant of
+his to Burghley, positively to demand audience of the
+Queen when she arrived at Richmond. The reply
+brought back in Burghley’s words was ominous.
+“Sir, I must tell you the truth; the Queen is at
+present alone, unattended by Councillors, and as
+Don Bernardino is to bring letters to the Queen
+from so great an enemy of hers as his master, it
+is meet that he should be received accordingly.”</p>
+
+<p>They kept Mendoza fuming for several days
+longer before he was received; and when he entered
+the presence chamber at Richmond, boiling over
+with wounded pride, he found the Queen no longer
+the smiling coquette she had formerly been with
+him. Seated upon a tabouret under the canopy,
+with Sussex and Lord Admiral Clinton standing
+by her, she refrained from rising and advancing to
+receive him, as was her wont, and welcoming him with
+a greeting in Italian. Instead of that she sat frowning
+as he bowed low before her, the first words she
+said being to complain that she was suffering from a
+pain in her hip. Mendoza expressed his sorrow that
+he should have to trouble her with business in such
+circumstances, but she made no reply, and left him
+standing uncovered. “How about the letter you say
+you have from the King?” she snapped at last, and
+he handed her the King’s demand for Don Antonio’s
+surrender, which she read with a clouded brow.
+“You know very well,” she said, “that Don Antonio
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_380">[380]</span>has left England; but I can tell you that if I had
+chosen to help him your King’s fleets from the Indies
+would not be where they are now, and Portugal,
+perchance, would not be so tranquil”—all this, as
+Mendoza says, with much browbeating and vociferation.</p>
+
+<p>“What else have you to say?” asked the Queen tartly;
+and in answer Mendoza, in high and mighty strain,
+began to talk about the power of his master’s fleets,
+and how those who dared to attack them would get
+well trounced. She had helped the rebel Antonio, he
+said, she had called him “King,” she had let him sail
+from the Thames with English ships and arms from
+the Tower to attack his sovereign, the London merchants
+had lent him money on his jewels, and much
+more to the same effect. His King, already offended
+by the way she had helped the Flemish rebels, was
+doubly resentful now. What more could she do, asked
+Mendoza, even if she were at open war? To all of
+which Elizabeth replied boldly. As for Don Antonio,
+she had helped him and still would do so; but she
+knew not what the ambassador meant by his other
+complaints. “This was said,” continues Mendoza,
+“with the most terrible insolence; and as I saw her
+evil intent, I replied that I had been here for over
+three and a half years; but as it appears she had heard
+nothing in all this time of the complaints I had constantly
+been making, and would find no remedy for
+them, it would be necessary to see whether cannon
+would not make her hear better.” In answer to this
+Elizabeth, for a wonder, replied calmly and in a low
+voice that he need not think to threaten or frighten
+her, or she would put him into a place where he could
+not say a word. In future he might negotiate with
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_381">[381]</span>her Council, but as she had no ambassador in Spain
+she would not receive him herself.</p>
+
+<p>Mendoza thought probably that he had gone too far,
+as he certainly had; for Philip, as we shall see later,
+had no intention, or indeed ability, at this time
+(October, 1581) to attempt the conquest of England.
+He did not desire to threaten, Mendoza said; he was
+in her power and of course she could do as she liked
+with him, but whatever she did, thank God! King
+Philip would avenge him. Elizabeth then ordered
+every one out of the room but the two Councillors, to
+whom in angry tones she repeated Mendoza’s threat
+about cannon, and her reply. “I smiled to hear her
+relate this with so much fury and agitation, and
+remarked that I would not waste time on that point.
+Monarchs, I knew, were never afraid of private
+individuals, and above all she, who was a lady so
+beautiful that even lions would crouch before her.
+She is so vain and flighty that her anger was at
+once soothed on hearing this, and she began to relate
+how thankful your Majesty ought to be to her for
+having refused help to the Flemish rebels. All she
+had done was to prevent the French from taking
+possession of your territory.” Thenceforward to the
+end of the long interview Elizabeth played off the
+Spanish support of the Irish rebels, the subsidising of
+the northern rebellion, and the intrigues of de Spes,
+against Mendoza’s complaints of her help to Orange,
+the depredations of Drake, and the reception of Don
+Antonio; and the exchange of grievances ended by
+Elizabeth coldly saying that she would receive the
+ambassador no more until the King sent her some
+satisfaction, to which he retorted by saying that he
+would prefer to do business with the Council. As he
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_382">[382]</span>turned to go and was already some paces from the
+Queen he heard her heave a deep sigh, and say in
+Italian, evidently intended to reach his ear, “I
+would to God that each one had his own and was at
+peace.”&#x2060;<a id="FNanchor_235" href="#Footnote_235" class="fnanchor">[235]</a> Mendoza, humiliated and embittered at the
+course of events, which he ascribed entirely to
+Leicester and Hatton, thenceforward became a more
+virulent enemy of Elizabeth than ever de Spes had
+been. In the next letter after the interview just described
+he prayed Philip to avenge himself by seizing
+all English property in his dominions; but the King
+had tried that game before to his cost, and dared
+not run the risk again, nor would he listen to
+Mendoza’s earnest prayers to anticipate the intrigues
+of Leicester to have him expelled from England by
+recalling him himself.</p>
+
+<p>When, therefore, Father Creighton returned, in
+October, 1581, from his mission to Scotland, Mendoza
+was ripe for any plan which promised injury to
+Elizabeth. The Jesuit told him how he had been
+secretly conveyed across the Scottish border, and had
+conferred with Lennox, Eglinton, Huntly, Caithness,
+and Seton, who had warmly consented to Catholic missioners
+being sent—“on condition that they brought
+money for their own maintenance.” They would have
+King James approached, too, and told that his one
+hope of obtaining the English succession would be for
+him to embrace Catholicism and make friends with
+Spain. Neither Lennox nor the King was to be
+frightened with the suggestion that the French
+were to be thrown over: but Seton, who appears
+to have known James’s character well, proposed
+that his greed and ambition might be worked upon
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_383">[383]</span>by his being shown how much more effectual a
+friend Spain would be to him than France. Father
+Parsons was in London when Creighton arrived, and
+he and his colleague Heywood were long closeted with
+Mendoza to discuss who should be the pioneer missioners
+to Scotland. Creighton thought that Father
+Parsons, himself, and Heywood should go, “as they
+would need to be very learned and virtuous men.”
+Parsons, still in his captain’s garb, ran over to Rheims
+to consult the Principal of the English Seminary,
+Dr. Allen; and at Mendoza’s instance it was
+agreed that Parsons could not well be spared from
+England, and that Dr. Allen should appoint fresh men
+for the Scottish mission.</p>
+
+<p>The six English Catholic lords who had first
+arranged the matter with Mendoza were now in
+prison: Catholics were being savagely persecuted
+everywhere, and it was evident that the scheme for
+upsetting Elizabeth by means of a Catholic movement
+in Scotland must be managed by Spanish agents
+in France and Dr. Allen, “as the Queen and her
+heretics are served here by such a multitude of spies
+that the Queen of Scots herself is in great alarm.”
+But above all, says Mendoza, though the affair must
+be managed in France, “the French must have no
+suspicion that your Majesty has anything to do with
+it.” As may be supposed, Mary Stuart was a keen
+participant in the scheme. In April, 1581, six months
+previously, she had sent a message through Archbishop
+Beton to the new Spanish ambassador in
+Paris, Tassis. “Things,” she said, “were never in
+better form in Scotland than now for a return to
+ancient conditions, so that English affairs could be
+dealt with afterwards from there. Her son was
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_384">[384]</span>determined to be a Catholic, and inclined to break
+with Elizabeth as soon as he could be sure of substantial
+help.” This help Mary earnestly begged of
+Philip through Tassis, and asked that it should be
+landed first in Ireland, ready to cross to Scotland
+as soon as the treaty was signed.</p>
+
+<p>For some reason or another Mary conceived some
+distrust of Tassis, the Spanish ambassador in Paris,
+and of Beton; and as soon as she heard of the result
+of Father Creighton’s mission to Scotland, she wrote
+direct to Mendoza to tell him that she had partly consented
+to join her son with herself in the sovereignty of
+Scotland, which course had been urged upon her by
+the French, but that she was still determined in all
+things to follow the direction of the King of Spain in
+her affairs. She had understood from the first that
+from France, divided as it was, she had nothing
+effective to hope for. Her son and the Catholic
+Scots might desire to keep alive the ancient alliance
+with France, but Mary wanted more than that: she
+needed rescue from England, and this could only be
+effected by a Power that was willing to go to war with
+England if necessary for her sake, which she knew
+France, with its powerful Huguenot element and
+Catharine de Medici at the helm, would never do.
+Mary was suspicious, and grew even more so, of
+Guise’s interference in her affairs, which she saw was
+not occasioned by the desire to benefit her personally,
+but to increase his power by keeping hold of
+Scotland. Mendoza, of course, threw cold water
+upon the suggestion that Mary should recognise
+James as King on the recommendation of France,
+and by gaining Mary’s entire confidence, gradually
+worked her affairs into his own hands.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_385">[385]</span></p>
+
+<p>The priests sent to Scotland were meeting with
+great success; and James himself told Creighton that,
+though out of policy he was obliged to appear in
+favour of the French, in his heart he would rather be
+Spanish. Parsons, whilst, fortunately for himself, he
+was abroad, though just about to embark for England,
+had been proclaimed a traitor and a price set upon his
+head; so that in future his sphere of activity was in
+Scotland and on the Continent, where he continued to
+direct English affairs with ever-increasing violence
+against the Queen and her faith. It is characteristic
+of Spanish methods that, though even Mary protested
+against it, all the priests sent by Dr. Allen to Scotland
+were to be Englishmen, because it was feared that
+Scotsmen might have other ends and incline to France.
+Above all, it was provided that the French should
+have no idea that Spain was behind this purely
+religious propaganda. Elizabeth’s Government, suspicious
+already of the Catholic <i>régime</i> in Scotland,
+was well aware that something was going on in which
+Mendoza was concerned,&#x2060;<a id="FNanchor_236" href="#Footnote_236" class="fnanchor">[236]</a> and keen vigilance was
+kept upon the Border. “So far as can be seen,
+this business is proceeding most hopefully,” writes
+Mendoza in December, 1581, “and is under God’s
+protection; for, whilst these two priests were on the
+English Border one night, a great search was made
+in every house in the neighbourhood, as the Queen
+had been informed that some English priests would
+endeavour to go to Scotland, but God ordained that
+they should escape almost by a miracle.”&#x2060;<a id="FNanchor_237" href="#Footnote_237" class="fnanchor">[237]</a> Tresham
+was in prison, but priests carried messages backwards
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_386">[386]</span>and forwards between him and Mendoza, so that the
+plot was kept going; and the fortitude of the Catholic
+prisoners under torture in refusing to divulge the
+names of their associates had drawn into the new
+combination a large number of sympathisers, whilst
+Mary herself, gaining ever more confidence in
+Mendoza personally, was urging him to assure King
+Philip that the time was propitious for him to take
+some bold and decided action in her favour in
+Scotland.</p>
+
+<p>This was the hopeful condition of affairs when
+Father Holt, a young Jesuit sent by Parsons
+and Creighton from Scotland, arrived in London.
+Tresham and the other English leaders being in
+prison, he had been directed to a disguised English
+priest in London, who would take him to the person
+who was to receive his message. Holt, like the rest
+of the rank and file of the Jesuit missioners, had no
+suspicion that a political object was behind their
+Scottish propaganda, and was astounded when he was
+led to the house of the Spanish ambassador to give
+his report. What he had to say was important.
+Everything, he reported, was going excellently in
+Scotland. The lords were trying by every means
+to convert the King; but they wished to obtain
+Queen Mary’s permission, if he remained obstinate,
+“to force the King to open his eyes and to see the
+truth.” Failing this, they would, if the Queen authorised
+them, depose or transport James until Mary’s
+arrival in her realm. But, continued Holt, they
+considered it necessary, if they were to succeed in
+their aim, to be able to count positively upon foreign
+armed assistance to subdue the heretics and provide
+against any interference from England. If they had
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_387">[387]</span>two thousand soldiers from abroad they would be sufficient
+for the purpose. Where could they look, he asked,
+for such assistance? Not to France or to the Guises,
+for several reasons, and they hoped that Queen Mary
+would prevail upon the Pope and the King of Spain
+to send Spaniards or Italians. He begged that
+Mendoza would convey this to Mary and to Philip,
+and to have more English priests sent into Scotland
+for the propaganda, “only they must bring money
+for their own maintenance.”</p>
+
+<p>To Mary Mendoza sent the message of the Scottish
+Catholics in a somewhat softened form, in order not to
+arouse her maternal solicitude for James; but to his
+own Sovereign, Philip, he wrote almost vehemently,
+praying him to seize the opportunity for striking a
+fatal blow at Elizabeth. “With the two thousand
+soldiers they ask for, he says, the Scots might defy
+this Queen ... and the whole North of England
+would be disturbed, the Catholics there being in a
+majority, and the opportunity would be taken by the
+Catholics in other parts of the country to rise when
+they knew that they had on their side the forces of a
+more powerful Prince than the King of Scotland.”&#x2060;<a id="FNanchor_238" href="#Footnote_238" class="fnanchor">[238]</a>
+There was no more concealment of Mendoza’s opinion
+beneath a veil of assumed humility: he not only urged
+Philip to ensure the victory of Scottish orthodoxy by
+force, but to aid a rising of English Catholics over the
+Scottish Border. The opportunity looked a tempting
+one, for it provided for the removal of the doubtful
+James, and the plan might be carried out (if the
+Scottish lords were to be depended upon) without
+giving to Elizabeth the legal right to interfere.</p>
+
+<p>The experienced Cardinal de Granvelle, who was
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_388">[388]</span>governing Spain in Philips absence in Portugal, was
+almost as enthusiastic in its advocacy as Mendoza
+himself. “The affair is so important,” he wrote to
+Philip, “both for the sake of religion and to restrain
+England, that no other can equal it. By keeping the
+Queen of England busy we shall be ensured against
+her helping Alençon (in Flanders) or daring to
+obstruct us elsewhere.”&#x2060;<a id="FNanchor_239" href="#Footnote_239" class="fnanchor">[239]</a> Mary Stuart was just as
+eager, but had wider views than Granvelle, seeing
+clearly with her great penetration, if she was to be
+Queen of Britain, the absolute need for organising the
+English Catholics, whilst keeping the French out of
+the affair and not arousing unduly the suspicions
+of Elizabeth. “In the event,” she wrote, “of the
+Scots having the support requested, and the Queen
+of England attempting to interfere, which might give
+an occasion for the English Catholics to rise, it would
+be necessary to have this latter part of the business
+arranged beforehand, but in such a way that they
+should not understand what is intended, or have any
+idea until everything was ready to burst forth.”</p>
+
+<p>Holt went back to Scotland with a promise from
+Mendoza, which he certainly was not authorised by
+Philip to give, that the two thousand men asked for
+should be sent to their aid, and the English Catholics,
+or such of them as were still at liberty, were conciliated
+by means of Lord Henry Howard, who was
+very heavily bribed by Philip, and thenceforward
+became the principal Spanish agent at Elizabeth’s
+Court. The plot looked, indeed, a promising one
+under the sole guidance of Mendoza; and all were in
+high hopes that Mary Stuart’s fortune was at last to
+take a turn, when Father Creighton arrived in Paris
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_389">[389]</span>directed to Tassis, the Spanish ambassador, with a
+letter from the Duke of Lennox. “Understanding,”
+he says, “from the missioners that the Pope and the
+King of Spain desire to make use of him for the
+design they have in hand to restore the Catholic
+faith in Scotland and release the Queen ... he is
+prepared to employ his life and estate in carrying out
+the same, on condition that he is supplied with all
+things set forth in the statement taken by Father
+Creighton.” This letter was dated early in March,
+1582, and reached Tassis in May, having been
+brought to him by Creighton and Parsons.&#x2060;<a id="FNanchor_240" href="#Footnote_240" class="fnanchor">[240]</a> The
+plan was a perfectly new one to Tassis, as Mendoza
+in London had been the sole intermediary purposely
+chosen by Mary and the originators of the plot, in
+order to exclude any probability of French participation;
+and Philip, to his surprise, was now informed
+of the affair by his ambassador in Paris, as if for the
+first time. Why Lennox should have chosen to send
+his adhesion to Paris instead of to Mendoza is not
+quite clear; but, being naturally attached to Guisan
+interests, it is probable that he wished to ensure that
+his French patrons should not be excluded.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_390">[390]</span></p>
+
+<p>In any case, it does not need much knowledge of
+Philip’s character to foresee that such inept management
+as this would upset the whole business as far
+as he was concerned. The demands of Lennox, as
+stated by Creighton, were ridiculous. The Scottish
+Lords had promised Mendoza through Holt that if
+two thousand foreign troops landed they would be
+able to effect the revolution, and this was a number
+that Philip could have provided; but here was
+Lennox demanding twenty thousand men paid for
+eighteen months and a large quantity of munitions
+of war of all sorts. He must have, he says, twenty
+thousand crowns in money sent to Scotland immediately
+for fortifications, &amp;c., and a further subsidy to
+raise Scottish troops; he asks that the troops should
+be of various nationalities and placed under his
+command, and if the attempt failed and he lost
+his Scottish estate in consequence, he wanted a
+guarantee from the Pope and Philip that an estate
+of equal value should be given to him elsewhere.
+He proposes himself to leave Scotland at the most
+critical juncture, and to go to Paris to make final
+arrangements, as soon as he hears that the Pope and
+the King of Spain are pledged to the enterprise.</p>
+
+<p>Tassis, not unnaturally, remarked to the priests that
+Lennox was asking for a good deal, and he learned
+from them that the Duke of Guise had been consulted,
+and thought that fewer men would do. Parsons then
+took up the story, and was quite sure that the
+Catholics of England would rise immediately the
+Scottish affair began; and it was soon evident, even
+to Tassis, who had been previously quite in the dark
+about it, that not only Guise but many other people,
+clerical and lay, had been drawn into the business,
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_391">[391]</span>since one of the Jesuits was to go to Madrid, others
+to Rouen and to Rome; and the Nuncio, Archbishop
+Beton, and Dr. Allen were also parties to the proposals.
+The idea that Lennox should be in supreme
+command, and that French troops were to be
+included, alone would have sufficed to render the
+plan abortive, apart from the other quite extravagant
+conditions he imposed. Lennox wrote a somewhat
+similarly foolish letter to Mary Stuart, saying that
+the Jesuit Creighton had promised him fifteen
+thousand men; and that he, Lennox, was to go to
+France to raise a large force of Frenchmen. Mary
+was furious at such impracticable nonsense, and wrote
+to Mendoza begging him to restrain the bungling
+priests, as she was trying to do, and once more to get
+the matter into his own hands. “I am advising
+Lennox,” she writes, “to stay in Scotland, and I disapprove
+entirely of his plan to raise men in France.
+You may inform these Jesuits, too, that I will not
+on any account allow anything concerning this matter
+to be done in my name ... and I do not approve of
+sending any one on my behalf to negotiate direct with
+the Pope and King Philip.”</p>
+
+<p>Mendoza also was full of scorn for such muddling,
+and the whole scheme was thrown into confusion.
+Guise, as soon as he was informed by Lennox’s
+letter brought by Creighton, travelled from Eu to
+Paris and met Tassis secretly at Beton’s house.
+He, too, was full of far-reaching, ill-digested plans,
+his main object evidently being to prevent Spanish
+troops from being sent to Scotland, in order to avoid,
+as he says, French jealousy, but really because he
+feared Philip’s power. His plan was to raise a large
+mixed force to be sent by the Pope to Scotland,
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_392">[392]</span>whilst he, Guise, was to make a descent upon the
+coast of Sussex with a French force. Philip met the
+new situation in his characteristic way. So far as he
+was concerned, the plan became impossible the moment
+that Guise and the French interest were included in it,
+and he wrote to Tassis, with vague sanctimonious
+sympathy, deprecating overzeal and ordering that
+nothing more should be done in the matter until
+further orders.&#x2060;<a id="FNanchor_241" href="#Footnote_241" class="fnanchor">[241]</a>&#x2060;</p>
+
+<p>Father Parsons, by far the cleverest of the Jesuits,
+went to Madrid and submitted Lennox’s foolish conditions
+to Cardinal de Granvelle and Sir Francis
+Englefield, Philip’s English secretary. They both
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_393">[393]</span>agreed that the bases laid down by Mendoza and
+Mary were the only practical ones, and Granvelle
+incidentally in his report on the matter throws rather
+a curious light upon the diversity of views that we see
+now existed, although he probably did not know it,
+between Philip’s views with regard to England and
+his own. We shall see presently what was in Philip’s
+mind; but that of Granvelle is sufficiently revealed
+when, speaking of the fear of the Scots that the
+landing of foreign troops might endanger their
+liberties, he says: “This is not what his Majesty
+wants, nor do I approve of it; but that we should
+loyally help the King of Scots and his mother to
+maintain their rights, and, by promoting armed disturbance,
+keep the Queen of England and the French
+busy at small cost to ourselves in comparison with
+what she will have to spend, and so enable us to
+settle our own affairs better. If it had no other
+result this should suffice, but much more when we
+consider that it may lead to the re-establishment of
+the Catholic religion in those parts. When we strike
+there the Irish will pluck up courage; and it is advantageous
+that the matter should be taken in hand
+by the Duke of Guise, as it will ensure us from French
+obstruction. Since we cannot hope to hold the island
+for ourselves, Guise will not hand it over to the King
+of France to the detriment of his own kinswoman.”
+He also hints at the possibility of Elizabeth’s coming
+to terms with Spain and renewing the old alliance.</p>
+
+<p>This was certainly not Philip’s view at this time
+(1582). He had now lost hope of conciliating England
+whilst Elizabeth was on the throne, and he was
+gradually being convinced that nothing but a great
+national conquest with purely Spanish arms would
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_394">[394]</span>serve his turn. The policy of “loyally helping the
+King of Scots,” and, above all, with the co-operation
+of the French, would have been useless to him except
+as a means of gaining for him uncontrolled command
+of English foreign policy, which, with James an unknown
+factor and Guise as a confederate, was uncertain.
+The idea of attacking England through Scotland, which
+some of his advisers favoured, was one that never appealed
+very strongly to him after this first fiasco of
+Lennox, and it introduced an element in the situation
+which subsequently influenced him greatly, finally,
+indeed, deciding his policy. This was the jealousy
+felt by Englishmen of Scots, and a determination
+that nothing like a domination of England by a
+people whom they considered inferior should be
+allowed. Scotland and France, it must be recollected,
+had for centuries been looked upon by
+Englishmen as their joint enemies, whilst Spain
+and Flanders had been their friends, and it soon
+became a common saying amongst the English
+Catholics, of whom Parsons was the mouthpiece,
+that England would welcome a thousand times
+more a Spanish sovereign than a Scottish one.
+The first note of the feeling is struck in Granvelle’s
+memorandum quoted above, where he says that
+Englefield is very distrustful of the Archbishop of
+Glasgow, with whom he has ceased to correspond,
+and he wishes that he (Beton) should not be made
+cognisant with this business, “which he would immediately
+divulge to the French.”</p>
+
+<p>Whilst these events were passing in France, the
+causes for irritation between Elizabeth and Philip
+were becoming daily more grave. The Queen,
+almost at her wits’ end, had managed to get rid of
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_395">[395]</span>her importunate suitor Alençon, in February, 1582,
+by means of a solemn promise to marry which she
+never intended for a moment to keep. She had insisted
+upon Leicester accompanying him to Antwerp,
+where the Prince was to join Orange as the obedient
+servant of Elizabeth. To the Queen’s dismay, a few
+days afterwards she learnt that Leicester had sanctioned
+by his presence the investiture of the French Prince
+with Philip’s Crown of Duke of Brabant, and it seemed
+now, even to her, that the cup was full and that
+nothing could save her from the vengeance of the
+outraged Spaniard, especially as she found that the
+King of France ostentatiously disavowed her and his
+brother’s action. Elizabeth railed at Walsingham and
+Leicester like a very fury, summoned Burghley from a
+sick bed to counsel her, and ended by leaving her
+French lover in the lurch.</p>
+
+<p>Far from seeking immediate vengeance, however,
+Philip’s own perplexity was such, in the face of this
+new dilemma, that he contemplated a step which up
+to that time he had always repudiated with scorn.
+Writing to Mendoza in May, 1582, he orders him
+to endeavour to exacerbate Elizabeth’s jealousy of the
+French in Flanders for the purpose of enlisting her
+aid as a mediator between his rebellious subjects and
+himself. Orange had just been dangerously wounded
+by a Spanish agent,&#x2060;<a id="FNanchor_242" href="#Footnote_242" class="fnanchor">[242]</a> and it may have appeared to
+Philip that the moment was a favourable one to bring
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_396">[396]</span>about some settlement which, at all events, might save
+his sovereignty. “It will be well,” he writes, “for
+you to discover whether it is possible for the Queen
+herself to intervene for the purpose of reconciling me
+with my subjects.” He is not very sanguine, he says,
+of such an intermediary; “and she is much more likely
+to continue her usual arts to incense my subjects
+against me, but it is worth trying”; and to show
+how urgent was Philip’s need of a peaceful settlement,
+he sent the large sum of 40,000 crowns to
+Mendoza to bribe Elizabeth’s ministers to propose her
+mediation.&#x2060;<a id="FNanchor_243" href="#Footnote_243" class="fnanchor">[243]</a>&#x2060;</p>
+
+<p>The presence of Alençon in Flanders as sovereign,
+even under her own auspices, made Elizabeth anxious
+to learn at first hand what the Spaniards thought of
+this new provocation, and a hint was sent to Mendoza
+that she would receive him again with Philip’s Portuguese
+envoy, who had come to announce his accession
+to the Crown. She was, during the interview, very
+emphatic as to her perfect neutrality with regard to
+Portugal, “just,” says Mendoza, “as if it were true,
+instead of an evident lie.” Mendoza interposed by
+saying that no doubt that was her intention, but there
+were, at that moment, perhaps unknown to her, several
+ships being fitted and armed in the Thames for Don
+Antonio. What did he mean? Elizabeth asked, and
+the ambassador gave her full particulars. Up to
+this point Elizabeth had been polite, but when she
+found that no complaint was made about Alençon,
+she plucked up courage, and Hatton, a special enemy
+of Mendoza’s, who was behind him, seems to have
+made some sign to the Queen, for her tone suddenly
+changed. “This is no time to deal with that matter,”
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_397">[397]</span>she cried angrily, and Mendoza retired more wrathful
+than ever, and more determined to work his revenge.</p>
+
+<p>He had been praying for his recall for some time,
+for he was nearly blind with cataract, and his soul
+rebelled against the humiliations he had to suffer; but
+Philip had pressed him to stay on, for nobody could
+manage the great conspiracy against Elizabeth so
+wisely and stealthily as he. He would not abandon
+his post, moreover, until Mary Stuart had consented
+to deal with a fresh ambassador, and he urged Philip
+to send a special envoy, on the pretext of claiming the
+restoration of Drake’s plunder, but really to succeed
+him if Mary would show confidence in the new man.
+“If it be profitable that I should remain here I will
+willingly sacrifice myself for a matter so closely touching
+the service of God and the increase of His Church,
+as well as serving your Majesty, since two hundred
+priests are risking their lives in the same cause, in
+face of great hardships, hunger and poverty.” His
+stay in England, indeed, was a true martyrdom, only
+endured because of his hope that in union with Mary
+of Scotland he might be instrumental in overthrowing
+Elizabeth and her Protestant ministers. They, for
+their part, repaid his hatred with enmity as bitter.
+Leicester, Hatton, and Walsingham left no stone
+unturned to make his post in England untenable.
+There was no English ambassador in Spain, they
+said, and should be no Spanish ambassador in England:
+the man was only a spy and a conspirator.
+It was he, said his detractors, who had planned the
+assassination of the Prince of Orange, and was the
+abettor and provider of the flock of black Jesuit crows
+who were infesting England with their presence. Even
+the street boys in London pelted and hooted him as he
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_398">[398]</span>passed,&#x2060;<a id="FNanchor_244" href="#Footnote_244" class="fnanchor">[244]</a> and he was practically excluded from Elizabeth’s
+Court. But for every fresh slight offered to
+him he became more ardent in his determination to
+make Mary Stuart Queen of Catholic Britain. The
+correspondence between them was close, for Mary
+refused to trust any other intermediary, and until the
+raid of Ruthven and the flight and death of Lennox
+finally upset the Catholic <i>régime</i> in Scotland, the hope
+of bringing back again into workable shape the plot
+that the priests and Lennox had embroiled was never
+abandoned by them.&#x2060;<a id="FNanchor_245" href="#Footnote_245" class="fnanchor">[245]</a>&#x2060;</p>
+
+<p>The fact of their correspondence was, of course, well
+known to Elizabeth’s Government, and this made the
+ambassador’s treatment the harder. Once, in May,
+1582, he was driven, by orders from the anxious King,
+to demand audience of the Queen, who replied that
+she would receive him as a private person if he liked,
+but would see him no more as ambassador until he
+brought an apology from Philip for aiding the Irish
+rebels. To this he replied haughtily in a letter,
+threatening to leave England at once and let muskets
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_399">[399]</span>speak for him. When Elizabeth read the letter she
+was perturbed, and softened somewhat. “God forbid,”
+she said, “that she should ever break with the King
+of Spain, to whom she bore nothing but goodwill, ... She
+hoped that Don Bernardino would not leave;
+he could communicate with her in writing until the
+King’s explanation of the Irish affair came.” Writing
+to Philip in November, 1582, Mendoza says: “I have
+tried every means, overt and covert, to get into relations
+with the Queen’s ministers, but they fly from me as if
+I were a rebel subject of hers, and things have reached
+such a point that no one will speak to me or even to
+my servants.” Even his heavily paid Court spies, Lord
+Henry Howard and Sir James Crofts, avoided communication
+with him, except when they needed money.</p>
+
+<p>The efforts of Guise and Beton to keep the Scottish
+Catholic intrigue in their own hands also tended to
+isolate Mendoza. Both he and Philip, when the news
+of the raid of Ruthven and the flight of Lennox
+reached them, recognised that the enterprise through
+Scotland was hopeless for a time, and endeavoured to
+confine Guise’s energies in future to France. He was
+told how dangerous it would be for him to leave
+France with his enemies the Huguenots in possession,
+and was flattered and encouraged by Philip with the
+suggestion that the Crown of France might be his by
+Spanish aid, if Henry and his brother Alençon died
+childless, as seemed probable: “for it would be a
+public infamy if the most Christian Crown should fall,
+as may be feared, into the hands of a man who was
+not a Catholic [<i>i.e.</i>, Henry of Navarre], besides the
+danger of this, it will be a standing disgrace to a true
+Catholic like Guise himself.” Guise was proud and
+delighted that so much deference was being paid him,
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_400">[400]</span>but he could hardly be expected to look at Scottish
+affairs entirely from Philip’s point of view; and, whilst
+not losing sight of his vast ambitions in France, he
+still endeavoured through Beton, Tassis, and Parsons,
+to keep his hand on the realm of his cousin.</p>
+
+<p>When Lennox passed through London in January,
+1583, on his way to exile in France he sent his secretary
+to Mendoza—not daring to come himself—to give him
+an explanatory account of Lennox’s ignominious collapse,
+and to inform him of his plans to return to Scotland,
+with James’s full connivance, and for an invasion
+by foreign troops in the Catholic interest. In such
+plans both Mendoza and his master had now lost hope,
+and though Lennox soon afterwards died, Guise
+himself, undeterred by Philip’s flattering attempts at
+diversion, became the central pivot of the intrigue,
+abetted by Beton, Tassis, and the Jesuits, who were
+still curiously blind to the real trend of affairs. A
+new French ambassador, La Mothe, was sent to remonstrate
+with Ruthven and the Scottish Protestants
+for keeping their King in durance, and to warn
+Elizabeth not to interfere in Scotland; and with him
+went young de Maineville on a separate mission from
+Guise to the Scottish Catholics, for the purpose of
+reviving the plot for landing a foreign force in Scotland.
+Beton and Tassis were, of course, parties to
+the arrangement, much to the annoyance of Mary and
+Mendoza, who thus saw all their carefully planned
+schemes thrown into confusion. James in Scotland,
+as usual, lied to everybody, and the Scottish Catholic
+party was disunited, so that Guise’s agent, de Maineville,
+promptly saw that any present attempt to invade
+Scotland in Mary’s interest would end in failure, and
+Guise changed all his plans.</p>
+
+<figure class="figcenter illowp53" id="illus11" style="max-width: 31.25em;">
+  <img class="w100" src="images/illus11.jpg" alt="">
+  <figcaption>
+    <p>HENRI, DUC DE GUISE</p>
+    <p>FROM AN ENGRAVING</p>
+  </figcaption>
+</figure>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_401">[401]</span></p>
+
+<p>On the 4th May, 1583, Tassis wrote to Philip that
+Guise, in view of the changed position in Scotland,
+had decided to negotiate with the English Catholics
+for a rising in England. “He has already carried the
+matter so far that he expects to have it put into execution
+very shortly, and intends to be present in person.”
+He asked for 100,000 crowns from the Pope and
+Philip, to be ready in Paris when he wanted it, though
+Tassis says that he does not expect that his Holiness
+will send much. He needed this large sum, it appears,
+principally “for one object which I dare not venture
+to mention here, but which, if it be effected, will make
+a noise in the world.” This object was no other than
+the murder of Elizabeth, which was to be the prelude
+of the revolution to place Mary on the throne. Two
+days before this letter to Philip was written by Tassis
+the Nuncio in Paris wrote to the Papal Secretary of
+State, the Cardinal of Como, much more plainly.
+Guise and his brother Mayenne, he says, had arranged
+for the murder of the Queen by one of her courtiers,
+secretly a Catholic, who owed her a grudge for
+executing certain of his relations. This man had made
+the proposal to Mary, and she had refused to entertain
+it, but the Duke of Guise was less scrupulous and had
+promised the assassin 100,000 francs for the work.
+He did not ask the Pope’s aid for this, but for the
+invasion of the South of England, which he, Guise,
+intended to effect immediately after the Queen had
+been killed. Neither the Nuncio nor the Cardinal,
+nor even his Holiness, had anything but praise for
+this saintly plan, and readily promised one-quarter of
+the sum needed if Philip would find the other three-quarters.</p>
+
+<p>Guise’s ideas, as usual, were vague and scattered.
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_402">[402]</span>Simultaneously with this plan for murdering Elizabeth
+and invading Sussex, with the connivance of the
+English Catholics, an utterly impracticable scheme, he
+tried to keep the Scottish Catholics in hand by heavy
+bribes and to convert James. All this sinister activity
+could not be quite hidden from Elizabeth, who made
+a counter move by proposing terms for Mary’s release,
+which in future would render her harmless. Mary at
+once asked the advice of Mendoza, who was quite
+shocked at the idea, and wrote to her, as he says,
+“with all possible artifice,” by all means to refuse her
+liberty; but he tells Philip his real reason: “Nothing
+could be more injurious to your Majesty’s interest and
+hopes of converting this island than that the French
+should get their fingers into the matter through the
+Queen of Scotland and turn it to their own ends.”&#x2060;<a id="FNanchor_246" href="#Footnote_246" class="fnanchor">[246]</a>
+Philip agreed that it would be best to keep Mary
+where they could lay hands upon her at any moment;
+but, perhaps influenced by the opinion of Granvelle,
+quoted in an earlier page, he asks for Mendoza’s
+further opinion on the association of Guise in the contemplated
+revolution. Since he was a near relation of
+Mary’s, and had the confidence of the Scottish
+Catholics and the Pope, would his co-operation, in the
+opinion of Mendoza, be open to the same objections as
+that of Frenchmen generally? To this Mendoza gave
+a cautious, sagacious reply. There was no objection
+to Guise pulling the chestnuts out of the fire, if he
+depended entirely upon Spain, but above all Mary
+Stuart must be kept in England.</p>
+
+<p>Philip professed himself willing to provide a part of
+the money required for Guise’s murderous attempt,
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_403">[403]</span>but bargained for a larger contribution from the Pope.&#x2060;<a id="FNanchor_247" href="#Footnote_247" class="fnanchor">[247]</a>
+Before anything could be decided, however, the ill-knit
+plan fell to pieces. Father Allen and most of the
+English Catholic exiles were in deadly earnest, and
+thought that “all this talk and intricacy was mere
+fencing.” The feeling, also, of national jealousy of
+the Scots began to manifest itself strongly amongst
+them. “They suspected a tendency on the part of
+the Scots to claim a controlling influence in the new
+Empire, and, as the Scots are naturally inclined to the
+French, they would rather see the affair carried through
+with but a few Spaniards, whilst the English hate this
+idea, as their country is the principal one, and they say
+that it should not lose its predominance.”&#x2060;<a id="FNanchor_248" href="#Footnote_248" class="fnanchor">[248]</a> This
+tendency of the English exiles gradually worked upon
+Philip and his ministers, until French co-operation in
+the plans to subjugate Britain, even under the auspices
+of the Guises, was eliminated from the schemes, so
+far as Spain and the English exiles could influence
+them.</p>
+
+<p>Not many weeks elapsed before this vague plot of
+Guise to murder Elizabeth simultaneously with an
+invasion of Sussex had fallen through. On the 30th
+May, 1583, the Nuncio in Paris wrote to the Cardinal
+of Como, “I believe that the design upon the person
+of the Queen of England will come to nothing”; and
+three weeks later Tassis wrote to Philip that the
+murder plot “is, I see, for the present, quite at an
+end, and nothing more is being said about it, so the
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_404">[404]</span>funds referred to will therefore not be required.”&#x2060;<a id="FNanchor_249" href="#Footnote_249" class="fnanchor">[249]</a> The
+English Catholic exiles, led by Dr. Allen and Father
+Parsons, soon tired of such an unbusinesslike conspirator
+as Guise, and they came to Tassis, in Paris,
+with a scheme of their own. They were already
+jealous of French and Scottish intervention in English
+affairs. “They have received so much favour from
+your Majesty, that they would rather have the help of
+Spaniards.” Dr. Allen and his followers therefore
+stood aloof somewhat now from the Guise proposals,
+and “convinced that they must look for a remedy only
+to the feeling of England, they have made up their
+minds that they are simply wasting time in depending
+upon what is arranged here in France, and they have
+decided to lay the real condition of England before
+your Majesty, and beg you to extend your pity to the
+poor, afflicted, distressed Catholics there.”</p>
+
+<p>Tassis was much impressed by Dr. Allen’s
+earnestness. Scotland was in no condition, he said,
+to co-operate at present, even if it were advisable for
+her to do so, which the English thought it was not.
+The King was a mere boy, notably unstable and in the
+hands of heretics, though he pretended to be secretly
+favourable to Guise’s plans; and the Catholics of the
+North of England were ready to rise on their own
+account if Philip would aid them with money and a few
+troops to be landed in Yorkshire or Lancashire.
+“They are so confident of success, with the blessing
+of God, in whose service the attempt will be made,
+that it is impossible for any one to hear them without
+being convinced.” In this scheme the exiled Earl of
+Westmorland and Lord Dacre were to join, and
+Dr. Allen was to accompany the expedition as Bishop
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_405">[405]</span>of Durham. The time fixed by Allen and his friends
+for the attempt was in September or October of that
+year, 1583, in the hope that Philip’s fleet would by
+that time have defeated Don Antonio’s expedition
+off the Azores, and be free to co-operate with an
+English Catholic rising. Even an extreme Catholic
+party in Scotland were desirous of working independently
+of France and the Guises, and sent Lord
+Seton’s brother to Spain to appeal to Philip, avoiding
+all communication with Guise and Beton.</p>
+
+<p>The Duke of Guise, determined not to lose hold
+of the business if he could help it, tried to graft a
+plan of his own upon that of the English Catholics,
+who were in such dead earnest and had no object
+in view but the conversion of England. He was
+willing to abate his demands considerably, and Tassis
+thought that if he were flattered enough he would
+agree to whatever Philip ordered. Guise eventually
+managed to upset the businesslike plans of Dr. Allen
+and his friends by forcing upon them his undesired
+and impractical co-operation. Father Parsons, who
+had recently returned from Spain, was to go to
+Madrid (July, 1583) to represent to Philip the English
+view of the case and to crave Spanish support; but
+before he left Paris in August, Guise managed
+to enlist him as an advocate of his new combined
+plan, which he was to submit, not to Philip, but to
+the Pope. Parsons travelled under the name of
+Melino—one of his many aliases—and was instructed
+by Guise to say that if Philip would send 4,000 good
+soldiers and contribute money to raise and pay
+10,000 more, with arms for 5,000 Englishmen, the
+affair could be carried through successfully. Parsons
+was to go to Rome first and earnestly beg the Pope
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_406">[406]</span>in Guise’s name to provide money liberally, and to
+leave the whole management of the affair to the
+King of Spain. Ports, he was to assure the Pope,
+had already been secured, especially that of Fouldrey,
+on the Lancashire coast, and troops could be sent
+from Flanders to join Guise’s force of 6,000 men to land
+in the South of England. The whole of the North
+of England and Catholic Scotland was ready to rise,
+the nobles prepared, and even James of Scotland
+had now freed himself from the custody of the
+Ruthvens and smiled upon the enterprise. The Pope
+was to be asked to issue a Bull approving of the
+expedition, giving indulgences to all who aided it,
+and to appoint Dr. Allen Nuncio and Bishop of
+Durham.</p>
+
+<p>This was the message that Parsons, under the name
+of Melino, took to Rome; and to any one who knows
+Philip’s methods it spells failure on the face of it.
