Part 3 (1/2)

The queen's letters were confirmed by Commendone himself; he had been permitted to confer in private with more than one good Catholic in the realm; and every one had given him the same a.s.surances,[121] although he had urged upon them the opposite opinion entertained by Pole:[122] he had himself witnessed the disposition with which the people regarded Elizabeth, and he was satisfied that the queen's alarm on this head was not exaggerated.[123]

In opinions so emphatically given, the pope was obliged to acquiesce, and the same view was enforced upon him equally strongly by the emperor. Charles knew England tolerably well; he was acquainted perfectly well with the moral and intellectual unfitness of the intended legate for any office which required discretion; and Julius, therefore, was obliged to communicate to the eager cardinal the necessity of delay, and to express his fear that, by excess of zeal, he might injure the cause and alienate the well-affected queen.[124] Though Pole might not go to England, however, he might go, as he went before, to the immediate neighbourhood; he might repair to Flanders, with a nominal commission to mediate in the peace which was still hoped for. In Flanders, though the pope forbore to tell him so, he would be under the emperor's eyes and under the emperor's control, till the vital question of the queen's marriage had been disposed of, or till England was in a calmer humour.

About the marriage Charles was more anxious than ever; Pole was understood to have declined the honour of being a compet.i.tor;[125] Renard had informed the emperor of the present direction of the queen's own inclinations; and treating himself, therefore, as out of the question on the score of age and infirmities, he instructed his minister to propose the Prince of Spain as a person whom the religious and the political interests of the world alike recommended to her as a husband. The alliance of England, Spain, and Flanders would command a European supremacy; their united fleets would sweep the seas, and Scotland, deprived of support from France, must become an English province; while sufficient guarantees could be provided easily for the security of English liberties. These, in themselves, were powerful reasons; Renard was permitted to increase their cogency by promises of pensions, lands, and t.i.tles, or by hard money in hand, in whatever direction such liberality could be usefully employed.[126]

The external advantages of the connection were obvious; it recommended itself to the queen from the Spanish sympathies which she had contracted in her blood, and from the a.s.sistance which it promised to afford her in the great pursuit of her life. The proposal was first suggested informally. Mary affected to find difficulties; yet, if she raised objections, it was only to prolong the conversation upon a subject which delighted her. She spoke of her age; Philip was twenty-seven, she ten years older; she called him ”boy;” she feared she might not be enough for him; she was unsusceptible; she had no experience in love;[127] with such other phrases, which Renard interpreted at their true importance. With the queen there would be no difficulty; with the council it was far otherwise. Lord Paget was the only English statesman who listened with any show of favour.

The complication of parties is not to be easily disentangled. Some attempt, however, may be partially successful.

The council, the peers, the Commons, the entire lay voices of England, liberal and conservative alike, were opposed to Rome; Gardiner was the only statesman in the country who thought a return to Catholic union practicable or desirable; while there was scarcely an influential family, t.i.tled or unt.i.tled, which was not, by grant or purchase, in possession of confiscated church property.

There was an equal unanimity in the dread that if Mary became the wife of a Spanish sovereign England would, like the Low Countries, sink into a provincial dependency; while, again, there was the utmost unwillingness to be again entangled in the European war; the French amba.s.sador insisted that the emperor only desired the marriage to secure English a.s.sistance; and the council believed that, whatever promises might be made, whatever stipulations insisted on, such a marriage, sooner or later, would implicate them. The country was exhausted, the currency ruined, the people in a state of unexampled suffering, and the only remedy was to be looked for in quiet and public economy; there were attractions in the offer of a powerful alliance, but the very greatness of it added to their reluctance; they desired to isolate England from European quarrels, and marry their queen at home. With these opinions Paget alone disagreed, while Gardiner was loudly national.

On the other hand, though Gardiner held the restoration of the papal authority to be tolerable, yet he dreaded the return of Pole, as being likely to supersede him in the direction of the English Church;[128] the party who agreed with the chancellor about the marriage, and about Pole, disagreed with him about the pope; while Paget, who was in favour of the marriage, was with the lords on the supremacy, and, as the Romanising views of the queen became notorious, was inclining, with Arundel and Pembroke, towards the Protestants.

