Part 28 (1/2)
At the same time, it was difficult to see how the members of the a.s.sociation could carry out their pledge without a breach of the law; stronger legal measures for the defence of the Queen and the frustration of a.s.sa.s.sination as a means to secure the inheritance in any particular quarter were required. Parliament was summoned at the end of November.
Ministers wished to have definite provision made for carrying on the Government in case of the Queen's murder; but she would go with them no further than to sanction the a.s.sociation, with the entirely laudable modification that the person for whose sake the deed was done should not be held _ipso facto_ guilty of complicity. The differences of opinion were so strong that the session closed without the pa.s.sing of any Act. In January however, an accomplice of that Parry already mentioned [Footnote: See p. 330] denounced him for intending to kill the Queen. Threatened with the rack, Parry made a full confession, and was hanged, drawn, and quartered. At the renewed Session in February, it was enacted that an invasion, rebellion, or attempt on the Queen's person, on behalf of any one with a claim to the succession, should disqualify such person from the succession absolutely, if complicity in the attempt should be proved after due enquiry. A commission was appointed to put the Act in execution in the event of a.s.sa.s.sination; and the a.s.sociation was sanctioned subject to these provisions. Subsidies were then voted, and parliament prorogued, after an unusually gracious speech from the throne.
[Sidenote: 1585: France: the Holy League]
Meantime the United Provinces, despairing of an English overlords.h.i.+p, were again making overtures to France for a Protectorate, or even annexation if France should insist on that alternative. Relations between the King and Mendoza, now Amba.s.sador at Paris, were so strained that war seemed all but inevitable; Henry seems to have been held back only by the well-founded fear that Elizabeth was intriguing to draw him into the war and frustrate him in carrying it on. But in that fear he declined the offer of the Provinces. In March the Guises produced a new development by the open announcement of the formation of the Holy League, for the exclusion of Navarre from the succession and the enforcement in France of the decrees of the Council of Trent.
But for the unconquerable mutual distrust of Henry and Elizabeth, Henry, relying on English support, would have bidden defiance to the League; but the memories of St. Bartholomew and Elizabeth's character as an intriguer made confidence on either side impossible. The great siege of Antwerp seemed to be on the verge of terminating in a catastrophe for the revolting States, which would enable Parma to co-operate actively with Guise; and Henry found himself threatened with excommunication. Before midsummer he capitulated, and declared for the League. On the other hand, Navarre was not the man to yield, and while Elizabeth again had the chance of playing a bold part and espousing his cause heartily, she judged rightly that he was strong enough unaided to keep the alliance of the League and the Court very thoroughly occupied for some time to come. As a factor in the Netherlands question. France was for the present at least a negligible quant.i.ty. So she left Navarre to fight his own battles in France, while she should dole out to the Netherlanders just so much or so little support as might suffice for her own ends.
While the French King was surrendering to the League, the Spanish King took a step which was intended to frighten England, and had as usual the precisely contrary result. He ordered the seizure of all English s.h.i.+ps and crews on his coasts. The order was carried out; and England instead of being cowed was forthwith ablaze with defiance. The effect was promptly apparent.
[Sidenote: Agreement with the States]
The United Provinces were again offering themselves to England. In August an agreement was arrived at. The Queen was to hold Ostend and Sluys as well as Flus.h.i.+ng and Brille, as security. She was to send over five thousand men with Leicester in command. Some Queen's troops and large numbers of volunteers were s.h.i.+pped off in a few days--too late however to save Antwerp. Still weeks and even months pa.s.sed before pay or commanders were allowed to follow. But before the year was out, Sidney, Leicester, and others had taken up their commands, the last named representing the Queen of England.
