Constitutional History of England Volume I Part 11

[189] Camden, after telling us that the queen's disinclination to marry raised great clamours, and that the Earls of Pembroke and Leicester had professed their opinion that she ought to be obliged to take a husband, or that a successor should be declared by act of parliament even against her will, a.s.serts some time after, as inconsistently as improperly, that "very few but malcontents and traitors appeared very solicitous in the business of a successor."--P. 401 (in Kennet's _Complete Hist. of England_, vol. ii.). This, however, from Camden's known p.r.o.neness to flatter James, seems to indicate that the Suffolk party were more active than the Scots upon this occasion. Their strength lay in the House of Commons, which was wholly protestant, and rather puritan.

At the end of Murden's _State Papers_ is a short journal kept by Cecil, containing a succinct and authentic summary of events in Elizabeth's reign. I extract as a specimen such pa.s.sages as bear on the present subject.

October 6, 1566. Certain lewd bills thrown abroad against the queen's majesty for not a.s.senting to have the matter of succession proved in parliament; and bills also to charge Sir W. Cecil, the secretary, with the occasion thereof.

27. Certain lords, viz., the Earls of Pembroke and Leicester, were excluded the presence-chamber for furthering the proposition of the succession to be declared by parliament without the queen's allowance.

November 12. Messrs. Bell and Monson moved trouble in the parliament about the succession.

14. The queen had before her thirty lords and thirty commoners, to receive her answer concerning their pet.i.tion for the succession and for marriage. Dalton was blamed for speaking in the Commons' house.

24. Command given to the parliament not to treat of the succession.

Nota: in this parliament time the queen's majesty did remit a part of the offer of a subsidy to the Commons, who offered largely, to the end to have had the succession established. P. 762.

[190] Catherine, after her release from the Tower, was placed in the custody of her uncle, Lord John Grey, but still suffering the queen's displeasure, and separated from her husband. Several interesting letters from her and her uncle to Cecil are among the Lansdowne MSS. vol. vi.

They cannot be read without indignation at Elizabeth's unfeeling severity. Sorrow killed this poor young woman the next year, who was never permitted to see her husband again. Strype, i. 391. The Earl of Hertford underwent a long imprisonment, and continued in obscurity during Elizabeth's reign; but had some public employments under her successor. He was twice afterwards married, and lived to a very advanced age, not dying till 1621, near sixty years after his ill-starred and ambitious love. It is worth while to read the epitaph on his monument in the S.E. aisle of Salisbury Cathedral, an affecting testimony to the purity and faithfulness of an attachment rendered still more sacred by misfortune and time. Quo desiderio veteres revocavit amores! I shall revert to the question of this marriage in a subsequent chapter.

[191] Haynes, 396.

[192] _Id._ 413; Strype, 410. Hales's treatise in favour of the authenticity of Henry's will is among the Harleian MSS. n. 537 and 555, and has also been printed in the Appendix to _Hereditary Right a.s.serted_, fol. 1713.

[193] Camden, p. 416, ascribes the powerful coalition formed against him in 1569, wherein Norfolk and Leicester were combined with all the catholic peers, to his predilection for the house of Suffolk. But it was more probably owing to their knowledge of his integrity and attachment to his sovereign, which would steadfastly oppose their wicked design of bringing about Norfolk's marriage with Mary, as well as to their jealousy of his influence. Carte reports, on the authority of the despatches of Fenelon, the French amba.s.sador, that they intended to bring him to account for breaking off the ancient league with the house of Burgundy, or, in other words, for maintaining the protestant interest. Vol. iii. p. 483.

A papist writer, under the name of Andreas Philopater, gives an account of this confederacy against Cecil at some length. Norfolk and Leicester belonged to it; and the object was to defeat the Suffolk succession, which Cecil and Bacon favoured. Leicester betrayed his a.s.sociates to the queen. It had been intended that Norfolk should accuse the two counsellors before the Lords, ea ratione ut e senatu regiaque abreptos ad curiae januas in crucem agi praeciperet, eoque perfecto recte deinceps ad forum progressus explicaret populo tum hujus facti rationem, tum successionis etiam regnandi legitimam seriem, si quid forte reginae humanitus accideret. P. 43.

[194] D'Ewes, 81.

[195] Strype, 11, Append. This speech seems to have been made while Catherine Grey was living; perhaps therefore it was in a former parliament, for no account that I have seen represents her as having been alive so late as 1571.