No wonder, therefore, that the whole council were in confusion and at cross purposes. No sooner were Charles's proposals definitely known than the entire machinery of the government was dislocated. Mary represented herself to Renard as without a friend whom she could trust; and the letters, both of Renard and Noailles, contain little else but reports how the lords were either quarrelling, or had, one after the other, withdrawn in disgust to their country houses. Now it was Pembroke that was gone, now Mason, now Paget; then Courtenay was a prisoner in his house; then Lord Winchester was forbidden to appear at court: the ministers were in distrust of each other and of their mistress; the queen was condemned to keep them in their offices because she durst not make them enemies; while the Stanleys, Howards, Talbots, and Nevilles were glooming apart, indignant at the neglect of their own claims.

The queen herself was alternately angry and miserable; by the middle of September Renard congratulated Charles on her growing ill-humour; the five Dudleys and Lady Jane, he hoped, would be now disposed of, and Elizabeth would soon follow.

Elizabeth's danger was great, and proceeded as much from her friend's indiscretion as from the hatred of her enemies. Every one who disliked the queen's measures, used Elizabeth's name. Renard was for ever hissing his suspicions in the queen's ear, and, unfortunately, she was a too willing listener-not, indeed, that Renard hated Elizabeth for her own sake, for he rather admired her-or for religion's sake, for he had a most statesmanlike indifference to religion; but he saw in her the queen's successful rival in the favour of the people, the heir-presumptive to the crown, whose influence would increase the further the queen travelled on the road on which he was leading her, and, therefore, an enemy who, if possible, should be destroyed. An opportunity of creating a collision between the sisters was not long wanting. The lords of the council were now generally present at ma.s.s in the royal chapel. Elizabeth, with Anne of Cleves, had as yet refused to appear. Her resistance was held to imply a sinister intention; and on the 2nd and 3rd of September the council were instructed to bring her to compliance.[129] Yet the days pa.s.sed, the priest sang, and the heir to the crown continued absent. Gardiner, indeed, told Renard that she was not obdurate; he had spoken to her, and she had seemed to say that, if he could convince her, her objections would cease;[130] but they had not ceased so far; she did not attend. In the happiness of her first triumph Mary had treated Elizabeth like a sister, but her manner had relapsed into coldness; and the princess, at length, knowing how her name was made use of, requested a private interview, which, with difficulty, was granted. The sisters, each accompanied by a single lady, met in a gallery with a half-door between them. Elizabeth threw herself on her knees. She said that she perceived her majesty was displeased with her; she could not tell what the cause might be, unless it was religion; and for this, she said, she might be reasonably forgiven; she had been educated, as the queen was aware, in the modern belief, and she understood no other; if her majesty would send her books and teachers, she would read; she would listen; she could say no more.

Mary, at the moment, was delighted. Like a true Catholic, however, she insisted that obedience must precede faith; come to the ma.s.s, she said, and belief will be the reward of your submission; make your first trial on the ma.s.s of the Nativity of the Blessed Virgin.[131]

Elizabeth consented. She was present, but present reluctantly; pretending, as Renard said, to be ill; the next Sunday she was again absent. The queen, knowing the effect which her conduct would produce, again sent for her, and asked her earnestly what she really believed; the world said that, although she had complied once, her compliance was feigned, and that she had submitted out of fear; she desired to hear the truth. Elizabeth could reply merely that she had done as the queen had required her to do, with no ulterior purpose; if her majesty wished she would make a public declaration to that effect.[132] The queen was obliged to receive her answer; but she told Renard that her sister trembled as she spoke, and well, Renard said, he understood her agitation; she was the hope of the heretics, and the heretics were raising their heads; the Papists, they said, had had their day, but it was waning; if Elizabeth lived, England would again apostatise.

There was no difficulty in keeping the queen's jealousy alive against her sister. Courtenay was another offence in the eye of the amba.s.sador, as the rival to Philip, who found favour with the English council. The queen affected to treat Courtenay as a child; she commanded him to keep to his house; she forbade him to dine abroad without special permission; the t.i.tle of Earl of Devon was given to him, and he had a dress made for him to take his seat in, of velvet and gold, but the queen would not allow him to wear it:[133] and yet, to her own and the amba.s.sador's mortification, she learnt that he affected the state of a prince; that he spoke of his marriage with her as certain; that certain prelates, Gardiner especially, encouraged his expectation, and one or more of them had knelt in his presence.[134] The danger had been felt from the first that, if she persisted in her fancy for the Prince of Spain, Courtenay might turn his addresses to Elizabeth; the lords would in that case fall off to his support, and the crown would fall from her head as easily as it had settled there.