[Sidenote: Drake's raid]
Already, however, an enterprise still more ominous to Spain was in hand--unofficial, like most other great enterprises of the reign. Letters of reprisal for the seizure of the English s.h.i.+ps had been promptly issued, and numbers of privateers were quickly in Spanish waters. Among others, Francis Drake fitted out a flotilla, the Queen being an interested shareholder in his venture--though even under those conditions he put to sea before time, lest counter-orders should arrive. The adventurers sailed into Vigo, demanded the release of all English prisoners in the province, which was promised, captured some prizes, and betook themselves to the ocean, with a view to seizing the Spanish Plate Fleet, which was on its way from America. They just missed the Fleet, but proceeded to San Domingo (Hayti) which they held to ransom, went on to treat Cartagena in like manner, and then being attacked by Yellow Fever, came home with the spoils.
Whatever fears of a Spanish war might be entertained by Elizabeth herself, the English seamen had no qualms as to their own immeasurable superiority, and desired nothing better than opportunities for demonstrating it.
[Sidenote 1: Elizabeth's intrigues]
[Sidenote 2: 1586 Leicester in the Netherlands]
While Drake was thus congenially employed, Elizabeth was carrying on her system of inaction and double-dealing. She intrigued--behind the backs of her ministers--with Parma, for the surrender to him of the towns she held, on terms which from her point of view were quite good enough for the Provinces, namely the rest.i.tution of their old Const.i.tutional Government without religious liberty; although in their own view, religious liberty was primarily essential. Leicester complicated matters for her by accepting, in flat contradiction to her orders, the formal Governors.h.i.+p of the United Provinces: finding in fact that if he was to stay in the Netherlands nothing short of that would prevail against the suspicions of the Queen's treachery. At home, Burghley himself threatened to resign if she would not take a straightforward course. Walsingham wrote to Leicester, with his usual bitterness, of the ”peril to safety and honour” from her behaviour. If she had indeed contemplated the surrender of the cities to Parma, that plan was frustrated. Still she stormed at Burghley and Walsingham, flatly and with contumely refused to ratify Leicester's arrangement, and continued to keep back the pay of the troops. Parma, though he too was starved in men and money by Philip, continued inch by inch to absorb the revolted territory. All that Leicester succeeded in accomplis.h.i.+ng by the month of September was the brilliant and entirely futile action of Zutphen where in one great hour Philip Sidney won death and immortality (September 22nd). Thereafter, inaction and short supplies continued to be the rule, on both sides. In November, Leicester was back in England, where a fresh situation was developing.
[Sidenote:1585-86 The trapping of Mary]
While the arrangements for armed intervention in the Netherlands were in progress, Walsingham had been busy preparing for the last act in the Tragedy of Mary Stewart. The Secretary was foremost among those who held not only that the captive Queen deserved death, but that her death was more necessary to the welfare of England than any other event. Yet it was quite certain that Elizabeth would not a.s.sent to her death, unless she thought she could convince herself and the world that Mary had been actively engaged in treasonous plots. Recently however at Tutbury under the charge of Sir Amyas Paulet, she had been guarded so strictly that no surrept.i.tious correspondence had a chance of pa.s.sing. Walsingham was confident that if the opportunity were given, a treasonous correspondence would be opened. It became his object therefore to give her the opportunity in appearance, while securing that the channel through which communications pa.s.sed should be a treacherous one, and the whole of what was supposed to be secret should be betrayed to him. To this end, the Queen was removed in December 1585 to Chartley Manor, avowedly in response to her own demands for a less rigorously unpleasant residence than Tutbury. The instrument of the plot was a young man named Giffard, supposed to be in the inner counsels of the Jesuits, actually in Walsingham's service. Through Giffard, communications were opened between Mary and a devoted adherent of hers in France named Morgan: but every letter pa.s.sing was deciphered and copied, and the copies placed in the Secretary's hands.
[Sidenote: 1586 Babington's plot]
In the late spring, the great Babington conspiracy was set on foot; whereof the main features were, that Elizabeth was to be a.s.sa.s.sinated by a group of half a dozen young men who had places at court and occasional access to her person. The two leading spirits were Anthony Babington and a Jesuit named Ballard. Of course a Catholic rising and a foreign invasion were part of the plan, and Mendoza at Paris was playing his own part. Much of the plot was confided to Giffard, who reported to Walsingham. The Secretary and his Queen were satisfied to let the plot develop while they gathered all the threads in their own hands before striking. The correspondence, as copied for Walsingham at Chartley, conveyed not details but general intelligence of what was on foot to Mary, and approval from Mary to the conspirators. In August, Walsingham's moment came: the conspirators were seized; under torture or threat of torture they made complete confession. The Scottish Queen's rooms at Chartley were ransacked, and all her papers impounded.
