Volume III Part 20 (2/2)
The English government had agents in Rome whose business was to overhear conversations, though held in the most secret closet in the Vatican; to bribe secretaries to make copies of private despatches; to practise (such was the word) for intelligence by fair means, or else by foul: and they did their work. Pole's movements and Pole's intentions were known in London as soon as they were known at Toledo; and simultaneously another fragment of information was forwarded from Italy, as important in itself, as, doubtless, the manner in which it was procured was questionable. Access was obtained, either by bribery or other form of treachery, to a letter from some person high in Paul's confidence at Rome, to the Cardinal of Seville; opportunity, perhaps, did not permit the completion of a transcript, but an a.n.a.lysis, with considerable extracts, found its way into the hands of Cromwell. The letter stated that an Irish n.o.bleman, evidently the Earl of Desmond, had sent a confidential agent to the Pope to explain at length the weakness of the English authority in Ireland, to describe the impunity with which the earl had resisted and despised it, and to state further how the same ill.u.s.trious personage, for the discharge of his soul, was now ready to transfer his allegiance to his Holiness. ”England,” so Desmond had declared, was in confusion, utter and hopeless. ”Fathers were against sons, husbands against wives, the commonalty risen one against another;”
... and ”perceiving their divisions, he had been with a great part of Ireland to know their wills and minds, and also with the bishops and the religious houses; and not only the great men of power, but also the people, all with one voice would be ready to give aid against the King of England.” He had added a demand which bore some witness to the energy with which Henry had strengthened the government at Dublin since the Geraldine rebellion. ”Thirty thousand Spaniards,” the earl said, ”with all things necessary for them, with artillery, powder, s.h.i.+ps, galleys, and pinnaces, would be required to insure the conquest.” If these could be landed, Desmond would guarantee success. Ireland should be reannexed to the Holy See; and he would himself undertake the government as viceroy, paying a revenue to Paul of one hundred thousand ducats. The expedition would be costly, but the expenses would fall neither on his Holiness nor on the Emperor. Desmond, with armed privateers, would seize and deliver into the hands of the Pope the persons of a sufficient number of the heretical English, whose ransoms would defray the necessary outlay; and an insurrection in behalf of the Holy See might be antic.i.p.ated with certainty in England itself.
[Sidenote: His Holiness approves of the proposition.]
This being the substance of the Irish message, ”His Holiness, perceiving the good mind of these gentlemen in G.o.d's behalf, had determined to desire amongst all Christian kings to have aid in this matter for charity, to aid the good Christian people of Ireland.”
[Sidenote: Ways and means to provide money. The Pope will issue pardons.]
[Sidenote: The antichrist of England and the dog Luther his brother.]
”His Holiness says,” concluded the letter, ”that if at the general council amongst the kings he cannot have aid to obtain this holy work, then he will desire them that they will agree and consent that certain pardons may be received in their realms, and that they may give liberty that the bishops may constrain the commonalty to receive the said pardons, and it shall be declared that all such money shall be used for the conquest of Barbary; and that his Holiness will take upon him the said conquest of Barbary with the accord of the Emperor. If the above will not suffice, then his Holiness will give order and desire for the maintenance and defence of the holy faith, to all bishops, archbishops, cardinals, legates, deans, canons, priests, and curates, and also to all sorts of monasteries, to help with certain money which may be needful, to subdue and proceed in this good deed. And he will desire the Most Christian King of France, and also the King of Scots, to have amongst them aid in his behalf, inasmuch as they and their kingdoms is nigh to the said island of Ireland. And immediately that the fleet shall be together to go for Barbary, then shall the most part go for Ireland unto the gentleman that hath written to his Holiness to uphold the Holy See, that his Holiness may sustain Holy Mother Church from that tyrant of England, the which goes to confound the Holy See of St. Peter and the governors and ministers of it. And G.o.d give unto all good Christians strength to confound the antichrist of England and the dog Luther his brother.”[383]
Never, perhaps, since the beginning of time had such a provision of ”ways and means” been devised for a military enterprise as was found in the financial suggestions of this Papal Hibernian war scheme.
Nevertheless, when so many Spanish s.h.i.+ps annually haunted the harbours of Munster, a few thousand men might be thrown on sh.o.r.e there without particular difficulty. The exchequer was in no condition to endure a repet.i.tion of the insurrection of Lord Fitzgerald, which had cost forty thousand pounds; and, with the encouragement of an auxiliary force, another similar rising, with its accompanying ma.s.sacres, might be easily antic.i.p.ated. Though invasion might be confidently faced in England, it was within the limits of possibility that Ireland might be permanently lost.
[Sidenote: Dangerous material in the hands of the Pope.]
With such materials in their hands, more skilful antagonists than Paul III. or Cardinal Pole might have accomplished something considerable; but Paul's practical ability may be measured by his war budget; and the vanity of the English traitor would have ruined the most skilful combinations. Incapable of any higher intellectual effort than declamatory exercises, he had matched himself against the keenest and coolest statesman in Europe. He had run a mine, as he believed, under Henry's throne, to blow it to the moon; and at the expected moment of his triumph his shallow schemes were blasted to atoms, and if not himself, yet his nearest kindred and dearest friends were buried in the ruins.
