Part 26 (1/2)
[Sidenote: Ireland and Philip II.]
In England, 1569 was the year of the Northern rebellion. France was viewing the Scots Queen's pretensions with increasing lukewarmness, and Philip was regarding her with corresponding favour. The Ridolfi plot was developing in 1570 and 1571. In brief, at this period Philip's disposition towards Elizabeth was becoming definitely, though not avowedly, hostile instead of--as. .h.i.therto on the whole--friendly. Yet he would not accept the Irish invitation to intervene. But he received at Madrid, and treated with great favour, the very remarkable adventurer Thomas Stukely, already mentioned as a piratical ally of Shan O'Neill's. Stukely had been sent over to England to answer for his miscellaneous misdeeds; but was--perhaps intentionally--allowed to escape to Spain; where he represented himself as an enthusiastic Catholic, and the most influential man in Ireland, and bragged hugely of the coming conquest of that country, of which he was to become in some sort the Prince, with the a.s.sistance of Spain. The entertainment of Stukely however summed up all that Philip was prepared to do for Ireland. By September 1572 he was again seeking Elizabeth's amity.
[Sidenote: Experimental Presidencies]
In the meantime, the experiment of const.i.tuting Connaught a Presidency had been tried and failed ignominiously. The curse of the English Government--a soldiery whose pay was permanently and hugely in arrear, who were constantly on the verge of mutiny, and lived virtually by pillage--remained unabated; and Sidney, having tried vigorous government first and then, lacking the means to maintain it properly, extirpation as an alternative, but still without success, clamoured to be recalled, and at last got his wish.
Desmond was still detained in England, but the Geraldines in Munster had not been crushed either by Sidney or by Gilbert. Despite the failure in Connaught, the Presidency plan was tried in the southern province, Sir John Perrot being appointed thereto. Perrot blew up strongholds, captured and hanged some hundreds of the population, but could not lay hold of the chiefs or bring the country into subjection.
In 1572, Fitzmaurice made his way to Ulster, gathered a force of Scots, and came down the Shannon. The President got his chance of a fight, and shattered the force: but Elizabeth was dissatisfied with the results of an unwonted if still inadequate expenditure, and declared that the whole experiment was too costly. A general amnesty and the withdrawal of Perrot ended it.
[Sidenote: 1573 Ess.e.x (the elder) in Ulster]
Yet experiments continued to be the order of the day. The one expedient not attempted was a government supported by obviously efficient physical force, but aiming at the prosperity of the people, and not running violently counter to the customs and the prejudices of centuries. Another inefficient colony was started in Ulster, which only excited popular animosity; Desmond was at last in 1573 allowed to return to Munster with many promises on his part, from which, like O'Neill before him, he considered himself absolved by a breach of faith towards him. Finally Walter Devereux, Earl of Ess.e.x, was allowed to try the biggest and perhaps the most disastrous of the whole series of experiments; being virtually granted authority to invade Ulster with a free hand to make laws and generally to do what seemed to him good there--all at his own cost--save only for some provisions safe-guarding the royal prerogative. He went with excellent intentions, romantic ideals, a respectable force, and a sublime ignorance of facts. The Irishmen, mindful of the Munster colonisation, tricked him with an apparently warm welcome at Carrickfergus, permitted him to congratulate himself on roseate prospects, and then at one swoop cleared the district of provisions. They professed to owe allegiance to the Queen, but repudiated the claims of a private adventurer. His own troops were volunteers, with no mind for hards.h.i.+ps and no prospects of plunder. In three months he found his dreams hopelessly dissipated, and himself almost deserted, with no remotest chance of carrying out the Utopian projects with which he had started.
[Sidenote: 1574]
The volunteer method having failed thus ignominiously, Ess.e.x was made officially Governor of Ulster, and supplied with troops; for the O'Neills were now threatening, and the Deputy, Fitzwilliam, was inactive. Tirlogh O'Neill and his kinsman Sir Brian were very promptly brought to submission. In the south Desmond, between threats and promises, was persuaded to resume an air of loyalty. Ess.e.x however had learned to adopt the common view of the Irish in its extremest form. By a ruse which anywhere else he would have counted a piece of the blackest treachery, he seized Sir Brian and his wife and cut up their following when they were actually his own guests; and followed up the performance by a hideous and wanton ma.s.sacre of women and children and decrepit men at Rathlin off the Antrim Coast; of which things he wrote with a perfect complacency, and for which he was highly applauded.
Thereafter he returned to England.
[Sidenote: 1576 Sidney's second Deputys.h.i.+p]
Once more, Sidney was persuaded to accept the Deputys.h.i.+p. It is probable that his honest desire was to govern firmly and justly, although, when denied the means for steady rule he had fallen back on extirpation. At any rate the Irish themselves, genuinely or not, hailed his return with apparent enthusiasm. The chiefs hoped that after so many experiments had collapsed, the pristine plan of making them responsible for their own districts and leaving them alone might be tried again. But no English statesman could divest himself of the idea that no government was worth having unless it was conducted by English methods. Sidney insisted on reconst.i.tuting the Presidencies of Connaught and Munster, Malby taking charge of the former and Drury of the latter. Naturally enough, and with plenty of excuse, they set about hangings on an extensive scale, and where they met with resistance gave no quarter. English methods, as usual in Ireland, promptly degenerated into ma.s.sacre and devastation. Sidney left the country again two years after he had returned to it--and left it as ripe for rebellion as it had ever been.