+When the King heard that Parsons had in Guise’s
+name settled with the Pope what Rome’s contribution
+was to be, without reference to him, he expressed
+his annoyance with unwonted energy, for he had no
+intention of allowing his hands to be forced by priestly
+meddling or French interference. He had, indeed,
+by this time, as we shall see presently, gradually
+allowed himself to entertain the vast project for the
+conquest and domination of England on his own
+account, towards which he intended the Pope to contribute,
+not the comparative trifle demanded by Guise,
+but the lion’s share of the expense.</p>
+
+<p>At the same time as Parsons went on his way to
+Rome, Guise despatched to England Charles Paget,
+who, with Thomas Morgan, had been sent by Mary
+Stuart to serve as assistants or secretaries to Beton,
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_407">[407]</span>his mission being to ascertain from the English
+Catholics what force they could join to Guise’s invading
+army. Paget, although an Englishman, was
+ostensibly a devout Guisan, but in strong opposition
+to the interference of Parsons and the Jesuits in
+political affairs.&#x2060;<a id="FNanchor_250" href="#Footnote_250" class="fnanchor">[250]</a> From the first he had been a spy
+in Walsingham’s pay, and to him was owing the
+perfect knowledge possessed by Elizabeth’s Government
+of the whole of the present intrigue. The
+instructions given to him by Guise display more
+clearly than any other document the utter incompatibility
+of the views respectively of Philip and Guise
+with regard to England, and of themselves are
+sufficient to account for the subsequent exclusion of
+Guise from all the Spanish plans relating to it.
+Paget is instructed to discover which port will be
+most convenient for Guise’s landing, and what
+strength will join him there. Guise would come with
+4,000 or 6,000 men, and desired a port within fifty
+leagues of Dover. He wished to know what provisions
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_408">[408]</span>and arms would be ready for him, and much
+other information was sought. To all of this Philip
+scattered on the margin when he read the dispatch
+satirical exclamations at the unreadiness and uncertainty
+that these inquiries demonstrated; but what
+finally convinced Philip that Guise was no fit confederate
+for him was the concluding portion of Paget’s
+instructions. “Assure the English Catholics, on the
+faith and honour of Hercules [<i>i.e.</i>, Guise], that the
+enterprise is being undertaken with no other object
+or intention than to re-establish the Catholic religion
+in England, and to place the Queen of Scotland
+peacefully on the English throne, which of right
+belongs to her. When this is effected the foreigners
+will immediately retire from the country, and if anyone
+attempts to frustrate this intention, Hercules
+[Guise] promises that he and his forces will join
+the people of the country to compel the foreigners
+to withdraw.”&#x2060;<a id="FNanchor_251" href="#Footnote_251" class="fnanchor">[251]</a> No wonder that Philip underscored
+these lines, and that he thenceforward found the whole
+plan insufficiently matured. Once more he primly
+deprecated undue haste, and gently put the plan
+aside with vague professions of sympathy.</p>
+
+<p>Mendoza in England was less cautious than his
+master. His position, as we have seen, was a
+humiliating one, as Elizabeth persisted in her refusal
+to receive him as ambassador, and he was
+exposed to daily slights from those who took their
+tone from the Queen. When Charles Paget went
+to England on Guise’s errand in August-September,
+1583, he was directed to Francis Throckmorton for
+the purpose of obtaining the information he sought;
+this man being probably the person referred to in
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_409">[409]</span>the correspondence already quoted, as having been
+willing to kill Elizabeth a few months previously at
+Guise’s bidding. However that may be, Throckmorton
+was an intimate of Mendoza, who had been
+informed of all that had been discussed in Paris, and
+both he and Charles Paget, whilst he was in England,
+were closely watched. Through his numerous
+spies Walsingham was perfectly aware of all that
+had been so incautiously handled by Guise; the
+whole of the invasion project had been known to
+Elizabeth’s Government for months, and though
+Charles Paget, who was a spy, was allowed to get
+clear away to France, no sooner was he gone than
+the blow fell upon those in England with whom
+he had conferred.</p>
+
+<p>Francis Throckmorton was arrested, as was the
+new Earl of Northumberland and his son, whilst the
+Earl of Arundel was summoned before the Privy
+Council, and Lord Paget and Charles Arundell (of
+Wardour) fled to France. Mendoza was deeply concerned
+at the arrest of his friend Throckmorton, and
+wrote to Philip an account of it, cautiously worded,
+but sufficiently inculpatory: “The Catholics are quite
+cowed.... Only one paper was found upon Throckmorton,
+containing a list of the principal ports in
+England, and particulars with regard to them, and
+the chief gentlemen and Catholics resident in them.
+For this they carried him at once to the Tower, and
+it is feared that his life is in danger, although he
+informed me by a cipher note, written on a playing-card
+and thrown out of the window, that he denies
+that the document is in his handwriting, the hand
+being a disguised one. He told them that some
+person had thrown it into his house for the purpose
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_410">[410]</span>of injuring him, and he assures me that he will
+endure a thousand deaths rather than accuse any one,
+which message he begs me to convey to his Catholic
+friends.... I have written to the lady in prison [<i>i.e.</i>,
+Mary Stuart], encouraging her, and begging her not
+to grieve over the matter to the detriment of her
+health, but the business, it may be feared, may imperil
+her life if the negotiations in France are
+entirely discovered.”&#x2060;<a id="FNanchor_252" href="#Footnote_252" class="fnanchor">[252]</a>&#x2060;</p>
+
+<p>Tassis in Paris was even more despondent, and
+he feared, what proved to be true, that the rack would
+soon draw from the prisoner all he knew. Time
+after time Throckmorton was tormented, as were
+his brother-in-law and two other relatives, and
+sufficient was torn from them, together with the known
+correspondence, to furnish a good pretext at last
+for expelling Mendoza from England with ignominy.
+On the 19th January, 1584, a formal summons for
+him to appear before the Council was handed to
+him. “If these gentlemen wish to see me in
+my private capacity,” he replied to Beal, the Secretary,
+“let them come to my house as I went to
+theirs when I wanted to see them. But if they are
+sitting in Council, I would wait upon them, as an
+ambassador should; but I warn them that if I open
+my ears to what they have to say, I shall not shut
+my mouth to answer them, as the service of my
+master may demand.” He says he gave this answer
+because he knew the intention was to expel him,
+and on the Councillors answering that they wished
+to see him officially, he went to the Lord Chancellor’s
+house to meet them.</p>
+
+<p>Walsingham spoke Italian better than the rest,
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_411">[411]</span>and formulated the Queen’s complaint. Mendoza,
+he said, had conspired with Guise to liberate the
+Queen of Scots; he was known to be in communication
+with Mary, with the French plotters, and
+with Throckmorton, and he must leave the country
+within fifteen days. “It is strange,” sneered
+Mendoza, “that the Queen should have summoned
+them and himself for such a trifle as this. What
+you tell me are mere dreams, hardly worthy of an
+answer. These general accusations are absurd,
+mainly extorted by the rack, and unsupported by
+details.” Very different were the charges he brought
+against the Queen of trying to injure his master,
+King Philip: and he launched out his usual string
+of complaints, from the seizure of the Spanish treasure
+fifteen years before to the present helping of Don
+Antonio against his rightful sovereign. As for his
+leaving England, that, as his hearers well knew,
+would delight him, and he would go the moment
+his master instructed him to do so in answer to a
+despatch sent by the Queen requesting his recall.
+The Councillors rose angrily at this and said that
+nothing of the sort would be done: he must leave
+England at once: “and they explained their past
+acts with impertinences that I dare not repeat to your
+Majesty, the least of them being that I ought to
+be very thankful that the Queen had not ordered
+me to be punished for what I had done.”</p>
+
+<p>The blood of the proud Mendozas, the noblest
+family in Spain, flared out at this: “To my King
+alone in the world belongs the right of correcting
+me, and to him alone under heaven am I responsible:
+so, say no more on that point, unless ye are prepared
+to fight.” As for the Queen of England
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_412">[412]</span>punishing him, he laughed at the idea. He would
+be overjoyed to be gone as soon as a passport was
+sent to him. She was a lady, and, as such, the
+least grateful to those who served her best; but,
+as he had failed to satisfy her as a minister of peace
+she would in future force him to try whether he
+would succeed better as a minister of war. Thus
+Mendoza flung down the gage to England and the
+Reformation. He had been unpopular in London
+before, but now the rumour spread through England
+that he had plotted to kill the Queen, and his
+life was in the greatest danger from the popular
+indignation against him. He himself, seeing that
+the Government refused him the aid of English ships
+to get away, and the Dutch privateers still swarmed
+in the narrow seas, was convinced that mischief was
+meant to him. But he held his head high and
+boasted more than ever, as slight followed slight
+from Elizabeth’s ministers, of the overwhelming
+greatness and power of his master, King Philip, who
+would avenge with interest all the injuries inflicted
+upon him and Spain. “Don Bernardino de Mendoza
+was not born to disturb countries, but to conquer
+them,” he said in one of his messages to
+Elizabeth; whilst to Philip himself he passionately
+wrote with a back-handed reproach: “All their
+behaviour is on a par with this; and if God had
+not made you so clement and God-fearing a prince,
+surely no vassal of yours would consent to serve
+you in England, seeing the way in which the English
+treat us: for so powerful an empire as that which
+God has granted to your Majesty cannot endure such
+ill-treatment as this for any earthly reward.”&#x2060;<a id="FNanchor_253" href="#Footnote_253" class="fnanchor">[253]</a>&#x2060;</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_413">[413]</span></p>
+
+<p>To add to his trouble, he was almost without money,
+for Philip was the worst paymaster in the world, and
+he had to bring away with him from England, not only
+his own great household but the English spies and
+intermediaries who had served him. “The insolence
+of these people [<i>i.e.</i>, Elizabeth’s Government] has
+brought me to a state, in which my only desire to
+live is for the purpose of revenging myself upon
+them; and I pray that God may let it be soon, and
+will give me grace to be His instrument of wrath,
+even though I have to walk barefoot across the world
+to beg for it. I am sure his Majesty will give such
+an answer as their insolence merits.”&#x2060;<a id="FNanchor_254" href="#Footnote_254" class="fnanchor">[254]</a>&#x2060;</p>
+
+<p>And so, cursing and reviled, the proud ambassador,
+with rage in his heart, was hustled out of England,
+and once more King Philip was face to face with the
+apparently unsolvable problem of how to gain control
+of English policy. Five ministers of his had begun
+hopefully with methods of suave diplomacy, and one
+after the other had become dangerous conspirators
+and promoters of treason. Elizabeth and her Government,
+timidly at first and with many gyrations, had
+through a long series of years injured with impunity
+the dearest interests of Spain. The seizure of the
+treasure had caused the failure of Alba; the constant
+aid of the Netherlands revolt had prevented the
+pacification of Flanders; the sheltering of the pirates
+and privateers in English ports had almost cut off communication
+between Spain and the Flemish dominions
+by sea; the depredations of Drake, afloat and ashore,
+had well-nigh ruined Spain and demonstrated her
+impotence to the world; whilst the assistance and
+asylum given to the Portuguese Pretender had rendered
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_414">[414]</span>incomplete Philip’s hold over the new conquest upon
+which he based such great hopes.</p>
+
+<p>For five-and-twenty years Philip, against the
+impatient advice of many of his ministers, had
+persisted in the belief that his own slow, cautious,
+diplomatic methods would succeed in conciliating
+Elizabeth or in substituting for her an instrument
+more amenable to his hand. The expulsion of
+Mendoza, in January, 1584, marks the conclusion of
+the era of peaceful effort. The ambassador left
+England breathing threats of war and vengeance,
+and when Philip received the reports of his doings
+he had no words but those of praise and approbation
+for them. “You have acted with the same good
+sense and courage in the manner of your departure
+as in all else that has happened during your stay
+in the country. I am entirely satisfied with you, and
+with your good services, and will take care that they
+are duly remembered.”</p>
+
+<p>Philip at last had made up his mind: henceforward
+it must be war to the knife between himself and
+Elizabeth, and no keener instrument to work the
+destruction of his enemy could be found than
+Mendoza, with a bitter personal injury of his own
+to avenge. From his new post in Paris the
+ambassador worked incessantly to compass the ruin
+of the <i>régime</i> in England that had wounded his
+pride; and for the rest of his active life, until, blind
+and heartbroken with failure, the brilliant soldier,
+diplomatist, and historian was shrouded in a monk’s
+gabardine, Elizabeth had no enemy so indefatigable
+and rancorous as Don Bernardino de Mendoza. Plans
+and plots for revolution in England, for the murder
+of Elizabeth, and for the overthrow by treachery of
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_415">[415]</span>the Protestant power in favour of Mary Stuart, were
+the means upon which Mendoza mainly depended.</p>
+
+<p>Philip was willing, in his cool, cautious way, to
+smile upon such attempts, when he could do so
+without committing himself prematurely or too far.
+They might turn out well by chance, and he might
+reap the harvest where others had sown the grain
+and nourished it with their blood. But through it all
+thenceforward there was slowly maturing in Philip’s
+mind, and preparing in his chancelleries, the great
+enterprise to which he had been forced by the logic
+of events—the conquest and domination of England
+by his own arms and for his own benefit. Such a
+scheme necessitated patient plotting in every capital
+in Europe before the material preparations could be
+even commenced. Of the secret preliminaries, the
+laborious concentration, and the final disaster of the
+great Armada in which Philip’s ambitions were
+wrecked the next chapter will tell.</p>
+
+<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop" aria-hidden="true">
+
+<div class="chapter">
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_416">[416]</span></p>
+
+<h2 class="nobreak" id="CHAPTER_IX">CHAPTER IX<br>
+<span class="smaller">1584-1588</span></h2>
+
+<p>English Catholics <i>versus</i> Scottish—Santa Cruz’s proposal to conquer
+England—Enlisting the Pope—Intrigues in Rome—Mary Stuart and
+Philip—Drake’s raid on Galicia—Elizabeth assumes the protectorate
+of the Netherlands—War at last inevitable—The preliminaries of the
+Armada—The Babington plot—Philip’s consent—His distrust—Discovery—Elizabeth’s
+fears of war—Her approaches to Spain—Santa
+Cruz’s fresh proposals to invade England—His great plan—The Scottish
+Catholics try again to share the attack upon England—Failure of
+Huntly’s scheme—Guise not allowed by Philip to interfere—Mendoza
+in favour of the Scottish plan—Philip’s claims to the English crown—The
+peace negotiations—Drake’s dash upon Cadiz—Parma and the
+Armada—Death of Santa Cruz—Medina Sidonia—The Armada—The
+failure and its causes—The end of the struggle to win England</p>
+
+</div>
+
+<p>When the news came of the arrest of
+Francis Throckmorton and his friends,
+and the expulsion of Mendoza, in January,
+1584, Allen and Parsons were at Tournay busily
+discussing and arranging with Alexander Farnese,
+Philip’s viceroy in Flanders, the details of the
+proposed invasion of England in conjunction with
+Guise and a rising of English Catholics. At first the
+English priests affected to believe that the arrests
+would have no serious effects upon their plans. “If,”
+they wrote to Philip, “these men had been cast into
+prison in consequence of our great business, they
+would, as usual, have been put into the Tower of
+London; and we feel sure, therefore, that up to the
+present our adversaries have not discovered any particulars
+of our plans.”&#x2060;<a id="FNanchor_255" href="#Footnote_255" class="fnanchor">[255]</a> On the contrary, they continue,
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_417">[417]</span>what has happened should only have the effect
+of encouraging his Majesty to carry the matter
+through with greater celerity. “It is nothing short
+of a miracle that a business known to so many friends
+for two years past should have remained undiscovered
+so long; but it cannot remain hidden much longer, so
+that unless aid comes from abroad at once the Catholics
+in the island will be utterly ruined. We therefore
+cast ourselves at the feet of his Majesty, and cry
+unto him for the love of Jesus Christ that he will not
+abandon so many suffering souls, who with their
+hands raised to heaven are looking eagerly for his
+help. The time is favourable, and every day’s delay
+is filled with danger.”</p>
+
+<p>Alas! the zealous Churchmen, who were still at
+this time acting in concert with the Duke of Guise,
+did not even yet understand the character and aims
+of Philip. The King, keener sighted than the priests,
+knew full well that the arrest of the English Catholics
+and the expulsion of Mendoza meant not only
+the failure of the loosely-knit plan of invasion with
+Scottish-Guisan co-operation, but a remodelling of the
+whole scheme for subduing England to his will. He
+faced the new problem cautiously and speciously, as
+was his wont, for he could not afford to alienate the
+Papacy by avowing political ends, nor dared he at
+first openly to fly in the face of Guise. Mendoza was
+summoned to Spain to confer with his master, for Mendoza
+was always haughtily oblivious to any but purely
+Spanish means and ends, and to him was confided
+the entire direction of the English enterprise from the
+Spanish embassy in Paris, to which he was appointed.
+But ere he arrived at his post the English Jesuits,
+recognising, at last, that the Scottish-Guisan plan
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_418">[418]</span>was really frustrated, had trimmed their sails in the
+direction most likely to attain the ends they aimed
+at—namely, that which would best please their
+Spanish paymaster.</p>
+
+<p>The Vatican, always jealous of Spanish overreaching,
+still clung to the inclusion of Guise and
+the attack upon England across the Scottish border;&#x2060;<a id="FNanchor_256" href="#Footnote_256" class="fnanchor">[256]</a>
+and Beton and other Scottish Catholics naturally
+followed a lead which offered such prospects for the
+aggrandisement of their country. But Allen and
+Parsons were already undeceived, for they had been
+in close touch with Spanish feeling in Flanders; and
+when the former was summoned to Paris by Beton
+and Guise in April, 1584, in order that they might
+convince him that the Scottish plan was the best,
+they came to high words, and Allen penned a vigorous
+defence of his own and the Spanish view. The English
+Catholics, he said, would never rise and join a
+force coming from Scotland, owing to the hatred and
+jealousy between the peoples; the King of Scots’
+religion being more than doubtful, moreover, will
+make people believe that he is trying to conquer
+England for himself rather than for the Church, and
+the very Catholics will fight against him and his
+foreign Catholic allies. A landing in Scotland also,
+said Allen, would give Elizabeth and her Government
+time to prepare and mass their forces on the Border,
+whilst a descent on the Welsh or northern English
+coasts would find the people ready to welcome their
+deliverers and secure their footing before the Queen
+could organise resistance.&#x2060;<a id="FNanchor_257" href="#Footnote_257" class="fnanchor">[257]</a>&#x2060;</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_419">[419]</span></p>
+
+<p>Before he surrendered his post to his successor,
+Mendoza, Tassis, the outgoing Spanish ambassador
+in Paris, also wrote a weighty memorandum to Philip
+enforcing the same view, whilst recommending him
+to send money to the King of Scots to keep him in
+hand;&#x2060;<a id="FNanchor_258" href="#Footnote_258" class="fnanchor">[258]</a> and thus not many weeks passed from the
+failure of the combined Guisan and Jesuit plan before
+the English Jesuit and Spanish elements perfectly
+understood each other, and agreed that Spain must
+act alone in England. In May, 1584, Tassis wrote
+to Philip that Allen and Parsons were both in Paris:
+“Still of opinion that the enterprise should be
+directed against England itself, and on no account
+should it be attempted elsewhere.... Scotsmen
+here, impatient at the delay, are discussing the possibility
+of carrying through the business by other aid
+than that of your Majesty; and, although Allen and
+Parsons are trying to keep in with them as much
+as possible, they [<i>i.e.</i>, Allen and Parsons] say that
+the English need no other patron than your Majesty,
+and they not only look to you for a remedy, but they
+say that even if you make the Queen of Scotland
+their Sovereign they hope you will not leave them
+hastily, or until everything is settled permanently.
+They also say they would be glad for your Majesty to
+keep some [English] ports in your hands, the better
+to assure matters.”&#x2060;<a id="FNanchor_259" href="#Footnote_259" class="fnanchor">[259]</a> This was the thin end of the
+wedge; and, knowingly or not, the ideas of Allen
+and Parsons must even thus early have agreed with
+Philip’s humour at the time.</p>
+
+<p>James Stuart, by his tergiversation, had made
+himself quite impossible, from Philip’s point of view,
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_420">[420]</span>as a successor to his mother on the throne of Catholic
+England. Philip’s own descent from John of Gaunt
+was undoubted, and already had been quietly mentioned
+as giving him a claim to succeed to the Crown
+in default of other Catholic heirs. If England had
+to be conquered by sheer force and by Spanish arms,
+Philip was determined to make a complete job of it,
+and to suffer no more backsliding such as had happened
+after the death of his wife Mary; so that the suggestion
+of the Jesuits that the attack should be a frontal
+one on England itself, and that the Spaniards should
+retain their hold upon the country even after Mary
+Stuart had been substituted for Elizabeth, met a
+ready but cautious echo from the King himself.</p>
+
+<p>Some months before this, when, in August, 1583,
+the Marquis of Santa Cruz, the great Alvaro de
+Bazan, had scattered off the Azores the mercenary
+French and English fleet in the service of the unfortunate
+Portuguese Pretender, Don Antonio, and the
+Spanish squadrons, flushed with victory, were ready
+for more fighting, the famous admiral wrote in exalted
+strains to the King, praying for his permission to
+make him King of England. “Your Majesty,” he
+wrote, “is now so well prepared, and with an army
+so victorious, that I supplicate you not to miss this
+chance; for believe me, sire, I have the will to make
+you King of England and of other realms as well,
+whence you might with confidence hope to subdue
+Flanders.” Philip was hardly ready for the step yet;
+for he had the hard task before him of hoodwinking
+the Vatican as well as parrying French opposition
+and Guisan interference, but he wrote to his great
+admiral: “These are things of which we can hardly
+speak just yet, for they must depend upon time and
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_421">[421]</span>circumstances; but in any case I will order the preparations
+you propose to be made, biscuits to be
+provided, the building of galleons hastened, and men
+sent to Flanders to be ready.”&#x2060;<a id="FNanchor_260" href="#Footnote_260" class="fnanchor">[260]</a>&#x2060;</p>
+
+<p>The first necessary step was to secure the financial
+support of the Pope without letting him know the
+real object of the proposed invasion. Gregory XIII.
+was cautious and unambitious, though not unwilling
+to signalise his pontificate by some great effort against
+heresy, but, like most Italians, with no desire to
+aggrandise Spain politically. He was surrounded by
+Cardinals representing different interests: Medici,
+D’Este, Gonzaga, Rusticucci, Santorio, and others
+favouring the French view, which looked with hope
+towards the conversion of James Stuart and an
+arrangement with Elizabeth to recognise him as her
+heir, the real object being, of course, the exclusion
+of Spanish influence from England. Cardinal Sanzio
+watched the interests of the House of Guise, while the
+Secretary of State, Caraffa, Sirleto, Como, Dr. Allen
+(somewhat later), and the Spanish ambassador, the
+Count of Olivares, worked craftily and incessantly to
+forward Philip’s wishes. It will be recollected that
+when Father Parsons, under the name of Melino,
+went to Rome at the instance of Guise in the autumn
+of 1583, to beg the Pope’s assistance in money for the
+combined Anglo-Scottish project, Gregory XIII. had
+readily promised what was asked of him, much to
+Philip’s annoyance. When, therefore, Olivares, in
+Philip’s name in the spring of the following year,
+1584, sounded the Pope upon the much vaster project
+of invading England with a great force direct,
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_422">[422]</span>the Pontiff blandly replied that he would contribute
+what he had promised to Guise through Parsons, and
+at the same time recommended to Philip the Guisan
+plan of an invasion of Scotland as a preliminary of
+the conquest of England for the faith.</p>
+
+<p>It was not so easy, replied Philip, to liberate the
+King of Scotland, nor was it safe for the Duke of
+Guise to stir from his house in France unless in great
+force. If he were to try the Scottish plan he would
+probably be lost, which would be an irreparable blow
+to the Catholic cause in France. Then Philip gently
+pushed James Stuart into the background. He shall
+be helped with money, of course, and the English
+Catholics shall be kept in good heart, but the affair
+is a great one, and will take time and much money
+if it is to be done with a certainty of success; above
+all, the Pope must “contribute very largely, and must
+find ways and means, through his holy zeal, to do
+much more than any one has yet imagined.”&#x2060;<a id="FNanchor_261" href="#Footnote_261" class="fnanchor">[261]</a>&#x2060;</p>
+
+<p>The stars seemed to favour the Spanish plan.
+Young Alençon died in June, 1584, and the next heir
+to the Crown of France was the Huguenot Henry of
+Navarre. Guise, with his high hopes and the people
+of Paris at his bidding, was thenceforward more easily
+brought into obedience to Philip; for upon Spanish
+forces alone could he depend to aid the French
+Catholics to resist the accession of a Protestant
+sovereign. Civil war, indeed, loomed up in France,
+and from it the Duke of Guise might hope to emerge
+a king; and in December, 1584, the Catholic league
+of Philip and Guise was signed at Joinville, by which
+the King of Spain was left a free hand in English
+affairs in return for his support of Guise in the rapidly
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_423">[423]</span>approaching struggle in France. Philip was thus
+assured, first, that the Huguenots would be too busy
+to help Elizabeth in her hour of need, and, secondly,
+that Guise would be too full of his own ambitions in
+France to interfere with his in England.</p>
+
+<p>The death of Gregory XIII. and the accession of
+Felice Peretti as Pope Sixtus V. also seemed to favour
+the Spanish objects. Sixtus was full of vast projects
+for the spread of orthodox Christianity; he was
+a man of great ability and boundless ambition, who
+had waited long for his chance and was determined
+to make the most of it now it had come, so that
+Olivares had in future a more ready listener than
+before to his exhortations on behalf of the Catholic
+King. But though Sixtus yearned to do great things
+for the Church, he was determined, as his predecessor
+had been, not to work for purely Spanish aims to the
+prejudice of France; and for the next two years a
+keen war of wits was waged between Olivares and
+the Pope, the Spaniard seeking to obtain the million
+ducats subsidy to the English enterprise without
+pledging his master to any definite course in England
+after the conquest.</p>
+
+<p>In the meanwhile the long delay was driving
+Mary Stuart and the English Catholics to desperation.
+The Queen had been taken from the mild
+custody of Lord Shrewsbury, and was now kept a
+close prisoner in the hands of very different gaolers.
+Her one hope was in Philip and Mendoza; but as
+month followed month whilst her treatment became
+harsher and no succour came—for the vast plans
+of Philip could only be carried out, if at all, with
+infinite preliminaries—the unhappy woman became
+almost vehement in her prayers that the movement
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_424">[424]</span>should be made before it was too late. In
+November, 1584, she wrote to Mendoza: “Let the
+end be what it may, and whatever becomes of me, no
+matter what change may be made in my condition,
+pray use all diligence in forwarding the execution
+of the great enterprise without any regard for the
+personal danger I may incur. I shall look upon
+my life as well spent if by its sacrifice I can help
+to relieve the multitude of oppressed children of
+the Holy Catholic Church.” Both she and Mendoza
+believed at this time that her life was in danger
+unless the Spanish attack was delivered in time to
+avert the supposed evil intention, and the ambassador,
+writing to Philip, added his own supplications
+to those of the Queen that no more time should be
+lost.</p>
+
+<p>What Mendoza dreaded even more than Mary’s
+murder by the English, was the possibility of her
+escape by their means, as she would then owe her
+life to heretics, and would thereafter presumably be
+an untrustworthy instrument against them. “If, on
+the contrary, she perish, as may be feared, it cannot
+fail to bring scandal and reproach upon your Majesty,
+because as you are, after her, the nearest Catholic
+heir of the blood royal of England, some false
+suspicion might be aroused at your having abandoned
+the good Queen to be ruined by the heretics, in
+order to open the door to your Majesty’s own
+advantage.”&#x2060;<a id="FNanchor_262" href="#Footnote_262" class="fnanchor">[262]</a> This idea of Philip’s claim to the
+English succession was industriously kept alive by
+Allen, Parsons, and Hugh Owen, who had been
+appointed a committee to advise the Duke of Parma
+in Flanders with regard to the English enterprise,
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_425">[425]</span>until the breaking out of the civil war in France,
+and the open support given to the Dutch rebels
+and Huguenots by Elizabeth, changed the centre
+of intrigue from Flanders to Rome; and Allen and
+Parsons were sent thither to work in favour of the
+Spanish plans.</p>
+
+<p>For the scheme was surely growing now into a
+vast expedition, ostensibly to place Mary Stuart
+upon the throne of England, but really to make
+Philip master of the country, with or without the
+nominal sovereignty. Deeply though France was
+plunged in civil war, with Guise in arms tyrannising
+over the King, the French interest was still strong,
+and, both at Rome and elsewhere, would struggle
+its hardest against anything like a Spanish domination
+of England. Nor were the Italians in love
+with the idea of a conquest that would make Philip
+supreme in Europe, and consequently all the skill,
+boldness, and cunning of Spanish diplomacy was
+concentrated in Rome to obtain by false pretences
+from the Church the vast sums required for the
+conquest of England. With the weak attempts of
+the French Government itself to avert the danger
+Philip could easily deal. The French ministers
+proposed to Mendoza in June, 1585, that Spain and
+France jointly should invade England in favour of
+Mary Stuart. Philip understood the object at once,
+and in his usual way, with much sanctimonious
+verbiage, asked for a multitude of pledges and
+particulars, as if he entertained the proposal, whilst
+he continued his own stealthy preliminaries in Rome
+for the purely Spanish enterprise, for which others
+might pay but he alone must direct.&#x2060;<a id="FNanchor_263" href="#Footnote_263" class="fnanchor">[263]</a> When the
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_426">[426]</span>leader of the French party in the Vatican, Cardinal
+D’Este, soon after this tried to persuade the Pope
+that the best and safest course for the Church
+would be to aid Guise to direct the English enterprise
+and make James Stuart King of Britain after
+his mother’s death, another line had to be taken
+by Philip. Then Olivares boldly told the Pope that
+D’Este, like so many of his house, was a bad
+Catholic, who sought to bring about the victory of
+heresy in France and the consequent downfall of the
+Guises. Let the Pope secure the triumph of Guise
+and the faith in France first, urged Olivares, and
+the English enterprise could be undertaken afterwards.</p>
+
+<p>Sixtus V. was willing, nay anxious, to allow the
+conquest to be undertaken by Spain alone, recognising
+that the French Catholics could not now safely be
+allowed to exhaust their strength in a foreign war;
+but he always hoped that James’s constant assurances
+of Catholic sympathies might be sincere, and that
+Mary Stuart might be duly succeeded by her son
+under Catholic auspices. Guise also was constantly
+plied with arguments by Mendoza on Philip’s orders,
+directed to divert him from all ideas of England.
+“Warn him [Guise] against making any agreement
+with his enemies,” wrote Philip, on the 17th August,
+1585, “and open his eyes with regard to the English
+enterprise. Point out to him the danger he runs
+if he allows himself to be cajoled into leaving his
+home and country before he has humbled his rivals
+and converted or expelled the heretics, and how
+much deceived he might find himself when he wished
+to return to France from such an attempt.... Tell
+the French first to put an end to the heretics in
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_427">[427]</span>their own country, and afterwards we can deal with
+them elsewhere.”&#x2060;<a id="FNanchor_264" href="#Footnote_264" class="fnanchor">[264]</a>&#x2060;</p>
+
+<p>The sinister activity of Philip’s agents in Rome
+and the vapouring of the English Catholic refugees
+in Spanish Flanders, had in the meanwhile aroused
+the distrust of Elizabeth and her Government. Ever
+since Philip had captured Portugal and obtained
+thus the command of the Atlantic, the Puritan
+element in the English Court, led by Leicester and
+Walsingham, had promoted attempts, through Don
+Antonio and otherwise, to strike a crushing blow
+at the Spanish naval power in Europe. Drake’s
+depredations in the Pacific had been a terrible
+loss to Spain, both in a moral and material sense,
+and the English seamen were eager to return to
+the charge, in order to anticipate and frustrate the
+evil which most of them believed was being plotted
+against their country by the quiet, stealthy little
+elderly man far away in the mountains of Castile.
+Elizabeth and Cecil detested to face responsibility;
+and although the Queen was willing to accept the
+benefit of accomplished facts, she usually set her face
+against assuming an attitude of open hostility to
+Spain when she could avoid it. Leicester had at
+last, in the autumn of 1585, induced her to accept,
+with much misgiving, the practical protection of the
+rebel Dutch States, and this was naturally assumed
+by Philip as an act of open war. Thenceforward
+any means for injuring the English were considered
+legitimate by the King of Spain.</p>
+
+<p>In the spring of 1585 a large number of English
+ships had been induced, on a promise of immunity
+from molestation, to carry cargoes of grain to the
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_428">[428]</span>northern ports of Spain, where famine was impending.
+One of these ships, the <i>Primrose</i>, was discharging
+her cargo off Portugalete, near Bilbao, when, as
+the English sailors averred, the Lieutenant-Governor
+of Biscay and a force of men disguised as merchants
+boarded the ship and suddenly called upon
+the Englishmen to surrender. Though taken by
+surprise, the crew turned upon the intruders and
+threw them all overboard, though some were subsequently
+rescued by the English, amongst them the
+Lieutenant-Governor himself; whereupon the <i>Primrose</i>,
+carrying her prisoners with her, immediately
+set sail to England, with the news of the treachery,
+the official orders found upon the person of the
+half-drowned Lieutenant-Governor being to the effect
+that the ships were all to be captured to help the
+expedition contemplated for the invasion of England.
+At all events, the rest of the English ships were
+captured, Philip’s own pretext for the act being
+that it was in reprisal for the daring abduction by
+the <i>Primrose</i> of the Lieutenant-Governor.&#x2060;<a id="FNanchor_265" href="#Footnote_265" class="fnanchor">[265]</a>&#x2060;</p>
+
+<p>No sooner did the news reach England than the
+country burst into a chorus of indignation, and the
+sailors and Puritans, who had so long urged an
+active policy against Spain on the sea, found that
+all Englishmen were now with them.&#x2060;<a id="FNanchor_266" href="#Footnote_266" class="fnanchor">[266]</a> It was no
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_429">[429]</span>longer to be a timid support of the Portuguese
+Pretender, or a surreptitious sheltering of Dutch and
+Huguenot privateers, but an avowed public movement,
+and London and the western ports of England came
+openly with subscriptions, to which the Queen contributed
+largely, for a joint-stock fleet under Drake,
+to avenge the capture of English ships, and to injure
+Spanish shipping wherever it could be found. This
+was open war; and through the summer and autumn
+of 1585 Philip’s spies in England continued to send
+him alarming news of the great preparations for a
+naval expedition against him under the dreaded
+Drake. Sometimes it was said to be another attempt
+to place Don Antonio on the Portuguese throne,
+sometimes it was the Spanish silver fleet that was
+to be met and plundered on its way home, and so
+forth; but whatever it was it boded ill to Philip’s
+ships, with Drake in command of his foes. Retaliatory
+embargoes were placed once more on Spanish
+property in England, and the two countries thenceforward
+were practically at war.</p>
+
+<p>The enthusiasm in England knew no bounds;
+and when Drake and his sea-dogs Fenner, Wynter,
+and Frobisher sailed out of Plymouth with twenty-one
+stout craft and many pinnaces well armed, on
+the 14th September, 1585, every one in England
+knew that Philip’s secret plotting was to be met
+by open action. Capturing the Spanish ships, they
+met, Drake and his company in a few days, came
+to anchor off the Bayona Isles in Galicia, and landed
+a force of men. “What want ye here,” asked the
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_430">[430]</span>terrified townsmen, far from succour. “We come,”
+said Drake, “for the Englishmen ye have in your
+prisons, and for the English merchandise ye have
+stolen.” The people could only give them fair words
+and presents of country produce, for the English
+ships had not been captured there. Burning a chapel
+and its contents, the English force then sailed to
+the great harbour of Vigo, where they looted all
+they could lay their hands upon. Here again the
+people came to parley, and Frobisher, who spoke
+good Spanish, was the spokesman of the English.
+“We want our countrymen and our stolen goods
+restored to us,” he said; and the Spaniards were
+ready to promise this or anything if the valuables
+just seized by the English were returned. Banquets
+and palavers followed, but they were full of distrust,
+and nothing came of them; for Drake saw that his
+enemies were but delaying until help should arrive.
+So, capturing all he could catch in Vigo Bay, he sailed
+away on his West India voyage, intending to assail the
+Spanish colonial power in its three principal western
+centres. Philip was astounded at the boldness of
+the attack, the first upon Spanish soil itself, not,
+as he was careful to explain, because of the material
+damage suffered, which was small, but for the
+“insolence” of the thing; but withal, it took six
+months of frenzied effort before Alvaro de Bazan
+could muster a Spanish fleet fit to pursue the bold
+Devonshire sailor, who was devastating the West
+Indies.</p>
+
+<p>The departure of Leicester and a strong English
+army to Holland, at the end of 1585, finally brought
+England and Spain nationally face to face in the
+field. We have witnessed the slow process by
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_431">[431]</span>which Philip and Elizabeth, both haters of war,
+had been drawn into this position. For the former
+it was vital that England should be amenable to
+his direction in foreign policy, or the cause for
+which he lived was doomed, and the decadence of
+Spain as a dominant power in Europe was certain;
+and, with his patient, inflexible belief in the fated
+triumph of his methods, he had striven through
+twenty-eight years to secure his object by peaceful
+means. He had failed, and it was to be war after
+all. Not now against a Queen whose throne was
+unstable, but against a popular sovereign and a
+nation which, since he had seen it, had been born
+to a new sense of power, a consciousness of potential
+grandeur, and a determination to live its own
+life without interference from its neighbours. But
+though Philip’s plans were thus changed late in the
+struggle and he saw himself faced by new forces,
+he, at least, never doubted of the result. For him
+the idea of failure, in a cause that in his eyes was
+that of God Himself, was impossible. With a limited
+mental scope, which shut out all views but one, he
+was incapable of understanding that there were two
+sides to every question, or that Elizabeth was
+actuated in her resistance to his advances by anything
+else than an impious desire to do evil for
+evil’s sake. A small spice of imagination would
+have enabled him to see that she was fighting for
+her own and her country’s life and greatness, as
+surely as he was fighting for his; and perchance
+the knowledge might have made harmony, or at
+least neutrality, possible. But, given Philip’s character
+and Elizabeth’s circumstances, it was inevitable,
+after the autumn of 1585, that the antagonists should
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_432">[432]</span>come to close grip, and that one or the other should
+be reduced to impotence for harm.</p>
+
+<p>Philip was convinced of this at last, and with his
+leaden-footed deliberation he set about making success
+as certain as he knew how to make it. He was
+laborious, unsparing of himself and others, a man
+of great personal ability, sagacious and wise within
+his limitations; but his ingrained distrust of other men—part
+of his father’s teaching—led him to take upon
+himself the care of every detail in all his enterprises
+and deprived his officers of initiative and independence.
+From his cell in the Escorial, far away and
+difficult of access from the coast, he insisted upon
+pulling the wires which controlled the smallest actions
+of his subordinates, and we shall see how in the
+crowning effort of his life these fatal characteristics
+cast a blight over the vast enterprise, upon which
+depended the fate of Christendom for centuries.</p>
+
+<figure class="figcenter illowp58" id="illus12" style="max-width: 34.375em;">
+  <img class="w100" src="images/illus12.jpg" alt="">
+  <figcaption>
+    <p>CARDINAL ALLEN</p>
+  </figcaption>
+</figure>
+
+<p>There were many difficulties to overcome before
+the material preparations could even be commenced.
+First there was Sixtus to persuade, which was not
+an easy task. Olivares and Allen worked hard in
+Rome to convince him that Philip was moved
+solely by religious zeal, and not by a desire for
+revenge or aggrandisement, in projecting the expedition.
+“I have plied him,” wrote Olivares, “with
+every argument ... but in addition to his natural
+tenacity and his buckler of precedents, I have been
+much hampered with the news of your Majesty’s
+preparations which pour in from all quarters.” The
+Guisan and Italian Cardinals, too, were for ever undoing
+one day what Olivares and Allen with Caraffa
+had effected the day before. The Scottish and
+Welsh Catholic clergy in Rome, too, especially Dr.