More afflicting to Mary than these personal grievances was the pertinacity with which the council continued, in their public doc.u.ments, to describe her as Head of the Church, the execrable t.i.tle which was the central root of the apostasy. In vain she protested; the hateful form-indispensable till it was taken away by parliament-was thrust under her eyes in every paper which was brought to her for signature, and she was obliged to acknowledge the designation with her own hand and pen.

Amidst these anxieties, September wore away. Parliament was to open on the fifth of October, and either before or after the meeting the queen was to be crowned. The ceremony was an occasion of considerable agitation; Mary herself was alarmed lest the holy oil should have lost its efficacy through the interdict; and she entreated Renard to procure her a fresh supply from Flanders, blessed by the excellent hands of the Bishop of Arras. But the oil was not the gravest difficulty. As the rumour spread of the intended Spanish marriage, libellous handbills were scattered about London; the people said it should not be till they had fought for it. A disturbance at Greenwich, on the 25th of September, extended to Southwark, where Gardiner's house was attacked,[135] and a plot was discovered to murder him: in the day he wore a s.h.i.+rt of mail under his robes, and he slept with a guard of a hundred men. Threatening notices were even found on the floor of the queen's bed-room, left there by unknown hands. Noailles a.s.sured the lords that his own government would regard the marriage as little short of a declaration of war, so inevitably would war be the result of it; and Gardiner, who was unjustly suspected of being in the Spanish interest, desired to delay the coronation till parliament should have met; intending that the first act of the a.s.sembly should be to tie Mary's hands with a memorial which she could not set aside. She inherited under her father's will, by which her accession was made conditional on her marrying not without the consent of the council; parliament might remind her both of her own obligation to obey her father's injunctions, and of theirs to see that they were obeyed.

With the same object, though not with the same object only, the lords of the council supported the Bishop of Winchester. They proposed to alter the form of the coronation oath, and to bind the queen by an especial clause to maintain the independence of the English Church-a precaution, as it proved, not unnecessary-for the existing form was already inconvenient, and Mary was meditating how, when called on to swear to observe the laws and const.i.tutions of the realm, she could introduce an adjective sub silentio; she intended to swear only that she would observe the JUST laws and const.i.tutions.[136] But she looked with the gravest alarm to the introduction of more awkward phrases; if words were added which would be equivalent (as she would understand them) to a denial of Christ and his Church, she had resolved to refuse at all hazards.[137]

But her courage was not put to the test. The true grounds on which the delay of the coronation was desired could not be avowed. The queen was told that her pa.s.sage through the streets would be unsafe until her accession had been sanctioned by parliament, and the act repealed by which she was illegitimatised. With Paget's help she faced down these objections, and declared that she would be crowned at once; she appointed the 1st of October for the ceremony; on the 28th of September she sent for the council to attempt an appeal to their generosity. She spoke to them at length of her past life and sufferings, of the conspiracy to set her aside, and of the wonderful Providence which had preserved her and raised her to the throne; her only desire, she said, was to do her duty to G.o.d and to her subjects; and she hoped, turning as she spoke, pointedly to Gardiner, that they would not forget their loyalty, and would stand by her in her extreme necessity. Observing them hesitate, she cried, ”My lords, on my knees I implore you”-and flung herself on the ground at their feet.[138]

The most skilful acting could not have served Mary's purpose better than this outburst of natural emotion; the spectacle of their kneeling sovereign overcame for a time the scheming pa.s.sions of her ministers; they were affected, burst into tears, and withdrew their opposition to her wishes.[139]

On the 30th, the procession from the Tower to Westminster through the streets was safely accomplished. The retinues of the lords protected the queen from insult, and London put on its usual outward signs of rejoicing; St. Paul's spire was rigged with yards like a s.h.i.+p's mast, an adventurous sailor sitting astride on the weatherc.o.c.k five hundred feet in the air:[140] there was no interruption; and the next day (October 1), Arras having sent the necessary unction,[141] the ceremony was performed at the Abbey without fresh burdens being laid on Mary's conscience.

