Part 51 (1/2)

The story of his mission has been completely detailed from the most authentic and secret doc.u.ments, and there is not a single line written to the Queen, to her ministers, to the States, to any public body or to any private friend, in England or elsewhere, that does not reflect honour on his name. With sagacity, without pa.s.sion, with unaffected sincerity, he had unravelled the complicated web of Netherland politics, and, with clear vision, had penetrated the designs of the mighty enemy whom England and Holland had to encounter in mortal combat. He had pointed out the errors of the Earl's administration--he had fearlessly, earnestly, but respectfully deplored the misplaced parsimony of the Queen--he had warned her against the delusions which had taken possession of her keen intellect--he had done--his best to place the governor-general upon good terms with the States and with his sovereign; but it had been impossible for him to further his schemes for the acquisition of a virtual sovereignty over the Netherlands, or to extinguish the suspicions of the States that the Queen was secretly negotiating with the Spaniard, when he knew those suspicions to be just.

For deeds, such as these, the able and high-minded amba.s.sador, the accomplished statesman and poet, was forbidden to approach his sovereign's presence, and was ignominiously imprisoned in his own house until the death of Leicester. After that event, Buckhurst emerged from confinement, received the order of the garter and the Earldom of Dorset, and on the death of Burghley succeeded that statesman in the office of Lord-Treasurer. Such was the substantial recognition of the merits of a man who was now disgraced for the conscientious discharge of the most important functions that had yet been confided to him.

It would be a thankless and superfluous task to give the details of the renewed attempt, during a few months, made by Leicester to govern the Provinces. His second administration consisted mainly of the same altercations with the States, on the subject of sovereignty, the same mutual recriminations and wranglings, that had characterized the period of his former rule. He rarely met the States in person, and almost never resided at the Hague, holding his court at Middleburg, Dort, or Utrecht, as his humour led him.

The one great feature of the autumn of 1587 was the private negotiation between Elizabeth and the Duke of Parma.

Before taking a glance at the nature of those secrets, however, it is necessary to make a pa.s.sing allusion to an event which might have seemed likely to render all pacific communications with Spain, whether secret or open, superfluous.

For while so much time had been lost in England and Holland, by misunderstandings and jealousies, there was one Englishman who had not been losing time. In the winter and early spring of 1587, the Devons.h.i.+re skipper had organized that expedition which he had come to the Netherlands, the preceding autumn, to discuss. He meant to aim a blow at the very heart of that project which Philip was shrouding with so much mystery, and which Elizabeth was attempting to counteract by so much diplomacy.

On the 2nd April, Francis Drake sailed from Plymouth with four s.h.i.+ps belonging to the Queen, and with twenty-four furnished by the merchants of London, and other private individuals. It was a bold buccaneering expedition--combining chivalrous enterprise with the chance of enormous profit--which was most suited to the character of English adventurers at that expanding epoch. For it was by England, not by Elizabeth, that the quarrel with Spain was felt to be a mortal one. It was England, not its sovereign, that was instinctively arming, at all points, to grapple with the great enemy of European liberty. It was the spirit of self-help, of self-reliance, which was prompting the English nation to take the great work of the age into its own hands. The mercantile instinct of the nation was flattered with the prospect of gain, the martial quality of its patrician and of its plebeian blood was eager to confront danger, the great Protestant mutiny. Against a decrepit superst.i.tion in combination with an aggressive tyranny, all impelled the best energies of the English people against Spain, as the embodiment of all which was odious and menacing to them, and with which they felt that the life and death struggle could not long be deferred.

And of these various tendencies, there were no more fitting representatives than Drake and Frobisher, Hawkins and Ess.e.x, Cavendish and Grenfell, and the other privateersmen of the sixteenth century. The same greed for danger, for gold, and for power, which, seven centuries before, had sent the Norman race forth to conquer all Christendom, was now sending its Anglo-Saxon and Anglo-Norman kindred to take possession of the old world and the new.

”The wind commands me away,” said Drake on the 2nd April, 1587; ”our s.h.i.+p is under sail. G.o.d grant that we may so live in His fear, that the enemy may have cause to say that G.o.d doth fight for her Majesty abroad as well as at home.”

But he felt that he was not without enemies behind him, for the strong influence brought to bear against the bold policy which Walsingham favoured, was no secret to Drake. ”If we deserve ill,” said he, ”let us be punished. If we discharge our duty, in doing our best, it is a hard measure to be reported ill by those who will either keep their fingers out of the fire; or who too well affect that alteration in our government which I hope in G.o.d they shall never live to see.” In lat.i.tude 40 deg. he spoke two Zeeland s.h.i.+ps, homeward bound, and obtained information of great warlike stores acc.u.mulating in Cadiz and Lisbon. His mind was instantly made up. Fortunately, the pinnace which the Queen despatched with orders to stay his hand in the very act of smiting her great adversary, did not sail fast enough to overtake the swift corsair and his fleet. Sir Francis had too promptly obeyed the wind, when it ”commanded him away,” to receive the royal countermand. On the 19th April, the English s.h.i.+ps entered the harbour of Cadiz, and destroyed ten thousand tons of s.h.i.+pping, with their contents, in the very face of a dozen great galleys, which the nimble English vessels soon drove under their forts for shelter. Two nights and a day, Sir Francis, that ”hater of idleness,”

was steadily doing his work; unloading, rifling, scuttling, sinking, and burning those transports.h.i.+ps which contained a portion of the preparations painfully made by Philip for his great enterprise.