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_433">[433]</span>Owen Lewis, Bishop of Cassano, and even many of
+the English secular clergy, were strongly opposed to
+what they feared would mean a Spanish domination
+of the island; and between the opposing factions and
+his disinclination to part with the vast sum of money
+demanded of him, Sixtus was not easy to bend to
+Philip’s will. At length, after much friction and
+many quarrels, Olivares was obliged to be content
+with the Pope’s promise of a million ducats towards
+the subjection of England; but no persuasion or
+pressure could move Sixtus to provide any part of
+this sum until after the Spanish army had secured
+a footing on the island. A more delicate matter even
+than this was the question of the sovereignty of
+England after the death of Mary Stuart. Sixtus
+now usually agreed—though he often wavered on the
+point—that James Stuart was not to be trusted;
+and in compliance with Philip’s argument that a
+successor to Mary should be chosen before she was
+placed upon the English throne, in order to prevent
+her from forcing her son as her heir afterwards, the
+Pope was at length brought to agree to leave the
+choice of the future Sovereign of England to the King
+of Spain, though he pleaded hard that the person
+chosen should be an Englishman.&#x2060;<a id="FNanchor_267" href="#Footnote_267" class="fnanchor">[267]</a>&#x2060;</p>
+
+<p>Whilst Olivares in Rome, with imperious boldness,
+was managing the Pope, Mendoza in Paris, with equal
+skill, was keeping Guise in hand, pointing out the
+great destiny that awaited him in France, and the
+shame of allowing a heretic King to succeed to
+the “most Christian” Crown. At the same time
+he maintained a close correspondence with Mary
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_434">[434]</span>Stuart and the disaffected section of English Catholics
+who were represented as yearning for the coming
+of King Philip’s liberating fleet. Mary was sore
+and angry at what she thought an unjustifiable
+delay on the part of Philip, and was incessant in
+her prayers, through Mendoza, that she should be
+liberated before it was too late. Most of her intermediaries
+were false, and her secret correspondence
+was known to Walsingham and Elizabeth, but with
+Mary’s unhappy trustfulness she never failed to seize
+upon any chance, however dangerous, by which her
+great ambition might, perhaps, be served.</p>
+
+<p>In the middle of May, 1586, Charles Paget, who
+was still one of Mary’s agents in Paris, came to
+Mendoza, bringing with him an English priest named
+Ballard, who had been sent by a number of Catholics,
+especially in Lancashire and the North, to represent
+to him that: “God had infused more courage than
+ever into them, and had convinced them that no
+time was so opportune as the present to shake off
+the oppression of the Queen and the yoke of heresy
+that weighs upon them, as most of the strongest
+heretics are now absent in Zeeland. They say that
+I have never deceived them, and they beg me to
+tell them whether your Majesty had determined
+to help them to take up arms when they decided
+to do so.”&#x2060;<a id="FNanchor_268" href="#Footnote_268" class="fnanchor">[268]</a> Mendoza had but a general expression
+of sympathy to reply to this; for though the great
+fleet of conquest projected in Spain was already
+the talk of Europe, to Philip’s officers it was still
+supposed to be an inviolate secret. This inquiry
+of the English Catholics, however, was not John
+Ballard’s real reason for coming to see Mendoza.
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_435">[435]</span>He handed him a letter from four English Catholics
+who had access to Elizabeth’s Court, in which they
+promised to kill the Queen either by poison or by
+steel if they were assured of Philip’s help after the
+deed was done. Mendoza ciphered the letter himself
+and sent it to Philip’s secretary, but as John Ballard
+did not broach the subject verbally Mendoza’s disinclination
+to give any pledges kept Ballard in
+Paris beating about the bush in doubt for many
+weeks. Parsons, who was a good hater, asserted
+ten years afterwards&#x2060;<a id="FNanchor_269" href="#Footnote_269" class="fnanchor">[269]</a> that the whole scheme of
+Ballard and Gifford was promoted by Paget and
+Morgan, Mary Stuart’s correspondents in Paris, for
+the purpose of frustrating the purely Spanish attack
+upon England, to which they are represented as
+being bitterly hostile, and that Walsingham was
+informed of the plot with the same object. Paget
+was, and continued to be, a pensioner of Spain,
+and Morgan, who was entirely trusted by Mary,
+was also richly rewarded by Philip, at her request;
+but there is no reason to doubt the positive assertions
+of Parsons that both of them belonged to the
+anti-Jesuit party, to which, indeed, most English as
+well as the Scottish and Welsh Catholics adhered;
+and that by every means they endeavoured to
+frustrate what Allen and the Jesuits tried so hard
+to promote—a Spanish domination of England.</p>
+
+<p>Whilst Ballard waited in Paris the reply of
+Mendoza, the latter received important letters from
+Mary Stuart, who at last had been able, by Morgan’s
+contrivance, to reopen correspondence with the outer
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_436">[436]</span>world, little dreaming, poor soul, that the facilities
+provided were only a trap of her enemies. This
+was the first time she had communicated with
+Mendoza since his arrival in Paris a year before,
+and William Paget, the brother of Charles, was
+her messenger. He was to make certain proposals
+to him for Philip’s aid to “our designs”; but by
+far the most important part of the message came
+afterwards. The continued heresy of her son James
+had, she said, well-nigh broken her heart, and in
+order to secure the triumph of the Church “I
+will cede and make over by will to the King
+your master my right to the succession of the
+English Crown, and ask him to take me in future
+entirely under his protection, and also the affairs
+of this country. For the discharge of my own
+conscience I could not hope to place them in the
+hands of a Prince more zealous in our Catholic
+faith or more capable in all respects of re-establishing
+it in this country.... I am obliged in this
+matter to prefer the public welfare of the Church
+to the aggrandisement of my posterity.”</p>
+
+<p>Thus Mary finally embraced the Jesuit view which
+looked forward to a Spanish sovereignty over England
+to the detriment of her son and Scotland, and
+in opposition to many of her friends and adherents
+in England and France.&#x2060;<a id="FNanchor_270" href="#Footnote_270" class="fnanchor">[270]</a> To the King of Spain
+this renunciation of her son by Mary was of profound
+significance. His own English descent had
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_437">[437]</span>never been lost sight of, but here his claim was
+rendered legitimate apart from his ancestry; and
+Mendoza, though when he received Mary’s letter he
+had just been couched for cataract and was temporarily
+blind, caused a reply to be written to the Queen
+warmly commending her saintly resolution. She saw,
+he said, how evil her son was disposed, and the
+French had done little enough for her, whereas
+Philip had always befriended her. “Moreover,” he
+wrote to Philip, “failing the Queen of Scots and her
+son, your Majesty is the direct legitimate heir to the
+Crown of England. Cecil, the Lord Treasurer, was
+in the habit of saying that the Duchy of Lancaster
+had been unlawfully usurped from your Majesty.”&#x2060;<a id="FNanchor_271" href="#Footnote_271" class="fnanchor">[271]</a>
+No wonder that Philip replied to this in what
+was for him an unusually effusive strain: “She
+[Mary Stuart] has greatly risen in my estimation
+in consequence of what she says, and has much
+increased the devotion I have always felt for her
+interests, not so much because of what she says
+in my favour, though I am very grateful for that
+also, as because she postpones her love for her son,
+which might be expected to lead her astray, for
+the service of our Lord, the good of Christendom,
+and the salvation of England. Tell her all this
+from me, and assure her that if she perseveres
+in the good path she has chosen I hope that
+God will bless her by placing her in possession
+of her own. You will add that I shall be happy
+to undertake the protection of her person and
+interests as she requests.”&#x2060;<a id="FNanchor_272" href="#Footnote_272" class="fnanchor">[272]</a>&#x2060;</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_438">[438]</span></p>
+
+<p>This move of Mary’s made it necessary for
+Philip to handle the question of the succession
+with more caution than ever in Rome, for if once
+the French and Italian Churchmen thought that
+he meant to seize the Crown of England for himself,
+half Europe would have been ready to oppose
+him. So Olivares was ordered to “keep constantly
+before the eyes of his Holiness the advisability of
+choosing some firm Catholic, who on the exclusion
+of the King of Scots should take his place, and it
+is equally important to keep his Holiness to the
+point, binding him to agree to my nomination of a
+fit successor to the Queen of Scots in England.”
+The reply from Philip gave Mary new hope. She
+had been deeply discouraged at the repeated failures
+of attempts to rescue her and overthrow Elizabeth,
+and the long delay of any effective aid from Philip
+had well-nigh driven her to despair. But now,
+surely, a new era of success was opening to her.
+Rumours reached even her in her prison of the
+great preparations being made in the Spanish and
+Portuguese ports for some vast naval enterprise;
+whilst the open war between Elizabeth’s troops and
+the Spaniards in Zeeland seemed to Mary to make
+certain and near the hour when Philip’s arms
+should avenge the injuries done to him by finally
+crushing the heretic Queen and substituting Mary
+for her. Many times in the last six months, she
+wrote to Mendoza, she had turned a deaf ear to
+proposals of English Catholics for her deliverance:
+“But now that I hear of the good intentions of
+the Catholic King towards us I have written to
+the principal leaders of the Catholics here a full
+statement of my views on all points of the execution
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_439">[439]</span>of the enterprise. To save time I have ordered
+them to send to you with all speed one of their
+number, fully instructed to treat with you, in
+accordance with the promises given to you in
+general terms, and to lay before you all the
+requests they wish to make to the King. I assure
+you, on their faithful promise given to me, that
+they will carry out their undertakings, even at the
+risk of their lives. I therefore beg you to give full
+credit to their messenger as if I had sent him
+myself. He will tell you the means they have
+for getting me away from here, which I will attempt
+to effect on my own account if I am assured of
+armed aid.”&#x2060;<a id="FNanchor_273" href="#Footnote_273" class="fnanchor">[273]</a>&#x2060;</p>
+
+<p>Almost simultaneously with this the group of
+English Catholics who had sent Ballard to Mendoza
+in May were able to supply the ambassador
+with the details and assurances he had requested
+to prove the seriousness of their intention. Their
+envoy on this occasion was Gilbert Gifford, brother
+of the Dean of Lille, and, according to Parsons, a
+strong opponent of the Spanish-Jesuit party. He
+unfolded to Mendoza the existence of a vast conspiracy
+in England, in which most of the Catholic
+nobles were implicated. The Earl of Arundel, son of
+the late Duke of Norfolk, and most of his kinsmen,
+with a score or so of other noblemen and gentry
+whose names Mendoza sent to Philip, were ready
+to rise in force whenever they were advised that
+the Spanish fleet was approaching. Sir William
+Stanley, in command of a large body of Irishmen
+intended for Flanders, would delay his departure
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_440">[440]</span>if possible, revolt against the Queen, and join
+the invaders; the English force in Ireland under
+Bele would do likewise, whilst Claude Hamilton
+and a force of Scots would join the Catholics of
+the North on the signal being given. The very
+heretics themselves, they said, were ripe for revolution,
+tired of the burden of taxation; but, above
+all, a young man named Babington and some six
+confederates&#x2060;<a id="FNanchor_274" href="#Footnote_274" class="fnanchor">[274]</a> had determined to kill Queen Elizabeth,
+in accordance with the suggestion previously
+made by them through Ballard. They only asked
+that Spain should support them when the deed was
+done. No Frenchmen should be concerned in the
+business, but promptitude was now vital, for every
+hour increased the risk of discovery; and they prayed
+Philip to let them know at once what he would do to
+rescue England.</p>
+
+<p>Mendoza jumped at all these proposals, for, according
+to Gifford, the greatest men in England were
+pledged to the rising—as apart from Babington’s
+murder plot; even the moderate Catholics being
+pledged to it. Two letters went off at once from
+the Spaniard to the heads of the enterprise, “praising
+the proposal as it deserved, as it was so Christian,
+just, and advantageous to our holy faith and to your
+Majesty’s service, worthy of spirits so Catholic as
+theirs and of the ancient valour of Englishmen.”
+If they succeeded in killing the Queen, promised
+Mendoza without authority, they should have the
+assistance they required from the Netherlands, and
+the assurance that King Philip would succour them.
+“I promised them this on my faith and word, urging
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_441">[441]</span>them to hasten the execution.” Directly they had
+despatched the Queen, wrote Mendoza to them, let
+them seize Don Antonio and the Portuguese with him
+and lodge him in the Tower; get Sir William Stanley
+to seize the Queen’s fleet, unless Lord Admiral
+Howard was a trustworthy party to the plot, and let
+them be sure to kill Cecil, Walsingham, Hunsdon,
+Knollys, and Beal at the same time as the Queen.</p>
+
+<p>Mendoza’s hatred of Elizabeth outran his discretion,
+and in conveying all this to Philip he wrote: “Of all
+the plots they have hatched these many years past
+none have been apparently so serious as this. They
+have never before proposed to make away with the
+Queen, which is now the first step they intend to take.
+As she so richly deserves her punishment, it may be
+believed that God has heard the groans of the afflicted
+Catholics and desires to bring it upon her thus swiftly.
+Let Him dispose as He will; but if, for our sins, He
+shall ordain that it do not succeed there will be much
+Catholic blood shed in England. Up to the present
+your Majesty is pledged no further than the risk of
+100,000 crowns, which have been given to the priests
+sent thither, and if secrecy be kept we need only
+watch what comes of it. If the Queen falls the
+country will submit without bloodshed, and the
+Netherlands war will be at an end.”</p>
+
+<p>Philip was horrified when he received this letter,
+and scribbled upon its margin, in that appalling scrawl
+of his, scornful comments which showed that his cold,
+secretive nature rebelled against the rash enthusiasm
+of his usually discreet Mendoza. How could such a
+secret be kept, he asked, if all these people were
+chattering about it? How could the schismatics, or
+outwardly conforming Catholics, be trusted? They
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_442">[442]</span>were mere heretics and no better; and how imprudent
+of Mendoza, his ambassador, to send to the conspirators
+two such compromising letters as those
+mentioned! Philip had heard too often in the past
+of such plots as this, and he had thrown away already
+too much money in subsidising such adventures.
+Nothing but conquest, he was convinced, would serve
+his turn now; and to that end he was bending all his
+energies night and day, penning the Pope closer into
+the corner, inflaming more than ever the French
+ambitions of Guise, and fomenting trouble in France;
+and, above all, collecting stores, arms, and ships from
+all his vast dominions to crush Elizabeth for good and
+for all in the interests of the Church and Spain.</p>
+
+<p>But, withal, Philip was not a man to throw away a
+chance if he could gain it with a minimum of responsibility,
+and he blended his somewhat caustic remarks
+upon the lack of secrecy and caution displayed with
+saintly approval of the plan to murder his sister-in-law.
+“As the affair is so much in God’s service,” he wrote
+to Mendoza on the 5th September, “it certainly
+deserves to be supported, and we hope that our Lord
+will prosper it, unless our sins are an impediment
+thereto. It appears to be based upon a solid foundation
+and to have the support of many Catholics, but
+it is difficult to keep a secret entrusted to so many
+people, and it causes me anxiety that it should be so
+widespread, and even schismatics let into the secret....
+But the importance of the matter is great, and
+perhaps the time has arrived when God will strike for
+His own cause.” Philip left in no doubt his own
+attitude with regard to the matter. The Spanish aid
+should be ready, but should not be sent until the
+murder of Elizabeth had been effected. Let the
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_443">[443]</span>“principal executions” be done, he urged, without a
+moment’s delay. “Everything depends upon the
+one act which is to be the commencement. When
+this is done they may with one voice acclaim it, and
+the way will be clear, whilst if the intention is discovered
+before its execution each one will be destroyed
+separately and union will be impossible. As all hangs
+upon this, and the cause is God’s own, we must hope
+that He will prosper it.”</p>
+
+<p>Gifford was sent on his way to England with the
+King’s message, and soon the heavy hand of Walsingham
+fell upon the conspirators, who had all through
+been living in a fool’s paradise, betrayed, as was
+Mary herself, by the instruments they thought so
+trusty and faithful. Philip had been right in his
+distrust; once more conspiracy subsidised by Spanish
+intrigue and money had failed, more disastrously this
+time than ever before; and the King of Spain, whilst
+deploring in conventional terms the dire fate of most
+of those upon whom he had depended for an auxiliary
+movement in England on the approach of his fleet,
+accepted the reverse with stolid philosophy. In one
+respect, indeed, it was to some extent a relief to him.
+There is no doubt that he greatly esteemed Mary
+Stuart for her steadfast Catholicism, and would have
+placed her upon the throne of England if his attempt
+at conquest had been successful during her life; but
+there was always lurking in the background the fear
+that after her accession she might be drawn by French
+intrigue or maternal solicitude to adopt her son as her
+heir, in which case Philip’s vast efforts and expenditure
+might have been in vain. But with Mary a
+condemned prisoner, whose head might fall at any
+moment, it was the present rather than the future
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_444">[444]</span>sovereignty of England that was now to be decided,
+and slowly, with the aid of Parsons and Allen, the
+claims of Philip to the English succession were
+advanced tentatively even in England itself, though
+not, as we shall presently see, with any intention of
+his personally assuming the sovereignty after Elizabeth
+was disposed of.</p>
+
+<p>The question of Mary Stuart’s complicity in
+Babington’s murder-project is one that does not
+directly concern us here, but there can be but little
+doubt that, even though it was not conveyed to her
+in so many words, she was well aware of the whole
+plan.&#x2060;<a id="FNanchor_275" href="#Footnote_275" class="fnanchor">[275]</a> At least Mendoza, who should have known,
+believed that she was; for on the collapse of the
+conspiracy he wrote to Philip: “I am of opinion that
+the Queen of Scotland must be well acquainted with
+the whole affair, to judge by the contents of a letter
+she has written to me.... Doubtless it is God’s will
+to give England to your Majesty by the strong arm
+only, since He has allowed so much Catholic blood to
+be lost, as will be shed by the discovery of this
+business. Nothing has been said yet about my letters,
+but even if they were discovered and printed they are
+so worded that another construction could be placed
+upon them.” Mendoza was too sanguine in this
+respect. His letters were read and his conversations
+with the messengers repeated. There was no need
+on the part of Elizabeth and Walsingham to go out
+of their way to put harmless constructions upon his
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_445">[445]</span>words, which, indeed, were plain enough, and a shout
+of execration went up all over England at an ambassador
+who thus connived at the murder of a sovereign
+and a lady.</p>
+
+<p>Already the alarming reports of spies had aroused
+the worst fears of Elizabeth and her people. The
+Queen, particularly, dreaded the vengeance which
+seemed hanging over her. For years she had defied
+Philip and had beaten him in the game of diplomacy,
+depending for her immunity upon the continued war
+in the Netherlands and upon Philip’s distrust of
+France. But she saw that France could not help her
+now, whatever her extremity, for the Guises were in
+arms and the wretched fribble upon the throne was
+but a straw borne hither and thither upon the tempest,
+whilst the Huguenots were grimly awaiting the hour
+when they themselves would have to fight for freedom
+and for life. The war in Zeeland, moreover, was
+now only maintained by English help, and when the
+dreaded Spanish descent upon England was made
+Elizabeth would have to abandon the Dutch Protestants
+to their fate, and the last bulwark of Reform
+would be submerged by the flood of Spanish popery.</p>
+
+<p>Once more Elizabeth played the outworn game
+that had served her turn so often before. Andrea de
+Loo and many other intermediaries hurried backwards
+and forwards at the instance of Burghley between
+London and Flanders, impressing upon the Duke of
+Parma the English Queen’s earnest desire to come to
+terms with her “good brother.” Let the Pacification
+of Ghent, which had been accepted in the time of
+Don Juan, be re-enacted and all might be settled; let
+a conference meet, in which mutual grievances might
+be arranged, and England and Spain should live
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_446">[446]</span>happy together ever after. But Parma for a time
+gave stiff answers to all this, much as he knew that
+Flanders needed peace, for Philip kept him in the
+dark as to his real intentions, and he dared not act
+without precise instructions from the King. Other
+attempts were made to reopen the trade negotiations
+through Portuguese agents with a view to a general
+agreement, but Philip was irresponsive now; for after
+half a lifetime of hesitation he had finally made up his
+mind. England must be conquered by the sword
+wielded by his hand alone; and although he might
+feign to talk of peace to suit his purpose, there was in
+his slow-moving, inflexible mind thenceforward no
+peace possible with England until Elizabeth and her
+Government had been crushed.</p>
+
+<p>Another spirited attempt was made by Elizabeth
+to reach Philip direct. Pedro Sarmiento de Gamboa,
+the famous explorer and Governor of Patagonia, had
+been captured at sea by one of Raleigh’s ships.
+Usually such men were held for heavy ransom, but
+Sarmiento was received by the Queen at Windsor
+with every witchery she knew how to exert, and was
+impressed with her sorrow that such unhappy relations
+existed—God knew from no fault of hers—between
+her people and the Spaniards. Would Sarmiento convey
+a letter to his King, accepting his liberation as a
+reward for his doing so? Naturally nothing would
+suit Sarmiento better, and Raleigh carried him with
+all distinction to Durham House as his honoured
+guest, plying him with assurances of Sir Walter’s
+desire to serve the King of Spain by putting a stop
+to all this piracy, of which the Queen herself and
+Lord Treasurer Burghley disapproved. Besides this,
+he (Raleigh) would sell a fine ship of his to Philip for
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_447">[447]</span>5,000 crowns, would prevent any more aid being
+given to Don Antonio, and would, indeed, become
+Philip’s humble servant in England. This was, doubtless,
+nothing but one of the usual mystifications to
+divert Philip; but the Queen herself gave a cordial
+verbal message to Sarmiento for the King, saying
+that she was really anxious to let bygones be bygones
+and make a durable peace. Sarmiento left London in
+November, 1586, and gave his message to Mendoza
+in Paris, but on his way to Spain was unlucky enough
+to be captured again, by Huguenots this time, near
+the Pyrenean frontier, and all Elizabeth’s and Raleigh’s
+influence was exerted to secure his prompt release.
+By all means accept Raleigh’s offer to prevent further
+aid being given to Don Antonio and to stop piracy,
+wrote Philip; but to the suggestions for direct peace
+negotiations he made no reply.</p>
+
+<p>In the meanwhile the arsenals and harbours of
+Philip’s realms were ringing with preparations for the
+great enterprise. The peace conference so much
+desired by Elizabeth might meet in Flanders and
+talk, but no pause was made in the feverish activity
+in the Spanish preliminaries for war. Old Santa
+Cruz had waited patiently after the King’s gentle
+rebuff to him in 1583,&#x2060;<a id="FNanchor_276" href="#Footnote_276" class="fnanchor">[276]</a> until the circumstances detailed
+in the foregoing pages had rendered war with England
+inevitable early in 1586, when he wrote to the
+King from Lisbon a letter full of fiery zeal, recalling
+his former offer to conquer England when his
+victorious fleet was ready, and deploring the shame
+that had fallen upon Spain since by reason of the
+continued insults and injuries inflicted upon it by the
+heretics, much to the material gain and moral prestige
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_448">[448]</span>of the Queen of England. They had, he said,
+plundered a million and a half of ducats in the last
+five months, and had defied the King of Spain
+successfully at all points. Everything was now propitious,
+urged the admiral, for dealing a final blow at
+these daring heretics, and he prayed the King to arise
+in his wrath and smite his enemy before the occasion
+passed. “I am not moved to this,” he proudly added,
+“by a desire for fresh battles or the ambition for new
+victories, but by no other motive than the service of
+God and your Majesty.”</p>
+
+<p>This time the hero’s appeal found the King ready,
+for all his peaceful diplomacy had failed to bring
+England to his side; and Santa Cruz was requested
+to submit to the King a plan for carrying out the
+enterprise he proposed. It took Santa Cruz two
+months, as he says, to draw up from his papers and
+the experience of forty years at sea a complete
+scheme for the irresistible descent upon England;
+and the estimate with which he furnished Philip
+stands to-day, after three centuries and a quarter, an
+unexampled monument of foresight, skill, and boldness.
+Nothing was forgotten in this prodigious
+estimate: naval and military requisites, arms, stores,
+clothing and material, down to the minutest detail,
+are set forth, with estimates of price and with surprising
+clearness; the salaries to be paid to men of every
+rank are given; the weight and bulk of every article, the
+best place where it may be obtained, the rations to be
+provided, and the discipline to be observed on land
+and sea, are all written in due order, and to such a
+lover of formal papers as Philip the estimate of
+Santa Cruz must have been a pure delight from the
+bureaucratic point of view.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_449">[449]</span></p>
+
+<p>Not so, however, with regard to the concentrated
+magnitude of the demands, greater than had ever
+been made for such an enterprise before. Santa Cruz
+wanted for the invasion of England 150 great ships,
+40 store hulks, 320 small craft of 50 to 80 tons burden,
+40 galleys and 6 galleasses, or 556 sail in all, besides 40
+skiffs and 200 landing rafts. There were needed 30,000
+sailors and nearly 64,000 soldiers, with 1,600 cavalry
+horses, all to be shipped from Spain, and this enormous
+multitude was to be provisioned beforehand for eight
+months with food and water. Deducting the ordinary
+cost of armaments in Spain, the extra estimated
+expense to be incurred by the enterprise was placed
+by Santa Cruz at 3,800,000 ducats.&#x2060;<a id="FNanchor_277" href="#Footnote_277" class="fnanchor">[277]</a> The sum in
+money was much greater than Philip had ever had
+to provide in Spain for any one enterprise before,
+and it took him aback now. The Pope, it is true, had
+promised a million ducats, but not a soldo would he
+pay beforehand, and the Italian States might be
+coerced into contributing; but the bulk of this vast
+sum in ready money had to be wrung somehow out of
+already exhausted Castile, and, anxious as Philip was
+to make assurance doubly sure, he knew that this
+was impossible; so Santa Cruz’s estimates had to be
+modified.</p>
+
+<p>The opportunity for the invasion, nevertheless, was
+one that could hardly be expected to recur. The cup
+of Elizabeth’s provocations was full to the brim, and
+her anxiety to open peace negotiations proved her
+own apprehensions. France, for almost the first time,
+was paralysed and could not interfere. Leicester’s
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_450">[450]</span>ineptitude in Holland had even turned the feeling of
+the Dutch against their protectors, whilst many of the
+English troops and their leaders, such as Roland York,
+Sir W. Stanley, and Colonel Semple had deserted to the
+Spanish side and had delivered to Parma the fortresses
+occupied by them. The Turk, moreover, was for the
+time harmless, and Don Antonio was already a discredited
+and waning force. So, although Philip did
+not approve of Santa Cruz’s plan that the whole army
+should be embarked in Spain, he gave orders that the
+arsenals and dockyards should work night and day,
+and through Spain and Portugal, Sicily, Naples, and
+Lombardy there rang the echoes of warlike preparations
+such as they had never known before; whilst
+the recluse of the Escorial, shutting himself away
+from all other tasks, took counsel how he might effect
+his purpose with the means at his disposal.</p>
+
+<p>It is not to be supposed that the French and Scottish
+faction would sit tamely by and see without an effort
+the whole enterprise of England fall into the hands of
+Spain. The conversion of James Stuart was still a
+fervent hope with many who dreaded to see a Spanish
+king supreme in Britain; and the English Jesuit
+faction had to fight hard against the Welsh, Scottish,
+French, and many English Catholics at home and
+abroad. James Stuart himself and the Scottish
+Catholic nobles were fully alive to the danger that
+threatened. The Scottish nobles, with the secret connivance
+of James, made a bold attempt to associate
+themselves with Philip’s invasion, and to bring Guise
+again into the combination. Huntly, Morton, Claude
+Hamilton, Crawford, and Montrose, in the summer of
+1586, sent one Robert Bruce with three blank signed
+papers to the Duke of Guise in Paris, where the
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_451">[451]</span>letters over the signatures were written at Guise’s
+dictation and addressed to Philip,&#x2060;<a id="FNanchor_278" href="#Footnote_278" class="fnanchor">[278]</a> begging him to
+listen to the verbal proposals of their envoy, Bruce.
+Guise and Beton introduced Bruce to Mendoza, and
+the gist of the proposals was that Philip should send
+to the Scottish Catholics 150,000 crowns to raise and
+arm soldiers, whom they would maintain for a year,
+and they also asked that a foreign force of 6,000 men
+should be sent to Scotland to secure the triumph of
+the Catholics, in consideration of which they promised
+to place at his disposal one or more ports in the south
+of Scotland to serve as a shelter and a base of operations
+against England. Mendoza understood, as
+indeed did all experienced fighting-men, the immense
+importance of the latter suggestion; for Santa Cruz
+from the first had insisted upon the need of seizing
+harbours in the Channel in case of contrary weather;
+and Bruce was sped on his way to see Philip with all
+the support that the ambassador could give him.</p>
+
+<p>But Philip had had enough of Guisan meddling, and
+he had no intention of allowing the supreme effort he
+was making to be used for the benefit of any one but
+himself, and least of all for that of shuffling James
+Stuart. As usual, he did not say no plainly, for he
+had no wish to alienate the Scottish Catholics, or to
+arouse suspicions of his motives anywhere. So,
+gently suggesting doubts and difficulties, he referred
+the question to Mendoza and Parma for report,
+sending Bruce back to Paris with “fair words” and a
+letter to Guise “praising the zeal which moves you to
+strive so sincerely for the promotion of our holy
+Catholic faith.” Mendoza was directed to keep the
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_452">[452]</span>Scots in hand, to suggest that they should ask the Pope
+for the money they needed, and to flatter Guise as
+much as he thought necessary; all of which meant
+that Philip would not bind himself to Scot or Frenchman
+in the execution of his project, though, if on their
+own account and at their own risk they cared to divert
+his enemy, he had, of course, no objection to their
+doing so. But the offer of one or two safe ports in
+Scotland near the English border was one not lightly
+to be refused—its acceptance, indeed, might have
+changed the whole course of history—and Mendoza,
+an experienced soldier, wrote in October, 1586, to
+Parma strongly urging that the offer of the Scottish
+Catholics should be sympathetically entertained, in
+order that a diversion might thus be effected in the
+North simultaneously with the Spanish invasion of the
+South of England; though here commended that full
+inquiries should be first made to ascertain to what
+extent Huntly and his friends could carry out their
+pledges.</p>
+
+<p>Parma, however, was almost as cautious as his
+uncle. He was, in fact, resentful that Philip was
+keeping him in the dark as to his ultimate plans, and
+was determined not to move a step in any direction
+beyond his written orders until he knew what the
+King was really aiming at; whether to frighten
+Elizabeth into peace, which Parma more than suspected,
+or to crush her finally by war. So to Mendoza’s
+almost vehement advocacy of the Scottish diversion
+Parma replied coolly, saying that the proposal would
+fail unless it formed part of the combined plan and
+was executed in co-operation simultaneously with the
+invasion. Mendoza grew more and more in love with
+Bruce’s proposal, which would, he said, give harbours
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_453">[453]</span>of refuge for the Spaniards in the North Sea and
+divide the Queen of England’s forces; and here
+began the first whispers of Parma’s half-hearted
+loyalty,&#x2060;<a id="FNanchor_279" href="#Footnote_279" class="fnanchor">[279]</a> which amongst the vanquished officers of
+the Armada afterwards swelled into a tempest of
+indignant recrimination.</p>
+
+<p>Mendoza’s inquiries of Bruce had satisfied all his
+doubts, and to Philip he wrote beseechingly on the
+24th December, 1586, in favour of the scheme.
+Some of the passages in his extremely able letter,&#x2060;<a id="FNanchor_280" href="#Footnote_280" class="fnanchor">[280]</a>
+read by the knowledge of the subsequent disaster
+of the Armada, sound almost prophetic. “It is of
+advantage to the English,” he wrote, “that they
+should be attacked by a force which needs great
+sea fleets for its transport and maintenance, both on
+account of the immense sums of money which must
+be spent upon such an expedition, and the vast
+quantities of material and the length of time necessary
+for preparation, as well as the many opportunities
+which occur during this delay for impeding the progress
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_454">[454]</span>of such armaments. Such expeditions, moreover,
+are liable to much greater disasters than land
+armies, for in most cases the mere death of the
+leader suffices to frustrate them ... and in the
+event of the loss of a great fleet the owner is
+deprived at one blow of forces, ships, and guns—things
+difficult to replace readily.” It is clear now,
+with our later knowledge, that the old warrior-diplomatist—the
+last of the disciples of Alba, as he
+calls himself—was right in his appreciations, and
+that Philip made a fatal mistake in not following
+the advice of such men, instead of indulging in his
+fatal itch for retaining in his own hands all executive
+monopoly and all ultimate profit in his plans.</p>
+
+<p>But the advances of Huntly were not entirely
+rejected, for not only Mendoza, but Parma too,
+as time went on, saw their importance, and although
+the idea of invading England over the Scottish
+border was again vetoed, Bruce was sent back to
+Scotland after many months of impatient waiting in
+France and Flanders, carrying with him ten thousand
+crowns to freight ships in Scotland ostensibly for
+Dantzig, but really for Flanders, to embark there
+an auxiliary force to aid the Scottish Catholics in
+their intended rising.&#x2060;<a id="FNanchor_281" href="#Footnote_281" class="fnanchor">[281]</a> Bruce went on his way late
+in the summer of 1586, with his doublet padded
+with gold, but when he arrived in Scotland the
+whole scheme was embroiled and frustrated with
+the usual ineptitude. It was too late in the season
+for the ships to be obtained. James Stuart was
+also consulted by the Scottish lords as to his joining
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_455">[455]</span>the Spanish attack upon England to avenge his
+mother, with the result that was to be expected.
+Bruce and his companion, Foster, turned traitors
+when the plan was seen to be impracticable, and
+once more, and for the last time, Philip settled
+down to the inevitability of conquering England by
+himself alone, and for himself alone.</p>
+
+<p>It was more important now than ever it had been
+that he should succeed in doing it, for Henry III.
+of France was without a son, and was in bad health.
+If Henry of Navarre, a Huguenot, became King,
+and France ceased to be a Catholic country and in
+alliance with Protestant England, the Catholic
+domination of Europe would be at an end, and the
+sun of Spain must sink rapidly. The conquest of
+England, indeed, must be effected, and the country
+made Catholic before Henry III. died, or all, it
+seemed, would be lost; and Philip, after thirty years
+of paltering, was now in a desperate hurry. There
+was still another reason why Philip’s zeal for the
+conquest of England should be further inflamed at
+this time. Mary Stuart was condemned to death,
+and in the bitterness of her heart she wrote the
+beautiful letter&#x2060;<a id="FNanchor_282" href="#Footnote_282" class="fnanchor">[282]</a> to Mendoza (23rd November, 1586),
+in which she entrusted to Philip alone the task of
+avenging her and the cause for which she died, of
+providing for her servants, and, above all, of inheriting
+her rights to the succession of the Crown of
+England, which bequest she afterwards confirmed
+by a formal will. There was no longer any legal
+bar between Philip and the sovereignty, and no
+further fear of a doubtfully Catholic successor being
+adopted by Mary after her accession. With the
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_456">[456]</span>fall of the head of the Queen of Scots the spirits
+of the English Jesuit party rose, for they knew now
+that James and his countrymen would not be allowed
+to lord over Englishmen if once Philip held the
+country in his grasp.</p>
+
+<p>The subtle web of intrigue that had been spun
+for so many years past, the threads of which we
+have to some small extent endeavoured to unravel,
+had so far been favourable to Philip. He had
+patiently suffered numberless indignities and injuries
+at the hands of Elizabeth and her people; he had
+seen England and his own Dutch provinces drift
+ever further away from him; but he had never
+ceased to plot patiently in order to dispose affairs
+aptly for his vengeance when the propitious hour
+should strike. The Guises had been alternately
+flattered and frowned at, until their great ambitions
+in France seemed to hang upon Philip’s will, and
+they dared not stir without his countenance.
+Henry III. had been by the same means rendered
+equally powerless to help England or to hinder
+Spain. The Scottish Catholics had been subsidised
+and cajoled, as had James Stuart himself, into a
+benevolent neutrality towards Philip with blended
+hopes and fears of the English succession. Mary
+Stuart had been so handled as to lead her to make
+Philip by will the heir to the English Crown; and
+gradually all the strings which were intended to
+pull down the edifice of the Reformation were
+gathered into the hands of the gouty old monastic
+monarch in his granite cloister-palace on the bleak
+Castilian sierra. Each interest, as we have seen,
+had been silently and separately dealt with, and
+tricked into the position that best suited Philip’s
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_457">[457]</span>ends; for he would take no risks that he could
+avoid, and aspired to imitate natural forces in the
+slow, insensible accumulation of power, which at the
+supreme moment might be launched by the master
+with irresistible effect.</p>
+
+<p>When, at length, the stealthy plotting had reached
+fruition, and Elizabeth saw herself isolated, with
+Henry III. and James VI. paralysed; when the
+Pope and the Cardinals understood that the Church
+and its cherished hoards were to be instruments of
+Spanish political ends; when the Guises found that
+they and their kin were to be excluded from all
+share in the great prize of England; and even the
+English Catholics of the more patriotic and moderate
+sort awoke to the knowledge that their religion and
+their scorn of the Scots were being used to forward
+a conspiracy against the independence of their country;
+then each separate interest struggled as best it might
+to free itself from the toils in which the diplomacy of
+Philip had involved it. Allen, with his seminary, and
+the English Jesuits under Parsons, had gone over
+to the Spanish side bag and baggage, but the English
+Carthusians and seculars under Dr. Owen Lewis,
+and the large Scottish Catholic element in Rome
+under the Bishop of Dunblane, aided the Guisan
+Cardinals in combating the idea of a purely Spanish
+domination of England, and the contest went on
+bitterly and without cessation, especially after the
+death of Mary Stuart had made the fears more
+imminent.</p>
+
+<p>Before that had happened, Philip had instructed
+Olivares to sound the Pope cautiously, and, if
+possible, to obtain a brief from him, declaring
+Philip entitled to the throne of England after the
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_458">[458]</span>Queen of Scots, “as I cannot make war upon
+England for the purpose merely of placing upon the
+throne a young heretic like the King of Scots.”
+The Pope’s fears were to be lulled by the declaration
+that Philip had no intention of annexing
+England to the Crown of Spain, but of passing the
+sovereignty to some suitable Catholic candidate,
+perhaps to his daughter, the Infanta Isabel. Olivares,
+Allen, and Parsons knew at this time (January, 1587)
+that the Vatican was uneasy about the whole business,
+and they prayed the King to say nothing
+about his own claim openly until the Armada had
+been successful. But when, a month or two later,
+the news of Mary’s death came, Philip was obliged
+to some extent to show his hand to the Pope, and
+the brief was ordered to be secretly asked for as
+a measure of precaution. Above all, Philip urged,
+not a word must be said about his claims to Guise
+or the Frenchmen.</p>
+
+<p>Unfortunately, much had already been said about
+them, even by Mendoza; and Guise and Catharine
+de Medici, and James of Scotland himself, were all
+trying their utmost to prove how very Catholic the
+latter was, and what an excellent King of England
+he would make. Philip ordered that his claims upon
+England were only to be broached with the utmost
+caution to the English Catholics. In May, 1587,
+the King wrote to Mendoza: “You must only speak
+of my rights to well-disposed native Englishmen in
+order that they may be informed of the truth, and
+convey it to others of their nationality, that it may
+thus spread and gain ground amongst them. But
+do not mention the matter to Frenchmen and others,
+who will only take it up for the purpose of frustrating
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_459">[459]</span>it.”&#x2060;<a id="FNanchor_283" href="#Footnote_283" class="fnanchor">[283]</a> To add to his authority in the
+matter, Philip urged successfully that Allen should be
+made a Cardinal, and he was well primed by
+instructions from Spain how to push the succession
+question with the Pope. Religion, of course, was to
+be the pretext. The King of Scots was a heretic,
+and unfit to succeed. For the good of the Church
+a Catholic of unquestionable orthodoxy should be
+chosen, and he must be powerful enough to keep
+England in the straight path. All this, of course,
+could only tend to the conclusion that Philip or his
+daughter alone would serve; and very gradually and
+cautiously this view was made familiar to Catholics,
+to be struggled against fiercely by all those who
+were not absolutely under the Jesuit and Spanish
+influence. Parsons was indefatigable in writing
+letters, addresses, and memoranda in favour of this
+view, and the absolute quiescence of the moderate
+English Catholics when at last the Armada appeared
+in the Channel, and their loyalty through the crisis,
+was largely due to the unwise forcing of the idea
+of a Spanish Sovereign over England by the Jesuit
+propaganda.</p>
+
+<p>Elizabeth was no less active than the other
+threatened interests in her efforts to escape from
+the position in which she found herself. Still
+hoping against hope that the old policy of advance
+and retire might again be successful, she and
+Burghley strove heroically to arrange some form of
+peace congress with Parma through Andrea de Loo.