[196] There was something peculiar in Mary's mode of blazonry. She bore Scotland and England quarterly, the former being first; but over all was a half scutcheon of pretence with the arms of England, the sinister half being, as it were, obscured, in order to intimate that she was kept out of her right. Strype, vol. i. p. 8.

The despatches of Throckmorton, the English amba.s.sador in France, bear continual testimony to the insulting and hostile manner in which Francis II. and his queen displayed their pretensions to our crown. Forbes's _State Papers_, vol. i. _pa.s.sim_. The following is an instance. At the entrance of the king and queen into Chatelherault, 23rd November 1559, these lines formed the inscription over one of the gates:

"Gallia perpetuis pugnaxque Britannia bellis Olim odio inter se dimicuere pari.

Nunc Gallos totoque remotos...o...b.. Britannos Unum dos Mariae cogit in imperium.

Ergo pace potes, Francisce, quod omnibus armis Mille patres annis non potuere tui."

This offensive behaviour of the French court is the apology of Elizabeth's intrigues during the same period with the malcontents, which to a certain extent cannot be denied by any one who has read the collection above quoted; though I do not think Dr. Lingard warranted in a.s.serting her privity to the conspiracy of Amboise as a proved fact.

Throckmorton was a man very likely to exceed his instructions; and there is much reason to believe that he did so. It is remarkable that no modern French writer that I have seen, Anquetil, Garnier, Lacretelle, or the editors of the _General Collection of Memoirs_, seem to have been aware of Elizabeth's secret intrigues with the king of Navarre and other protestant chiefs in 1559, which these letters, published by Forbes in 1740, demonstrate.

[197] Burnet, i. Append. 266. Many letters, both of Mary herself and of her secretary, the famous Maitland of Lethington, occur in Haynes's _State Papers_, about the end of 1561. In one of his to Cecil, he urges, in answer to what had been alleged by the English court, that a collateral successor had never been declared in any prince's life-time, that whatever reason there might be for that, "if the succession had remained untouched according to the law, yet where by a limitation men had gone about to prevent the providence of G.o.d, and s.h.i.+ft one into the place due to another, the offended party could not but seek the redress thereof."--P. 373.

[198] A very remarkable letter of the Earl of Suss.e.x, October 22, 1568, contains these words: "I think surely no end can be made good for England, except the person of the Scottish queen be detained, by one means or other, in England." The whole letter manifests the spirit of Elizabeth's advisers, and does no great credit to Suss.e.x's sense of justice, but a great deal to his ability. Yet he afterwards became an advocate for the Duke of Norfolk's marriage with Mary. Lodge's _Ill.u.s.trations_, vol. ii. p. 4.

[199] Hume and Carte say, this first illness was the small-pox. But it appears by a letter from the queen to Lord Shrewsbury (Lodge, 279) that her attack in 1571 was suspected to be that disorder.

[200] Haynes, 580.

[201] In a conversation which Mary had with one Rooksby, a spy of Cecil's, about the spring of 1566, she imprudently named several of her friends, and of others whom she hoped to win, such as the Duke of Norfolk, the Earls of Derby, Northumberland, Westmoreland, c.u.mberland, Shrewsbury. "She had the better hope of this, for that she thought them to be all of the old religion, which she meant to restore again with all expedition, and thereby win the hearts of the common people." The whole pa.s.sage is worth notice. Haynes, 447. See also Melvil's _Memoirs_, for the dispositions of an English party towards Mary in 1566.

[202] Murden's _State Papers_, 134, 180. Norfolk was a very weak man, the dupe of some very cunning ones. We may observe that his submission, to the queen (_Id._ 153) is expressed in a style which would now be thought most pusillanimous in a man of much lower station, yet he died with great intrepidity. But such was the tone of those times; an exaggerated hypocrisy prevailed in everything.

[203] _State Trials_, i. 957. He was interrogated by the queen's counsel with the most insidious questions. All the material evidence was read to the Lords from written depositions of witnesses who might have been called, contrary to the statute of Edward VI. But the _Burghley Papers_, published by Haynes and Murden, contain a ma.s.s of doc.u.ments relative to this conspiracy, which leave no doubt as to the most heinous charge, that of inviting the Duke of Alva to invade the kingdom. There is reason to suspect that he feigned himself a catholic in order to secure Alva's a.s.sistance. Murden, p. 10.