[Sidenote: Political condition of England.]
Lord Darcy had said that fifteen lords and great men had been banded together to put down the Reformation. Two peers had died on the scaffold. Lord Abergavenny, the head of the Nevilles, was dead also; he was, perhaps, a third. The knights and commoners who had suffered after the Pilgrimage of Grace had not covered the whole remaining number. The names revealed by the Nun of Kent, though unknown to the world, had not been forgotten by the government. Cromwell knew where to watch, and how.
[Sidenote: The Marquis of Exeter a possible pretender to the crown.]
[Sidenote: The Poles and the Nevilles.]
The country was still heaving uneasily from the after-roll of the insurrection, and Pole's expectations of a third commotion, it is likely, were as well known to the Privy Council as they were known to the Pope. Symptoms had appeared in the western counties strikingly resembling those which had preceded the Yorks.h.i.+re rising, when Cromwell's innocent order was issued for the keeping of parish registers.[384] Rumours were continually flying that the Emperor would come and overthrow all things; and the busy haste with which the coast was being fortified seemed to sanction the expectation. The Pope had made James of Scotland _Defensor fidei_. Fleets were whispered to be on the seas. Men would wake suddenly and find the Spaniards arrived; and ”harness would again be occupied.”[385] Superst.i.tion on one side, and iconoclasm on the other, had dethroned reason, and raised imagination to its place; and no sagacity at such times could antic.i.p.ate for an hour the form of the future.[386]
Pole's treason had naturally drawn suspicion on his family. The fact of his correspondence with them from Liege could hardly have been a secret from Cromwell's spies, if the contents of his letters were undiscovered; and the same jealousy extended also, and not without cause, to the Marquis of Exeter. Lord Exeter, as the grandson of Edward IV., stood next to the Tudor family in the line of succession. The Courtenays were petty sovereigns in Devons.h.i.+re and Cornwall; and the marquis, though with no special intellectual powers, was regarded as a possible compet.i.tor for the crown by a large and increasing party. Lady Exeter we have already seen as a visitor at the shrine of the oracle of Canterbury; and both she and her husband were on terms of the closest intimacy with the Poles. The Poles and the Nevilles, again, were drawing as closely together as mutual intermarriages would allow. Lady Salisbury, I have said, was regarded as the representative at once of the pure Plantagenet blood and of Warwick the King Maker.[387] Lord Montague had married a daughter of Lord Abergavenny; and as any party in the state in opposition to the government was a formidable danger, so a union between Lord Exeter, Lady Salisbury, and the Nevilles was, on all grounds, religious, political, and historical, the most dangerous which could be formed. It was the knowledge of the influence of his family which gave importance to Reginald Pole. It was this which sharpened the eyes of the government to watch for the first buddings of treason among his connexions.
[Sidenote: Unsatisfactory conduct of Exeter during the Pilgrimage of Grace.]
[Sidenote: Irregular influence exerted by him in Devons.h.i.+re.]
Exeter's conduct had been for some time unsatisfactory. He had withdrawn for an unknown cause from his share in the command of the royal army on the Pilgrimage of Grace. He had gone down into Devons.h.i.+re, where his duty would have been to raise the musters of the county; but, instead of it, he had courted popularity by interrupting the levy of the subsidy.[388] The judges on circuit at the same time complained of the coercion and undue influence which he exercised in the administration of justice, and of the dread with which his power was regarded by juries.
No indictment could take effect against the adherents of the Marquis of Exeter; no dependent of the Courtenays was ever cast in a cause.[389]
[Sidenote: The Marquis of Exeter high steward on the arraignment of Lord Darcy.]
[Sidenote: He quarrels with Cromwell.]
[Sidenote: He defends Lord Montague.]
From this and other causes altercations had arisen between Exeter and Cromwell at the council-board. High words had pa.s.sed on Lord Darcy's arraignment. The marquis had been compelled to sit as high steward; and Lord Delaware, in an account of the trial, stated that when the verdict was given of guilty, a promise had been exacted from Cromwell to save Darcy's life, and even to save his property from confiscation.[390]
Cromwell may have done his best, and Darcy's death have been the act of the king. With Henry guilt was ever in proportion to rank; he was never known to pardon a convicted traitor of n.o.ble blood. But the responsibility was cast by the peers on the Privy Seal. Once it was even reported that Exeter drew his dagger on the plebeian adventurer, who owed his life to a steel corslet beneath his dress;[391] and that Cromwell on that occasion ordered the marquis to the Tower. If the story was true, more prudent counsels prevailed, or possibly there would have been an attempt at rescue in the streets.[392] The relations between them were evidently approaching a point when one or the other would be crushed. Exeter was boldly confident. When Lord Montague's name was first mentioned with suspicion at the council-board (although, as was discovered afterwards, the marquis knew better than any other person the nature of schemes in which he was himself implicated so deeply), he stood forward in his friend's defence, and offered to be bound for him, body for body.[393] This was a fresh symptom of his disposition. His conduct, if watched closely, might betray some deeper secrets. About the same time a story reached the government from Cornwall, to which their recent experience in Lincolns.h.i.+re and the north justified them in attaching the gravest importance.
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