+It was not easy, for neither side was in a yielding
+mood in matters of procedure; but Philip said that
+he saw no harm in entertaining the advances, which
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_460">[460]</span>he knew from the first he did not intend to have
+any result other than to lull Elizabeth into a false
+security, whilst his preparations advanced. The
+Burghley party in Elizabeth’s Court had all the
+Puritans against them, and, more strongly still, the
+blue water school of sailors, who for years past
+had shown by their deeds that the Spaniards were
+no match for them at sea. “Why wait to be attacked
+on our own coasts,” was their constant argument,
+“when we can go and crush our enemies before even
+they can leave port?”</p>
+
+<p>The English ships had finer lines and lower bows
+than the Spaniards. They could sail several points
+nearer the wind; and the need for ocean attack
+and defence had developed an entirely new school
+of seamanship, depending upon celerity of movement,
+broadside armament low down, by which the
+hulls of the enemy might be riddled between wind
+and water, whereas the Spanish ships depended
+still largely upon bulk, needful for the carriage of
+cargoes from the Indies, and the old tradition
+descended from the Mediterranean galleys of heavy
+armaments fore and aft. The attack in the Spanish
+system consisted only in grappling with the foe and
+pouring soldiers on board of him, the vessel being
+less of a fighting entity than a conveyance to bring
+the fighting-men on each side into contact, as galleys
+had been. Under Drake the English sailors had
+developed an ideal entirely distinct from this, namely,
+to avoid grappling, and by superior handiness of the
+craft to cripple the hulls of the enemy, and make them
+unseaworthy and incapable of manœuvring. Again
+and again the English sailors had proved that the
+new methods were effective; and whenever there was
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_461">[461]</span>a chance of meeting the Spaniards at sea, they eagerly
+sought it.</p>
+
+<p>It was this combination of sailors and the Puritans
+or Liberals, led by Leicester, that sought once more
+to force Elizabeth’s hand in the midst of the negotiations
+for the peace conference with Parma early in the
+spring of 1587. The Portuguese spies in England
+continued to report to Mendoza the great preparations
+being made for a naval expedition, by Drake, in Plymouth
+and the Thames. Elizabeth and Burghley
+deeply distrusted a policy of daring aggression, and
+hesitated much to allow an attack upon Spain, though
+Leicester’s influence and Drake’s confidence ultimately
+carried the day. The secret of the destination of
+Drake’s fleet was well kept. The pretence was
+cleverly maintained to the last that it was one more
+attempt to aid Don Antonio—this time, it was said, to
+go to the Indies; and Mendoza, who reported almost
+daily to Philip what he heard, was hoodwinked all
+through. Drake arrived in Plymouth from the
+Thames on the 23rd March, in a hurry to get away,
+for fear the Queen would alter her mind and order
+him back. He had obtained her commission—“to
+prevent or withstand any enterprise against her Highness’s
+dominions, and especially to prevent the concentration
+of the King of Spain’s squadrons”—and he
+was authorised to “distress the ships as much as
+possible, both in the havens and on the high seas.”
+Drake knew that as soon as he left Court attempts
+by the moderate party would be made to spoil and
+hamper his plans, for his Vice-Admiral, Borough, a
+Queen’s officer, had been sent with him only to serve
+as a clog upon his actions, and Elizabeth was still full
+of faith in the insincere peace negotiations. Sure
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_462">[462]</span>enough, only a few hours after he hurriedly sailed
+from Plymouth, a royal order came thither from
+London, happily too late, “to forbear to enter forcibly
+any of the said King’s ports or havens, or to offer any
+violence to his towns or ships in harbour, or to do any
+act of hostility on land.” Drake took very good care
+that these timid orders never reached him until too
+late to stay his hand, and went on his way as usual, in
+defiance of Borough’s warning.</p>
+
+<p>Slowly, and with infinite difficulty, stores, arms, and
+material were being collected in Spain. The roads
+were bad, communications laborious, and Philip’s
+centralising methods clogged the wheels of progress.
+Old Santa Cruz was labouring early and late, in
+Lisbon, making ready such great ships as could be
+collected in the Tagus; whilst in the ports of
+Andalusia the Duke of Medina Sidonia, the great
+magnate of the Province, had seized for the King all
+the merchant ships and stores; and was actively
+getting ready to sail from Cadiz and join Santa Cruz
+in Lisbon in the early summer, and, together with
+other vessels expected from Italy and the Biscay ports,
+attempt the conquest of England. Thus matters stood
+in April, 1587. Santa Cruz was almost in despair,
+for he profoundly disliked the modification of his
+plans adopted by Philip, by which the bulk of the
+army under Parma was to cross in small boats to
+England when the Armada should arrive off the
+North Foreland to protect its passage from Dunkirk
+to the Thames, and the command was to be divided,
+Santa Cruz to be supreme at sea and Parma on land.
+The ships in Lisbon were still unready, and the crews
+and soldiers were joining in mere driblets from distant
+parts of Spain. The provisions, too, for all his host
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_463">[463]</span>came in slowly, and much of the stores rotted before
+they could be used. The ships from the eastern ports
+of Spain and from Naples and Messina were lagging;
+for delay was inevitable when every detail had to be
+directed by one overworked old man far away.</p>
+
+<p>Then suddenly, on the 18th April, 1587, the people
+of Cadiz saw in the offing a fleet of thirty white sail.
+“Some contingent of the Armada,” thought the Duke
+of Medina Sidonia, busy with his stores inside the
+harbour. It was nothing so welcome as that; for it
+was the terrible Drake himself, with his stout ships,
+bent upon mischief, notwithstanding Elizabeth’s timid
+wavering and her Admiral Borough’s warning.
+Looking up the harbour of Cadiz, Drake could see
+a forest of masts, many a tall ship, he knew, that was
+intended for the subjugation of his country. They
+were, for the most part, store ships, nearly a hundred
+of them altogether; and though they were crammed
+with provisions and material, neither their guns nor
+their crews were on board. Into the harbour dashed
+Drake, sinking the big galleon at the entrance that
+served as a guardship, and disdaining the fire of the
+protecting forts, and soon he had all the harbour at
+his mercy. The very name of Drake appalled the
+Spaniards, and without impeachment he turned adrift
+and set on fire some twenty-five of the principal ships.
+Soon the great crowd of galleons was a blazing ruin,
+and in the three weeks that followed Drake deliberately
+annihilated in the harbour of Cadiz the results of a
+year’s work and vast expenditure. Then, on the 1st
+May, 1587, he leisurely sailed away, secure in the
+knowledge that, come what might, no invasion of
+England by Spanish ships was possible for that
+summer.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_464">[464]</span></p>
+
+<p>In the Tagus, at Lisbon, there still lay the fifty
+great galleons, under Santa Cruz, which were to form
+the principal fighting force of the Armada, and as
+Drake stood off the mouth of the river, they looked
+tempting. He was more than half inclined to sail in
+and serve them as he had served the Cadiz ships; but
+he did not know whether they had their great guns on
+board or not. Whilst he was ascertaining this by his
+spies the peremptory orders came to him from the
+Queen that he was to provoke the King of Spain no
+more: the great fighting ships of Spain, with no
+crews or guns on board, were left unattacked, to
+Drake’s abiding regret, and the chance of making the
+invasion of England by Spain impossible altogether
+was missed through Elizabeth’s belief that by her
+usual methods she might avoid war, even at this
+eleventh hour. The damage done by Drake was in
+great part irreparable. Not only were many stores
+and ships destroyed in Cadiz, but for weeks afterwards
+the English fleet lay off the coast of Portugal,
+capturing great numbers of vessels loaded with pipe
+staves,&#x2060;<a id="FNanchor_284" href="#Footnote_284" class="fnanchor">[284]</a> for the water and wine casks of the Armada.
+These could not be quickly replaced, and their loss led
+to the short and bad water supply in the fleet, which
+was one of its worst calamities. When Drake sailed
+away, Spain was crippled for a time; and the capture
+of the rich Indies galleon, <i>San Felipe</i>, completed the
+discomfiture of King Philip, who had no alternative
+now but to order Santa Cruz to make ready his ships
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_465">[465]</span>in Lisbon, in a hurry, not now to invade England, but
+to prevent Drake from intercepting and plundering
+the silver fleet, whose safe arrival in Spain would
+alone enable Philip to proceed with his plan of invasion
+in the following year. The injury inflicted by
+Drake’s raid was a terrible one to Philip, but he
+plodded on, still convinced of the goodness of his
+methods and the ultimate certain victory of his
+cause.</p>
+
+<figure class="figcenter illowp53" id="illus13" style="max-width: 31.25em;">
+  <img class="w100" src="images/illus13.jpg" alt="">
+  <figcaption>
+    <p>QUEEN ELIZABETH</p>
+    <p>FROM THE PAINTING BY MARC GHEERAEDTS AT THE NATIONAL PORTRAIT GALLERY</p>
+  </figcaption>
+</figure>
+
+<p>To Parma, in Flanders, the news of Drake’s attack
+brought anguish and discouragement beyond words,
+for he was less blinded by fervour than his uncle was,
+and was brought nearer to his practical difficulties.
+He was a great commander and saw plainly the weak
+points of Philip’s scheme for the Armada, so far as it
+was communicated to him. A divided command and
+strictly limited authority were repugnant to him, a
+sovereign Prince and practically supreme in Spanish
+Flanders; and from the first he was determined that
+no blame for the failure which he feared would attend
+the attempt should be laid at his doors in consequence
+of his exceeding the strict letter of the
+King’s written instructions. He had strained every
+nerve to muster and equip his troops to be ready for
+the expected arrival of Santa Cruz with his fleet in
+the summer of 1587, and now he found himself with a
+large force of men, and short of money, provisions,
+and stores for their maintenance. But he was a
+general of resource, and utilised his army to capture
+the Sluys and invest Ostend and so improve his position
+before the English Peace Commissioners, the
+Earls of Derby and Hertford, Lord Cobham, Sir
+James Crofts, and Drs. Dale and Herbert, went over
+in the autumn of 1587, in the chimerical hope of
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_466">[466]</span>making peace with Philip. Leicester, Walsingham,
+and the sailors wondered aloud how her Majesty
+could be so blind as to believe that peace with Philip
+was possible now. Exhortations and prayers reached
+Elizabeth, from those who knew Philip’s intentions
+well, that she would allow another bold stroke to be
+dealt upon the enemy’s heart; but her parsimony and
+belief in her methods made her turn a deaf ear to
+all such urging, and England still stood unready in
+the face of danger so imminent and dire.</p>
+
+<p>Whilst Parma was still spinning matters out with
+the English Peace Commissioners on fine-drawn
+points of etiquette and procedure, in order to give
+time for really illuminating instructions to reach him
+from Philip, and Elizabeth was living still in her
+fool’s paradise, the plan of the Armada was finally
+settled; for Philip, dead against the advice of his
+seamen, had determined to send out the expedition at
+all risks, in the autumn of 1587, as soon as Santa
+Cruz returned from convoying the silver fleet. The
+letter in which he conveyed his plan to Parma on the
+4th September, 1587, is worth quoting at some
+length.&#x2060;<a id="FNanchor_285" href="#Footnote_285" class="fnanchor">[285]</a> The Armada, under Santa Cruz, was to sail
+up the Channel, avoiding, if possible, any decisive
+engagement, until it had reached the Straits of Dover
+and had joined hands with Parma. “We calculate that
+by the time you have invested Ostend you will have
+30,000 men ready for the main business, whilst 16,000
+Spanish infantry, a part of them veterans, will go in
+the Armada from here, the whole force of soldiers and
+sailors in the fleet reaching 22,000 men. I have
+decided that as soon as the Marquis of Santa Cruz
+returns with the flotillas to Cape St. Vincent ... he
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_467">[467]</span>shall leave them in charge of the galleys, and himself
+go straight to Lisbon, where he will take command of
+the fleet which will there await him, and, with God’s
+blessing, sail direct for the English Channel. On his
+arrival he will anchor off Margate, having given notice
+to you at Dunkirk of his approach. You in the meanwhile
+will be quite ready, and when you see the
+passage assured by the arrival of the fleet off Margate
+or at the mouth of the Thames, you will, if the
+weather permits, immediately cross over in the boats
+you will have ready. You and the Marquis will then
+co-operate, you being in command on land, and he at
+sea; and, with the help of God, will carry through
+the main business successfully. Until you have
+crossed, the Marquis is not to be diverted by anything
+from assuring your passage. His taking
+possession of Margate will cut the communications of
+the enemy, and prevent him to some extent from concentrating
+his forces. When you have landed (the
+Marquis giving you six thousand selected Spanish
+infantry as ordered),&#x2060;<a id="FNanchor_286" href="#Footnote_286" class="fnanchor">[286]</a> I am inclined to leave to the
+Marquis’s discretion what he should do with the fleet,
+whether to stay and ensure the passage of our people
+from Flanders to England and intercept any foreign
+aid that might be sent to the English, or to go and
+capture some port and divert the enemy’s strength; or
+else he might go and seize English ships lying in
+various ports, to deprive them of maritime forces,
+upon which their strength mainly depends. You will
+settle this point between you, the Marquis carrying
+out your joint decision, whilst you will hasten to the
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_468">[468]</span>front to conduct the enterprise on the lines laid down.
+I trust to God, in whose service it is done, that success
+may attend the enterprise, and that yours may be the
+hand to execute it.”</p>
+
+<p>The advice of all his best soldiers and sailors had
+failed to move Philip on one point because he knew
+that it meant delay, and he was ready now to risk
+everything rather than wait any longer. “We are
+quite aware of the risk incurred by sending a heavy
+fleet in the winter through the Channel without a sure
+harbour; but the various reasons which render this
+course necessary are sufficient to counterbalance the
+objections. As it is all for His good cause, God send
+good weather. The most important of all things is
+that you should be so completely ready when the
+Marquis arrives at Margate that you may be able to
+do your part at once without delay. You will see the
+danger of any tardiness, the Armada having to wait
+there with you unready; as until your passage is
+effected they will have no harbour for shelter, whereas
+when you have crossed he will have the safe, spacious
+river Thames. Otherwise he will be at the mercy of
+the weather, and if, which God forbid, any misfortune
+should happen to him you will understand what a
+state it would put us into. All will be assured, please
+God, by your good understanding; but do not forget
+that the forces collected and the vast monetary
+responsibility incurred make it extremely difficult for
+any such expedition to be organised again, if they
+[the English] escape us this time; whilst the obstacles
+and divisions which may, and certainly will, arise next
+summer, force us to carry through the enterprise this
+year or fail altogether. I hope this will not occur,
+but that great success may attend us by God’s grace,
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_469">[469]</span>since you are to be the instrument, and I have bountifully
+supplied you with money. I have told you how
+all our prestige is now at stake, and how entirely my
+tranquillity depends upon success being achieved, and
+I now once more earnestly enjoin you to justify the
+trust I place in you. Pray send me word that there
+shall be no shortcomings in this respect, as I shall be
+full of anxiety till I hear from you.”</p>
+
+<p>Thus, like a desperate gambler, Philip at last,
+after all these years of waiting and planning, was
+ready to stake everything—fleet, army, resources,
+prestige, and the cause for which he had lived—with
+the chances of success and the warnings of experience
+dead against him. For years past his expert advisers
+had been telling him how much superior in staunchness
+and seaworthiness the English ships were to
+his, that the new naval construction and armament, by
+which the artillery fire was delivered low and from
+the broadside, gave an enormous advantage to the
+handy English craft, which, by reason of their finer
+lines and weatherly qualities, could avoid fighting at
+close quarters. Santa Cruz, Parma, and Mendoza
+had pointed out to him the rashness of taking a vast,
+unwieldy fleet in the late autumn, the worst period of
+the year, up the Channel without a harbour of refuge
+in case of contrary winds or tempest; again and again
+he had been told that his ships were still unready, his
+stores and arms unconcentrated, and his army but
+partially mustered in various provinces of Spain and
+Italy. All this he knew, and yet in the face of
+disorganisation, incapacity, and corruption in his
+administration, of almost insuperable material difficulties
+in collecting and supplying such an enormous
+fleet as that contemplated, the growing alarm and
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_470">[470]</span>the opposition of all Christendom to his designs,
+he trusted, in the absence of all the mundane elements
+of success, to the special intervention of
+Providence in his favour. Patience and diplomacy
+had brought the possibility of success within his
+reach, but patience and diplomacy can be worked
+by the methods of a chess-player in a monastic
+cell, whilst armies and fleets must be raised,
+organised, and led by practical men on the spot,
+and this was where Philip failed. All power and
+initiative must be his, whilst he sat upon his office
+chair, annotating, checking, and dictating from
+morn till night, but never coming within hundreds
+of miles of executive action.</p>
+
+<p>In obedience to Philip’s fervent exhortations
+Parma did his best, keeping his army of German,
+Italian, and Walloon mercenaries in good heart and
+readiness whilst the sham peace preliminaries went
+on. Most of the English Commissioners themselves
+were soon satisfied that nothing would come
+of their mission, for months were wasted in discussing
+and wrangling over such questions as the place
+of meeting, the sufficiency of powers, and the
+points to be discussed, though Croft, representing
+the moderate Catholic party in England, strained
+his loyalty to the utmost to conciliate Parma.&#x2060;<a id="FNanchor_287" href="#Footnote_287" class="fnanchor">[287]</a>
+But still the Armada came not, though the winter
+of 1587 wore on and Parma’s painfully gathered thirty
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_471">[471]</span>thousand men-at-arms were rapidly melting away,
+demoralised by short commons and dying by
+thousands of the plague. Not even Parma’s
+extremity could move Santa Cruz to take a course
+that he knew would end in disaster. When he
+returned to Lisbon from convoying the silver fleet,
+he told Philip flatly that it would be certain disaster
+to take the Armada out at such a season of the year,
+the ships and men, moreover, being unready. Scorn
+and derision were poured upon the old admiral by the
+nobles and soldiers, as well as by the bureaucrats who
+were at the King’s elbow, though the sailors who had
+met the English on many seas knew that Santa Cruz
+was right. “Once let us grapple with the heretics,”
+cried the vapouring men-at-arms, “and all will be
+well; the sailorman’s task is but to bring us face
+to face with the foe and we shall know how to deal
+with him.” Philip rarely reproached those who served
+him, but even his almost inexhaustible patience gave
+way, and his curt, cold words of reproach to Santa
+Cruz for his tardiness in serving him broke the old
+hero’s heart, and in February, 1588, there passed
+to his grave the one man in Spain who perchance
+might have rescued from otherwise inevitable catastrophe
+the Armada and the mighty freight of hopes
+it bore.</p>
+
+<p>Philip was, indeed, nearly at his wits’ end, though
+personally he never lost faith in ultimate success.
+Sixtus was growing more and more sarcastic, and
+unwilling to pledge himself further to a policy which
+he now understood was making religion the stalking-horse
+of politics. Olivares might rail insolently at
+the Pontiff as a garrulous old curmudgeon, Cardinal
+Allen and Father Parsons, by word and pen, might,
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_472">[472]</span>and did, urge with bland eloquence the saintliness
+of the enterprise and the holy aims of the Catholic
+King; but all Europe now was aware and apprehensive
+of Philip’s overwhelming schemes—not against
+England alone, it was feared, but against all those who
+questioned the political supremacy of Spain. By
+every courier went frantic appeals and remonstrances
+from Parma to Philip, as week after week passed
+and no Armada appeared in the Straits of Dover.
+The army was getting out of hand, he said, and,
+what with plague and discontent, would soon disappear
+altogether, whilst of money he had none, and
+even his credit was exhausted.</p>
+
+<p>In December, 1587, Philip, apparently in desperation,
+thought that Parma, failing the coming of
+the Armada, might have made a dash across the
+Straits on his own account, and have captured
+England by a <i>coup-de-main</i>, whilst the peace preliminaries
+were being discussed. Parma, who was
+a practical soldier, was furious at such a suggestion,
+as well he might be. Writing to the King on the
+31st January, 1588, he asks how could he be expected
+to do what he had the King’s strict orders to avoid
+doing. He had laid down clearly, he said, the
+necessary conditions of success; namely, that the flat
+boats and skiffs, too small for fighting and unfit to
+weather a freshet, much less a storm, should be
+ensured an absolutely unimpeded passage across,
+whilst the French should be kept busy at home, and
+the Dutch rebels rendered powerless for harm.
+“Your Majesty ordered me to undertake this business,
+and be fully prepared, though the time given to
+me was short and my resources were limited. I have
+done my best to perform the impossible in order
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_473">[473]</span>to please you and carry out my duty.... Affairs
+have been unduly drawn out, both men and money
+have been delayed beyond the time indicated, and
+particularly the Spanish troops, who are the sinew of
+the whole business, and who have, after all, come
+in less number than agreed upon, and so dilapidated
+and maltreated as to look unfit for service for some time
+to come. The Italians and Germans have dwindled
+in consequence of having to march quickly in very
+bad weather, and they are so badly housed to keep
+them near the ports that many are missing; and our
+men are dying and falling away rapidly. I have
+strained every nerve to keep them near the coast
+to be ready for the arrival of Santa Cruz with the
+Armada ... and now I see that everything has
+turned out wrong and contrary to my hopes.
+Secrecy, which was of the utmost importance, has
+not been maintained. From Spain, Italy, and elsewhere
+come full details of the expedition. The King
+of France, as well as the League, has raised
+enormous forces, and they, being Frenchmen, are
+certainly not likely to be in our favour. Holland
+and Zeeland have armed as promptly as usual, and
+have prevented the few ships of our fleet in Antwerp
+from getting out, whilst the English themselves
+are preparing for their defence with great energy....
+If the Marquis had come in good time the
+crossing might then have been easily effected, by
+God’s help, as neither the English nor the Hollanders
+and Zeelanders were then ready.”</p>
+
+<p>Then Parma passionately protests against Philip’s
+attitude. Let the King, he says, tell him plainly what
+he wishes him to do. He will do it at all risks and at
+any cost; but to give him orders to do one thing and
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_474">[474]</span>expect him to do another in quite impossible circumstances
+is unfair. The position has changed, he
+continues, and the force brought by the Armada must
+be an overwhelming one to clear the seas or the
+troops from Flanders cannot cross. “The delay
+in the coming of the Armada is causing the total
+ruin of Flanders, and is hardly less disastrous to the
+rest of the States. The country can bear the
+burden but a short time longer. The greatest
+trouble of all is my lack of money. The cost of
+maintaining the boats, the keep of the soldiers, the
+subsidy to Guise and Lorraine, and the contract with
+the German mercenaries, is all so great that your
+Majesty must provide me with a great sum of money.
+If I run short, as indeed I am doing, your Majesty
+may be certain that evil will befall and all the past
+expenditure and effort will be wasted.”&#x2060;<a id="FNanchor_288" href="#Footnote_288" class="fnanchor">[288]</a>&#x2060;</p>
+
+<p>Two months after this, when the death of Santa
+Cruz had cast a still deeper gloom over the prospects
+of the Armada, Parma, now quite disillusioned,
+and convinced that the great enterprise would fail,
+urged Philip earnestly to allow him to turn the
+feigned negotiations for peace into real ones. “I
+should fail in my duty,” he wrote, “if I did not tell
+your Majesty that the general opinion is that if
+the English are proceeding straightforwardly, as
+they profess, and their alarm at your Majesty’s
+preparations and great power really inclines them
+towards you, it would be better to conclude peace
+with them. We should thus end the misery and
+calamity of these afflicted States, the Catholic
+religion would be established in them, and your
+ancient dominion restored. Besides this, we should
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_475">[475]</span>not jeopardise the great fleet which your Majesty
+has raised, and we should escape the danger of some
+disaster causing you to fail in the conquest of England
+whilst losing your hold of the Netherlands. It is
+thought that it would be much best to try to settle and
+pacify everything during your own happy reign, so that
+all might prosper by the grace of God and your
+Majesty’s goodness. Nothing more honourable and
+beneficent could happen to us, no step would be more
+heartily welcomed by your vassals, or more effectually
+check your rivals, especially the heretics, than a good
+and honourable peace. We should thus avoid the
+danger of disaster. If the enterprise were in the
+condition we expected it to be, and secrecy had been
+kept, we might, with God’s blessing, have looked
+more confidently for a successful issue. But things
+are not as we intended. The English have had time
+to arm by land and sea, and form alliances with the
+Danes and the German Protestants.... They are
+well aware of our plans, and we shall have plenty
+of work to do in effecting a landing and advancing
+afterwards, especially if our force is inadequate.”&#x2060;<a id="FNanchor_289" href="#Footnote_289" class="fnanchor">[289]</a>&#x2060;</p>
+
+<p>And thus, point by point, the greatest soldier of his
+time lays bare in letter after letter the weakness of
+Philip’s position and the hopelessness of success in the
+circumstances. But to all Parma’s remonstrances and
+advice the King had but one cold, precise reply.
+The expedition was to go in God’s own service, and
+it would be duly carried through by His help. That
+being the case, Parma could only stand more stiffly
+than ever upon the absolute fulfilment of his conditions,
+without which he knew that failure and disgrace
+would befall him. The sea must be kept clear of
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_476">[476]</span>enemies before he would embark a man for England,
+and he must have six thousand Spanish veterans from
+the Armada or he would not undertake the conquest.
+To Philip’s embarrassments there seemed no end.
+His greatest military officer thus predicted disaster,
+and would take no responsibility beyond the letter
+of his instructions, and Santa Cruz, his greatest
+seaman, had assumed the same attitude for similar
+reasons.</p>
+
+<p>But the death of Santa Cruz in February plunged
+the King into deeper difficulty than ever; for
+although it allowed him to control the details of
+the command more completely than Santa Cruz
+would have allowed him to do, he had no officer
+of sufficient rank, authority, and experience to replace
+the dead admiral. Seamen he had, many of
+them fine mariners from the Biscay coast, who had
+commanded the great flotillas from the Indies, and
+had faced with varied fortune the English plundering
+craft any time these twenty years; but the
+tradition lingered that the seaman was a mere
+drudge to carry the nobler soldier into the fight,
+and the quarrelsome, haughty soldier nobles scorned
+to serve under a man who was a seaman only.
+The men in nominal command of the great ships
+were nearly always military officers whose orders
+the shipmasters obeyed. So although Oquendo,
+Bertondona, and Recalde, with a half score of others,
+were as splendid sailors as ever ploughed the seas, the
+supreme command of the Armada could not be given
+to such as they. The Spanish nobles were jealous of
+each other, each standing upon his dignity in a way
+that to modern men looks ridiculous, but which to
+them was a matter of the first concern in life.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_477">[477]</span></p>
+
+<p>The man to be appointed to command, since the
+King himself could not go, must be of rank so
+exalted as to overtop the rest, and yet so amenable
+to Philip’s control as to allow the fleet to be commanded
+practically by the King from his writing-table.
+The only man in Spain who seemed to unite
+in himself these two qualities was appointed by Philip
+to lead the fleet upon which depended the fate of
+Spain and Catholic Christendom, and he was of all
+men the least fit to carry to success such a forlorn
+hope as the Armada—the Duke of Medina Sidonia,
+the magnate and admiral of Andalusia, who had been
+so busy collecting ships and stores in Cadiz and his
+other ports. He was a dignified noble of early middle
+age, well meaning and not without administrative
+ability in normal circumstances, though utterly unequal
+to deal with critical conditions. His high rank
+was sufficient to ensure the obedient respect of the
+other nobles and to hold the sailor commanders in
+awe. But, as he plaintively protested to the King, in
+dismay, when he was first informed of his appointment,
+he was utterly inexperienced in practical warfare both
+on land and sea. He knew nothing of navigation, he
+was always wretchedly seasick as soon as he lost sight
+of land, and he was quite unable to bear the expense
+which such a command entailed. His wife and friends
+were more emphatic still, and ridiculed the idea that
+such a poor creature as this should assume a responsibility
+so tremendous. Perhaps Philip was not sorry to
+have a weak and timid commander who would not
+dare to depart a hair’s breadth from his orders. At
+all events, his mind was made up; and Medina
+Sidonia, with a shrinking heart and unwilling spirit,
+was forced to go to Lisbon to replace the great
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_478">[478]</span>Santa Cruz as the Captain-General of the Invincible
+Armada.&#x2060;<a id="FNanchor_290" href="#Footnote_290" class="fnanchor">[290]</a>&#x2060;</p>
+
+<p>The Tagus was crowded with ships when, in
+March, 1588, Medina Sidonia took command.
+Eleven huge galleons, contributed by Portugal,
+headed by the flagship <i>San Martin</i>, was to be the
+squadron of the high admiral. The Andalusian
+squadron of fifteen vessels was to be led by Don
+Pedro de Valdés; and the famous Biscay seamen
+Oquendo and Martinez de Recalde were to lead
+other squadrons, and Diego Flores yet another.
+There were thirty-one armed store-ships, all carrying
+their quota of fighting-men as well as sailors, seven-and-twenty
+pinnaces and sloops, and four armed galleys,
+such as in the Mediterranean formed the Spanish
+fighting force. In all 114 ships lay there before
+the white city of Lisbon on its amphitheatre of
+hills. Gallant and strong they looked with their
+carved and gilded prows, their fluttering silken
+banners, and the soaring crucifix upon the highest
+pinnacle of their bows. But, alas! the dry-rot of
+Philip’s system was at the very heart of the
+enterprise. The soldiers came still in driblets and
+unwillingly. Arms were accumulating in one part
+of Spain, whilst the men to bear them were
+mustered in another. Stores went astray or remained
+bogged and derelict many miles from their
+destination; wine ran short and water went bad
+upon the ships. The long delay had caused the
+bottoms to foul and the seams to gape; and the
+overburdened Duke of Medina Sidonia could but
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_479">[479]</span>clamour more piteously than Santa Cruz had done
+for more supplies, more men, more arms, more
+money, more everything, unless disaster were to fall
+upon the expedition. The Irish and English Catholics
+on the quays of Lisbon, and the priests and friars
+who flocked everywhere, made light of difficulties.
+Was it not God’s own fleet, going upon His errand,
+and could He be beaten? Was not England tired to
+death of their heretic Queen and her ministers? and
+was not a whole nation waiting with open arms to
+welcome those who came as friends and deliverers?
+And the haughty, confident Spanish nobles, courtiers,
+and soldiers, fretting in idleness, scoffed and reviled
+the timid councils of the Duke of Medina Sidonia.
+But the sailormen shook their heads sadly. They
+knew that Biscay storms and Channel gales could
+not be controlled by swords and pikes, and that at
+sea Drake and the West-country ships could sail
+several points closer to the wind than could their
+lumbering round-bowed galleons that looked so
+mighty.</p>
+
+<p>No day passed without some fresh demand from
+Medina Sidonia; and at last Philip himself, long-suffering
+as he was, began to lose patience, for the
+spring was wearing on, and Parma, in despair, was,
+as we have seen, praying him either to abandon
+the enterprise or send him means for keeping together
+his dwindling army. At length, in April, it was
+impossible to hide any longer the open complaints
+of the soldier nobles. Medina Sidonia’s insatiable
+demands, they said, were prompted by sheer cowardice,
+with a view to preventing the sailing of the expedition
+altogether. Already he had under his command the
+strongest force that ever sailed the seas—130 vessels
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_480">[480]</span>of an aggregate tonnage of 58,000 tons, 2,431 cannon,
+and 30,000 men, between soldiers and sailors. All
+was ready. The orders to the fleet had been given
+long since—orders that prescribed a code of conduct
+for the rough seamen and men-at-arms such as would
+have befitted a convent school. There was to be no
+bad language or loose talk, no dicing or card-playing,
+no evil living. Prayers and Masses were to be sung
+daily, and every man, high and low, was to be confessed
+and absolved; for all were going on a sacred
+crusade against the foes of God and the faith. The
+friars and priests, both on the ships and ashore, exhorted
+ceaselessly all these reckless soldiers and half-savage
+sailors, until, with hearts aflame, they too
+began to scowl at the tardy Duke, who alone seemed
+to hold them back from their heaven-sent mission.</p>
+
+<p>At length, at the end of April, peremptory command
+came from Philip that the Armada must sail at once.
+The old orders to Santa Cruz were repeated. The
+fleet must go straight up the Channel to the North
+Foreland, avoiding an engagement if possible, until
+the main body of the English fleet should be met, as
+he thought it would, off Margate, where it was to be
+defeated or held in check, and then Parma and his
+army were to be protected on their way across to the
+Thames. All difficulties and dangers in such a plan
+were ignored or smoothed over by Philip. The
+warnings of years had been lost upon him. He still
+counted upon his big ships outmanœuvring and gaining
+the wind of the English craft; he still believed
+that the old grappling tactics were possible, in the face
+of Drake’s new strategy and the superior build of the
+English ships. And he broke faith with Parma too.
+Parma had never wavered in his condition. He
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_481">[481]</span>would not cross the sea until he was reinforced by six
+thousand Spanish veterans from the Armada; and yet
+in these last instructions to Medina Sidonia it was left
+to his discretion whether these veterans should be sent.
+Thus all the elements of discord existed before the
+great fleet sailed. An almost monkish discipline was
+enjoined on the fleet by the King, and it is clear that
+Philip himself had worked his spirit into a state of
+fervour which made him believe that sanctimoniousness
+would compensate for the absence of practical
+provisions for success. Saints’ names alone formed the
+watchwords, Jesus for Sunday, the Holy Ghost for
+Monday, the Holy Trinity for Tuesday, and so on;
+whilst the ships’ boys were to chant the Salve and
+good-morrow at daybreak and the Ave Maria at
+sunset on every vessel.</p>
+
+<p>On the 25th April, 1588, the sacred banner was
+delivered to the Duke by Philip’s Viceroy, the Archduke
+Albert, in Lisbon Cathedral; and thence with
+raised crosses, swinging censers, flaming candles, and
+chanting priests it was borne before the whole kneeling
+hosts of the Armada in the great square of the
+city. And then, sped by prayers and psalms of rogation,
+the Armada, with its cargo of hopes and fears,
+tried for a month in vain to get out of the Tagus, with
+a boisterous westerly gale blowing full into the mouth
+of the river. But at length, at the end of May, 1588,
+the fleet got clear out to sea; the Duke complaining
+to the last of his subordinates and of his ships to the
+King, and praying that God would avert disaster.
+Contrary winds still held the fleet back for a fortnight
+more on the coast, and then, on the 19th June, a
+great storm came and scattered the ships like chaff.
+Some, with the Duke, fled in dire danger to shelter in
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_482">[482]</span>Corunna, some even were blown within sight of the
+Scilly Isles, and many ran into the Biscay and
+Galician ports. Confusion, utter and complete, overcame
+the host. Many of the ships were crippled,
+spars broken, sails split, and planks started. Provisions
+were spoilt; the long delay had consumed
+stores and water; and again Medina Sidonia appealed
+to the King to abandon an enterprise which seemed
+so ill-starred, and again he clamoured for more stores,
+more men, more money, more arms.</p>
+
+<p>On the 24th June, in despair, he wrote to the King
+as follows: “When your Majesty ordered me to take
+command of this fleet I gave many reasons why I
+ought not to undertake it.... I saw that it was
+going against a powerful nation, which had the help
+of its neighbours, and that the task would require a
+much larger force than that collected at Lisbon; I
+therefore declined the command.... Since then the
+ships have suffered much, and the fleet is now greatly
+inferior to that of the English; the crews are weakened
+by sickness, and numbers fall ill daily in consequence
+of bad food.... The provisions are rotten, the
+water is stinking, and our stores will not last two
+months under the most favourable conditions.”&#x2060;<a id="FNanchor_291" href="#Footnote_291" class="fnanchor">[291]</a> Then
+he goes on to say that all the power of Spain, all the
+King’s hopes, credit, and prestige, are entrusted to this
+Armada, and its loss would mean irretrievable ruin.
+“It would be unwise,” he says, “to run such a risk
+even with equal forces, but much more so with such
+an inferior force as we have now, the men inexperienced,
+and the officers, on my conscience I assure
+your Majesty, hardly any of them knowing or capable
+of doing their duty.... Believe me, your Majesty,
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_483">[483]</span>we are very weak; pray do not allow any one to
+persuade you otherwise.” The timid Duke was full
+of forebodings, but Don Pedro de Valdés and other
+officers were writing at the same time to the King,
+impatiently scoffing at the delay, and Philip sternly,
+almost angrily, ordered Medina Sidonia to carry out
+his instructions without further parley—to patch up
+and collect his vessels again and sail up the Channel,
+with God’s blessing, to conquer the heretics who were
+holding the fair land of England.</p>
+
+<p>And thus Philip the Prudent cast to the winds all
+the dictates of prudence. Parma, at all events, could
+not be accused either of ineptitude or of cowardice, and
+yet he had twice solemnly warned his uncle to abandon
+his plan, now that all Europe knew of it and was prepared
+to frustrate it. If Philip had determined (as indeed
+he had) to run all risks and depend upon the special
+interposition of Providence in his favour, it was surely
+the height of folly to entrust the task, upon the success
+of which the whole future of his cause depended, to
+two unwilling commanders, both of whom deliberately
+foretold failure. It was, perhaps, impossible for him
+to dismiss Parma at short notice; but the letter from
+Medina Sidonia quoted above would amply have justified
+either his recall or the abandonment of the enterprise
+for which he, the commander, foretold defeat.
+Like Villeneuve at Trafalgar, Medina Sidonia was a
+beaten man before he met his enemy; but Philip,
+blind to all worldly considerations and steadfast in
+his faith in himself and his cause, elected to strike
+his supreme blow against Elizabeth with an obsolete
+and faulty weapon wielded by a feeble hand.</p>
+
+<p>With plentiful prayers and the blessings of Churchmen,
+with abundant copies of Father Parsons’s
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_484">[484]</span>allocutions to his countrymen on the blessings of
+Spanish rule, and Cardinal Allen’s exhortations in
+favour of the old faith, the Armada sailed. The
+victuals were scanty and bad, the water was putrid,
+the craft overcrowded and fever-haunted; the admiral
+was faint-hearted and prophesied disaster; but the
+crank ships, with strained spars and gaping seams,
+though they looked so brave and loomed so high,
+sailed out of Corunna on the 12th July, 1588, doomed
+beforehand to disaster, which only a miracle from on
+high could avert from them. How the disaster fell
+there is no space here to relate; but a week’s running
+fight up the Channel, and one hopeless battle at bay,
+struck the first irreparable blow at the fable of Philip’s
+irresistible power, and the prestige that clung still
+around the name of the Emperor and his son.</p>
+
+<p>We have followed the process by which circumstances
+and the personal character of the chief actors
+in the great drama had driven Philip, after thirty years
+of diplomacy in trying to win England to his side
+without any concessions on his part, into a violent
+course at last. The result of his over-caution for so
+many years had been that he was forced to be reckless
+after all or fail entirely; the outcome of his fatal
+desire to win all for himself without risking anything
+was that when the crisis came he had to risk everything
+on a losing hazard. Elizabeth was more
+fortunate in the issue than her brother-in-law, but
+hardly more wise. Almost to the day when the
+Armada sighted her coasts she was beguiled into
+a belief that her negotiations with Parma might
+avert war, though Walsingham and the sailors were
+almost in despair at what they saw was the terrible
+risk she ran. She was far more hard-fisted and
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_485">[485]</span>parsimonious than Philip, too, when once it was
+brought home to her that she and her people would
+have to fight for the independence of England. Her
+men, unlike those at the bidding of Philip, were full
+of initiative and boldness, though they had to cope
+with material obstacles almost as great as his. All
+was unready in England when the peril loomed near,
+and even if the Queen had been as liberal as she was
+stingy, sufficient stores could not in the circumstances
+have been improvised and concentrated.</p>
+
+<p>But every one in England, high and low, did his
+best. There was but little of the vapouring self-confidence
+that led the Spanish soldiers into the
+disillusionment which destroyed their nation’s potency;
+but the predictions and assurances with regard to
+England of Parsons and the English Jesuits and
+Spanish pensioners, were all signally falsified. The
+moderate English Catholics, who quite conceivably
+might have welcomed the adoption of an English
+Catholic successor to Elizabeth under Spanish
+patronage, were indignant at the Jesuit-Spanish plan
+to foist Philip’s daughter upon the throne after
+deposing Elizabeth and submitting the country to
+conquest. The treatment meted out to Englishmen
+in Spain by the Inquisition had given even to
+Catholics no desire to live under a rule which made
+such an institution a branch of Government. So,
+when the time of trial came, the Howards, Catholics
+though they were, and often as they had been parties
+to Philip’s plans, fought against him as stoutly as the
+veriest Puritan of them all. A generation had passed
+away since Philip had personally felt the pulse of
+England. Allen, Englefield, and Parsons had not,
+for many years before the Armada sailed, seen with
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_486">[486]</span>their own eyes the growing spirit of patriotism which
+under Elizabeth was binding Englishmen as such
+together, independent of their creeds; and the Jesuit
+Churchmen and pensioned laymen who advised Philip
+that the English people would welcome the men on
+the Armada with open arms as liberators were as the
+blind leading the blind, for they were not in touch
+with nor understood the England that had arisen since
+their time.</p>
+
+<p>For the rest of Philip’s life, ten years, a more
+pressing task even than that of winning England by
+finesse or force claimed his every effort. The murder
+of Henry III. made a Protestant King of France; and
+to prevent the country from joining the Reformation
+Philip and Spain would have to fight until the
+last dollar was spent and the last Spanish soldier was
+dead. Again, the Infanta was his candidate for the
+Crown of all or a portion of her mother’s land; and,
+as in the case of England, the forces of patriotism in
+the end overrode the differences of creed, and all
+Frenchmen coalesced to oppose foreign aggression.