The banquet in the great hall pa.s.sed off with equal success; Sir Edward Dymocke, the champion, rode in and flung down his gage, and was listened to with becoming silence: on the whole, Mary's friends were agreeably disappointed; only Renard observed that, between the French amba.s.sador and the Lady Elizabeth there seemed to be some secret understanding; the princess saluted Noailles as he pa.s.sed her; Renard she would neither address nor look at-and Renard was told that she complained to Noailles of the weight of her coronet, and that Noailles ”bade her have patience, and before long she would exchange it for a crown.”[142]

The coronation was a step gained; it was one more victory, yet it produced no material alteration. Rome, and the Spanish marriage, remained as before, insoluble elements of difficulty; the queen, to her misfortune, was driven to rely more and more on Renard; and at this time she was so desperate and so ill-advised as to think of surrounding herself with an Irish bodyguard; she went so far as to send a commission to Sir George Stanley for their transport.[143]

The scheme was abandoned, but not because her relations with her own people were improved. Before parliament met, an anonymous pamphlet appeared by some English n.o.bleman on the encroachments of the House of Austria, and on the treatment of other countries which had fallen through marriages into Austrian hands. In Lombardy and Naples every office of trust was described as held by a Spaniard; the Prince of Salerno was banished, the Prince of Benevento was a prisoner in Flanders, the Duke of Calabria a prisoner in Spain. Treating Mary's hopes of children as ridiculous, the writer pictured England, bound hand and foot, at the mercy of the insolent Philip, whose first step, on entering the country, would be to seize the Tower and the fleet, the next, to introduce a Spanish army and suppress the parliament. The free, glorious England of the Plantagenets would then be converted into a prostrate appanage of the dominions of Don Carlos. The pamphlet was but the expression of the universal feeling. Gardiner, indeed, perplexed between his religion and his country, for a few days wavered. Gardiner had a long debt to pay off against the Protestants, and a Spanish force, divided into garrisons for London and other towns, would a.s.sist him materially.[144] Partly, however, from attachment to Courtenay, partly from loyalty to his country, he shook off the temptation and continued to support the opposition.[145]

Mary, except for the cautious support of Paget, stood otherwise alone coquetting with her fancy, and played upon by the skilful Renard. The queen and the amba.s.sador were incessantly together, and Philip was the never-tiring subject of conversation between them. She talked of his disposition. She had heard, she said, that he was proud; that he was inferior to his father in point of ability; and then he was young, and she had been told sad stories about him; if he was of warm temperament, he would not suit her at all, she said, considering the age at which she had arrived.[146] Moreover, when she was married, she must obey as G.o.d commanded; her husband, perhaps, might wish to place Spaniards in authority in England, and she would have to refuse; and that he would not like. To all of which, being the fluttering of the caught fly, Renard would answer that his highness was more like an angel than a man; his youth was in his favour, for he might live to see his child of age, and England had had too much experience of minorities. Life, he added remarkably, was shorter than it used to be; sixty was now a great age for a king; and as the world was, men were as mature at thirty as in the days of his grandfather they were considered at forty.[147] Then touching the constant sore-”her majesty,” he said, ”had four enemies, who would never rest till they had destroyed her or were themselves destroyed-the heretics, the friends of the late Duke of Northumberland, the courts of France and Scotland, and, lastly, her sister Elizabeth. Her subjects were restless, turbulent, and changeable as the ocean of which they were so fond;[148] the sovereigns of England had been only able to rule with a hand of iron, and with severities which had earned them the name of tyrants;[149] they had not spared the blood royal in order to secure their thrones, and she too must act as they had acted, leaning for support, meanwhile, on the arm of a powerful prince.”

To these dark hints Mary ever listened eagerly-meantime she was hara.s.sed painfully from another quarter.

Reginald Pole, as might have been expected from his temperament, could ill endure the delay of his return to England. The hesitation of the queen and the objections of the emperor were grounded upon arguments which he a.s.sured himself were fallacious; the English nation, he continued to insist, were devoted to the Holy See; so far from being himself unpopular, the Cornish in the rebellion under Edward had pet.i.tioned for his recall, and had even designated him by the forbidden name of cardinal; they loved him and they longed for him; and, regarding himself as the chosen instrument of Providence to repair the iniquities of Henry VIII., he held the obstructions to his return not only to be mistaken, but to be impious. The duty of the returning prodigal was to submit; to lay aside all earthly considerations-to obey G.o.d, G.o.d's vicegerent the pope, and himself the pope's representative.