[204] The northern counties were at this time chiefly catholic. "There are not," says Sadler, writing from thence, "ten gentlemen in this country who do favour and allow of their majesty's proceedings in the cause of religion." Lingard, vii. 54. It was consequently the great resort of the priests from the Netherlands, and in the feeble state of the protestant church there wanted sufficient ministers to stand up in its defence. Strype, i. 509, _et post_; ii. 183. Many of the gentry indeed were still disaffected in other parts towards the new religion. A profession of conformity was required in 1569 from all justices of the peace, which some refused, and others made against their consciences.

_Id._ i. 567.

[205] Camden has quoted a long pa.s.sage from Hieronymo Catena's _Life of Pius V._, published at Rome in 1588, which ill.u.s.trates the evidence to the same effect contained in the _Burghley Papers_, and partly adduced on the Duke of Norfolk's trial.

[206] Strype, i. 546, 553, 556.

[207] _Id._ 578; Camden, 428; Lodge, ii. 45.

[208] Strype, ii. 88; _Life of Smith_, 152.

[209] Strype, i. 502. I do not give any credit whatever to this league, as printed in Strype, which seems to have been fabricated by some of the queen's emissaries. There had been, not perhaps a treaty, but a verbal agreement between France and Spain at Bayonne some time before; but its object was apparently confined to the suppression of protestantism in France and the Netherlands. Had they succeeded, however, in this, the next blow would have been struck at England. It seems very unlikely that Maximilian was concerned in such a league.

[210] Strype, vol. ii.

[211] The college of Douay for English refugee priests was established in 1568 or 1569. Lingard, 374. Strype seems, but I believe through inadvertence, to put this event several years later. _Annals_, ii. 630.

It was dissolved by Requesens, while governor of Flanders, but revived at Rheims in 1575, under the protection of the cardinal of Lorrain, and returned to Douay in 1593. Similar colleges were founded at Rome in 1579, at Valladolid in 1589, at St. Omer in 1596, and at Louvain in 1606.

[212] 13 Eliz. c. 1. This act was made at first retrospective, so as to affect every one who had at any time denied the queen's t.i.tle. A member objected to this in debate as "a precedent most perilous." But Sir Francis Knollys, Mr. Norton, and others defended it. D'Ewes, 162. It seems to have been amended by the Lords. So little notion had men of observing the first principles of equity towards their enemies! There is much reason from the debate to suspect that the _ex post facto_ words were levelled at Mary.

[213] Strype, ii. 133; D'Ewes, 207.

[214] Strype, ii. 135.

[215] _Life of Parker_, 354.

[216] Strype's _Annals_, ii. 48.

[217] Murden's _Papers_, p. 43, contain proofs of the increased discontent among the catholics in consequence of the penal laws.

[218] Strype, ii. 330. See too in vol. iii. Appendix 68, a series of pet.i.tions intended to be offered to the queen and parliament, about 1583. These came from the puritanical mint, and show the dread that party entertained of Mary's succession, and of a relapse into popery. It is urged in these, that no toleration should be granted to the popish wors.h.i.+p in private houses. Nor in fact had they much cause to complain that it was so. Knox's famous intolerance is well known. "One ma.s.s," he declared in preaching against Mary's private chapel at Holyrood House, "was more fearful unto him than if ten thousand armed enemies were landed in any part of the realm, on purpose to suppress the whole religion." M'Crie's _Life of Knox_, vol. ii. p. 24. In a conversation with Maitland he a.s.serted most explicitly the duty of putting idolaters to death. _Id._ p. 120. Nothing can be more sanguinary than the reformer's spirit in this remarkable interview. St. Dominic could not have surpa.s.sed him. It is strange to see men, professing all the while our modern creed of charity and toleration, extol these sanguinary spirits of the sixteenth century. The English puritans, though I cannot cite any pa.s.sages so strong as the foregoing, were much the bitterest enemies of the catholics. When we read a letter from any one, such as Mr. Topcliffe, very fierce against the latter, we may expect to find him put in a word in favour of silenced ministers.

[219] D'Ewes, 161, 177.

[220] Strype's _Life of Parker_, 354.

[221] Strype's _Annals_, i. 582. Honest old Strype, who thinks church and state never in the wrong, calls this "a notable piece of favour."

[222] _Id._ ii. 110, 408.

[223] Strype's _Annals_, iii. 127.

[224] _Life of Whitgift_, 83. See too p. 99, and _Annals of Reformation_, ii. 631, etc.; also Holingshed, ann. 1574, _ad init._