+Henry IV. “went to Mass,” it is true, and that France
+remained a Catholic country through his efforts was
+the only great triumph of Philip’s strenuous life.</p>
+
+<p>From the time when the Armada, or such of the
+ships as escaped the wild Atlantic gales, crept home,
+plague-stricken, battered wrecks, and the cry of mortal
+anguish went up from all Spanish hearts at the
+cruel disappointment of their hopes, Philip, it is true,
+continued to strive against the woman who had beaten
+him. These efforts I have described elsewhere: but
+with no hope of conquering England by frontal
+attack was one little expedition after another with
+infinite difficulty and friction fitted out thenceforward
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_487">[487]</span>in Corunna. For that Philip knew well the time had
+passed, notwithstanding the continued exhortations
+of the Churchmen and pensioned refugees. Thenceforward
+it was his plan to incite Irish Catholics to
+revolt, to render Elizabeth unsafe and uneasy, in
+order to prevent her from aiding Henry of Navarre
+in France; to look forward to the time when her
+death, by natural or unnatural means, should give
+him a chance of manœuvring a sovereign apt for his
+purpose upon the throne of England. With the
+failure of Philip’s thirty-five years’ struggle to gain
+the control of England for his ends under two sister
+Queens, the downfall of his own system and the decay
+of Spain were absolutely inevitable, though the
+tradition of its potency died hard and was maintained
+long after its reality had fled.</p>
+
+<p>It is bootless to consider what would have been the
+result if Philip’s methods had been less rigid, and if
+he could have fought his enemies with their own
+weapons; for if such had been the case he would not
+have been Philip, and the situation that made the
+long struggle incumbent upon him would never have
+been created. But, though on his agonising death-bed
+in his poor cell at the Escorial, in the autumn of
+1598, he knew that Elizabeth still defied him, and the
+Dutch Protestants repudiated his rule, that wherever
+the yoke of Rome was shaken off it could be imposed
+no more, he still held firmly to his faith beyond all
+earthly evidence, that God in His good way and
+time would send triumphant victory to the cause for
+which He and Philip had fought in partnership—the
+supremacy of Catholicism and the preponderance of
+Spain amongst the nations.</p>
+
+<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop" aria-hidden="true">
+
+<div class="footnotes">
+
+<div class="chapter">
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_488">[488]</span></p>
+
+<h2 class="nobreak" id="FOOTNOTES">FOOTNOTES</h2>
+
+</div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a id="Footnote_1" href="#FNanchor_1" class="label">[1]</a> Moryson to the Council, 7th October 1552. Record Office.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a id="Footnote_2" href="#FNanchor_2" class="label">[2]</a> Thirlby, Hoby, and Moryson to the Council. State Papers,
+Germany.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a id="Footnote_3" href="#FNanchor_3" class="label">[3]</a> Sir Philip Hoby to Cecil. Hatfield Papers and Haynes.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a id="Footnote_4" href="#FNanchor_4" class="label">[4]</a> Papiers d’État du Cardinal de Granvelle, vol. iv.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a id="Footnote_5" href="#FNanchor_5" class="label">[5]</a> The envoys to the Emperor. Papiers d’État de Granvelle,
+vol. iv.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a id="Footnote_6" href="#FNanchor_6" class="label">[6]</a> The Emperor to the envoys. Papiers d’État de Granvelle,
+vol. iv.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a id="Footnote_7" href="#FNanchor_7" class="label">[7]</a> The Imperial envoys to the Emperor. Papiers d’État,
+vol. iv.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a id="Footnote_8" href="#FNanchor_8" class="label">[8]</a> The Emperor to the envoys, 20th July.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a id="Footnote_9" href="#FNanchor_9" class="label">[9]</a> Contemporary account by Antonio de Guaras. Edited by
+Garnett.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a id="Footnote_10" href="#FNanchor_10" class="label">[10]</a> Ambassades de Noailles, vol. ii</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a id="Footnote_11" href="#FNanchor_11" class="label">[11]</a> Renard to the Emperor. Papiers d’État de Granvelle,
+vol. iv.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a id="Footnote_12" href="#FNanchor_12" class="label">[12]</a> He had, in fact, several children by the Lady Doña Isabel
+de Osorio, with whom he had lived since his young wife’s death.
+The fact that Granvelle puts the word in the plural proves that
+this was quite recognised.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a id="Footnote_13" href="#FNanchor_13" class="label">[13]</a> In the private letter which the Emperor wrote to his son on
+the subject he says: “if the choice falls upon a foreigner, I
+think the English would rather have me than any one else, as
+they have always been well disposed towards me. But I can
+assure you that even greater dominions” (<i>i.e.</i>, than England)
+“would not seduce me nor divert me from the very different
+intention which I hold. If, therefore, they should send and
+propose this marriage to me, I have thought that it would be
+better to suggest you, and the matter could then be carried
+through successfully. The benefits and advantages which would
+accrue are so great and notorious that they need not be
+particularised. I only place it before you for your consideration.
+Let me know at once what you think of it, so that we may act
+accordingly; but keep it strictly secret.”—MS. Simancas.
+Printed in the <i>Retiro, estancia y muerte del Emperador Carlos V.</i></p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a id="Footnote_14" href="#FNanchor_14" class="label">[14]</a> Granvelle to Renard. Papiers d’État, vol. iv.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a id="Footnote_15" href="#FNanchor_15" class="label">[15]</a> Although Renard at this interview of 6th August did not,
+according to his own statement, bring forward Philip’s name to
+the Queen, public rumour was already busy with it. Noailles
+three days afterwards wrote to the King of France saying that
+the Imperial ambassadors had proposed Philip to the Queen:
+“and it was not now so sure that she would marry Courtenay.
+It is thought that the effect of his presence has greatly damaged
+his reputation, although he is quite handsome and well bred.”—“<i>Mais
+la nourriture que vous, Sire, pouvez penser qu’il á pris ayant
+été toujours fermé dés son enfance dans des murailles lui a laissé
+si peu de gravité et d’experience qui je crains beaucoup qu’il soit
+pour se conduire á telle fortune, Combien que la commune de toute
+cette province la lui desire.</i>”—Ambassades de Noailles.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a id="Footnote_16" href="#FNanchor_16" class="label">[16]</a> The Princess in question was the daughter of Eleanor,
+sister of the Emperor, and now the widow of Francis I. of
+France.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a id="Footnote_17" href="#FNanchor_17" class="label">[17]</a> Renard had seen Bishop Gardiner, the Queen’s principal
+minister, the day before, and had tried to draw some declaration
+from him, although he was known to be in favour of the
+Courtenay match. The Bishop said that he would not suggest
+any name to the Queen; but if she asked his advice as to
+marrying a foreigner, he would tell her that, for the good of her
+country and her own safety, it would be better to marry an
+Englishman, as the very name of foreigner was hated by the
+English. “As for the Prince of Spain,” continued Gardiner,
+“if she married him, the people would never tolerate the
+Spanish character; which even the Flemish subjects of the
+Emperor detest; besides which, the marriage would mean for
+England a perpetual war with France.”—Papiers d’État de
+Granvelle, vol. iv.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a id="Footnote_18" href="#FNanchor_18" class="label">[18]</a> Philip wrote to his father, “If the marriage should be
+proposed for your Majesty, that would be the best course. But
+if your Majesty persists in the view you state to me in your
+letter and you think better to treat of the marriage for me, you
+know already that as an entirely obedient son I have no other
+will than yours, and above all on an affair of this importance.
+I therefore leave it to your Majesty to act as you deem best.”—MS.
+Simancas. <i>Retiro estancia y muerte del Emperador</i>, etc.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a id="Footnote_19" href="#FNanchor_19" class="label">[19]</a> A curious account of these preparations will be found in
+Machyn’s Diary.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a id="Footnote_20" href="#FNanchor_20" class="label">[20]</a> Ambassades de Noailles, vol. ii. Noailles, in describing the
+scene to the King of France, says that when de Geneda entered
+the boat that was to convey him down the Thames on his way
+to Spain, he announced that Prince Philip would visit Queen
+Mary in the following March on his way to Flanders; and
+Noailles advises the King of France to muster his ships in
+the Channel to prevent the Prince’s passage.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a id="Footnote_21" href="#FNanchor_21" class="label">[21]</a> Antonio de Guaras.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a id="Footnote_22" href="#FNanchor_22" class="label">[22]</a> Antonio de Guaras, who was present in the Abbey. It was
+noticed by the Imperial ambassadors that Princess Elizabeth,
+who at the ceremony took the place due to a Royal Princess,
+with Anne of Cleves, exchanged significant glances with Noailles
+whenever she met him. In the course of the day she complained
+to the French ambassador of the weight of the coronet
+she was wearing. “Patience!” was his reply, “it will soon
+produce a better one.”—Record Office, Brussels Transcripts, i.
+p. 436.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a id="Footnote_23" href="#FNanchor_23" class="label">[23]</a> The details of these interesting interviews are in Renard’s
+Letters, Record Office, Brussels Transcripts, vol. i.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a id="Footnote_24" href="#FNanchor_24" class="label">[24]</a> Renard to the Emperor, 31st October. Record Office,
+Brussels Transcripts. Mary had apparently waited until the
+Acts had passed declaring her mother’s marriage legal. This
+was effected on the 28th October.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a id="Footnote_25" href="#FNanchor_25" class="label">[25]</a> The Emperor to his son, 21st January, 1554, asking him to
+ratify the treaty, notwithstanding the hardness of the conditions.
+MSS. Simancas, Estado 808.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a id="Footnote_26" href="#FNanchor_26" class="label">[26]</a> Queen Jane and Queen Mary.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a id="Footnote_27" href="#FNanchor_27" class="label">[27]</a> Queen Jane and Queen Mary.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a id="Footnote_28" href="#FNanchor_28" class="label">[28]</a> Record Office, Brussels Transcripts, vol. i. 979.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a id="Footnote_29" href="#FNanchor_29" class="label">[29]</a> Documentos Ineditos, vol. iii.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a id="Footnote_30" href="#FNanchor_30" class="label">[30]</a> Queen Jane and Queen Mary.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a id="Footnote_31" href="#FNanchor_31" class="label">[31]</a> Ambassades de Noailles, Instruction à Lamarque, vol. iii.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a id="Footnote_32" href="#FNanchor_32" class="label">[32]</a> Documentos Ineditos, iii.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a id="Footnote_33" href="#FNanchor_33" class="label">[33]</a> Renard to the Emperor, 8th March. Record Office, Brussels
+Transcripts, vol. i.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a id="Footnote_34" href="#FNanchor_34" class="label">[34]</a> Renard to the Emperor, 8th March. Record Office, Brussels
+Transcripts, vol. i.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a id="Footnote_35" href="#FNanchor_35" class="label">[35]</a> Ibid.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a id="Footnote_36" href="#FNanchor_36" class="label">[36]</a> As showing the excited condition of the public mind even
+yet with regard to the marriage, it may be mentioned that the day
+before this scene was passing, on the 6th March, two bands of
+about 300 London urchins collected in a field—probably Moorfields—and
+engaged in strenuous combat against each other;
+one band representing the Queen’s and Philip’s forces, and the
+other those of the King of France and Wyatt’s. Noailles, in
+his account of the affair—though Renard does not mention the
+detail—says that the unfortunate boy who was made to represent
+the Prince of Spain was captured and hanged, very nearly
+fatally. The leaders of the fight on both sides were well
+whipped and imprisoned by the Queen’s orders.—Ambassades
+de Noailles, iii. 130. Renard’s Letter, 9th March. Record
+Office, Brussels Transcripts, and Queen Jane and Queen Mary.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a id="Footnote_37" href="#FNanchor_37" class="label">[37]</a> Muñoz’s narrative, Sociedad de Bibliofilos.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a id="Footnote_38" href="#FNanchor_38" class="label">[38]</a> Muñoz’s narrative.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a id="Footnote_39" href="#FNanchor_39" class="label">[39]</a> On this and on all occasions that English fashions of the
+time are described by Spaniards, mention was made of the
+enormous number of ornamental buttons that English gentlemen
+wore on their garments.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a id="Footnote_40" href="#FNanchor_40" class="label">[40]</a> Muñoz’s narrative.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a id="Footnote_41" href="#FNanchor_41" class="label">[41]</a> Muñoz’s narrative.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a id="Footnote_42" href="#FNanchor_42" class="label">[42]</a> In fact they shipped a large number of horses.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a id="Footnote_43" href="#FNanchor_43" class="label">[43]</a> Muñoz’s narrative. Sociedad de Bibliofilos.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a id="Footnote_44" href="#FNanchor_44" class="label">[44]</a> Record Office, Brussels Transcripts.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a id="Footnote_45" href="#FNanchor_45" class="label">[45]</a> Renard to the Emperor. Record Office, Brussels Transcripts.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a id="Footnote_46" href="#FNanchor_46" class="label">[46]</a> Renard to the Emperor, 9th June. Record Office, Brussels
+Transcripts.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a id="Footnote_47" href="#FNanchor_47" class="label">[47]</a> Noailles to the King, 17th June, 1554. Ambassades.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a id="Footnote_48" href="#FNanchor_48" class="label">[48]</a> Renard to the Prince, 13th March, Record Office, Brussels
+Transcripts.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a id="Footnote_49" href="#FNanchor_49" class="label">[49]</a> Papiers d’État de Granvelle, vol. iv.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a id="Footnote_50" href="#FNanchor_50" class="label">[50]</a> The only warrant for the seasick story is that contained in a
+letter from Bedford and Fitzwalter in Spain to the Council,
+saying that the Prince “was wont to be very sick upon the sea,”
+and proposing that some preparations should be made at
+Plymouth for his landing there in case of need. But, in fact,
+Philip had a smooth voyage, and remained at anchor on the
+<i>Espiritu Santo</i> in Southampton harbour for nearly twenty-four
+hours before he landed, and was in perfect health.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a id="Footnote_51" href="#FNanchor_51" class="label">[51]</a> The bulk of the Spanish fleet was not allowed even to enter
+the harbour of Southampton for provisions and water, which
+only after much unpleasantness and discourtesy they were able
+to obtain at Portsmouth.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a id="Footnote_52" href="#FNanchor_52" class="label">[52]</a> Whilst they all praise the sumptuous fittings of the rooms,
+not a single Spanish narrator says a word of the story told by
+the malicious Venetian, that Philip was shocked by the words
+“Fidei Defensor” being embroidered on the hangings.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a id="Footnote_53" href="#FNanchor_53" class="label">[53]</a> Enriquez’s narrative. Sociedad de Bibliofilos.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a id="Footnote_54" href="#FNanchor_54" class="label">[54]</a> Philip’s courtiers sneered that Browne took the King’s
+horses to his own stables to recover from the voyage, in order
+that he might have a chance of keeping them altogether.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a id="Footnote_55" href="#FNanchor_55" class="label">[55]</a> Muñoz’s and Enriquez’s narratives. Sociedad de Bibliofilos.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a id="Footnote_56" href="#FNanchor_56" class="label">[56]</a> Narrative by Car, who was a servant to Pescara. Printed in
+Milan, 1554. See the author’s “Year After the Armada.”</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a id="Footnote_57" href="#FNanchor_57" class="label">[57]</a> All foreign visitors to England in the sixteenth century
+remarked upon the great profusion of plate used for household
+purposes at the time.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a id="Footnote_58" href="#FNanchor_58" class="label">[58]</a> Enriquez’s narrative.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a id="Footnote_59" href="#FNanchor_59" class="label">[59]</a> Philip had sent a Spanish magistrate, Alcalde Bribiesca, to
+England before him, to dispose of cases in his own following.
+The English were bitterly jealous of this, and refused to acknowledge
+any jurisdiction for him.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a id="Footnote_60" href="#FNanchor_60" class="label">[60]</a> Enriquez’s narrative. The narrator was a kinsman of the
+Duchess.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a id="Footnote_61" href="#FNanchor_61" class="label">[61]</a> This reminds one of Queen Elizabeth’s dancing, which was
+praised as “high and disposedly.”</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a id="Footnote_62" href="#FNanchor_62" class="label">[62]</a> Queen Jane and Queen Mary (Camden Society), Foxe’s
+Acts and Monuments, and other contemporary chronicles.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a id="Footnote_63" href="#FNanchor_63" class="label">[63]</a> John Elder’s Letter, Camden Society.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a id="Footnote_64" href="#FNanchor_64" class="label">[64]</a> John Elder’s Letter, Camden Society.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a id="Footnote_65" href="#FNanchor_65" class="label">[65]</a> MSS. Simancas, Estado 808.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a id="Footnote_66" href="#FNanchor_66" class="label">[66]</a> Queen Jane and Queen Mary.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a id="Footnote_67" href="#FNanchor_67" class="label">[67]</a> Ambassades de Noailles, vol. iii. 311.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a id="Footnote_68" href="#FNanchor_68" class="label">[68]</a> Letters from both Mary and Pole to the King of France
+advocating the conclusion of Peace are in Ambassades de
+Noailles, vol. iii. 323-4.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a id="Footnote_69" href="#FNanchor_69" class="label">[69]</a> Queen Jane and Queen Mary.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a id="Footnote_70" href="#FNanchor_70" class="label">[70]</a> Queen Jane and Mary, and Holingshed.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a id="Footnote_71" href="#FNanchor_71" class="label">[71]</a> We get at this time (October, 1554), whilst the royal couple
+were at Hampton Court, a glimpse of their life together. “As
+for newes you shall understand that the King’s and Queen’s
+Majesties be in helth and merry, whom I did see daunce
+togethers uppon Sunday night at the Court, where was a brave
+maskery of cloth of gold and silver apparailed in mariners
+garments, the chief doer whereof I think was my lord Admiral.”—Francis
+Yaxley to Sir W. Cecil, Landsdown MSS. (Cotton),
+vol. iii. 44.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a id="Footnote_72" href="#FNanchor_72" class="label">[72]</a> Venetian Calendar.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a id="Footnote_73" href="#FNanchor_73" class="label">[73]</a> Ibid.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a id="Footnote_74" href="#FNanchor_74" class="label">[74]</a> In the Venetian Calendar, 21st September, 1554, there is
+a dignified letter from Pole to Philip reproaching him for
+allowing him, a Prince of the Church, an Englishman exiled
+for Mary’s sake half a lifetime, and a Legate of the head of the
+Church, thus to knock at the door of his country unheeded by
+a Catholic King.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a id="Footnote_75" href="#FNanchor_75" class="label">[75]</a> Mason to the Queen and King, 9th November, Foreign
+Calendar.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a id="Footnote_76" href="#FNanchor_76" class="label">[76]</a> Ibid.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a id="Footnote_77" href="#FNanchor_77" class="label">[77]</a> Enriquez’s narrative (Sociedad de Bibliofilos) and John
+Elder’s letter, Camden Society. Queen Jane and Queen
+Mary.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a id="Footnote_78" href="#FNanchor_78" class="label">[78]</a> John Elder says that, as an instance of Pole’s good repute,
+that when he (Elder) was in Rome it was a common saying there,
+not only amongst Englishmen, but amongst Italians as well,
+“<i>Polus Cardinalis natione Anglus pietatis et literarum testimonio
+dignus, non qui Polus Anglus, sed qui Polus angelus vocetur</i>.”</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a id="Footnote_79" href="#FNanchor_79" class="label">[79]</a> Enriquez’s narrative.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a id="Footnote_80" href="#FNanchor_80" class="label">[80]</a> John Elder’s letter.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a id="Footnote_81" href="#FNanchor_81" class="label">[81]</a> Papiers d’État de Granvelle, vol. iv.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a id="Footnote_82" href="#FNanchor_82" class="label">[82]</a> Enriquez’s narrative.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a id="Footnote_83" href="#FNanchor_83" class="label">[83]</a> Enriquez’s narrative.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a id="Footnote_84" href="#FNanchor_84" class="label">[84]</a> Michaeli says that ten thousand people listened to the
+sermon.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a id="Footnote_85" href="#FNanchor_85" class="label">[85]</a> Signor Claretta has published (Pinerolo, 1892) an interesting
+series of documents from the Turin Archives giving full
+particulars of the visit.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a id="Footnote_86" href="#FNanchor_86" class="label">[86]</a> The assertion of so many historians that she came to Whitehall
+at Christmas, 1554, is erroneous. She did not come till the
+end of April, long after Savoy’s departure.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a id="Footnote_87" href="#FNanchor_87" class="label">[87]</a> At this time (late in 1554) a large number of Spanish
+shopkeepers and artisans had established themselves in London
+under the erroneous belief referred to in an earlier page, that
+the marriage of Philip meant their entering into possession of
+the kingdom. This had been so much resented by the Londoners
+that not only were attacks upon these people constant, as
+recorded by Enriquez and others, but on the 12th October Mary
+had been obliged to issue a decree commanding all Spanish
+tradesmen to shut up their shops. This, of course, was a new
+source of complaint with them.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a id="Footnote_88" href="#FNanchor_88" class="label">[88]</a> Foreign Calendar.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a id="Footnote_89" href="#FNanchor_89" class="label">[89]</a> Queen Jane and Queen Mary.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a id="Footnote_90" href="#FNanchor_90" class="label">[90]</a> Papiers d’État de Granvelle, vol. iv.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a id="Footnote_91" href="#FNanchor_91" class="label">[91]</a> On occasion of a grand tilting at Whitehall on the 25th
+March twenty gentlemen made a brilliant show, and Philip
+distinguished himself so much that the Queen became anxious
+and apprehensive, sending to beseech him, as he had run
+so many courses and done enough, not to encounter any
+further risk for her sake. He also attended another grand
+tilt at the weddings of Lords Maltravers and Fitzwalter in the
+following month.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a id="Footnote_92" href="#FNanchor_92" class="label">[92]</a> Venetian Calendar.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a id="Footnote_93" href="#FNanchor_93" class="label">[93]</a> “Acts and Monuments.”</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a id="Footnote_94" href="#FNanchor_94" class="label">[94]</a> Elizabeth’s Italian master was arrested in connection with
+one of these publications, called “A Dialogue.”—Michaeli,
+Venetian Papers.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a id="Footnote_95" href="#FNanchor_95" class="label">[95]</a> Michaeli’s advices, Venetian Calendar.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a id="Footnote_96" href="#FNanchor_96" class="label">[96]</a> Michaeli on this visit mentions that he saw Queen Mary,
+“who was looking very well; for, placing herself every morning
+at a small window, she likes to see the procession pass, which
+at her desire, goes round the palace court, she most courteously
+bowing her head in acknowledgment to all persons who salute
+her ... as she did twice with extraordinary cheerfulness and
+graciousness to the Portuguese ambassador and myself, we
+having gone into the court to accompany the King to Mass,
+and joined the procession on the invitation of the Lords of the
+Council. Her Majesty expects and hopes during this week to
+comfort the realm by an auspicious delivery, but the greater
+part of her women think that she will go beyond.”</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a id="Footnote_97" href="#FNanchor_97" class="label">[97]</a> Renard to the Emperor, 27th June, 1555.—Papiers d’État
+de Granvelle.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a id="Footnote_98" href="#FNanchor_98" class="label">[98]</a> Michaeli, Venetian Calendar.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a id="Footnote_99" href="#FNanchor_99" class="label">[99]</a> Ambassades de Noailles, vol. v. 136.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a id="Footnote_100" href="#FNanchor_100" class="label">[100]</a> Ambassades de Noailles, vol. v. 98.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a id="Footnote_101" href="#FNanchor_101" class="label">[101]</a> Ambassades de Noailles.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a id="Footnote_102" href="#FNanchor_102" class="label">[102]</a> Michaeli to the Doge, 3rd September, 1555.—Venetian
+Calendar.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a id="Footnote_103" href="#FNanchor_103" class="label">[103]</a> It must be recollected that Philip’s tolerance and moderation
+with regard to the extreme persecution of heresy in
+England was purely a matter of policy, as his after life clearly
+proved. At a later period, moreover, he actually claimed for
+himself the credit of the religious persecution. Cabrera de
+Cordoba quotes a letter from him to his sister Juana, in which
+he says, “I, having diverted the realm [England] from the
+sects and brought it into obedience to the Church, and having
+always been in favour of the punishment of the heretics, which
+is now being carried out so smoothly in England” (Cabrera,
+“Vida de Felipe II.”).</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a id="Footnote_104" href="#FNanchor_104" class="label">[104]</a> State Papers, Domestic, September, 1555.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a id="Footnote_105" href="#FNanchor_105" class="label">[105]</a> Ambassades de Noailles.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a id="Footnote_106" href="#FNanchor_106" class="label">[106]</a> This, of course, was late in 1555, before the truce of
+Vaucelles in February, 1556.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a id="Footnote_107" href="#FNanchor_107" class="label">[107]</a> Michaeli to the Doge, Venetian Calendar, 28th April, 1556.
+She had been asked many times to go to Flanders to stay with
+Philip’s aunt, Mary of Hungary.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a id="Footnote_108" href="#FNanchor_108" class="label">[108]</a> The process of these conspiracies may be followed step by
+step in the Letters of Noailles (Ambassades), Michaeli (Venetian
+Calendar), and Wotton (Foreign Calendar).</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a id="Footnote_109" href="#FNanchor_109" class="label">[109]</a> Michaeli, Venetian Calendar.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a id="Footnote_110" href="#FNanchor_110" class="label">[110]</a> In a pathetic and submissive letter (Cotton, Titus B. 2,
+57, British Museum) Mary beseeches Philip to allow her to
+defer the matter until he comes to England. Her doubts on the
+matter seem to have been partly inspired by jealousy of her
+sister, who if she married Emmanuel Philibert in Flanders
+would be near Philip, for she adds: “If you will not defer it I
+shall be jealous of your Highness, which would be worse for
+me than death—I have already begun to feel uneasy.”</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a id="Footnote_111" href="#FNanchor_111" class="label">[111]</a> Noailles and Michaeli.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a id="Footnote_112" href="#FNanchor_112" class="label">[112]</a> The particulars of this treaty will be found in the author’s
+Calendar of Spanish State Papers, Henry VIII., vols, vi., vii.,
+and viii.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a id="Footnote_113" href="#FNanchor_113" class="label">[113]</a> Sorzano to the Doge, May, 1557, Venetian Calendar, detailing
+a conversation with Henry on the subject.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a id="Footnote_114" href="#FNanchor_114" class="label">[114]</a> The Earl of Bedford, writing to Cecil on the 21st August,
+says that “the Count of Egmont with two thousand Spaniards
+and Schwartzreiters and as many of us made a ride into France
+of twenty-two miles, and found no great resistance, nor should
+have done though we had gone much further.”—Haynes’ State
+Papers.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a id="Footnote_115" href="#FNanchor_115" class="label">[115]</a> The vast monastery palace of the Escorial owed its origin
+to such a promise on the part of Philip II. when he saw to his
+sorrow that his troops had destroyed and sacked a church and
+cloister dedicated to St. Laurence at St. Quintin. To appease
+the saint, he promised on the spot to build the grandest
+monastery to St. Laurence in the world, and he kept his
+word. For the greater part of his life the building of this
+stupendous pile upon the sterile Guadarrama steppes was an
+obsession of the King.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a id="Footnote_116" href="#FNanchor_116" class="label">[116]</a> Lord Grey de Wilton to the Queen.—Domestic Calendar.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a id="Footnote_117" href="#FNanchor_117" class="label">[117]</a> An interesting account of the defence and loss of Guisnes is
+given by Lord Grey himself (Camden Society).</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a id="Footnote_118" href="#FNanchor_118" class="label">[118]</a> MSS. Simancas, Philip to Feria, January, 1558.—Estado, 811.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a id="Footnote_119" href="#FNanchor_119" class="label">[119]</a> Howard suspected the influence that had been exerted
+against him, and charged Feria with it. The Spaniard assured
+him that he had been misinformed; and in order to mollify
+him Philip wrote to the Queen asking her to give Howard
+some Court appointment instead of the Admiralty. Clinton was
+by Philip’s influence also placed in the Council, of which Howard
+was not a member, but became so, as well as Lord Chamberlain,
+shortly afterwards.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a id="Footnote_120" href="#FNanchor_120" class="label">[120]</a> Feria to the King, 12th February, 1558 (MSS. Simancas,
+Estado 811). Philip replied that he could not send the 10,000
+crowns required at once, as he was very short of money,
+but would send it as soon as he could get it in Spain.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a id="Footnote_121" href="#FNanchor_121" class="label">[121]</a> MSS. Simancas, Estado 811, Feria to the King, 10th March.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a id="Footnote_122" href="#FNanchor_122" class="label">[122]</a> Philip had written to Feria a day or two before saying that
+the English orders for powder, &amp;c., in Flanders were so excessive
+that if they were made public the dealers would at once put
+up the price to his detriment, and he begged that the amount
+might be reduced. In Rymer’s “Federa” there is a list of the
+munitions which Gresham was to obtain in conjunction with
+the Italian banker Bonvisi, who had advanced a loan to Mary:
+“3,500 hackequebutts, 1,000 pistolets, 500 pondera (lbs.) de
+Mauches, 100,000 pondera (lbs.) petre salse (saltpetre), 3,000
+corselets, 2,000 mourreyens, 3,000 iron cappes, 8,000 lances and
+pikes.”</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a id="Footnote_123" href="#FNanchor_123" class="label">[123]</a> Feria, writing to the King on the 6th April, says in reference
+to this: “Gresham writes that he has found much difficulty
+and has only taken up £10,000. I do not know how this comes
+to pass, for Paget and the rest of them told me at first that the
+loan for £100,000 was already arranged with the merchants
+I wrote about, and I naturally thought that as it had been
+settled between them and me that Gresham should go straight
+to your Majesty that the affair would be carried through at
+once.... He took letters from the Council to your Majesty,
+and the Queen instructed him to go straight to you. Now it
+seems from what he writes that he has not been to Brussels,
+and he deserves punishment at your Majesty’s hands, as I have
+told the Queen.”—MSS. Simancas, Estado 811.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a id="Footnote_124" href="#FNanchor_124" class="label">[124]</a> Foreign Calendar.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a id="Footnote_125" href="#FNanchor_125" class="label">[125]</a> MSS Simancas, 10th March, 1558, Estado 811.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a id="Footnote_126" href="#FNanchor_126" class="label">[126]</a> MSS. Simancas, Estado 811.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a id="Footnote_127" href="#FNanchor_127" class="label">[127]</a> In the letter written by Philip to Feria in reply to that
+quoted above he says that he has written to Clinton ordering
+him to go to Flanders at once to receive Philip’s orders as
+to what he is to do with the English fleet, “in order that
+the money it is costing should not be spent fruitlessly.”—MSS.
+Simancas, Estado 811.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a id="Footnote_128" href="#FNanchor_128" class="label">[128]</a> MSS. Simancas, Estado 811.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a id="Footnote_129" href="#FNanchor_129" class="label">[129]</a> Feria’s suggestion, to which this is a reply, runs thus: “I
+wrote to your Majesty that I did not see Madam Elizabeth
+when I came here because my principal means of carrying
+through what I wanted was the goodwill of the Queen, and I
+was anxious not to run counter to her in anything, especially as
+your Majesty had given me no instructions to the contrary. I
+afterwards sent a message of apology to Madam Elizabeth by
+the Admiral’s wife [<i>i.e.</i>, Lady Clinton], who was brought up
+with her and is much in her favour. I said that after she left
+[London] I had received orders from your Majesty to pay my
+respects to her in your name. I told Paget to excuse me to her
+also, but I do not think he did so. On the contrary, the
+Admiral’s wife told me that he asked Madam Elizabeth whether
+I had visited her, and when she said no he expressed much
+surprise. Figueroa and myself think the matter should not be
+left thus, and that it would be best for me to go and see
+her before I leave. She lives 20 miles away. I shall be glad
+of your Majesty’s instructions” (MSS. Simancas, Estado 811,
+Feria to the King, 18th May).</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a id="Footnote_130" href="#FNanchor_130" class="label">[130]</a> A good instance of this is given in the appointment of the
+commander of 1,000 English pioneers who had been raised for
+Philip’s service. Feria wished to send Major Randolph in
+charge of them. The Councillors appointed another man and
+said that Randolph was to be appointed to a post on shore in
+connection with the navy. Feria insisted, and a long quarrel
+resulted, Feria insisting that Philip should write peremptorily to
+the Queen about it.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a id="Footnote_131" href="#FNanchor_131" class="label">[131]</a> This was certainly not the case. Suriano, the Venetian
+ambassador, writing from Brussels on the 12th November, on
+Feria’s hasty voyage to England, when Mary was known to be
+dying, says drily: “He is in great favour with the Queen and
+he likewise fancies himself popular there [in England], but may
+God grant, in case of her Majesty’s death, that he do not experience
+to his detriment the perverse nature of those people, and
+their most inveterate hatred of foreigners and above all of
+Spaniards” (Venetian Calendar, 12th November). The fable of
+Feria’s great power in England persisted for years, probably
+owing to his marriage with Sir William Dormer’s daughter Jane,
+which brought him into relationship with the Sidneys and a
+powerful group of English noble families. Dr. Man, the
+English ambassador in Spain in 1567, writes to Cecil (Cotton
+MSS., Galba ciii.) that he had heard a Spanish gentleman say at
+table that the “Count de Feria was so beloved in England that
+in case he would he might have made himself King of England.
+Which although it be an untruth yet it argueth a confidence the
+Spaniards have of some great part the Count is yet able to make
+in England.” In fact, Feria, whose hatred of Elizabeth was
+intense, was extremely unpopular for his arrogance and presumption
+in England.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a id="Footnote_132" href="#FNanchor_132" class="label">[132]</a> MSS. Simancas, Estado 811.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a id="Footnote_133" href="#FNanchor_133" class="label">[133]</a> Philip was already in peace negotiations with the French;
+and the English Commissioners were holding out strongly for
+the restitution of Calais as a condition.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a id="Footnote_134" href="#FNanchor_134" class="label">[134]</a> Venetian Calendar, 29th October, 1558.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a id="Footnote_135" href="#FNanchor_135" class="label">[135]</a> The letter from Feria, dated 14th November, detailing this
+interview with Elizabeth was abstracted by Gonzalez many
+years ago with other papers of the period and translated into
+English. Unfortunately since then the letter appears to have
+been lost. At least I could not find it when I transcribed the
+other letters of the period relating to England in the Spanish
+Royal Archives at Simancas. The letter, however, was printed
+in Kervyn de Lettenhove’s “Relations Politiques,” &amp;c.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a id="Footnote_136" href="#FNanchor_136" class="label">[136]</a> From Father Clifford’s contemporary “Life of the Duchess
+of Feria” (published), for the inspection of the original manuscript
+of which I am indebted to its present possessor, Lord
+Dormer.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a id="Footnote_137" href="#FNanchor_137" class="label">[137]</a> Spanish Calendars of Elizabeth (Hume).</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a id="Footnote_138" href="#FNanchor_138" class="label">[138]</a> Spanish Calendars of Elizabeth, vol. i. (Hume).</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a id="Footnote_139" href="#FNanchor_139" class="label">[139]</a> The English correspondence on this matter is of much
+interest. It is in Forbes’s State Papers.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a id="Footnote_140" href="#FNanchor_140" class="label">[140]</a> Philip to Feria, 14th February, 1559.—Spanish Calendars of
+Elizabeth (Hume).</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a id="Footnote_141" href="#FNanchor_141" class="label">[141]</a> Elizabeth was all the time in negotiation with the Reform
+party in France through Guido Cavalcanti for a separate peace,
+if possible, on better terms than could be got in conjunction
+with Spain. She was quite willing to leave Philip in the lurch,
+if necessary, though the Catholic advisers of Henry II. had
+entirely different views. The correspondence is in Forbes’
+State Papers of Elizabeth.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a id="Footnote_142" href="#FNanchor_142" class="label">[142]</a> Hatfield Papers, part i, p. 151.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a id="Footnote_143" href="#FNanchor_143" class="label">[143]</a> Spanish Calendar of Elizabeth (Hume).</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a id="Footnote_144" href="#FNanchor_144" class="label">[144]</a> “Queens of Old Spain,” by Martin Hume.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a id="Footnote_145" href="#FNanchor_145" class="label">[145]</a> 12th July, Spanish Calendar, vol, i.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a id="Footnote_146" href="#FNanchor_146" class="label">[146]</a> The Bishop of Aquila to Feria, 7th March, 1560.—Spanish
+Calendar, vol. i.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a id="Footnote_147" href="#FNanchor_147" class="label">[147]</a> This pretended <i>rapprochement</i> may be followed in detail in
+Quadra’s letters in the Spanish Calendar. The intrigue was
+mainly engineered by Lady Mary Sidney.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a id="Footnote_148" href="#FNanchor_148" class="label">[148]</a> Spanish Calendar, vol. i.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a id="Footnote_149" href="#FNanchor_149" class="label">[149]</a> Quadra wrote a letter to the Emperor on the 26th June, before
+he received Philip’s instructions, worded in a way that was purposely
+intended to deceive. Whilst saying that the Scots were
+not favourable to the Archduke’s suit unless he brought enough
+money to keep himself and also that he was strong enough to
+assert Mary’s claim to the English Crown, he hinted that it was
+to France and not to Spain that she was looking for a husband.
+No word is mentioned about Don Carlos.—Spanish Calendar,
+vol. i. 340.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a id="Footnote_150" href="#FNanchor_150" class="label">[150]</a> Serious allegations of intrigues against the Queen had been
+made against the Bishop by a former secretary of his to Cecil.
+Shan O’Neil was known to have frequented his house; English
+Catholics were known to be attendants at Mass in the embassy
+chapel, and many other complaints were made besides the
+harbouring and connivance in the escape of the fugitive Italian.
+The Bishop himself was placed under arrest and subsequently
+deprived of the use of Durham House as a result of the investigation
+of these charges.—Spanish Calendar, vol. i., and Domestic
+Calendar of the same date, 1563.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a id="Footnote_151" href="#FNanchor_151" class="label">[151]</a> And not alone to Philip. The merchants of Antwerp wrote
+beseeching letters to Cecil, and also to Gresham, asking for their
+influence to procure the re-establishment of commercial intercourse.
+The correspondence on the subject, extending over
+many months, is in the Spanish Calendar, vol. i., and in the
+Flanders Papers of the date (1564) at the Record Office, for
+the most part abstracted in the Foreign Calendar.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a id="Footnote_152" href="#FNanchor_152" class="label">[152]</a> Some of the arguments he is directed to use sound strangely
+incongruous as coming from Philip. “You may say that they
+cannot fairly refuse the request about the [Catholic] churches,
+for even the Turk allows Christians who live in his country to
+worship God in their own way.”—Spanish Calendar, vol. i. 353.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a id="Footnote_153" href="#FNanchor_153" class="label">[153]</a> The meaning of this is that Dudley and his Catholic friends
+were saying that the suspension of commercial intercourse was
+favourable to them, as it was driving Englishmen to desperation,
+and would lead to a revolt against Cecil.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a id="Footnote_154" href="#FNanchor_154" class="label">[154]</a> Guzman was warned by his master that he must be very
+wary how he listened to treasonable suggestions, either from
+the English and Irish Catholics or from Dudley’s friends, as in
+either case they might be traps. If Dudley would get Cecil
+disgraced, Philip would be delighted, but the hand of Spain
+must on no account be seen in it.—Spanish Calendar, vol. i. 371.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a id="Footnote_155" href="#FNanchor_155" class="label">[155]</a> Spanish Calendar, vol. i.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a id="Footnote_156" href="#FNanchor_156" class="label">[156]</a> When Elizabeth visited the University of Cambridge on her
+autumn progress, she declined, in consequence of want of time,
+to attend a theatrical performance offered to her by the students.