Pipe-staves and spikes, horse-shoes and saddles, timber and cutla.s.ses, wine, oil, figs, raisins, biscuits, and flour, a miscellaneous ma.s.s of ingredients long brewing for the trouble of England, were emptied into the harbour, and before the second night, the blaze of a hundred and fifty burning vessels played merrily upon the grim walls of Philip's fortresses. Some of these s.h.i.+ps were of the largest size then known.

There was one belonging to Marquis Santa Cruz of 1500 tons, there was a Biscayan of 1200, there were several others of 1000, 800, and of nearly equal dimensions.

Thence sailing for Lisbon, Sir Francis, captured and destroyed a hundred vessels more, appropriating what was portable of the cargoes, and annihilating the rest. At Lisbon, Marquis Santa Cruz, lord high admiral of Spain and generalissimo of the invasion, looked on, mortified and amazed, but offering no combat, while the Plymouth privateersman swept the harbour of the great monarch of the world. After thoroughly accomplis.h.i.+ng his work, Drake sent a message to Santa Cruz, proposing to exchange his prisoners for such Englishmen as might then be confined in Spain. But the marquis denied all prisoners. Thereupon Sir Francis decided to sell his captives to the Moors, and to appropriate the proceeds of the sale towards the purchase of English slaves put of the same bondage. Such was the fortune of war in the sixteenth century.

Having dealt these great blows, Drake set sail again from Lisbon, and, twenty leagues from St. Michaels, fell in with one of those famous Spanish East Indiamen, called carracks, then the great wonder of the seas. This vessel, San Felipe by name, with a cargo of extraordinary value, was easily captured, and Sir Francis now determined to return. He had done a good piece of work in a few weeks, but he was by no means of opinion that he had materially crippled the enemy. On the contrary, he gave the government warning as to the enormous power and vast preparations of Spain. ”There would be forty thousand men under way ere long,” he said, ”well equipped and provisioned;” and he stated, as the result of personal observation, that England could not be too energetic in, its measures of resistance. He had done something with his little fleet, but he was no braggart, and had no disposition to underrate the enemy's power. ”G.o.d make us all thankful again and again,” he observed, ”that we have, although it be little, made a beginning upon the coast of Spain.” And modestly as he spoke of what he had accomplished, so with quiet self-reliance did he allude to the probable consequences. It was certain, he intimated, that the enemy would soon seek revenge with all his strength, and ”with all the devices and traps he could devise.” This was a matter which could not be doubted. ”But,” said Sir Francis, ”I thank them much that they have staid so long, and when they come they shall be but the sons of mortal men.”

Perhaps the most precious result of the expedition, was the lesson which the Englishmen had thus learned in handling the great galleys of Spain.

It might soon stand them in stead. The little war-vessels which had come from Plymouth, had sailed round and round these vast unwieldy hulks, and had fairly driven them off the field, with very slight damage to themselves. Sir Francis had already taught the mariners of England, even if he had done nothing else by this famous Cadiz expedition, that an armada, of Spain might not be so invincible as men imagined.

Yet when the conqueror returned from his great foray, he received no laurels. His sovereign met him, not with smiles, but with frowns and cold rebukes. He had done his duty, and helped to save her endangered throne, but Elizabeth was now the dear friend of Alexander Farnese, and in amicable correspondence with his royal master. This ”little” beginning on the coast of Spain might not seem to his Catholic Majesty a matter to be thankful for, nor be likely to further a pacification, and so Elizabeth hastened to disavow her Plymouth captain.'

[”True it is, and I avow it on my faith, her Majesty did send a s.h.i.+p expressly before he went to Cadiz with a message by letters charging Sir Francis Drake not to show any act of hostility, which messenger by contrary winds could never come to the place where he was, but was constrained to come home, and hearing of Sir F. Drake's actions, her Majesty commanded the party that returned to have been punished, but that he acquitted himself by the oaths of himself and all his company. And so unwitting yea unwilling to her Majesty those actions were committed by Sir F. Drake, for the which her Majesty is as yet greatly offended with him.” Burghley to Andreas de Loo, 18 July, 1587. Flanders Correspondence.' (S. P. Office MS.)]

ETEXT EDITOR'S BOOKMARKS:

The blaze of a hundred and fifty burning vessels We were sold by their negligence who are now angry with us

HISTORY OF THE UNITED NETHERLANDS

From the Death of William the Silent to the Twelve Year's Truce--1609

By John Lothrop Motley

History United Netherlands, Volume 54, 1587

CHAPTER XVII.

Secret Treaty between Queen and Parma--Excitement and Alarm in the States--Religious Persecution in England--Queen's Sincerity toward Spain--Language and Letters of Parma--Negotiations of De Loo-- English Commissioners appointed--Parma's affectionate Letter to the Queen--Philip at his Writing-Table--His Plots with Parma against England--Parma's secret Letters to the King--Philip's Letters to Parma Wonderful Duplicity of Philip--His sanguine Views as to England--He is reluctant to hear of the Obstacles--and imagines Parma in England--But Alexander's Difficulties are great--He denounces Philip's wild Schemes--Walsingham aware of the Spanish Plot--which the States well understand--Leicester's great Unpopularity--The Queen warned against Treating--Leicester's Schemes against Barneveld--Leicestrian Conspiracy at Leyden--The Plot to seize the City discovered--Three Ringleaders sentenced to Death-- Civil War in France--Victory gained by Navarre, and one by Guise-- Queen recalls Leicester--Who retires on ill Terms with the States-- Queen warned as to Spanish Designs--Result's of Leicester's Administration.

The course of Elizabeth towards the Provinces, in the matter of the peace, was certainly not ingenuous, but it was not absolutely deceitful.