And the omens abroad were dangerous. For the Jesuit Sanders was seeking to stir up a Catholic crusade, Stukely was in high favour at Madrid, and the ablest of the Geraldines, James Fitzmaurice, was in Spain.
Moreover Philip's indisposition to interfere was on the verge of being seriously disturbed by Drake's great expedition, which had sailed from England in 1577.
CHAPTER XXI
ELIZABETH (vi), 1578-83--THE PAPAL ATTACK
[Sidenote: Union of Utrecht 1579]
The presence of Alexander of Parma in the Netherlands soon resulted in a definite division between the seven northern and the ten southern States. The latter, Catholic themselves, were not inclined to hold out for religious liberty. The rest, being Protestant, and realising that, while William of Orange lived, two at least, Holland and Zealand, would hold out to the very death, resolved to stand together; combining, under the t.i.tle of the United Provinces, in the Union of Utrecht at the beginning of 1579. Their strength lay in their command of the estuaries of the Scheldt and the Meuse.
[Sidenote: 1578 The Matrimonial juggle]
Elizabeth's great object now was to keep Alencon (otherwise known as Anjou, the t.i.tle held by Henry III. before he ascended the throne; also very commonly as ”Monsieur”) dancing in obedience to her manipulation of the wires. In this, as in all the previous matrimonial negotiations, not one of her ministers seems ever to have grasped her policy; the policy, that is, which modern historians attribute to her: a policy of which the successful issue really depended on its never being suspected; which was possible only to one who was entire mistress of all arts of dissimulation; which did in fact succeed completely every time she applied it; a policy however of which no statesman could have dared to recommend the risk. This was, in brief, to make the whole world including her ministers believe that she really intended to marry, to keep that conviction alive over a protracted period of time, and yet to secure a loop-hole for escape at the last moment. She had played the farce for years with the Archduke Charles; she had played it with Henry of Anjou; she had already played it with Alencon once; yet every time she started it afresh, potentates and amba.s.sadors, her own ministers, and the wooer she selected, took the thing seriously, played into her hands, and were cajoled by her boundless histrionic ingenuity. Either she treated the world to a series of successful impositions, carried through, unaided and unsuspected, with the supreme audacity and skill of a consummate _comedienne;_ or she was a contemptibly capricious woman whose inordinate vacillations invariably took the turn which after-events proved to have been the luckiest possible in the circ.u.mstances. Of these two interpretations, the theory of a deliberate policy is the more acceptable, if only because it is inconceivable that the habitual indulgence of sheer wanton caprice should never once have involved her in some irrevocable blunder, some position from which she could not be extricated. Yet history affords no parallel to such repeatedly and universally successful dissimulation.
[Sidenote: Alencon's wooing]
The comedy had fairly begun three months before Don John's death. In response, as it would seem, to a private invitation, Alencon's envoys came over at the end of July to propose the marriage. Monsieur wanted the affair settled at once, as he must decide whether he was going to help Orange or Don John. After a little formal procrastination, Elizabeth had her answer ready. She was quite prepared to receive him as a suitor though somewhat hurt by his conduct before; still she could not promise to marry any man till they had met, and could really feel sure that they would be happily mated. He had better come over and see her.
Alencon did not want to come over and see her; but his alternative plan, of taking part with Don John, was opportunely spoilt by the Governor's death, coupled with the new Spanish prospects opened up by the death of the Portuguese King. An alliance with Parma under these conditions was not at all the same thing for the French prince as an alliance with the ambitious and somewhat Quixotic schemer who was now dead. Elizabeth, thus strengthened, added a new condition, that he must withdraw for the present from the Netherlands. He could hardly, under the circ.u.mstances, support Orange against her will, and he obeyed her behest. Then she consented to receive another representative on his behalf, but held to her declaration that she would settle nothing till she had met Monsieur himself in person.
[Sidenote: 1579 Popular hostility]
At the beginning of the year (1579) Alencon's emissary Simier arrived.
In England however practically every one--except apparently the Queen herself--was opposed to the marriage. The traditional animosity to France was strong, and had been intensified by the Paris ma.s.sacre. The French Huguenots, for whom there was some sympathy, had no confidence in Alencon. The more unpopular the marriage showed itself, the more the Queen seemed to incline to it--since the more reasonably she could also insist to him on the necessity of delay, that her people might first be reconciled to it. Yet however much the Council might dislike it, they now felt bound to advise that Monsieur should be allowed to pay his visit. In August he arrived, and she could no longer urge the plea that she had not seen him. Mendoza, the Spanish amba.s.sador, thought she would marry him, that a civil war would follow, and the end would be the return of England to Catholicism. On the whole Mendoza was not ill pleased.
[Sidenote: Loyalty to the Queen]