+Before she reached her next stopping-place she was persuaded
+to alter her mind, and she returned to witness the play. To her
+annoyance the imprisoned Catholic bishops were lampooned
+upon the stage with much sacrilegious buffoonery, whereupon
+“the Queen was so angry that she at once rose and entered her
+own chamber, using very strong language, and the torchbearers,
+it being night, left them in the dark, and so ended this scandalous
+representation.”—Spanish Calendar, vol. i. 375, Guzman to the
+Duchess of Parma.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a id="Footnote_157" href="#FNanchor_157" class="label">[157]</a> The Duchess of Aerschot had written to her from Flanders
+to this effect at the end of 1564.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a id="Footnote_158" href="#FNanchor_158" class="label">[158]</a> The King to Guzman, 6th June, 1565.—Spanish Calendar,
+vol. i. 433.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a id="Footnote_159" href="#FNanchor_159" class="label">[159]</a> Randolph to Cecil, 29th April, 1565.—Scottish Calendar (Bain).</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a id="Footnote_160" href="#FNanchor_160" class="label">[160]</a> Cardinal Pacheco to Philip.—Spanish Calendar, vol. i.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a id="Footnote_161" href="#FNanchor_161" class="label">[161]</a> Labanoff, vol. vii.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a id="Footnote_162" href="#FNanchor_162" class="label">[162]</a> Spanish Calendar (Hume), vol. i., 16th July, 1565.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a id="Footnote_163" href="#FNanchor_163" class="label">[163]</a> Scottish Calendar, vol. i. (Bain).</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a id="Footnote_164" href="#FNanchor_164" class="label">[164]</a> Scottish Calendar (Bain), 15th September, 1565.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a id="Footnote_165" href="#FNanchor_165" class="label">[165]</a> Ibid.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a id="Footnote_166" href="#FNanchor_166" class="label">[166]</a> Labanoff, vol. i.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a id="Footnote_167" href="#FNanchor_167" class="label">[167]</a> Spanish Calendar, vol. i. 497, Philip to Guzman.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a id="Footnote_168" href="#FNanchor_168" class="label">[168]</a> Diary of Sir James Melville of Hall Hill.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a id="Footnote_169" href="#FNanchor_169" class="label">[169]</a> How serious the situation was for Elizabeth, and how wide
+the ramifications of the Catholic intrigue at the time, may be
+seen by a letter written shortly after this by the English spy
+Rogers to Cecil. Arthur Pole, who was a prisoner in the Tower,
+had surrendered in Mary’s favour his claim to the Crown of
+England, and if he could escape from his prison was to come to
+Scotland to support her with others of his kin. Darnley himself,
+trying to outbid Mary, had boasted that forty gentlemen and
+more in England were ready to serve him. Letters passed
+fortnightly between the Countess of Lennox in the Tower and
+her son, whilst every month an emissary of the northern
+Catholic gentry came in disguise to Darnley from Carlisle. A
+regular plan, moreover, was prepared for the capture and
+fortification of Scilly in the Catholic interest, and the representative
+of the Irish rebel Shan O’Neil was made much of by
+Darnley, who, amongst other presents, sent to Shan two
+hundred crowns with which to buy whiskey. The hopes that
+Mary and Darnley built upon the English Catholics and Spain
+were therefore well founded, if they had been well handled.—Scottish
+Calendar, vol. ii. 293.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a id="Footnote_170" href="#FNanchor_170" class="label">[170]</a> Guzman to the King, Spanish Calendar, vol. ii., 16th
+February, 1568.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a id="Footnote_171" href="#FNanchor_171" class="label">[171]</a> One of the English spies in Madrid, Hogan, said that it was
+really Feria who had got Man into the trouble.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a id="Footnote_172" href="#FNanchor_172" class="label">[172]</a> Spanish Calendar, vol. ii.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a id="Footnote_173" href="#FNanchor_173" class="label">[173]</a> Spanish Calendar, vol. ii., 9th August, 1568.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a id="Footnote_174" href="#FNanchor_174" class="label">[174]</a> “I told him that, as for arranging anything of the sort
+between the Cardinal and the Duke, I regarded such a statement
+as a silly joke, the vain babble of the idle. I could assure
+him that to say that such a treaty had gone through my hands
+was absolutely false. If I had done such a thing against the
+Queen I should deserve heavy punishment from your Majesty,
+and even from the Queen herself, such action being entirely
+opposed to my instructions. I had never in my life had any
+communication with the Cardinal, and I was quite sure the
+Queen would not believe such nonsense.”—Spanish Calendar,
+vol. ii., 65. The English did not seem to understand fully at
+this time Philip’s distrust of all French interference, even that
+of the Guises.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a id="Footnote_175" href="#FNanchor_175" class="label">[175]</a> This letter is not in Labanoff, but it is probably similar to
+that sent to Charles IX. from Carlisle on the 26th June.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a id="Footnote_176" href="#FNanchor_176" class="label">[176]</a> Spanish Calendar, vol. ii. 71.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a id="Footnote_177" href="#FNanchor_177" class="label">[177]</a> Paget House had been the palace of the Bishops of Exeter,
+and was the first of the great houses on the river side of the
+Strand outside Temple Bar, on the site of what is now called the
+Outer Temple. It had been granted by Henry VIII. to Lord
+Paget.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a id="Footnote_178" href="#FNanchor_178" class="label">[178]</a> Very shortly after this, 30th October, when he had got into
+touch with Mary’s imprudent agent, the Bishop of Ross, de
+Spes wrote to the King: “I am of opinion that this would be a
+good opportunity for taking Scottish affairs in hand successfully,
+and restoring the Catholic religion in this country; and if the
+Duke [of Alba] were out of his present anxiety and your
+Majesty wished, it could be discussed.”—Spanish Calendar,
+vol. ii. 81. A week later de Spes wrote: “It appears as if the
+time was approaching when this country may be made to return
+to the Catholic Church, the Queen being in such straits and
+short of money. I have already informed your Majesty of the
+offers made by the brother-in-law of Viscount Montagu, on
+condition that they may look for the protection of your
+Majesty.”</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a id="Footnote_179" href="#FNanchor_179" class="label">[179]</a> Almost simultaneously de Spes went to the French ambassador
+in London (La Mothe) and proposed joint action between
+them first to oust Cecil from his office, and secondly to stop
+trade with England entirely both from France and the Spanish
+dominions, the ostensible object being that, if this were done,
+Elizabeth and her subjects would be obliged to become Catholic
+to avoid ruin. De Spes even proposed that the French should
+pull the chestnuts out of the fire for him by stopping trade first.
+La Mothe, in writing his account of the suggestion to Catharine,
+calmly points out the evident absurdity of both proposals. De
+Spes apparently had no notion of the incompatibility with
+Philip’s objects of joint action of France and Spain in England.—Correspondance
+de la Mothe Fénélon, vol. i.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a id="Footnote_180" href="#FNanchor_180" class="label">[180]</a> These letters are in the Spanish Calendar, vol. ii.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a id="Footnote_181" href="#FNanchor_181" class="label">[181]</a> How dangerous the position was at the time is seen by
+a letter (3rd December, 1568) from Sir Francis Knollys, who
+had charge of Mary at Bolton, to Cecil, in which he says that he
+has less fear that the attempt to release Mary by subterfuge as
+Cecil thought, than by force, and begs for more troops to resist
+attack from without. “We all agree herein, that this is an inconvenient
+and dangerous place for this Queen to tarry in.”</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a id="Footnote_182" href="#FNanchor_182" class="label">[182]</a> Whilst this letter was being written, Cecil and the Lord
+Admiral (Clinton) with a great train of followers and the
+alderman of the City came to Paget House and demanded
+to see de Spes. Cecil angrily told him that he had advised
+the Duke of Alba to seize English property, for which disloyal
+act the Queen placed him (de Spes) under arrest, dismissing his
+Spanish servants, and handing the charge of the house to Henry
+Knollys, Arthur Carew, and Lord Knyvett. De Spes answered
+defiantly, and the breach became wider than ever. Proclamations
+and counter proclamations, or printed broadsheets, were issued
+by the English Council and by de Spes respectively, each claiming
+that justice was on their side with regard to the seizures.—De
+Spes to the King, 8th January, 1569, Spanish Calendar,
+vol. ii.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a id="Footnote_183" href="#FNanchor_183" class="label">[183]</a> The King to de Spes, 18th February, 1569.—Spanish
+Calendar, vol. ii.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a id="Footnote_184" href="#FNanchor_184" class="label">[184]</a> “Memoirs of Sir James Melville of Hall Hill.”</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a id="Footnote_185" href="#FNanchor_185" class="label">[185]</a> Norfolk, on his trial, said that Leicester had also suggested
+the marriage.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a id="Footnote_186" href="#FNanchor_186" class="label">[186]</a> De Spes to the King, 5th August, 1569.—Spanish Calendar.
+Nonsuch House was in the occupation of the Earl of Arundel.
+De Spes, who had not been admitted to the Queen’s presence
+for many months, had hopes at this time of being received again
+to discuss the eternal question of the seizures. But another hitch
+had occurred, as the Queen refused to receive him without new
+credentials from Philip himself. It had been intended to take
+him from Oatlands, where the Queen was, to Nonsuch, after the
+audience, and there a meeting of the conspirators was to confer
+with him. This plan, however, was upset by the delay in granting
+him the audience with Elizabeth.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a id="Footnote_187" href="#FNanchor_187" class="label">[187]</a> The details of the Northern Rebellion may be followed
+closely in the Calendars of State Papers of the period (Spanish,
+Domestic, Border, and Scottish); in the Sadler Papers; in the
+Bowes Papers (Memorials of the Rebellion of 1569, by Sir
+Cuthbert Sharpe). Wright’s Elizabeth Papers, &amp;c.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a id="Footnote_188" href="#FNanchor_188" class="label">[188]</a> Philip to Alba, 16th December, 1569.—Spanish Calendar,
+vol. ii.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a id="Footnote_189" href="#FNanchor_189" class="label">[189]</a> These letters are in Labanoff and in the Hardwick State
+Papers.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a id="Footnote_190" href="#FNanchor_190" class="label">[190]</a> The Regent Murray had just been murdered.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a id="Footnote_191" href="#FNanchor_191" class="label">[191]</a> Antonio de Guaras to Secretary Zayas.—Spanish Calendar.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a id="Footnote_192" href="#FNanchor_192" class="label">[192]</a> Haynes State Papers.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a id="Footnote_193" href="#FNanchor_193" class="label">[193]</a> He was made to vacate Winchester House “because it had
+too many doors”; and on the 10th August two of the City
+aldermen came to him with an order to proceed to Saint
+Albans to meet a Committee of the Council, who wished to
+discuss his proceedings with him. He went as requested, but
+refused to discuss anything until the Queen would receive him,
+which she had refused to do since his disgrace. He was
+confident even now that they would soon expel him with
+ignominy. He was no longer an ambassador, said Leicester,
+but a spy, and the sooner he was gone the better.—Spanish
+Calendar, vol. ii.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a id="Footnote_194" href="#FNanchor_194" class="label">[194]</a> De Spes to Secretary Zayas, 6th February, 1571.—Spanish
+Calendar, vol. ii.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a id="Footnote_195" href="#FNanchor_195" class="label">[195]</a> The letter is in the Cotton MSS., Caligula, c. 11, p. 469.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a id="Footnote_196" href="#FNanchor_196" class="label">[196]</a> Depositions of Ross and Barker.—State Trials.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a id="Footnote_197" href="#FNanchor_197" class="label">[197]</a> Spanish Calendar, vol. ii.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a id="Footnote_198" href="#FNanchor_198" class="label">[198]</a> Cobham arrived in Madrid in May, when Alba’s memorandum
+on Ridolfi’s mission was in Philip’s hands. As was
+usual in English affairs, Feria was one of those asked to report
+on Cobham’s mission. He and his colleagues recommend that
+Cobham should be curtly dismissed, and the English again
+referred to Alba for the discussion of the trade dispute, and
+this course was taken. An extremely interesting letter was
+written by Feria to the King’s Secretary, Zayas, which is full of
+bitterness that his former advice as to England had not been
+taken. Amongst other things, Feria writes: “I understand that
+our object is to keep friendly with England because it is not at
+present possible to undertake the subjection of that country and
+Ireland. We were lords of it once and left it. The friendship
+will be difficult to maintain if the Sovereign be not a Catholic
+and our hold upon the Netherlands less firm. The Queen sees
+our weakness and assails us with inventions and fears that she
+will marry in France. She will no more marry Anjou than she
+will marry me.... If Cobham is not dealt with in dignified
+fashion I fear that our efforts to avoid war will only bring it
+upon us, and we shall find suddenly some day that we have lost
+the Catholics, and even they will take up arms against us. When
+the Queen once understands that the Catholics depend upon our
+King she will not dare to break with us. There is no other way
+out of it. For the last two years we have trodden the path of
+feebleness; let us now try the other road.”—Feria to Zayas,
+10th May, 1571, Spanish Calendar, vol. ii.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a id="Footnote_199" href="#FNanchor_199" class="label">[199]</a> MSS. Simancas, Estado 823. Portions of the document are
+reproduced by Mignet.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a id="Footnote_200" href="#FNanchor_200" class="label">[200]</a> The whole of the depositions will be found in the Hatfield
+Papers Historical MSS. Commission, and the circumstances
+are related in the Spanish Calendar.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a id="Footnote_201" href="#FNanchor_201" class="label">[201]</a> Simancas MSS., Minuta de Consejo, Estado 823. It will
+be seen on a subsequent page that the money, 200,000 crowns,
+was found.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a id="Footnote_202" href="#FNanchor_202" class="label">[202]</a> Spanish Calendar, vol. ii. Even after Philip knew that the
+plot had failed and that Norfolk was in the Tower, he did not
+abandon his hopes—for he was tenacious when once he had
+laboriously made up his mind. In the instructions given to the
+Duke of Medina Celi in November, 1571, when he was going to
+succeed Alba in the Netherlands, the King writes as follows:
+“As regards England you will proceed in conformity with what
+was communicated to you here and the Duke of Alba’s information,
+although I do not think there will be much to do at present,
+as the Queen has got scent of the business and has arrested the
+Duke of Norfolk and the principal people concerned. She has
+also made the Queen of Scotland’s prison straiter, and de Spes
+writes to me on the 21st October that they are all in great peril,
+for which I am very sorry, though I still have confidence that
+God, whose cause it is, will help us to forward the matter as we
+wish. You will therefore hold yourself ready, in case the Duke
+of Alba write to you at sea, to take any step with this end: in
+accordance with Clause iv. of your instructions. I have thought
+well to repeat it in this letter, <i>which for greater security you will
+burn before you embark</i>” (the words in italics have been added
+in the King’s own hand). Medina Celi is told that 200,000
+crowns, half in gold, will be handed to him for the English
+business, and must not on any account be used for any other
+purpose, “but for this English affair, which I sincerely hope that
+God will guide in some unexpected way for the good of His
+cause.”—Spanish Calendar, vol. ii. 349.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a id="Footnote_203" href="#FNanchor_203" class="label">[203]</a> Scottish State Papers, Mary, vol. vi.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a id="Footnote_204" href="#FNanchor_204" class="label">[204]</a> That Elizabeth intended the expulsion of de Spes, and her
+refusal to continue negotiations about the seizures, to be a
+political demonstration to show her power and impress her new
+friends the French, is seen by her conversation at this time
+(December, 1571) with Cavalcanti, Catharine de Medici’s
+confidential envoy. The King of Spain, she said, thought that
+he could separate her from the alliance with France at any
+time; but however accommodating he might show himself in
+the negotiations about the seizures, and however ready to
+agree to terms favourable to the English, she would never trust
+Spaniards again, seeing the trouble they had prepared for her
+in Ridolfi’s plots with the Pope. The King of France might see
+how little she cared for the King of Spain by the way she had
+ordered his ambassador to be gone without delay. She wished
+Cavalcanti could have seen him actually on the road, but with
+some pretext about wanting money he was here for a day or
+two longer. She could assure him, however, that he should not
+stay in her country, and she cared not whether another came or
+not.—Spanish Calendar, vol. ii.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a id="Footnote_205" href="#FNanchor_205" class="label">[205]</a> “Recueil des Depeches,” &amp;c., de la Mothe Fénélon,
+vol i. 375, and Spanish Calendar.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a id="Footnote_206" href="#FNanchor_206" class="label">[206]</a> Spanish Calendar, vol. ii.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a id="Footnote_207" href="#FNanchor_207" class="label">[207]</a> The French Huguenot force that had entered Flanders to
+aid the rebels had just been utterly routed by Alba’s son, Don
+Fadrique, and Charles IX. saw that unless he could dissociate
+himself from the unsuccessful attempt he might be dragged
+down by the fall of the Huguenot party.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a id="Footnote_208" href="#FNanchor_208" class="label">[208]</a> The story of the reception of the news of St. Bartholomew
+in England may best be followed in the Correspondance Diplomatique
+de La Mothe Fénélon.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a id="Footnote_209" href="#FNanchor_209" class="label">[209]</a> How soon division was introduced is seen by the action
+of Catharine, who saw only a few weeks after St. Bartholomew
+the mistake she had made in allowing the Catholic party to go
+too far, and once more began to court the Huguenots and
+Elizabeth, and also by the suspicion evinced by La Mothe,
+the French ambassador in London, of Guaras’ renewed favour
+at Elizabeth’s Court. Writing on the 9th November, he says
+that Alba is making all sorts of tempting offers to Elizabeth
+through Guaras to draw her away from French friendship and send
+an ambassador to Philip. “Guaras is intriguing for this with
+such good presents that I am told that he has given more than
+10,000 crowns to one personage alone, who has some authority
+here. He has done so much that the Lords of the Council have
+been busy for several days trying to come to some arrangement
+with the King of Spain, and Guaras is often at Court.”—Correspondance
+Diplomatique, vol. v.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a id="Footnote_210" href="#FNanchor_210" class="label">[210]</a> Guaras went to Kenilworth before the reception of the news
+of St. Bartholomew to carry letters to Elizabeth from King
+Philip notifying the appointment of Medina Celi to Flanders.
+Only a few days after the tidings of St. Bartholomew the French
+ambassador wrote to Charles IX: “It seems to me that these
+people are bent in any case in hatching some new plan with
+Antonio de Guaras on the pretext of the letters from the King
+of Spain and Medina Celi he carried to the Queen at Kenilworth.
+The purport of the letters was simply to notify the coming
+of Medina Celi to Flanders; but these people, in consequence
+of what has happened at Paris, wish to make them serve for a
+further purpose.”—Correspondance Diplomatique de la Mothe
+Fénélon.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a id="Footnote_211" href="#FNanchor_211" class="label">[211]</a> Spanish Calendar, vol. ii.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a id="Footnote_212" href="#FNanchor_212" class="label">[212]</a> Correspondance Diplomatique de la Mothe Fénélon.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a id="Footnote_213" href="#FNanchor_213" class="label">[213]</a> This was not the first time that the suggestion of a marriage
+between Mary and Don Juan had been made. A letter written
+by Lord Burghley to the Earl of Shrewsbury, Keeper of the
+Queen of Scots, written soon after the discovery of the Ridolfi
+plot, says that Elizabeth does not complain of Mary’s attempts
+to escape to Spain or elsewhere, nor is she offended by the proposal
+to marry young James to the Infanta. “Nether that she
+sought to make the King of Spayne beleve that she wold geve
+ear to the offer of Don Jon of Austria.” The real cause of
+Elizabeth’s anger, says Lord Burghley, is Mary’s conspiracy to
+raise a revolution in England.—Talbot Papers (Lodge).</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a id="Footnote_214" href="#FNanchor_214" class="label">[214]</a> One of Burghley’s spies, Lane, a Catholic, ventured even to
+reproach the minister for talking so much to Guaras on foreign
+policy. It appears that Burghley’s hare-brained son-in-law, Lord
+Oxford, and another English noble were in secret negotiation
+with Guaras to do some service to the Spaniards in Flanders,
+Guaras to find the necessary money on Oxford’s pledge. Lane
+advises Burghley to put a spoke into the wheel. Lane says that
+unless Guaras is employed in some way—preferably in Ireland
+on Government affairs—he may develop pernicious activity
+elsewhere.—Hatfield Papers, vol. ii., June, 1573.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a id="Footnote_215" href="#FNanchor_215" class="label">[215]</a> Hardwick State Papers.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a id="Footnote_216" href="#FNanchor_216" class="label">[216]</a> At this time (March, 1575) Orange, despairing of efficient
+aid from Elizabeth, was wooing the French. His daughter was
+to marry Alençon, who was to join Condé and a French army to
+assist the Flemings against Philip. This at once made
+Elizabeth turn to Spain. Not only was she, as we see, polite to
+Guaras, but she sent Henry Cobham to Spain as an ambassador
+in August to assure Philip that on no account would she allow
+any French domination of Flanders. A fleet of Spanish
+transports, too, on the way to Flanders were received with
+effusion now in the English ports by the Government though
+not by the English sailors.—Spanish Calendar, vol. ii.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a id="Footnote_217" href="#FNanchor_217" class="label">[217]</a> Fleetwood to Lord Burghley.—Wright’s State Papers.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a id="Footnote_218" href="#FNanchor_218" class="label">[218]</a> Spanish Calendar, vol. ii.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a id="Footnote_219" href="#FNanchor_219" class="label">[219]</a> Fleetwood, in one of his letters to Cecil (Wright’s State
+Papers), gives particulars of one such. A son of Alderman Lee
+came and said that his brother, although a Catholic, was in
+perpetual prison in Spain, the reason being that Guaras having
+bought a ship called the <i>Clock</i>, had given to Lee £160 to man
+the ship and attack Flushing. Lee having failed to carry out
+the plan to his satisfaction, Guaras had had him kidnapped and
+imprisoned in Spain. Guaras, he said, had thirty or forty spies in
+his service, who used to sit or walk in his hall downstairs at
+night without a candle, until, one by one, they were led up to
+Guaras’ room by Dela to report what they had discovered.
+Guaras’ house at Dowgate, Thames Street, was on a portion of
+the site covered by Cannon Street Station, and was bought by
+the Drapers’ Company on his conviction.—Domestic Calendar.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a id="Footnote_220" href="#FNanchor_220" class="label">[220]</a> Hatfield Papers, vol. ii., and Spanish Calendar.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a id="Footnote_221" href="#FNanchor_221" class="label">[221]</a> Guaras had the incredible imprudence to write a violent,
+treasonable letter to Don Juan from Newgate itself, dated
+14th November. Though he is a prisoner, he will continue
+to perform his work by the aid of friends. All has been
+seized, but he now sends his son, who is as zealous as himself,
+to Spain through France. The draft in Spanish was, of
+course, taken from the prisoner when he was transferred to
+the Tower, and is now in the Record Office.—Flanders Correspondence,
+iii. 101.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a id="Footnote_222" href="#FNanchor_222" class="label">[222]</a> Her great complaint against Don Juan is founded on his
+plots with Mary Stuart, as disclosed by the intercepted letters
+of his secretary, Escobedo. “Not that she is afraid of him,
+but she does not wish knowingly to foster a serpent in her
+bosom. If the King asks for proof, let him read Escobedo’s
+letters set down in the book above mentioned, and consider
+his practices through his agents with her enemy the Queen of
+Scots.”—Mr. Wilkes’ instructions, Foreign Calendar, 1577-78.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a id="Footnote_223" href="#FNanchor_223" class="label">[223]</a> In May, 1578, she sent Walsingham and Cobham to Orange to
+warn him against the French connection, and to Don Juan, to
+say that if the French entered Flanders she would send 20,000
+men to help the Spaniards, and if they were not enough, every
+man in her country should go.—Spanish Calendar, vol. iii.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a id="Footnote_224" href="#FNanchor_224" class="label">[224]</a> Mendoza had come to England some years previously, on
+one of the many abortive attempts to settle the question of the
+seizures.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a id="Footnote_225" href="#FNanchor_225" class="label">[225]</a> The unhappy Guaras remained in prison, treated with the
+greatest severity, until May, 1579. Mendoza appears to have
+pressed his case rather languidly, unwilling to embitter national
+relations further for the sake of so plebeian and insignificant a
+person as Guaras. A wealthy brother of the latter, named
+Gombal de Guaras, came to London early in 1579 to try
+whether bribery could release the prisoner. Mendoza was
+furiously angry at this interference, and had nothing but
+scorn for Gombal’s boastful tactics on ’Change. Gombal spent
+large sums of money to forward the release, and notwithstanding
+Mendoza’s assertion that Guaras would have been released
+earlier but for his brother’s boasts and turbulence it is doubtful
+whether the poor man would ever have got out at all without
+his expenditure. All sorts of hard conditions were imposed
+upon Guaras on his release. All his debts had to be paid and
+his maintenance in prison; he had to leave England at once
+without communicating with anybody, and was never again to
+return. He left England a ruined man, and died in 1584 at his
+birthplace, Tarrazona, and later his heirs prayed unsuccessfully
+for repayment of the money he had disbursed in England.—Spanish
+Calendar, vol. ii., and Españoles é Ingleses en el Siglo
+XVI., por Martin Hume (Madrid, 1903).</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a id="Footnote_226" href="#FNanchor_226" class="label">[226]</a> Philip, in reply to the suggestion to bribe the English
+ministers, orders Mendoza to send a schedule of the sums to
+be paid to each. When he has quite satisfied himself that
+they will have value for the money the latter shall be sent.
+“It is necessary, however, that before doing anything, we should
+have this information, so as not to cast our seed on stony ground,
+nor give money to people who will cheat us and laugh at us.”</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a id="Footnote_227" href="#FNanchor_227" class="label">[227]</a> The reason given by Elizabeth for sending Guaras back to
+prison was that she had heard anew that he had been serving as
+the agent of the Irish rebels.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a id="Footnote_228" href="#FNanchor_228" class="label">[228]</a> Spanish Calendar, vol. ii.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a id="Footnote_229" href="#FNanchor_229" class="label">[229]</a> Vargas Mexia at once saw the immense importance of this
+declaration and wrote to Philip (13th February): “Such is the
+present condition of England, with signs of revolt everywhere,
+the Queen in alarm, the Catholic party numerous, the serious
+events in Ireland, and the distrust aroused by your Majesty’s
+fleet, that I really believe that if so much as a cat moved, the
+whole edifice would crumble down in three days beyond repair.
+If your Majesty had England and Scotland attached to you,
+directly or indirectly, you might consider the States of Flanders
+conquered, in which case you could lay down the law for the
+whole world.” The adhesion of Guise as Philip’s servant made
+all the difference.—Spanish Calendar, vol. iii. It was certainly
+not the case that Guise and Beton had <i>persuaded</i> Mary to take
+this course. It is far more likely that she persuaded them, as
+she had seen for many years, as has been proved in the
+chapters of this book, that her only hope of effectively establishing
+her claim was to obtain Spanish support. Up to this
+time the Guises had rather obstructed this than otherwise, as
+they looked to Mary’s elevation to serve their own ambitions,
+which were not identical with those of Philip. The Duke of
+Guise in question was Mary’s first cousin, Henry of Lorraine,
+aged at this time thirty years.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a id="Footnote_230" href="#FNanchor_230" class="label">[230]</a> If we are to believe Camden, who was a fellow-student of
+Parsons’ at Balliol, this guise was not altogether strange to him.
+“He was,” he says, “a violent, fierce-natured man of rough behaviour.... When
+he was young the fellow was much noted
+for his singular impudency and disorder in apparel, going in great
+barrel hose, as was the fashion of hacksters in those days, and drawing
+also deep in a barrel of ale.” Another contemporary of his,
+Archbishop Abbot, who was a Fellow of Balliol, describes him
+as being “a man wonderfully given to scoffing, and with that
+bitterness which was the cause that none of the company loved
+him.” He was Bursar of Balliol—and of course a Protestant—until
+1573, when he got into trouble over his accounts, and
+for this and other reasons he resigned his Fellowship. He
+lived abroad thenceforward until he returned, as here described,
+as Provincial of the Jesuits for England, having entered the
+Society in 1575.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a id="Footnote_231" href="#FNanchor_231" class="label">[231]</a> Spanish Calendar, vol. iii.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a id="Footnote_232" href="#FNanchor_232" class="label">[232]</a> A few months later, when Mendoza sought audience of the
+Queen, to remonstrate by Philip’s orders with her about her aid
+to Don Antonio, Leicester and Hatton strongly opposed an
+audience being granted, whilst Cecil, who always advocated a
+conciliatory course with Spain, insisted upon Mendoza being
+received. “Leicester, whilst he was at supper lately, said that
+he would either turn me out of here or lose his life and property
+in the attempt; whilst Hatton, in the presence chamber in the
+hearing of the household, cried that he would do his best to get
+me expelled, for the Queen trembled every time I asked for
+audience. When he was asked by a friend whether this was
+because I spoke rudely to her, he replied: No, it was not that,
+for no ambassador was more courteous and respectful, but I
+communicated things in such a way that she trembled when she
+heard me.”—Mendoza to the King, 1st October, 1581, Spanish
+Calendar, vol. iii.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a id="Footnote_233" href="#FNanchor_233" class="label">[233]</a> Spanish Calendar, vol. iii.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a id="Footnote_234" href="#FNanchor_234" class="label">[234]</a> Mendoza, writing to Philip on the 1st October, 1581, dwells
+upon the terrible sufferings of the Catholics, and incidentally
+reveals how entirely now he had identified himself with those
+whom the Queen’s Government held to be disaffected. Not
+even the gifts of friends to the imprisoned Catholics, he says,
+may be given to the individuals, but are divided amongst all the
+prisoners. “They are incarcerated with crowds of thieves, and
+are left to die of hunger amongst them, in order that their
+torment may be the greater. If any one goes to visit them
+he is at once arrested, and consequently most of the gifts
+are sent through me and are distributed by my servants, the
+Catholics alone receiving them. In like manner I take charge
+of the money sent by the Catholics who have fled abroad,
+and of the sums given by others for the Seminaries of Rheims
+and Rome.”—Spanish Calendar, vol. iii.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a id="Footnote_235" href="#FNanchor_235" class="label">[235]</a> Spanish Calendar, vol. iii. 188.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a id="Footnote_236" href="#FNanchor_236" class="label">[236]</a> Herll to Leicester, 7th November, 1581.—Domestic
+Calendar.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a id="Footnote_237" href="#FNanchor_237" class="label">[237]</a> Spanish Calendar, vol. iii.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a id="Footnote_238" href="#FNanchor_238" class="label">[238]</a> Spanish Calendar, vol. iii.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a id="Footnote_239" href="#FNanchor_239" class="label">[239]</a> Spanish Calendar, vol. iii.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a id="Footnote_240" href="#FNanchor_240" class="label">[240]</a> Creighton had been directed to go to Rouen on the way to
+Paris, in order that he might consult Parsons, who was then
+there to be in touch with England. The Duke of Guise was
+near by, at his Castle of Eu, and Lennox’s letters to him by
+Creighton were also delivered at the same time. Even Father
+Parsons at this period had not penetrated the antagonism of the
+views of Philip II. and Guise, though he subsequently became
+the leader of the purely Anglo-Spanish party opposed altogether
+to the interference of the French influence and the inclusion of
+James VI. in the plans for the subjugation of England. At this
+time and for a short time afterwards Parsons was in close touch
+with Guise.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a id="Footnote_241" href="#FNanchor_241" class="label">[241]</a> “The two Jesuit fathers who spoke to you about the Scotch
+affair must have been very zealous, but their having carried the
+matter so far as they did and communicating it to so many
+people may make it difficult to keep secret. In order that it
+may be kept as quiet as possible, you will detain the priest if he
+has not already started to come hither. You can tell him, as if
+on your own account, that in order to keep the affair quiet
+nothing more should be done till you hear from me. You may
+reply to the Duke of Lennox to the same effect, dealing with
+the matter in a way which will not lead them to think that you
+are throwing difficulties in the way for the purpose of refusing
+the aid they ask for, but only in order that it may all be managed
+on such solid foundations as to ensure success, for which we
+should all strive, as it is so greatly in the interests of God and
+the public welfare.”—Philip to Tassis, 11th June, 1582, Spanish
+Calendar, vol. iii. Philip’s message to Guise through Tassis, in
+September, is in the same tone: “You will tell him I would
+gladly have helped in the submission of Scotland, and still would
+do so if I saw really good grounds for anticipating success and a
+willingness on the part of the Pope to contribute such money
+as the case demands, as he has promised me several times.
+You may dexterously hint at coolness in that quarter, so that he
+may see that the affair is not falling through by any fault of
+mine.”—Ibid. To those who know Philip’s style this represents
+a determination to desist from participation.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a id="Footnote_242" href="#FNanchor_242" class="label">[242]</a> Mendoza had entertained several proposals for killing
+Orange, and it was asserted that he had been an accomplice
+in the present attempt. He was very indignant at the odium
+that this accusation brought upon him, but it is extremely likely
+to be true. He and Mary Stuart had nothing but praise for the
+crime in their letters.—Spanish Calendar, vol. iii.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a id="Footnote_243" href="#FNanchor_243" class="label">[243]</a> Spanish Calendar, vol. iii.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a id="Footnote_244" href="#FNanchor_244" class="label">[244]</a> Dr. Hector Nuñez writes to Burghley in August, 1582, that
+Mendoza, passing through Fenchurch Street in his carriage, was
+stoned and hooted by a group of boys playing at soldiers, and
+had to take refuge in Lime Street, where the Lord Mayor, Sir
+James Harvey, lived.—Hatfield Papers, part ii.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a id="Footnote_245" href="#FNanchor_245" class="label">[245]</a> Mary wrote to him when she was deploring the confusion in
+their plans caused by the muddling of the Jesuits and Lennox:
+“There are, as you have pointed out, many objections to carrying
+out this enterprise from France, and I wish it to be conducted
+entirely by you, sure, as I am, of your faith and prudence....
+I must therefore beg of you most earnestly to continue here,
+and thus gain for yourself the honour of God and man if the
+enterprise be successful, as you yet give me hopes that it will be.