Again, as after the Throgmorton conspiracy, fleets were manned and musters called out. In September, the conspirators were tried and executed, and a Commission was appointed to try Mary herself in October.
[Sidenote: Trial of Mary]
Mary, as before, denied the jurisdiction, professing readiness to answer only before Parliament. She ignored an invitation from the Queen to obtain pardon by a confession of guilt. She a.s.sented under protest to appear before the Court, and there avowed that she had consistently appealed to the Powers of Europe to aid her, as she was ent.i.tled to do, but flatly denied complicity in the Babington plot. The evidence against her was entirely that of letters--said to be copied from her correspondence, but quite possibly invented in whole or in part--and the confessions of the conspirators or of her secretaries, extorted under torture or the fear of it. Those letters might even have been concocted to suit Walsingham without his actual privity, by the man who had the task of deciphering and copying them. Having heard her denial, the Court was transferred from Fotheringay, where it first sat, to Westminster: and at Westminster, after further examination of the doc.u.ments and of Mary's secretaries, it unanimously p.r.o.nounced her guilty. The sentence was left for Parliament and the Queen to settle. The Parliament which had pa.s.sed the recent Act for the Defence of the Queen was dissolved, and a new one was summoned. On its meeting in November, it pet.i.tioned for Mary's execution, in accordance with the terms of the ”a.s.sociation” which Mary herself had offered to join. The publication of the sentence was received with public acclamation: but whether the Queen would a.s.sent to it remained to be seen.
What then were the guiding considerations, whether of Ethics or of Expediency?
[Sidenote: The situation reviewed;]
For eighteen years, Mary had been in Elizabeth's power. Elizabeth had held her captive for the sufficient reason--amongst others--that were she outside of England and free from restraint, there was nothing to prevent her from actively agitating the Catholics of Europe to a.s.sert her claim to the English throne. No monarch having in his grip a claimant with an undeniably strong t.i.tle to his throne would have allowed that claimant to escape from his clutches. Few would have hesitated to concoct some more or less plausible pretext for the claimant's death. Half England considered that a sufficient pretext was provided by Kirk o' Field; but even a.s.suming that Mary's guilt in that matter was legally proved, which it a.s.suredly was not, it is sufficiently obvious that the sovereign of England had no jurisdiction. Still any monarch situated like Elizabeth would have maintained, and probably have acted upon, the right to put the captive to death, if proved to be guilty of complicity in treason or subornation thereof. Throughout the eighteen years, Elizabeth had deliberately abstained from seeking to prove definitely that Mary was an accomplice in the various plots on her behalf, while she was no less careful to leave the imputation of complicity clinging to her. But now, if the Chartley correspondence were genuine, the case was decided. The Court, which cannot be said to have been packed, was satisfied. Again it does not appear that any monarch, regarding the captive's death as _per se_ desirable, would have doubted the sufficiency of the ground for her execution.
But hitherto the English Queen had not regarded her rival's death as _per se_ desirable. Conceivably there was an element of generosity in that view. Certainly there was the fact that Mary was an anointed Queen, and Elizabeth had a most profound respect for the sanct.i.ty of crowned heads. But apart from this, there was the purely political argument. Mary living, and in her power, was an a.s.set. She might always be set at liberty on terms. Elizabeth hated parting with a political a.s.set even at a high price, for good value. Hitherto she had reckoned the living Mary as worth more than Mary's death would be: for Mary might simply be replaced as a claimant by James, who was not, like his mother, in her power, and might very well think the crown of England worth a Ma.s.s.
[Sidenote: its recent developments]