+The principal thing is for you to remain in England, but if that
+be impossible, then in France.”—Spanish Calendar, vol. iii.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a id="Footnote_246" href="#FNanchor_246" class="label">[246]</a> Roman Transcripts, Record Office, vols. xvi. and xvii.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a id="Footnote_247" href="#FNanchor_247" class="label">[247]</a> This was an ordinary course with Philip when he disapproved
+of a plan proposed to him: to pretend acquiescence, but to
+propose that the Pope should find the money, which he knew
+he would not do.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a id="Footnote_248" href="#FNanchor_248" class="label">[248]</a> Spanish Calendar, vol. iii.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a id="Footnote_249" href="#FNanchor_249" class="label">[249]</a> Spanish Calendar, vol. iii.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a id="Footnote_250" href="#FNanchor_250" class="label">[250]</a> Parsons, although always an enemy of Paget, was, up to
+the period in question, as we have seen, an adherent of Guise
+and the Scottish plans; but he appears to have changed
+immediately after his return from Rome. Allen, who was older
+and more experienced, probably indoctrinated him with the
+Anglo-Spanish view. Tassis, writing on the 15th November,
+1583, says that Parsons “persists that upon no account should
+the enterprise he commenced in Scotland. He is strongly of
+opinion that the design upon England should be persevered in
+and the heart struck at first: and he says that Allen is told this,
+by persons on the Border itself, who prove it by irrefutable
+arguments.” Amongst these arguments is one that was constantly
+used afterwards, viz., that no matter what the nationality
+of the foreign troops, if they came to England <i>viâ</i> Scotland,
+they would be looked upon as French and opposed accordingly.—Spanish
+Calendar, vol. iii.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a id="Footnote_251" href="#FNanchor_251" class="label">[251]</a> Spanish Calendar, vol. iii. (Paris Archives Nationales).</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a id="Footnote_252" href="#FNanchor_252" class="label">[252]</a> Spanish Calendar, vol. iii.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a id="Footnote_253" href="#FNanchor_253" class="label">[253]</a> Spanish Calendar, vol. iii.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a id="Footnote_254" href="#FNanchor_254" class="label">[254]</a> To Idiaquez.—Spanish Calendar, vol. iii.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a id="Footnote_255" href="#FNanchor_255" class="label">[255]</a> Roman Transcript, Record Office, vol. xvii. Allen and
+Parsons to the Pope and Philip, 16th January, 1584.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a id="Footnote_256" href="#FNanchor_256" class="label">[256]</a> The Cardinal of Como to the Nuncio in Paris, 9th April,
+1584.—Roman Transcripts, Record Office.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a id="Footnote_257" href="#FNanchor_257" class="label">[257]</a> Allen to the Nuncio in Paris.—“Letters and Memorials of
+Cardinal Allen.”</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a id="Footnote_258" href="#FNanchor_258" class="label">[258]</a> Spanish Calendar, vol. iii.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a id="Footnote_259" href="#FNanchor_259" class="label">[259]</a> Tassis to Philip, May 27th.—Spanish Calendar, vol. iii.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a id="Footnote_260" href="#FNanchor_260" class="label">[260]</a> Bazan to the King and the reply. Fernandez Duro, “La
+Armada Invincible.”</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a id="Footnote_261" href="#FNanchor_261" class="label">[261]</a> Spanish Calendar, vol. iii.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a id="Footnote_262" href="#FNanchor_262" class="label">[262]</a> Spanish Calendar, vol. iii.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a id="Footnote_263" href="#FNanchor_263" class="label">[263]</a> Philip to Mendoza, 5th July, 1585.—Spanish Calendar,
+vol. iii.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a id="Footnote_264" href="#FNanchor_264" class="label">[264]</a> Philip to Mendoza, 17th August.—Spanish Calendar, vol. iii.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a id="Footnote_265" href="#FNanchor_265" class="label">[265]</a> Philip to Mendoza, 23rd July, 1585.—Spanish Calendar,
+vol. iii.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a id="Footnote_266" href="#FNanchor_266" class="label">[266]</a> It appears, from a letter written by the Marquis of Santa
+Cruz in 1586, that all the English ships were released in a
+week or so without any damage being done to them, whereas
+the embargo upon Spanish property in England was not raised
+at all. Santa Cruz represents that the English were the aggressors;
+probably some religious point was made the pretext
+for the attempt to take possession of the <i>Primrose</i> by the
+Lieutenant-Governor of Biscay. The Spaniards insist that none
+of the ships were embargoed until the <i>Primrose</i> had sailed
+away with her “captors.”</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a id="Footnote_267" href="#FNanchor_267" class="label">[267]</a> The correspondence of Olivares detailing his negotiations
+with Sixtus is in the Spanish Calendar, vol. iii.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a id="Footnote_268" href="#FNanchor_268" class="label">[268]</a> Mendoza to Philip, Spanish Calendar, vol. iii.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a id="Footnote_269" href="#FNanchor_269" class="label">[269]</a> Parsons to Idiaquez, 30th June, 1597. Transcript printed
+in “Letters and Memorials of Cardinal Allen.” The original
+cannot now be found in the Simancas Archives.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a id="Footnote_270" href="#FNanchor_270" class="label">[270]</a> That she knew this is seen in the letter where she implores
+Mendoza to keep the matter secret, or she will lose her French
+dowry. It is curious, however, that in the same letter she prays
+for rewards for Morgan and the Pagets, whom Parsons represents
+as being strongly anti-Spanish.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a id="Footnote_271" href="#FNanchor_271" class="label">[271]</a> Mendoza to Philip, 26th June, 1586.—Spanish Calendar,
+vol. iii.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a id="Footnote_272" href="#FNanchor_272" class="label">[272]</a> Philip to Mendoza, 18th July, 1586.—Spanish Calendar,
+vol. iii.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a id="Footnote_273" href="#FNanchor_273" class="label">[273]</a> Mary to Mendoza, 27th July, 1586.—Spanish Calendar,
+vol. iii.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a id="Footnote_274" href="#FNanchor_274" class="label">[274]</a> It was asserted by Mendoza that Raleigh was one of these,
+which is incredible.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a id="Footnote_275" href="#FNanchor_275" class="label">[275]</a> If the postscript to her letter to Babington of 17th July, 1586
+(Record Office, “Mary Queen of Scots,” vol. xviii.), be genuine,
+as I believe, there can be no doubt of this, but her letter to the
+French ambassador, Chateauneuf (17th July), is also compromising
+(Labanoff).</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a id="Footnote_276" href="#FNanchor_276" class="label">[276]</a> See <a href="#Page_420">p. 420</a>.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a id="Footnote_277" href="#FNanchor_277" class="label">[277]</a> These were Castilian ducats worth 11 reals (2s. 5½d.), or
+£467,444, which would represent in present value nearly
+£3,000,000.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a id="Footnote_278" href="#FNanchor_278" class="label">[278]</a> These letters (copied by me in the Paris Archives) are in the
+Spanish Calendar, vol. iii.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a id="Footnote_279" href="#FNanchor_279" class="label">[279]</a> Alexander Farnese, Duke of Parma, had married a Portuguese
+princess, and his children had a better right to the Crowns
+of Portugal and England than Philip had. The English Catholic
+refugees in Flanders were already suggesting that the young
+Prince of Parma should marry Arabella Stuart and reign over
+England when it had been conquered. Farnese himself was
+approached by different English parties, even by the moderate
+conforming Catholics in Elizabeth’s Court during the negotiations,
+with a view to divide him from the Spaniards on this question of
+the succession. The Spanish officers, after the defeat of the
+Armada, failing to understand the tactical reasons that kept
+Farnese inactive, openly accused him of treachery. There is
+no doubt that Farnese was hurt, and justifiably so, at the contemptuous
+disregard for his children’s rights, but he was certainly
+loyal to Philip.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a id="Footnote_280" href="#FNanchor_280" class="label">[280]</a> Spanish Calendar, vol. iii. 681.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a id="Footnote_281" href="#FNanchor_281" class="label">[281]</a> Philip afterwards ordered that the aid should be confined to
+a money subvention, but Parma determined, if possible, to send
+the armed contingent, though the whole scheme fell through.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a id="Footnote_282" href="#FNanchor_282" class="label">[282]</a> Spanish Calendar, vols. iii. and iv.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a id="Footnote_283" href="#FNanchor_283" class="label">[283]</a> Spanish Calendar, vol. iv.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a id="Footnote_284" href="#FNanchor_284" class="label">[284]</a> To prove the importance of this point, one of Mendoza’s
+arguments in favour of the proposal of Huntly and the Scottish
+Catholics to attack England across the Border by land instead
+of by an invading fleet, was the great cost of the pipe staves,
+which he said had already been 150,000 ducats.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a id="Footnote_285" href="#FNanchor_285" class="label">[285]</a> Spanish Calendar, vol. iv. 135.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a id="Footnote_286" href="#FNanchor_286" class="label">[286]</a> This had been, and continued to be, an absolute condition
+of Parma’s, without which he would not move at all. We shall
+see how the promise was treated.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a id="Footnote_287" href="#FNanchor_287" class="label">[287]</a> There is, unfortunately, no space here to give details of
+the endless pourparlers that went on. Much of the correspondence
+from the English Commissioners is in the Flanders
+Papers in the Record Office, and in British Museum Cotton
+MSS. Vespasian CVII., whilst Parma’s letters on the subject
+to Philip are abstracted in the Calendars of Spanish State
+Papers, vol. iv., under the editorship of the present writer.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a id="Footnote_288" href="#FNanchor_288" class="label">[288]</a> Spanish Calendar, vol. iv.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a id="Footnote_289" href="#FNanchor_289" class="label">[289]</a> Parma to Philip, 20th March, 1588.—Spanish Calendar.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a id="Footnote_290" href="#FNanchor_290" class="label">[290]</a> The letters of Medina Sidonia and Philip have been printed
+in Spanish by Captain Fernandez Duro in “La Armada
+Invincible.”</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a id="Footnote_291" href="#FNanchor_291" class="label">[291]</a> “La Armada Invincible.”</p></div>
+
+</div>
+
+<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop" aria-hidden="true">
+
+<div class="chapter">
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_489">[489]</span></p>
+
+<h2 class="nobreak" id="INDEX">INDEX</h2>
+
+</div>
+
+<nav>
+
+<ul>
+
+<li class="ifrst">A</li>
+
+<li class="indx">Alava, Don Francés, Spanish ambassador in France, <a href="#Page_320">320-23</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx">Alba, Duchess of, in England, <a href="#Page_84">84-86</a>, <a href="#Page_88">88</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx">Alba, Duke of, <a href="#Page_53">53</a>, <a href="#Page_67">67</a>, <a href="#Page_68">68</a>, <a href="#Page_73">73</a>, <a href="#Page_85">85</a>, <a href="#Page_117">117</a>,
+    <a href="#Page_142">142</a>, <a href="#Page_148">148</a>, <a href="#Page_150">150</a>, <a href="#Page_197">197</a>, <a href="#Page_218">218</a>, <a href="#Page_226">226</a>,
+    <a href="#Page_231">231</a>, <a href="#Page_232">232</a>.</li>
+  <li class="isub1">In Flanders, <a href="#Page_258">258</a>, <a href="#Page_265">265</a>, <a href="#Page_266">266</a>, <a href="#Page_268">268</a>, <a href="#Page_271">271</a>,
+    <a href="#Page_272">272</a>, <a href="#Page_275">275</a>, <a href="#Page_277">277-78</a>, <a href="#Page_282">282</a>, <a href="#Page_283">283-88</a>, <a href="#Page_297">297-316</a>,
+    <a href="#Page_319">319</a>, <a href="#Page_324">324</a>, <a href="#Page_327">327</a>, <a href="#Page_330">330</a>, <a href="#Page_333">333</a>.</li>
+  <li class="isub1">Retires from Flanders, <a href="#Page_334">334</a>.</li>
+  <li class="isub1">In Portugal, <a href="#Page_372">372</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx">Alençon, Duke of, <a href="#Page_321">321</a>, <a href="#Page_326">326</a>, <a href="#Page_327">327</a>, <a href="#Page_342">342</a>, <a href="#Page_345">345</a>,
+    <a href="#Page_350">350</a>, <a href="#Page_352">352</a>, <a href="#Page_358">358</a>, <a href="#Page_361">361</a>, <a href="#Page_370">370</a>, <a href="#Page_376">376</a>,
+    <a href="#Page_388">388</a>, <a href="#Page_395">395-96</a>, <a href="#Page_399">399</a>, <a href="#Page_422">422</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx">Allen, Dr. (Cardinal), <a href="#Page_383">383</a>, <a href="#Page_385">385</a>, <a href="#Page_391">391</a>, <a href="#Page_404">404</a>, <a href="#Page_405">405</a>,
+    <a href="#Page_406">406</a>, <a href="#Page_416">416</a>, <a href="#Page_418">418</a>, <a href="#Page_419">419</a>, <a href="#Page_425">425</a>, <a href="#Page_432">432</a>,
+    <a href="#Page_457">457</a>, <a href="#Page_458">458</a>, <a href="#Page_459">459</a>, <a href="#Page_471">471</a>, <a href="#Page_484">484</a>, <a href="#Page_485">485</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx">Alvarez, Dr., Portuguese ambassador, <a href="#Page_270">270-71</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx">Anna of Austria, Philip’s fourth wife, <a href="#Page_300">300</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx">Antonio, Don, Portuguese Pretender, <a href="#Page_371">371-73</a>, <a href="#Page_375">375</a>, <a href="#Page_379">379</a>, <a href="#Page_380">380</a>, <a href="#Page_396">396</a>,
+    <a href="#Page_405">405</a>, <a href="#Page_411">411</a>, <a href="#Page_413">413</a>, <a href="#Page_420">420</a>, <a href="#Page_427">427</a>, <a href="#Page_429">429</a>,
+    <a href="#Page_441">441</a>, <a href="#Page_447">447</a>, <a href="#Page_450">450</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx">Armada, the evolution of the, <a href="#Page_420">420</a>, <a href="#Page_421">421</a>, <a href="#Page_425">425</a>, <a href="#Page_427">427</a>, <a href="#Page_431">431</a>,
+    <a href="#Page_432">432</a>, <a href="#Page_447">447</a>, <a href="#Page_448">448</a>, <a href="#Page_449">449</a>, <a href="#Page_450">450</a>, <a href="#Page_451">451</a>,
+    <a href="#Page_452">452</a>, <a href="#Page_453">453</a>, <a href="#Page_458">458</a>, <a href="#Page_462">462</a>.</li>
+  <li class="isub1">Orders given to, <a href="#Page_466">466-70</a>, <a href="#Page_475">475-78</a>, <a href="#Page_479">479</a>, <a href="#Page_480">480-82</a>.</li>
+  <li class="isub1">The catastrophe, <a href="#Page_483">483-84</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx">Arundel, Earl of (Fitzallan), <a href="#Page_14">14</a>, <a href="#Page_37">37</a>, <a href="#Page_40">40</a>, <a href="#Page_62">62</a>, <a href="#Page_67">67</a>,
+    <a href="#Page_174">174</a>, <a href="#Page_281">281-82</a>, <a href="#Page_284">284-88</a>, <a href="#Page_290">290</a>, <a href="#Page_302">302</a>, <a href="#Page_303">303</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx">Arundel, Earl of (Howard), <a href="#Page_409">409</a>, <a href="#Page_439">439</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx">Arundell, Charles, <a href="#Page_409">409</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx">Ashton, <a href="#Page_136">136</a></li>
+
+<li class="ifrst">B</li>
+
+<li class="indx">Babington plot, <a href="#Page_434">434-44</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx">Bacon, Sir Nicholas, <a href="#Page_163">163</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx">Bailly, Charles, <a href="#Page_310">310-12</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx">Ballard, Father, <a href="#Page_434">434</a>, <a href="#Page_435">435</a>, <a href="#Page_439">439</a>, <a href="#Page_440">440</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx">Barker, <a href="#Page_306">306</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx">Bayonne, the interviews at, <a href="#Page_230">230</a>, <a href="#Page_231">231</a>, <a href="#Page_232">232</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx">Bazan, Alvaro de (Santa Cruz), Admiral, his plan to conquer England, <a href="#Page_420">420</a>, <a href="#Page_428">428</a>, <a href="#Page_447">447</a>, <a href="#Page_448">448</a>,
+    <a href="#Page_449">449</a>, <a href="#Page_451">451</a>, <a href="#Page_462">462</a>, <a href="#Page_465">465</a>, <a href="#Page_466">466</a>, <a href="#Page_467">467</a>,
+    <a href="#Page_469">469</a>, <a href="#Page_471">471</a>, <a href="#Page_474">474</a>, <a href="#Page_476">476</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx">Beal, clerk of the Council, <a href="#Page_441">441</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx">Bedford, Earl of, <a href="#Page_54">54</a>, <a href="#Page_56">56</a>, <a href="#Page_57">57</a>, <a href="#Page_66">66</a><i>n</i>, <a href="#Page_145">145</a>,
+    <a href="#Page_149">149</a>, <a href="#Page_162">162</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx">Berga, Father, De Spes’s chaplain, <a href="#Page_300">300</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx">Bertondona, Martin de, Spanish seaman, <a href="#Page_58">58</a>, <a href="#Page_476">476</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx">Beton, Archbishop of Glasgow, <a href="#Page_239">239</a>, <a href="#Page_363">363</a>, <a href="#Page_364">364</a>, <a href="#Page_366">366</a>, <a href="#Page_383">383</a>,
+    <a href="#Page_384">384</a>, <a href="#Page_391">391</a>, <a href="#Page_400">400</a>, <a href="#Page_405">405</a>, <a href="#Page_418">418</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx">Beton, James, <a href="#Page_267">267</a>, <a href="#Page_270">270</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx"><span class="pagenum" id="Page_490">[490]</span>Blanks, the Conspiracy of the, <a href="#Page_450">450</a> <i>et seq.</i></li>
+
+<li class="indx">Bonner, Bishop of London, <a href="#Page_113">113</a>, <a href="#Page_115">115</a>, <a href="#Page_123">123</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx">Borough, Admiral, <a href="#Page_461">461</a>, <a href="#Page_463">463</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx">Bothwell, <a href="#Page_256">256</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx">Boxall, Secretary, <a href="#Page_161">161</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx">Browne, Sir Anthony (Viscount Montagu), <a href="#Page_43">43</a>, <a href="#Page_68">68</a>, <a href="#Page_303">303</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx">Bruce, Robert, <a href="#Page_450">450</a>, <a href="#Page_451">451-55</a></li>
+
+<li class="ifrst">C</li>
+
+<li class="indx">Cadiz, Drake’s raid upon, <a href="#Page_460">460-64</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx">Caithness, Earl of, <a href="#Page_382">382</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx">Calais, loss of, <a href="#Page_151">151</a>, <a href="#Page_157">157</a>, <a href="#Page_168">168</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx">Campion, Edmund, Jesuit, <a href="#Page_367">367</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx">Carew, <a href="#Page_46">46</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx">Carlos, Don (Philip’s son), <a href="#Page_54">54</a>, <a href="#Page_135">135</a>, <a href="#Page_213">213</a>, <a href="#Page_224">224</a>, <a href="#Page_225">225</a>,
+    <a href="#Page_228">228</a>, <a href="#Page_236">236</a>, <a href="#Page_238">238</a>, <a href="#Page_239">239</a>, <a href="#Page_240">240</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx">Castelnau, de la Mauvissière, French ambassador to Scotland, <a href="#Page_250">250</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx">Cateau Cambresis, Peace of, <a href="#Page_191">191</a>, <a href="#Page_195">195</a>, <a href="#Page_196">196</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx">Catharine de Medici, <a href="#Page_197">197</a>, <a href="#Page_210">210</a>, <a href="#Page_211">211</a>, <a href="#Page_226">226</a>, <a href="#Page_229">229</a>,
+    <a href="#Page_231">231</a>, <a href="#Page_287">287</a>, <a href="#Page_303">303</a>, <a href="#Page_320">320</a>, <a href="#Page_326">326</a>, <a href="#Page_330">330</a>,
+    <a href="#Page_345">345</a>, <a href="#Page_362">362</a>, <a href="#Page_384">384</a>, <a href="#Page_458">458</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx">Catharine Grey, <a href="#Page_196">196</a>, <a href="#Page_241">241</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx">Catholic League, the, <a href="#Page_195">195</a>, <a href="#Page_226">226</a>, <a href="#Page_228">228</a>, <a href="#Page_230">230</a>, <a href="#Page_327">327</a>,
+    <a href="#Page_328">328</a>, <a href="#Page_422">422</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx">Catholics, English, under Elizabeth, <a href="#Page_200">200</a>, <a href="#Page_227">227</a>, <a href="#Page_228">228</a>, <a href="#Page_233">233</a>, <a href="#Page_246">246-47</a>,
+    <a href="#Page_261">261</a>, <a href="#Page_271">271</a>, <a href="#Page_280">280-83</a>, <a href="#Page_285">285-88</a>, <a href="#Page_289">289-92</a>, <a href="#Page_293">293-95</a>,
+    <a href="#Page_298">298-316</a>, <a href="#Page_361">361</a>, <a href="#Page_367">367-68</a>, <a href="#Page_376">376</a>, <a href="#Page_388">388</a>, <a href="#Page_405">405</a>,
+    <a href="#Page_409">409</a>, <a href="#Page_416">416</a>, <a href="#Page_417">417</a>, <a href="#Page_434">434</a>, <a href="#Page_435">435</a>, <a href="#Page_439">439</a>,
+    <a href="#Page_440">440</a>, <a href="#Page_485">485</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx">Cavalcanti, Guido, <a href="#Page_320">320</a><i>n</i></li>
+
+<li class="indx">Cecil, William (Lord Burghley), <a href="#Page_9">9</a>, <a href="#Page_99">99</a>, <a href="#Page_149">149</a>.</li>
+  <li class="isub1">Elizabeth’s minister, <a href="#Page_183">183</a>, <a href="#Page_187">187</a>, <a href="#Page_195">195</a>.</li>
+  <li class="isub1">Checkmates Dudley, <a href="#Page_209">209</a>, <a href="#Page_226">226</a>, <a href="#Page_227">227</a>, <a href="#Page_247">247</a>, <a href="#Page_260">260</a>,
+    <a href="#Page_273">273</a>, <a href="#Page_274">274</a>, <a href="#Page_278">278</a>, <a href="#Page_280">280</a>, <a href="#Page_282">282</a>, <a href="#Page_301">301</a>,
+    <a href="#Page_317">317</a>, <a href="#Page_319">319</a>, <a href="#Page_324">324</a>, <a href="#Page_336">336</a>, <a href="#Page_345">345</a>, <a href="#Page_348">348</a>,
+    <a href="#Page_358">358</a>, <a href="#Page_371">371</a>, <a href="#Page_374">374</a>, <a href="#Page_379">379</a>, <a href="#Page_395">395</a>, <a href="#Page_427">427</a>,
+    <a href="#Page_437">437</a>, <a href="#Page_441">441</a>, <a href="#Page_459">459</a>, <a href="#Page_460">460</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx">Charles, Archduke, a suitor for Elizabeth’s hand, <a href="#Page_199">199</a>, <a href="#Page_202">202</a>, <a href="#Page_216">216</a>, <a href="#Page_219">219</a>,
+    <a href="#Page_224">224</a>, <a href="#Page_229">229</a>, <a href="#Page_238">238</a>, <a href="#Page_239">239</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx">Charles V. His attempts to gain the friendship of England, <a href="#Page_2">2-19</a>.</li>
+  <li class="isub1">His advice to Mary, <a href="#Page_17">17-18</a>.</li>
+  <li class="isub1">His abdication, <a href="#Page_132">132</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx">Charles IX. of France, <a href="#Page_327">327</a>, <a href="#Page_352">352</a>, <a href="#Page_358">358</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx">Chatillon, Cardinal, Huguenot leader, <a href="#Page_268">268</a>, <a href="#Page_299">299</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx">Cheyne, Sir Thomas, <a href="#Page_145">145</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx">Ciappino Vitelli, Alba’s general, <a href="#Page_292">292</a>, <a href="#Page_294">294</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx">Clarencius, Mrs., Queen Mary’s nurse, <a href="#Page_40">40</a>, <a href="#Page_78">78</a>, <a href="#Page_179">179</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx">Clinton, Lady, <a href="#Page_184">184</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx">Clinton, Lord, made Lord Admiral, <a href="#Page_157">157</a>, <a href="#Page_162">162</a>, <a href="#Page_163">163</a>, <a href="#Page_167">167</a>, <a href="#Page_170">170</a>,
+    <a href="#Page_225">225</a>, <a href="#Page_278">278</a>, <a href="#Page_379">379</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx">Cobham, Lord, English councillor, <a href="#Page_14">14</a>, <a href="#Page_15">15</a>, <a href="#Page_43">43</a>, <a href="#Page_310">310</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx">Cobham, Lord (junior), <a href="#Page_465">465</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx">Cobham, Henry, Elizabeth’s envoy to Spain, <a href="#Page_307">307</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx">Cobham, Thomas, <a href="#Page_310">310</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx">Coligny, Admiral, <a href="#Page_149">149</a>, <a href="#Page_268">268</a>, <a href="#Page_329">329</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx">Como, Cardinal of, <a href="#Page_401">401</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx">Condé, Prince of, <a href="#Page_226">226</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx">Cordell, Master of the Rolls, <a href="#Page_163">163</a>, <a href="#Page_179">179</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx">Cordova, Pedro de, <a href="#Page_86">86</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx">Council of Trent, proposal by Dudley for England to join in, <a href="#Page_203">203-10</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx">Courtenay, Earl, of Devon, <a href="#Page_19">19</a>, <a href="#Page_20">20</a>, <a href="#Page_22">22</a>, <a href="#Page_24">24</a>, <a href="#Page_32">32-33</a>,
+    <a href="#Page_38">38</a>, <a href="#Page_41">41</a>, <a href="#Page_43">43</a>, <a href="#Page_46">46</a>, <a href="#Page_48">48</a>, <a href="#Page_49">49</a>, <a href="#Page_62">62</a>,
+    <a href="#Page_113">113</a>, <a href="#Page_115">115</a>, <a href="#Page_116">116</a>, <a href="#Page_139">139</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx">Cranmer, Archbishop, <a href="#Page_41">41</a>, <a href="#Page_141">141</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx">Crawford, Earl of, <a href="#Page_450">450</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx">Creighton, Father, Jesuit, <a href="#Page_378">378</a>, <a href="#Page_382">382</a>, <a href="#Page_383">383</a>, <a href="#Page_384">384</a>, <a href="#Page_385">385</a>,
+    <a href="#Page_386">386</a>, <a href="#Page_388">388</a>, <a href="#Page_389">389</a>, <a href="#Page_390">390</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx">Crofts, Sir James, <a href="#Page_358">358</a>, <a href="#Page_399">399</a>, <a href="#Page_465">465</a>, <a href="#Page_470">470</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx">Cumberland, Earl of, <a href="#Page_285">285</a></li>
+
+<li class="ifrst"><span class="pagenum" id="Page_491">[491]</span>D</li>
+
+<li class="indx">Dacre, Lord, <a href="#Page_285">285</a>, <a href="#Page_293">293</a>, <a href="#Page_404">404</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx">Dale, Dr., Peace Commissioner, <a href="#Page_465">465</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx">Daniel, <a href="#Page_136">136</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx">Darnley, Henry Stuart, Lord, <a href="#Page_218">218</a>, <a href="#Page_221">221</a>, <a href="#Page_226">226</a>, <a href="#Page_235">235-37</a>, <a href="#Page_238">238-40</a>,
+    <a href="#Page_241">241-54</a>, <a href="#Page_256">256</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx">Dassonleville, Councillor, in England, <a href="#Page_173">173</a>, <a href="#Page_184">184</a>, <a href="#Page_278">278-79</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx">De Foix, French ambassador, <a href="#Page_230">230</a>, <a href="#Page_231">231</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx">Dela, Damian, <a href="#Page_345">345</a>, <a href="#Page_348">348</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx">Derby, Earl of, <a href="#Page_61">61</a>, <a href="#Page_67">67</a>, <a href="#Page_80">80</a>, <a href="#Page_85">85</a>, <a href="#Page_302">302</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx">Derby, Earl of (junior), <a href="#Page_465">465</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx">Desmond Rebellion, <a href="#Page_359">359</a>, <a href="#Page_362">362</a>, <a href="#Page_364">364</a>, <a href="#Page_370">370</a>, <a href="#Page_375">375</a>,
+    <a href="#Page_398">398</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx">De Spes. <i>See</i> <a href="#Gerau_de_Spes"><span class="smcap">Gerau de Spes</span></a></li>
+
+<li class="indx">D’Este, Cardinal, <a href="#Page_421">421</a>, <a href="#Page_426">426</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx">Don Juan of Austria, <a href="#Page_334">334-40</a>, <a href="#Page_345">345</a>, <a href="#Page_349">349-51</a>, <a href="#Page_352">352</a>, <a href="#Page_355">355</a>,
+    <a href="#Page_357">357</a>, <a href="#Page_362">362</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx">Drake, Sir Francis, <a href="#Page_369">369</a>, <a href="#Page_371">371</a>, <a href="#Page_381">381</a>, <a href="#Page_397">397</a>, <a href="#Page_413">413</a>,
+    <a href="#Page_427">427</a>, <a href="#Page_429">429</a>, <a href="#Page_430">430</a>, <a href="#Page_460">460-64</a>, <a href="#Page_465">465</a>, <a href="#Page_479">479</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx">Dudley, Lord Henry, <a href="#Page_16">16</a>, <a href="#Page_41">41</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx">Dudley, Sir Henry, <a href="#Page_136">136</a>, <a href="#Page_139">139</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx" id="Dudley">Dudley, Lord Robert, <a href="#Page_199">199</a>, <a href="#Page_202">202</a>, <a href="#Page_221">221</a>, <a href="#Page_223">223</a>, <a href="#Page_224">224</a>,
+    <a href="#Page_225">225</a>, <a href="#Page_226">226</a>.</li>
+  <li class="isub1">Plots against Cecil, <a href="#Page_227">227</a></li>
+  <li class="isub1">(Earl of Leicester), <a href="#Page_352">352</a>, <a href="#Page_355">355</a>, <a href="#Page_358">358</a>, <a href="#Page_371">371</a>, <a href="#Page_382">382</a>,
+    <a href="#Page_395">395</a>, <a href="#Page_397">397</a>, <a href="#Page_427">427</a>, <a href="#Page_430">430</a>, <a href="#Page_449">449</a>, <a href="#Page_460">460</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx">Dunblane, Bishop of, <a href="#Page_457">457</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx">Durham House, <a href="#Page_43">43</a>, <a href="#Page_170">170</a>, <a href="#Page_199">199</a>, <a href="#Page_217">217</a>, <a href="#Page_446">446</a></li>
+
+<li class="ifrst">E</li>
+
+<li class="indx">Edward VI., <a href="#Page_2">2</a>, <a href="#Page_3">3</a>, <a href="#Page_4">4</a>.</li>
+  <li class="isub1">Illness and death of, <a href="#Page_8">8-12</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx">Eglinton, Earl of, <a href="#Page_382">382</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx">Egmont, Count, his embassy to England, <a href="#Page_43">43</a>, <a href="#Page_44">44</a>, <a href="#Page_45">45</a>, <a href="#Page_48">48</a>, <a href="#Page_49">49</a>,
+    <a href="#Page_51">51</a>, <a href="#Page_55">55</a>, <a href="#Page_67">67</a>, <a href="#Page_76">76</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx">Elizabeth, Princess, of England, <a href="#Page_19">19</a>, <a href="#Page_20">20</a>, <a href="#Page_38">38</a>, <a href="#Page_39">39</a>, <a href="#Page_41">41</a>,
+    <a href="#Page_46">46</a>, <a href="#Page_48">48</a>, <a href="#Page_49">49</a>, <a href="#Page_61">61</a>, <a href="#Page_64">64</a>, <a href="#Page_109">109</a>, <a href="#Page_110">110</a>,
+    <a href="#Page_113">113</a>, <a href="#Page_115">115</a>, <a href="#Page_116">116</a>, <a href="#Page_122">122-24</a>, <a href="#Page_135">135</a>, <a href="#Page_136">136</a>,
+    <a href="#Page_138">138-41</a>, <a href="#Page_156">156</a>, <a href="#Page_164">164-65</a>.</li>
+  <li class="isub1">Visited by Feria, <a href="#Page_166">166</a>, <a href="#Page_174">174</a>.</li>
+  <li class="isub1">Acknowledged Mary’s heir, <a href="#Page_175">175</a>.</li>
+  <li class="isub1">Her accession, <a href="#Page_181">181</a>.</li>
+  <li class="isub1"><i>See also</i> <a href="#Elizabeth"><span class="smcap">Elizabeth, Queen of England</span></a></li>
+
+<li class="indx" id="Elizabeth">Elizabeth, Queen of England. Perplexity of Feria, <a href="#Page_181">181-82</a>.</li>
+  <li class="isub1">Her first measures, <a href="#Page_183">183</a>.</li>
+  <li class="isub1">The problem of her marriage, <a href="#Page_182">182</a>, <a href="#Page_186">186</a>.</li>
+  <li class="isub1">Her reception of Philip’s offer, <a href="#Page_192">192-93</a>.</li>
+  <li class="isub1">Deceives Quadra, <a href="#Page_203">203-10</a>.</li>
+  <li class="isub1">Her policy towards the Dutch Protestants, <a href="#Page_221">221</a>.</li>
+  <li class="isub1">Her statecraft, <a href="#Page_224">224</a>.</li>
+  <li class="isub1">Fresh approaches to Spain, <a href="#Page_226">226-30</a>.</li>
+  <li class="isub1">Her danger from Mary Stuart, <a href="#Page_235">235-55</a>.</li>
+  <li class="isub1">Her fear of Philip’s designs, <a href="#Page_258">258</a></li>
+  <li class="isub1">Her retort to Alba’s proceedings in the Netherlands, <a href="#Page_258">258</a>.</li>
+  <li class="isub1">Her anger at Dr. Man’s expulsion from Spain, <a href="#Page_259">259-62</a>.</li>
+  <li class="isub1">Seizes the treasure, <a href="#Page_275">275</a>.</li>
+  <li class="isub1">Embargoes Spanish property, <a href="#Page_275">275-80</a>, <a href="#Page_292">292</a>.</li>
+  <li class="isub1">Her alarm, <a href="#Page_301">301</a>.</li>
+  <li class="isub1">Her reception of Guaras, <a href="#Page_325">325</a>.</li>
+  <li class="isub1">Friendly with the French, <a href="#Page_326">326-27</a>.</li>
+  <li class="isub1">Alençon’s courtship, <a href="#Page_327">327-28</a>.</li>
+  <li class="isub1">Her talk with Guaras, <a href="#Page_341">341</a>.</li>
+  <li class="isub1">Receives Mendoza, <a href="#Page_354">354-60</a>, <a href="#Page_370">370</a>, <a href="#Page_374">374</a>, <a href="#Page_379">379-81</a>, <a href="#Page_385">385-91</a>.</li>
+  <li class="isub1">Draws nearer to Spain, <a href="#Page_395">395</a>, <a href="#Page_396">396</a>.</li>
+  <li class="isub1">Proposal to murder her, <a href="#Page_401">401-3</a>.</li>
+  <li class="isub1">At war with Philip, <a href="#Page_431">431</a>.</li>
+  <li class="isub1">Plot to murder her, <a href="#Page_434">434-35</a>, <a href="#Page_439">439-41</a>.</li>
+  <li class="isub1">Tries for peace, <a href="#Page_445">445</a>, <a href="#Page_459">459</a>, <a href="#Page_466">466</a>, <a href="#Page_470">470</a>.</li>
+  <li class="isub1">The Armada, <a href="#Page_480">480-84</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx">Elizabeth of Valois, third wife of Philip, <a href="#Page_197">197</a>, <a href="#Page_226">226</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx">Emmanuel Philibert of Savoy, <a href="#Page_7">7</a>, <a href="#Page_108">108-11</a>, <a href="#Page_116">116</a>, <a href="#Page_140">140</a>, <a href="#Page_148">148</a>,
+    <a href="#Page_186">186</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx">England reconciled to the Papacy, <a href="#Page_102">102-8</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx">Englefield, Sir Francis, <a href="#Page_392">392</a>, <a href="#Page_485">485</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx">Enriquez, Pedro de, his account of England, <a href="#Page_84">84</a>, <a href="#Page_86">86</a>, <a href="#Page_87">87</a>, <a href="#Page_88">88</a>, <a href="#Page_90">90</a>,
+    <a href="#Page_102">102</a>, <a href="#Page_111">111</a>, <a href="#Page_112">112</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx"><span class="pagenum" id="Page_492">[492]</span>Eric of Sweden. Offers to marry Elizabeth, <a href="#Page_165">165</a>, <a href="#Page_176">176</a>,
+    <a href="#Page_186">186</a>.</li>
+  <li class="isub1">A suitor for Mary of Scotland, <a href="#Page_219">219</a></li>
+
+<li class="ifrst">F</li>
+
+<li class="indx">Farnese, Alexander, Duke of Parma, <a href="#Page_350">350</a>, <a href="#Page_424">424</a>, <a href="#Page_445">445</a>, <a href="#Page_451">451</a>, <a href="#Page_452">452</a>,
+    <a href="#Page_453">453</a><i>n</i>, <a href="#Page_462">462</a>, <a href="#Page_465">465</a>, <a href="#Page_470">470</a>, <a href="#Page_471">471</a>, <a href="#Page_472">472</a>.</li>
+  <li class="isub1">Advocates peace, <a href="#Page_475">475</a>, <a href="#Page_479">479</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx">Felton, John, <a href="#Page_299">299-300</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx">Fenner, Captain, <a href="#Page_429">429</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx">Feria, Count (Duke of), <a href="#Page_55">55</a>, <a href="#Page_67">67</a>, <a href="#Page_73">73</a>, <a href="#Page_86">86</a>, <a href="#Page_151">151</a>,
+    <a href="#Page_153">153</a>.</li>
+  <li class="isub1">His dealings with Mary and her Council, <a href="#Page_153">153-172</a>.</li>
+  <li class="isub1">Leaves England, <a href="#Page_172">172</a>, <a href="#Page_173">173</a>.</li>
+  <li class="isub1">Returns to Mary’s death-bed, <a href="#Page_177">177</a>.</li>
+  <li class="isub1">Visits Elizabeth, <a href="#Page_166">166</a>, <a href="#Page_178">178</a>.</li>
+  <li class="isub1">Philip’s ambassador to Elizabeth, <a href="#Page_181">181</a>.</li>
+  <li class="isub1">His bewilderment at the changes, <a href="#Page_182">182-84</a>.</li>
+  <li class="isub1">His interviews with Elizabeth, <a href="#Page_185">185</a>.</li>
+  <li class="isub1">His action in Madrid, <a href="#Page_259">259</a>, <a href="#Page_265">265</a>, <a href="#Page_307">307</a><i>n</i>, <a href="#Page_317">317</a>, <a href="#Page_324">324</a>,
+    <a href="#Page_351">351</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx">Feria, Countess of (Jane Dormer), <a href="#Page_179">179</a>, <a href="#Page_202">202</a>, <a href="#Page_316">316</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx">Fiesco, <a href="#Page_292">292</a>, <a href="#Page_323">323</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx">Figueroa, Viceroy, Imperial ambassador, <a href="#Page_67">67</a>, <a href="#Page_79">79</a>, <a href="#Page_80">80</a>, <a href="#Page_165">165</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx">Fitzwalter, Lord (Earl of Sussex), <a href="#Page_54">54</a>, <a href="#Page_56">56</a>.</li>
+  <li class="isub1"><i>See also</i> <a href="#Sussex"><span class="smcap">Sussex</span></a></li>
+
+<li class="indx">Fitzwilliam, George, <a href="#Page_316">316-18</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx">Fleetwood, Sir William, <a href="#Page_343">343</a>, <a href="#Page_347">347</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx">Flores, Diego, <a href="#Page_478">478</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx">Fowler, a Lennox adherent, visits Guzman, <a href="#Page_235">235-37</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx">Francis II. of France, <a href="#Page_197">197</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx">Frobisher, Captain, <a href="#Page_429">429</a></li>
+
+<li class="ifrst">G</li>
+
+<li class="indx">Gardiner, Stephen, Bishop of Winchester, <a href="#Page_26">26</a><i>n</i>, <a href="#Page_36">36</a>, <a href="#Page_40">40</a>, <a href="#Page_42">42</a>, <a href="#Page_45">45</a>,
+    <a href="#Page_46">46</a>, <a href="#Page_61">61</a>, <a href="#Page_71">71</a>, <a href="#Page_75">75</a>, <a href="#Page_94">94</a>, <a href="#Page_95">95</a>, <a href="#Page_103">103-5</a>,
+    <a href="#Page_107">107</a>, <a href="#Page_115">115</a>, <a href="#Page_130">130-31</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx">Geneda, Don Diego, <a href="#Page_33">33</a>, <a href="#Page_135">135</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx" id="Gerau_de_Spes">Gerau de Spes, Spanish ambassador, <a href="#Page_264">264</a>.</li>
+  <li class="isub1">His violent character, <a href="#Page_265">265-67</a>.</li>
+  <li class="isub1">Begins plotting at once, <a href="#Page_268">268-69</a>, <a href="#Page_270">270</a>, <a href="#Page_271">271</a>.</li>
+  <li class="isub1">Causes seizure of English property and stoppage of trade, <a href="#Page_275">275</a>.</li>
+  <li class="isub1">His indiscretion, <a href="#Page_276">276</a>, <a href="#Page_277">277</a>, <a href="#Page_278">278</a>.</li>
+  <li class="isub1">Under arrest in England, <a href="#Page_278">278-79</a>.</li>
+  <li class="isub1">Plots with Mary Stuart, <a href="#Page_280">280-83</a>, <a href="#Page_284">284-92</a>, <a href="#Page_293">293</a>.</li>
+  <li class="isub1">The Ridolfi plot, <a href="#Page_297">297-315</a>.</li>
+  <li class="isub1">Hoodwinked by Hawkins, <a href="#Page_316">316-18</a>.</li>
+  <li class="isub1">His expulsion from England, <a href="#Page_319">319</a>, <a href="#Page_375">375</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx">German mercenaries for England, <a href="#Page_156">156</a>, <a href="#Page_168">168</a>, <a href="#Page_169">169</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx">Gifford, Gilbert, <a href="#Page_439">439</a>, <a href="#Page_440">440</a>, <a href="#Page_443">443</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx">Giraldi, Portuguese envoy to England, <a href="#Page_343">343-44</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx">Granvelle, Cardinal de, <a href="#Page_4">4</a>, <a href="#Page_21">21</a>, <a href="#Page_99">99</a>, <a href="#Page_387">387</a>, <a href="#Page_388">388</a>,
+    <a href="#Page_392">392-93</a>, <a href="#Page_394">394</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx">Gregory XIII., Pope, <a href="#Page_309">309</a>, <a href="#Page_338">338</a>, <a href="#Page_401">401</a>, <a href="#Page_405">405</a>, <a href="#Page_406">406</a>,
+    <a href="#Page_421">421</a>, <a href="#Page_422">422</a>, <a href="#Page_423">423</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx">Gresham, Sir Thomas, <a href="#Page_112">112</a>, <a href="#Page_160">160</a>, <a href="#Page_161">161</a>, <a href="#Page_268">268</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx">Grey, Lady Jane. <i>See</i> <a href="#Jane"><span class="smcap">Jane</span></a></li>
+
+<li class="indx">Grey de Wilton, Lord, <a href="#Page_145">145</a>, <a href="#Page_151">151</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx">Guaras, Antonio de, <a href="#Page_35">35-36</a>, <a href="#Page_267">267</a>, <a href="#Page_322">322-26</a>, <a href="#Page_330">330-33</a>, <a href="#Page_336">336-46</a>.</li>
+  <li class="isub1">Arrested, <a href="#Page_347">347-49</a>, <a href="#Page_357">357</a>, <a href="#Page_359">359</a>, <a href="#Page_375">375</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx">Guaras, Gombal de, <a href="#Page_357">357</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx">Guise, Francis, Duke of, <a href="#Page_142">142</a>, <a href="#Page_143">143</a>, <a href="#Page_148">148</a>.</li>
+  <li class="isub1">Captures Calais, <a href="#Page_151">151</a>.</li>
+  <li class="isub1">Death of, <a href="#Page_235">235</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx">Guise, Henry, Duke of, <a href="#Page_365">365</a>, <a href="#Page_366">366</a>, <a href="#Page_384">384</a>, <a href="#Page_389">389</a><i>n</i>, <a href="#Page_390">390-92</a>,
+    <a href="#Page_393">393</a>, <a href="#Page_394">394</a>, <a href="#Page_399">399</a>, <a href="#Page_401">401-3</a>, <a href="#Page_405">405-7</a>, <a href="#Page_409">409</a>,
+    <a href="#Page_417">417</a>, <a href="#Page_418">418</a>, <a href="#Page_422">422</a>, <a href="#Page_425">425</a>, <a href="#Page_426">426</a>, <a href="#Page_450">450</a>,
+    <a href="#Page_451">451</a>, <a href="#Page_458">458</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx">Guises, the, <a href="#Page_200">200</a>, <a href="#Page_210">210</a>, <a href="#Page_211">211</a>, <a href="#Page_232">232</a>, <a href="#Page_234">234</a>,
+    <a href="#Page_352">352-53</a>, <a href="#Page_445">445</a>, <a href="#Page_457">457</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx">Guzman de Silva, Diego. Spanish ambassador to England, <a href="#Page_222">222</a>.</li>
+  <li class="isub1">His first interviews with Elizabeth, <a href="#Page_225">225-32</a>.</li>
+  <li class="isub1">His negotiations with Mary Stuart, <a href="#Page_235">235-54</a>.</li>
+  <li class="isub1">His interviews with Elizabeth about the expulsion of Dr. Man, <a href="#Page_260">260-61</a>.</li>
+  <li class="isub1"><span class="pagenum" id="Page_493">[493]</span>Begs Philip to recall him, <a href="#Page_262">262</a>.</li>
+  <li class="isub1">Presents his successor, <a href="#Page_264">264</a>.</li>
+  <li class="isub1">Elizabeth’s grief at his departure, <a href="#Page_264">264-65</a>.</li>
+  <li class="isub1">Leaves England, <a href="#Page_265">265</a>, <a href="#Page_268">268</a></li>
+
+<li class="ifrst">H</li>
+
+<li class="indx">Hamilton, Lord Claude, <a href="#Page_440">440</a>, <a href="#Page_450">450</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx">Hastings, Lord, <a href="#Page_43">43</a>, <a href="#Page_99">99</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx">Hatton, Sir Christopher, <a href="#Page_370">370</a>, <a href="#Page_371">371</a>, <a href="#Page_373">373</a>, <a href="#Page_382">382</a>, <a href="#Page_396">396</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx">Havrey, Marquis d’, <a href="#Page_352">352</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx">Hawkins, John, <a href="#Page_273">273</a>, <a href="#Page_274">274</a>, <a href="#Page_281">281</a>.</li>
+  <li class="isub1">His trick on de Spes, <a href="#Page_316">316-18</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx">Hawkins, William, <a href="#Page_273">273</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx">Heath, Archbishop, Lord Chancellor, <a href="#Page_141">141</a>, <a href="#Page_155">155</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx">Henrique, Cardinal, King of Portugal, <a href="#Page_362">362</a>, <a href="#Page_372">372</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx">Henry VIII., <a href="#Page_2">2</a>, <a href="#Page_32">32</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx">Henry II. of France, <a href="#Page_6">6</a>, <a href="#Page_95">95</a>, <a href="#Page_115">115</a>, <a href="#Page_139">139</a>, <a href="#Page_142">142</a>,
+    <a href="#Page_188">188</a>, <a href="#Page_194">194</a>.</li>
+  <li class="isub1">Death of, <a href="#Page_197">197</a>, <a href="#Page_200">200</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx">Henry III. of France, <a href="#Page_399">399</a>, <a href="#Page_425">425</a>, <a href="#Page_455">455</a>, <a href="#Page_456">456</a>, <a href="#Page_457">457</a>,
+    <a href="#Page_486">486</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx">Herbert, Dr., Peace Commissioner, <a href="#Page_465">465</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx">Herries, Lord, <a href="#Page_257">257</a>, <a href="#Page_312">312</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx">Hertford, Earl of, <a href="#Page_465">465</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx">Heywood, Father, Jesuit, <a href="#Page_383">383</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx">Hoby, Sir Philip, English envoy, <a href="#Page_8">8</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx">Holt, Father, Jesuit, <a href="#Page_386">386</a>, <a href="#Page_388">388</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx">Horn, Count, <a href="#Page_67">67</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx">Horsey, Governor of the Isle of Wight, <a href="#Page_274">274</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx">Howard, Lord Henry, <a href="#Page_388">388</a>, <a href="#Page_399">399</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx">Howard, Lord William (Lord Effingham), <a href="#Page_43">43</a>, <a href="#Page_44">44</a>, <a href="#Page_61">61</a>, <a href="#Page_63">63</a>, <a href="#Page_64">64</a>,
+    <a href="#Page_67">67</a>, <a href="#Page_76">76</a>, <a href="#Page_77">77</a>, <a href="#Page_135">135</a>, <a href="#Page_148">148</a>, <a href="#Page_157">157</a>, <a href="#Page_191">191</a>,
+    <a href="#Page_225">225</a>, <a href="#Page_254">254</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx">Howard, Lord Admiral (Charles 2nd Howard of Effingham), <a href="#Page_441">441</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx">Huguenots, the, <a href="#Page_200">200</a>, <a href="#Page_210">210</a>, <a href="#Page_211">211</a>, <a href="#Page_226">226</a>, <a href="#Page_230">230</a>,
+    <a href="#Page_232">232</a>, <a href="#Page_268">268</a>, <a href="#Page_273">273</a>, <a href="#Page_320">320</a>, <a href="#Page_326">326</a>, <a href="#Page_327">327-29</a>,
+    <a href="#Page_353">353</a>, <a href="#Page_358">358</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx">Hunsdon, Lord, <a href="#Page_441">441</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx">Huntly, Earl of, <a href="#Page_382">382</a>, <a href="#Page_450">450</a>, <a href="#Page_454">454</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx">Hurtado de Mendoza, Diego, <a href="#Page_33">33</a></li>
+
+<li class="ifrst">I</li>
+
+<li class="indx">Isabel, the Infanta, <a href="#Page_458">458</a></li>
+
+<li class="ifrst">J</li>
+
+<li class="indx">James VI. of Scotland, <a href="#Page_363">363</a>, <a href="#Page_366">366</a>, <a href="#Page_377">377</a>, <a href="#Page_378">378</a>, <a href="#Page_382">382</a>,
+    <a href="#Page_384">384</a>, <a href="#Page_386">386</a>, <a href="#Page_387">387</a>, <a href="#Page_400">400</a>, <a href="#Page_419">419</a>, <a href="#Page_422">422</a>,
+    <a href="#Page_426">426</a>, <a href="#Page_433">433</a>, <a href="#Page_436">436</a>, <a href="#Page_438">438</a>, <a href="#Page_450">450</a>, <a href="#Page_454">454</a>,
+    <a href="#Page_457">457</a>, <a href="#Page_458">458</a>, <a href="#Page_459">459</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx" id="Jane">Jane Grey, <a href="#Page_11">11</a>, <a href="#Page_13">13</a>, <a href="#Page_16">16</a>, <a href="#Page_19">19</a>, <a href="#Page_41">41</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx">Jane the Mad, <a href="#Page_56">56</a>, <a href="#Page_120">120</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx">Jerningham, Master of the Rolls, <a href="#Page_163">163</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx">Jesuit propaganda in England, <a href="#Page_365">365</a>, <a href="#Page_367">367</a>, <a href="#Page_368">368</a>, <a href="#Page_378">378</a>, <a href="#Page_382">382</a>,
+    <a href="#Page_385">385</a>, <a href="#Page_398">398</a>, <a href="#Page_400">400</a>, <a href="#Page_419">419</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx">Juana, Princess, Philip’s sister, <a href="#Page_54">54</a>, <a href="#Page_56">56</a>, <a href="#Page_225">225</a></li>
+
+<li class="ifrst">K</li>
+
+<li class="indx">Kildare, Countess of, <a href="#Page_85">85</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx">Kingston, Sir Anthony, <a href="#Page_136">136</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx">Kirkaldy of Grange, <a href="#Page_255">255</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx">Knollys, Sir Francis, <a href="#Page_277">277</a><i>n</i>, <a href="#Page_441">441</a></li>
+
+<li class="ifrst">L</li>
+
+<li class="indx">Landau, Charles V. at, <a href="#Page_2">2</a>, <a href="#Page_3">3</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx">La Mole received by Elizabeth, <a href="#Page_327">327-28</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx">La Mothe Fénélon, French ambassador, <a href="#Page_275">275</a>, <a href="#Page_287">287</a>, <a href="#Page_330">330</a>, <a href="#Page_400">400</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx">Leicester, Earl of. <i>See</i> <a href="#Dudley"><span class="smcap">Dudley</span></a></li>
+
+<li class="indx">Lennox D’Aubigny (Duke of Lennox), <a href="#Page_363">363</a>, <a href="#Page_366">366</a>, <a href="#Page_377">377</a>, <a href="#Page_378">378</a>, <a href="#Page_382">382</a>,
+    <a href="#Page_389">389-92</a>, <a href="#Page_398">398</a>, <a href="#Page_399">399</a>, <a href="#Page_400">400</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx">Lennox, Margaret, Countess of, <a href="#Page_218">218</a>.</li>
+  <li class="isub1">Intrigues with Guzman, <a href="#Page_235">235-37</a>, <a href="#Page_238">238-40</a>, <a href="#Page_241">241</a>, <a href="#Page_247">247</a>, <a href="#Page_253">253</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx">Lethington, William Maitland, Laird of (Scottish Secretary), <a href="#Page_213">213</a>, <a href="#Page_214">214</a>, <a href="#Page_215">215</a>, <a href="#Page_218">218</a>,
+    <a href="#Page_234">234-40</a>, <a href="#Page_285">285</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx"><span class="pagenum" id="Page_494">[494]</span>Lewis, Dr. Owen, Bishop of Cassano, <a href="#Page_433">433</a>, <a href="#Page_457">457</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx">London.</li>
+  <li class="isub1">Rejoices at Mary’s accession, <a href="#Page_14">14-17</a>.</li>
+  <li class="isub1">Mary’s entry into, <a href="#Page_19">19</a>.</li>
+  <li class="isub1">Mary’s coronation at, <a href="#Page_32">32</a>, <a href="#Page_34">34</a>.</li>
+  <li class="isub1">Wyatt’s appeal to, <a href="#Page_15">15</a>, <a href="#Page_47">47</a>.</li>
+  <li class="isub1">Fears of the Spanish match, <a href="#Page_34">34</a>, <a href="#Page_43">43</a>, <a href="#Page_52">52</a>, <a href="#Page_64">64</a>, <a href="#Page_86">86-90</a>.</li>
+  <li class="isub1">Philip’s State entry, <a href="#Page_90">90-92</a>, <a href="#Page_93">93</a>.</li>
+  <li class="isub1">Ill-feeling towards Spaniards, <a href="#Page_114">114</a>, <a href="#Page_120">120</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx">Loo, Andrea, de, <a href="#Page_445">445</a>, <a href="#Page_459">459</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx">Lopez, Dr., <a href="#Page_373">373</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx">Lopez de Padilla, Gutierre, <a href="#Page_54">54</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx">Lorraine, Cardinal, <a href="#Page_216">216</a>, <a href="#Page_226">226</a>, <a href="#Page_231">231</a>, <a href="#Page_232">232</a>, <a href="#Page_234">234</a>,
+    <a href="#Page_238">238</a>, <a href="#Page_244">244</a>, <a href="#Page_265">265</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx">Lumley, Lord, <a href="#Page_285">285</a>, <a href="#Page_286">286</a>, <a href="#Page_290">290</a>, <a href="#Page_302">302</a>, <a href="#Page_303">303</a></li>
+
+<li class="ifrst">M</li>
+
+<li class="indx">Man, Dr., English ambassador in Spain, his expulsion, <a href="#Page_259">259</a>, <a href="#Page_265">265</a>, <a href="#Page_270">270</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx">Marnix, Jacques de (Tholuze), envoy to England, <a href="#Page_9">9</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx">Martinengo, Abbé, Papal Legate for England, <a href="#Page_209">209</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx">Martin, Sir Roger, Lord Mayor, <a href="#Page_271">271</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx">Mary Tudor, Queen of England, <a href="#Page_8">8</a>, <a href="#Page_10">10</a>, <a href="#Page_11">11-16</a>.</li>
+  <li class="isub1">Her accession, <a href="#Page_17">17</a>.</li>
+  <li class="isub1">Her reception in London, <a href="#Page_19">19</a>.</li>
+  <li class="isub1">Her acceptance of Philip, <a href="#Page_23">23-29</a>.</li>
+  <li class="isub1">Her anger with Courtenay, <a href="#Page_32">32-33</a>.</li>
+  <li class="isub1">Her coronation, <a href="#Page_34">34</a>.</li>
+  <li class="isub1">Pledged to Philip, <a href="#Page_40">40</a>.</li>
+  <li class="isub1">The public announcement of her marriage, <a href="#Page_45">45</a>, <a href="#Page_47">47</a>, <a href="#Page_48">48</a>.</li>
+  <li class="isub1">Anxiety for Philip’s safety, <a href="#Page_51">51</a>.</li>
+  <li class="isub1">Her meeting with Philip, <a href="#Page_76">76-78</a>.</li>
+  <li class="isub1">The marriage, <a href="#Page_80">80-82</a>.</li>
+  <li class="isub1">Entry into London, <a href="#Page_90">90-92</a>, <a href="#Page_95">95</a>.</li>
+  <li class="isub1">Receives Pole, <a href="#Page_102">102</a>, <a href="#Page_109">109-10</a>.</li>
+  <li class="isub1">Difficulties with Elizabeth, <a href="#Page_116">116-19</a>.</li>
+  <li class="isub1">Hopes of an heir, <a href="#Page_119">119-21</a>, <a href="#Page_122">122</a>, <a href="#Page_123">123</a>.</li>
+  <li class="isub1">Philip’s absence, <a href="#Page_130">130</a>, <a href="#Page_140">140-41</a>.</li>
+  <li class="isub1">Joy at Philip’s return, <a href="#Page_144">144</a>.</li>
+  <li class="isub1">Declares war on France, <a href="#Page_147">147</a>.</li>
+  <li class="isub1">Her grief at the loss of Calais, <a href="#Page_153">153</a>, <a href="#Page_157">157</a>.</li>
+  <li class="isub1">Her poverty, <a href="#Page_158">158-59</a>.</li>
+  <li class="isub1">Her decline and death, <a href="#Page_171">171</a>, <a href="#Page_175">175-80</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx">Mary of Hungary, Regent of the Netherlands, <a href="#Page_3">3</a>, <a href="#Page_6">6</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx">Mary, Queen of Scots, <a href="#Page_39">39</a>, <a href="#Page_141">141</a>, <a href="#Page_187">187</a>, <a href="#Page_193">193</a>, <a href="#Page_197">197</a>,
+    <a href="#Page_200">200</a>, <a href="#Page_211">211</a>, <a href="#Page_213">213</a>, <a href="#Page_224">224</a>, <a href="#Page_234">234</a>, <a href="#Page_236">236-40</a>.</li>
+  <li class="isub1">Marries Darnley under Philip’s patronage, <a href="#Page_243">243-45</a>.</li>
+  <li class="isub1">Her designs against Elizabeth, <a href="#Page_247">247-54</a>.</li>
+  <li class="isub1">Rizzio, <a href="#Page_256">256</a>.</li>
+  <li class="isub1">Mary a prisoner, <a href="#Page_256">256</a>, <a href="#Page_257">257</a>.</li>
+  <li class="isub1">In England, <a href="#Page_262">262</a>, <a href="#Page_268">268</a>, <a href="#Page_269">269</a>.</li>
+  <li class="isub1">Her communications with de Spes, <a href="#Page_277">277-88</a>, <a href="#Page_293">293</a>.</li>
+  <li class="isub1">The Ridolfi plot, <a href="#Page_297">297-315</a>, <a href="#Page_316">316</a>, <a href="#Page_317">317</a>.</li>
+  <li class="isub1">Intrigues with Don Juan through Guaras, <a href="#Page_336">336</a>, <a href="#Page_339">339-40</a>, <a href="#Page_345">345</a>, <a href="#Page_349">349</a>.</li>
+  <li class="isub1">Fresh plots, <a href="#Page_365">365-66</a>, <a href="#Page_377">377</a>, <a href="#Page_383">383-84</a>, <a href="#Page_401">401-3</a>, <a href="#Page_410">410</a>,
+    <a href="#Page_423">423</a>, <a href="#Page_434">434</a>.</li>
+  <li class="isub1">Bequeaths Crown of England to Philip, <a href="#Page_436">436</a>.</li>
+  <li class="isub1">Her part in the Babington plot, <a href="#Page_444">444</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx">Mary of Lorraine, Regent of Scotland, <a href="#Page_200">200</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx">Mason, Dr., English Councillor, <a href="#Page_14">14</a>, <a href="#Page_15">15</a>, <a href="#Page_16">16</a>, <a href="#Page_99">99</a>, <a href="#Page_100">100</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx">Maurice of Saxony, <a href="#Page_2">2</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx">Maximilian of Austria, <a href="#Page_38">38</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx">Mayenne, Duke of, <a href="#Page_401">401</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx">Medina Celi, Duke of, <a href="#Page_55">55</a>, <a href="#Page_73">73</a>, <a href="#Page_85">85</a>, <a href="#Page_315">315</a><i>n</i>, <a href="#Page_317">317</a>,
+    <a href="#Page_331">331</a><i>n</i></li>
+
+<li class="indx">Medina Sidonia, Duke of, <a href="#Page_462">462</a>.</li>
+  <li class="isub1">To command the Armada, <a href="#Page_477">477</a>, <a href="#Page_479">479</a>, <a href="#Page_481">481</a>.</li>
+  <li class="isub1">Prays Philip to abandon the enterprise, <a href="#Page_482">482</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx">Melville, Sir James, <a href="#Page_254">254</a>, <a href="#Page_285">285</a><i>n</i></li>
+
+<li class="indx">Mendoza, Bernardino, Spanish ambassador to England, <a href="#Page_351">351</a>, <a href="#Page_353">353-54</a>, <a href="#Page_355">355-60</a>.</li>
+  <li class="isub1">Plots with the English Catholics, <a href="#Page_368">368-70</a>, <a href="#Page_377">377-83</a>, <a href="#Page_386">386-98</a>.</li>
+  <li class="isub1">His unpopularity in London, <a href="#Page_398">398</a>.</li>
+  <li class="isub1"><span class="pagenum" id="Page_495">[495]</span>His connivance with Throckmorton’s plot, <a href="#Page_408">408</a>.</li>
+  <li class="isub1">Expulsion from England, <a href="#Page_410">410-12</a>.</li>
+  <li class="isub1">In Paris, <a href="#Page_422">422-25</a>, <a href="#Page_433">433</a>.</li>
+  <li class="isub1">Connives at the Babington Plot, <a href="#Page_434">434-45</a>.</li>
+
+<li class="indx">Metz, the Emperor’s defeat at, <a href="#Page_5">5</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx">Montmorenci, Constable, <a href="#Page_148">148</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx">Montmorenci, Jean (de Courrières), envoy to England, <a href="#Page_9">9</a>, <a href="#Page_43">43</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx">Montrose, Earl of, <a href="#Page_450">450</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx">Morgan, Thomas, <a href="#Page_406">406</a>, <a href="#Page_435">435</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx">Morley, Lord, <a href="#Page_285">285</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx">Morton, the Regent, <a href="#Page_365">365</a>, <a href="#Page_366">366</a>, <a href="#Page_377">377</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx">Morton, Earl of (Stuart), <a href="#Page_450">450</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx">Moryson, Sir Richard, addresses the Emperor, <a href="#Page_1">1-4</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx">Murray, James Stuart, Earl of, <a href="#Page_245">245</a>, <a href="#Page_251">251</a>, <a href="#Page_255">255</a>, <a href="#Page_256">256</a>, <a href="#Page_284">284</a>,
+    <a href="#Page_285">285</a>, <a href="#Page_287">287</a></li>
+
+<li class="ifrst">N</li>
+
+<li class="indx">Navarre, Henry of, <a href="#Page_326">326</a>, <a href="#Page_328">328</a>, <a href="#Page_399">399</a>, <a href="#Page_422">422</a>, <a href="#Page_455">455</a>,
+    <a href="#Page_486">486</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx">Navas, Marquis de las, <a href="#Page_54">54</a>, <a href="#Page_59">59</a>, <a href="#Page_67">67</a>, <a href="#Page_85">85</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx">Noailles, Antoine de, French ambassador, <a href="#Page_19">19</a>, <a href="#Page_20">20</a>, <a href="#Page_33">33</a>, <a href="#Page_41">41</a>, <a href="#Page_42">42</a>,
+    <a href="#Page_43">43</a>, <a href="#Page_46">46</a>, <a href="#Page_49">49</a>, <a href="#Page_62">62</a>, <a href="#Page_79">79</a>, <a href="#Page_93">93-94</a>, <a href="#Page_115">115</a>,
+    <a href="#Page_119">119</a>, <a href="#Page_134">134</a>, <a href="#Page_135">135</a>.</li>
+  <li class="isub1">His plots, <a href="#Page_136">136</a>, <a href="#Page_141">141</a>, <a href="#Page_146">146</a>, <a href="#Page_147">147</a>, <a href="#Page_151">151</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx">Nonsuch House, <a href="#Page_288">288</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx">Norfolk, Duke of (Thomas Howard), his plots with Mary Stuart, <a href="#Page_281">281-83</a>, <a href="#Page_284">284-88</a>, <a href="#Page_289">289-92</a>,
+    <a href="#Page_293">293-95</a>, <a href="#Page_297">297</a>, <a href="#Page_301">301</a>, <a href="#Page_306">306</a>, <a href="#Page_311">311-15</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx">North, the Rising in the, <a href="#Page_293">293-95</a>, <a href="#Page_297">297</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx">Northampton, Marquis of, <a href="#Page_62">62</a>, <a href="#Page_226">226</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx">Northumberland, Duke of, <a href="#Page_3">3</a>, <a href="#Page_4">4</a>, <a href="#Page_5">5</a>, <a href="#Page_7">7</a>, <a href="#Page_8">8</a>, <a href="#Page_10">10</a>,
+    <a href="#Page_12">12</a>, <a href="#Page_14">14</a>, <a href="#Page_15">15</a>, <a href="#Page_16">16</a>, <a href="#Page_19">19</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx">Northumberland, Earl of, <a href="#Page_254">254</a>, <a href="#Page_277">277</a>, <a href="#Page_281">281</a>, <a href="#Page_285">285</a>, <a href="#Page_290">290</a>,
+    <a href="#Page_293">293</a>, <a href="#Page_293">293-95</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx">Northumberland, Earl of (junior), <a href="#Page_409">409</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx">Nowell, Dr., Dean of St. Paul’s, <a href="#Page_3">3</a>.</li>
+  <li class="isub1">Elizabeth rebukes him, <a href="#Page_231">231</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx">Nuñez, Dr. Hector, <a href="#Page_398">398</a><i>n</i></li>
+
+<li class="ifrst">O</li>
+
+<li class="indx">Oquendo, Admiral, <a href="#Page_476">476</a>, <a href="#Page_478">478</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx">Olivares, Count, Spanish ambassador in Rome, <a href="#Page_421">421</a>, <a href="#Page_423">423</a>, <a href="#Page_426">426</a>, <a href="#Page_432">432</a>,
+    <a href="#Page_433">433</a>, <a href="#Page_438">438</a>, <a href="#Page_457">457</a>, <a href="#Page_471">471</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx">Orange, Prince of, <a href="#Page_332">332-33</a>, <a href="#Page_352">352</a>, <a href="#Page_356">356</a>, <a href="#Page_369">369</a>, <a href="#Page_381">381</a>,
+    <a href="#Page_395">395</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx">Osorio, Isabel de, Philip’s mistress, <a href="#Page_22">22</a><i>n</i>, <a href="#Page_27">27</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx">Owen, Hugh, <a href="#Page_424">424</a></li>
+
+<li class="ifrst">P</li>
+
+<li class="indx">Pacheco, Don Juan, robbed in England, <a href="#Page_84">84</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx">Paget, William, Lord, <a href="#Page_20">20</a>, <a href="#Page_24">24</a>, <a href="#Page_37">37</a>, <a href="#Page_40">40</a>, <a href="#Page_61">61</a>, <a href="#Page_99">99</a>,
+    <a href="#Page_158">158</a>, <a href="#Page_163">163</a>, <a href="#Page_167">167</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx">Paget, Lord (junior), <a href="#Page_409">409</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx">Paget, Charles, <a href="#Page_339">339</a>, <a href="#Page_406">406</a>, <a href="#Page_408">408</a>, <a href="#Page_409">409</a>, <a href="#Page_434">434</a>,
+    <a href="#Page_435">435</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx">Paget, William, <a href="#Page_436">436</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx">Paget House, <a href="#Page_238">238</a>, <a href="#Page_269">269</a>, <a href="#Page_278">278</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx">Parry, Elizabeth’s controller, <a href="#Page_184">184</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx">Parsons (or Persons), Father Robert, <a href="#Page_367">367</a>, <a href="#Page_383">383</a>, <a href="#Page_385">385</a>, <a href="#Page_389">389</a>, <a href="#Page_400">400</a>,
+    <a href="#Page_404">404</a>, <a href="#Page_405">405</a>, <a href="#Page_406">406</a>, <a href="#Page_407">407</a>, <a href="#Page_416">416</a>, <a href="#Page_417">417</a>,
+    <a href="#Page_419">419</a>, <a href="#Page_421">421</a>, <a href="#Page_425">425</a>, <a href="#Page_435">435</a>, <a href="#Page_457">457</a>, <a href="#Page_458">458</a>,
+    <a href="#Page_471">471</a>, <a href="#Page_483">483</a>, <a href="#Page_485">485</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx">Paul IV., Pope (Caraffa), <a href="#Page_121">121</a>, <a href="#Page_141">141</a>, <a href="#Page_142">142</a>, <a href="#Page_150">150</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx">Paulet, Sir Amyas, <a href="#Page_345">345</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx">Paz, Luis de, <a href="#Page_219">219</a>, <a href="#Page_236">236</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx">Peace negotiations with Parma, <a href="#Page_445">445</a>, <a href="#Page_459">459</a>, <a href="#Page_465">465</a>, <a href="#Page_466">466</a>, <a href="#Page_470">470</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx">Peckham, Sir W., <a href="#Page_136">136</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx">Pembroke, Earl of, <a href="#Page_14">14</a>, <a href="#Page_61">61</a>, <a href="#Page_71">71</a>, <a href="#Page_80">80</a>, <a href="#Page_82">82</a>, <a href="#Page_97">97</a>,
+    <a href="#Page_145">145</a>, <a href="#Page_225">225</a>, <a href="#Page_290">290</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx">Pembroke, Countess of, <a href="#Page_85">85</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx">Pescara, Marquis of, <a href="#Page_55">55</a>, <a href="#Page_67">67</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx">Petre, Sir W., Secretary of State, <a href="#Page_14">14</a>, <a href="#Page_24">24</a>, <a href="#Page_37">37</a>, <a href="#Page_40">40</a>, <a href="#Page_97">97</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx"><span class="pagenum" id="Page_496">[496]</span>Philip II., <a href="#Page_6">6</a>.</li>
+  <li class="isub1">To marry Mary, <a href="#Page_21">21-31</a>, <a href="#Page_37">37</a>, <a href="#Page_38">38</a>.</li>
+  <li class="isub1">The conditions of his marriage, <a href="#Page_42">42</a>, <a href="#Page_44">44-46</a>, <a href="#Page_50">50</a>.</li>
+  <li class="isub1">His coming to England, <a href="#Page_52">52-65</a>.</li>
+  <li class="isub1">His presents to Mary, <a href="#Page_54">54</a>.</li>
+  <li class="isub1">His demeanour in England, <a href="#Page_65">65</a>, <a href="#Page_66">66</a>.</li>
+  <li class="isub1">Arrival and first sight of Mary, <a href="#Page_66">66-80</a>.</li>
+  <li class="isub1">State entry into London, <a href="#Page_90">90-92</a>.</li>
+  <li class="isub1">Receives Pole, <a href="#Page_101">101-105</a>.</li>
+  <li class="isub1">His attitude towards Elizabeth, <a href="#Page_116">116-17</a>.</li>
+  <li class="isub1">Leaves England, <a href="#Page_125">125-26</a>.</li>
+  <li class="isub1">His influence on English policy, <a href="#Page_129">129</a>, <a href="#Page_133">133</a>.</li>
+  <li class="isub1">His attempts to draw England into war, <a href="#Page_143">143</a>.</li>
+  <li class="isub1">Visits England, <a href="#Page_144">144</a>.</li>
+  <li class="isub1">Obtains armed English aid, <a href="#Page_145">145</a>.</li>
+  <li class="isub1">England joins him in the war, <a href="#Page_147">147</a>.</li>
+  <li class="isub1">His last farewell to Mary, <a href="#Page_148">148</a>.</li>
+  <li class="isub1">The war and the English, <a href="#Page_151">151-60</a>, <a href="#Page_162">162-63</a>, <a href="#Page_164">164</a>.</li>
+  <li class="isub1">His friendship with Elizabeth, <a href="#Page_166">166</a>.</li>
+  <li class="isub1">He proposes to Elizabeth, <a href="#Page_188">188-91</a>.</li>
+  <li class="isub1">His new policy, <a href="#Page_195">195</a>.</li>
+  <li class="isub1">Alliance with France, <a href="#Page_198">198-99</a>.</li>
+  <li class="isub1">Its inefficiency, <a href="#Page_200">200</a>.</li>
+  <li class="isub1">His intrigue with Lord R. Dudley, <a href="#Page_203">203-10</a>.</li>
+  <li class="isub1">His reception of Scottish approaches, <a href="#Page_215">215</a>.</li>
+  <li class="isub1">His policy in the Netherlands, <a href="#Page_220">220</a>.</li>
+  <li class="isub1">Patronises Darnley, <a href="#Page_235">235-40</a>, <a href="#Page_241">241-54</a>.</li>
+  <li class="isub1">His determination to crush the Netherlands, <a href="#Page_258">258</a>.</li>
+  <li class="isub1">Adopts a stronger policy towards England, <a href="#Page_263">263</a>.</li>
+  <li class="isub1">Seizure of his treasure, <a href="#Page_272">272-77</a>.</li>
+  <li class="isub1">Stops trade, <a href="#Page_278">278-79</a>.</li>
+  <li class="isub1">Intrigues with Mary Stuart, <a href="#Page_280">280-83</a>, <a href="#Page_288">288</a>.</li>
+  <li class="isub1">Accepts Ridolfi plot, <a href="#Page_308">308</a>, <a href="#Page_313">313</a>, <a href="#Page_314">314</a>.</li>
+  <li class="isub1">His claim to Portugal, <a href="#Page_362">362</a>, <a href="#Page_372">372</a>.</li>
+  <li class="isub1">His attitude towards Guise’s plots, <a href="#Page_402">402</a>, <a href="#Page_407">407</a>, <a href="#Page_408">408</a>.</li>
+  <li class="isub1">Resolved upon war at last, <a href="#Page_415">415</a>, <a href="#Page_421">421</a>, <a href="#Page_426">426</a>.</li>
+  <li class="isub1">His claim to the Crown of England, <a href="#Page_436">436</a>, <a href="#Page_437">437</a>.</li>
+  <li class="isub1">His doubts of the Babington plot, <a href="#Page_441">441-43</a>.</li>
+  <li class="isub1">Plans the Armada, <a href="#Page_448">448-49</a>, <a href="#Page_450">450</a>, <a href="#Page_451">451-56</a>, <a href="#Page_457">457-58</a>, <a href="#Page_459">459</a>,
+    <a href="#Page_466">466-74</a>.</li>
+  <li class="isub1">His obstinacy and the result, <a href="#Page_483">483</a>.</li>
+  <li class="isub1">His failure, <a href="#Page_487">487</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx">Pickering, Sir William, <a href="#Page_168">168</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx">Pole, Arthur, plots with Quadra, <a href="#Page_217">217</a>, <a href="#Page_255">255</a><i>n</i></li>
+
+<li class="indx">Pole, Cardinal Reginald, <a href="#Page_19">19</a>, <a href="#Page_34">34</a>, <a href="#Page_95">95</a>, <a href="#Page_98">98</a>, <a href="#Page_99">99</a>.</li>
+  <li class="isub1">In England, <a href="#Page_100">100-4</a>, <a href="#Page_114">114</a>, <a href="#Page_125">125</a>, <a href="#Page_130">130</a>, <a href="#Page_141">141</a>,
+    <a href="#Page_143">143</a>, <a href="#Page_146">146</a>, <a href="#Page_155">155</a>, <a href="#Page_170">170</a>.</li>
+  <li class="isub1">His death, <a href="#Page_179">179</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx">Portugal, Philip’s claim to, <a href="#Page_362">362</a>, <a href="#Page_371">371</a>, <a href="#Page_372">372</a>, <a href="#Page_396">396</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx"><i>Primrose</i>, the attack upon the, <a href="#Page_428">428</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx">Protestant conspiracies against Mary, <a href="#Page_136">136</a>, <a href="#Page_146">146</a>.</li>
+  <li class="isub1"><i>See also</i> <a href="#Wyatt"><span class="smcap">Wyatt</span></a></li>
+
+<li class="ifrst">Q</li>
+
+<li class="indx">Quadra, Bishop Alvaro.</li>
+  <li class="isub1">Philip’s ambassador in England, <a href="#Page_196">196</a>, <a href="#Page_198">198</a>, <a href="#Page_199">199</a>, <a href="#Page_200">200</a>.</li>
+  <li class="isub1">Hoodwinked by Dudley, <a href="#Page_202">202-10</a>.</li>
+  <li class="isub1">Scottish approaches to, <a href="#Page_213">213</a> <i>et seq.</i></li>
+  <li class="isub1">His death, <a href="#Page_219">219</a></li>
+
+<li class="ifrst">R</li>
+
+<li class="indx">Raleigh, Sir Walter, <a href="#Page_440">440</a><i>n</i>, <a href="#Page_446">446</a>, <a href="#Page_447">447</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx">Randolph, English agent in Scotland, <a href="#Page_249">249</a>, <a href="#Page_255">255</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx">Randolph, Major, <a href="#Page_170">170</a><i>n</i></li>
+
+<li class="indx">Ratcliff, Egremont, <a href="#Page_342">342</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx">Recalde, Martinez de, <a href="#Page_476">476</a>, <a href="#Page_478">478</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx">Religious persecution, <a href="#Page_96">96</a>, <a href="#Page_113">113-15</a>, <a href="#Page_123">123</a>, <a href="#Page_128">128</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx">Renard, Simon.</li>
+  <li class="isub1">Imperial ambassador, <a href="#Page_9">9-18</a>.</li>
+  <li class="isub1">Proposes Philip for Mary, <a href="#Page_21">21-31</a>, <a href="#Page_33">33</a>, <a href="#Page_37">37</a>, <a href="#Page_48">48</a>, <a href="#Page_49">49</a>,
+    <a href="#Page_50">50</a>, <a href="#Page_51">51</a>, <a href="#Page_61">61</a>, <a href="#Page_62">62</a>, <a href="#Page_63">63</a>, <a href="#Page_65">65</a>, <a href="#Page_71">71</a>,
+    <a href="#Page_113">113</a>, <a href="#Page_114">114</a>, <a href="#Page_122">122</a>, <a href="#Page_128">128</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx">Requesens, Viceroy of Flanders, <a href="#Page_334">334</a>, <a href="#Page_337">337</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx">Ridley, Bishop, <a href="#Page_41">41</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx"><span class="pagenum" id="Page_497">[497]</span>Ridolfi, Rodolfo, <a href="#Page_281">281</a>, <a href="#Page_297">297</a>, <a href="#Page_304">304</a>, <a href="#Page_306">306-11</a>,
+    <a href="#Page_318">318</a>, <a href="#Page_375">375</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx">Rizzio, <a href="#Page_256">256</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx">Robsart, Amy, Lady R. Dudley, <a href="#Page_202">202</a>, <a href="#Page_203">203</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx">Rochester, Sir R., <a href="#Page_154">154</a>, <a href="#Page_163">163</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx">Rome, the Armada intrigues in, <a href="#Page_421">421</a>, <a href="#Page_426">426</a>, <a href="#Page_457">457</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx">Ross, Bishop of, <a href="#Page_285">285</a>, <a href="#Page_287">287</a>, <a href="#Page_289">289</a>, <a href="#Page_298">298-99</a>, <a href="#Page_302">302</a>,
+    <a href="#Page_304">304</a>, <a href="#Page_310">310</a>, <a href="#Page_311">311</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx">Ross, <a href="#Page_306">306</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx">Rutland, Earl of, <a href="#Page_164">164</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx">Ruy Gomez, Philip’s favourite, <a href="#Page_55">55</a>, <a href="#Page_67">67</a>, <a href="#Page_72">72</a>, <a href="#Page_78">78</a>, <a href="#Page_92">92</a></li>
+
+<li class="ifrst">S</li>
+
+<li class="indx">St. Bartholomew, <a href="#Page_328">328-30</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx">St. Quintin, battle of, <a href="#Page_148">148</a>, <a href="#Page_150">150</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx">St. Quintin, English at the battle of, <a href="#Page_149">149</a>, <a href="#Page_159">159</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx">Sanders, Dr., Papal Legate in Ireland, <a href="#Page_364">364</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx">Sarmiento de Gamboa, <a href="#Page_446">446-47</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx">Schefyne, envoy to England, <a href="#Page_9">9</a>, <a href="#Page_11">11</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx">Sebastian, King of Portugal, <a href="#Page_362">362</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx">Semple, Colonel, <a href="#Page_450">450</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx">Seton, Lord, <a href="#Page_382">382</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx">Shan O’Neil, <a href="#Page_217">217</a>, <a href="#Page_256">256</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx">Shrewsbury, Earl of, <a href="#Page_14">14</a>, <a href="#Page_16">16</a>, <a href="#Page_61">61</a>, <a href="#Page_67">67</a>, <a href="#Page_97">97</a>, <a href="#Page_302">302</a>,
+    <a href="#Page_423">423</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx">Sidney, Sir H., <a href="#Page_202">202</a>, <a href="#Page_203">203</a>, <a href="#Page_210">210</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx">Sidney, Lady Mary, <a href="#Page_199">199</a>, <a href="#Page_202">202</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx">Sixtus V., Pope, <a href="#Page_423">423</a>, <a href="#Page_426">426</a>, <a href="#Page_432">432</a>, <a href="#Page_433">433</a>, <a href="#Page_438">438</a>,
+    <a href="#Page_457">457</a>, <a href="#Page_459">459</a>, <a href="#Page_471">471</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx">Spaniards, discontent of, <a href="#Page_83">83-90</a>, <a href="#Page_102">102</a>, <a href="#Page_111">111</a>, <a href="#Page_112">112</a>, <a href="#Page_120">120</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx">Spinola, Benedict, Genoese banker in London, <a href="#Page_272">272</a>, <a href="#Page_273">273</a>, <a href="#Page_274">274</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx">Stafford, Thomas, his abortive rebellion, <a href="#Page_146">146</a>, <a href="#Page_147">147</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx">Stanley, Sir William, <a href="#Page_439">439</a>, <a href="#Page_441">441</a>, <a href="#Page_450">450</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx">Story, Dr., <a href="#Page_303">303</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx">Strange, Lord, <a href="#Page_43">43</a>, <a href="#Page_82">82</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx">Stukeley, English traitor, <a href="#Page_301">301</a>, <a href="#Page_362">362</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx">Supremacy, Act of, <a href="#Page_194">194</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx" id="Sussex">Sussex, Earl of, <a href="#Page_61">61</a>, <a href="#Page_153">153</a>, <a href="#Page_157">157</a>, <a href="#Page_293">293</a>, <a href="#Page_342">342</a>,
+    <a href="#Page_370">370</a>, <a href="#Page_371">371</a>, <a href="#Page_373">373</a>, <a href="#Page_379">379</a></li>
+
+<li class="ifrst">T</li>
+
+<li class="indx">Tassis, Spanish Ambassador in France, <a href="#Page_383">383</a>, <a href="#Page_384">384</a>, <a href="#Page_389">389</a>, <a href="#Page_392">392</a>, <a href="#Page_400">400</a>,
+    <a href="#Page_401">401</a>, <a href="#Page_403">403</a>, <a href="#Page_405">405</a>, <a href="#Page_410">410</a>, <a href="#Page_418">418</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx">Throckmorton, Francis, <a href="#Page_408">408</a>, <a href="#Page_409">409</a>, <a href="#Page_416">416</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx">Treasure, the seizure of Philip’s, <a href="#Page_271">271-77</a>, <a href="#Page_321">321-26</a>, <a href="#Page_331">331</a>, <a href="#Page_332">332</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx">Tremayne, <a href="#Page_136">136</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx">Tresham, <a href="#Page_377">377</a></li>
+
+<li class="ifrst">U</li>
+
+<li class="indx">Uniformity, Act of, <a href="#Page_194">194</a></li>
+
+<li class="ifrst">V</li>
+
+<li class="indx">Valdés, Pedro de, <a href="#Page_478">478</a>, <a href="#Page_483">483</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx">Vargas-Mexia, Spanish ambassador in France, <a href="#Page_364">364-65</a>, <a href="#Page_366">366</a><i>n</i></li>
+
+<li class="ifrst">W</li>
+
+<li class="indx">Walsingham, Sir Francis, <a href="#Page_328">328</a>, <a href="#Page_358">358</a>, <a href="#Page_397">397</a>, <a href="#Page_407">407</a>, <a href="#Page_409">409</a>,
+    <a href="#Page_410">410</a>, <a href="#Page_427">427</a>, <a href="#Page_434">434</a>, <a href="#Page_441">441</a>, <a href="#Page_443">443</a>, <a href="#Page_444">444</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx">Wentworth, Lord, Governor of Calais, <a href="#Page_151">151</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx">Westmorland, Earl of, <a href="#Page_97">97</a>, <a href="#Page_147">147</a>, <a href="#Page_174">174</a>, <a href="#Page_293">293</a>, <a href="#Page_375">375</a>,
+    <a href="#Page_404">404</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx">Wilkes, English envoy to Spain, <a href="#Page_350">350-51</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx">Williams, Sir John (Lord Williams of Thame), <a href="#Page_67">67</a>, <a href="#Page_68">68</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx">Wilson, Dr., <a href="#Page_345">345</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx">Winchester, the marriage at, <a href="#Page_72">72-84</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx">Winchester, Marquis of, <a href="#Page_86">86</a>, <a href="#Page_97">97</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx">Winchester House, <a href="#Page_287">287</a>, <a href="#Page_302">302</a><i>n</i></li>
+
+<li class="indx">Worcester, Earl of, <a href="#Page_303">303</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx" id="Wyatt"><span class="pagenum" id="Page_498">[498]</span>Wyatt’s rebellion, <a href="#Page_47">47</a>, <a href="#Page_48">48</a>, <a href="#Page_49">49</a>, <a href="#Page_61">61</a>,
+    <a href="#Page_62">62</a>, <a href="#Page_90">90</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx">Wynter, Admiral, <a href="#Page_273">273</a>, <a href="#Page_429">429</a></li>
+
+<li class="ifrst">Y</li>
+
+<li class="indx">Yaxley, Francis, sent to Philip by the English and Scottish Catholics, <a href="#Page_248">248-54</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx">York, the Conference of, <a href="#Page_269">269</a>, <a href="#Page_284">284</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx">York, Roland, <a href="#Page_450">450</a></li>
+
+<li class="ifrst">Z</li>
+
+<li class="indx">Zayas, Secretary, <a href="#Page_305">305</a>, <a href="#Page_306">306</a>, <a href="#Page_313">313</a>, <a href="#Page_336">336</a>, <a href="#Page_346">346</a>,
+    <a href="#Page_347">347</a>, <a href="#Page_359">359</a>, <a href="#Page_363">363</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx">Zweveghem, Flemish envoy, <a href="#Page_324">324</a>, <a href="#Page_326">326</a></li>
+
+</ul>
+
+</nav>
+
+</main>
+<div style='text-align:center'>*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 78876 ***</div>
+</body>
+</html>
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@@ -0,0 +1,11 @@
+This book, including all associated images, markup, improvements,
+metadata, and any other content or labor, has been confirmed to be
+in the PUBLIC DOMAIN IN THE UNITED STATES.
+
+Procedures for determining public domain status are described in
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+
+No investigation has been made concerning possible copyrights in
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@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+[Project Gutenberg](https://www.gutenberg.org) public repository for eBook [#78876](https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/78876)