Memoirs of the Court of Queen Elizabeth, Volumes I & II — 22 - Volume I, Chapter XV. 1567 and 1568, part 2

Fortunately for Scotland, though disastrously for the future days of Mary and the fame of Elizabeth, this formidable rising in favor of the deposed sovereign was crushed at a single blow.

Murray, with inferior forces, marched courageously against the queen, gained a complete and easy victory, and compelled her to a hasty flight.

Accompanied only by a few attendants, the defeated princess reached the English border.

What should she do?

Behind her was the hostile army, acting in the name of her son to whom she had signed an abdication of the throne, in virtue of which her late attempt to reinstate herself might lawfully be visited with the rigors of perpetual imprisonment, or even with death itself.

Before her lay the dominions of a princess whose titles she had once usurped, and whose government she had never ceased to molest by her intrigues,--of one who had hated her as a competitor in power and in beauty,--as an enemy in religion, and most of all as the heiress of her crown.

But this very princess had interfered, generously interfered, to save her life; she had shown herself touched by her situation; she had offered her, under certain conditions, succours and protection.

Perhaps she would no longer remember in the suppliant who embraced her knees, the haughty rival who had laid claim to her crown;--perhaps she would show herself a real friend.

The English people too,--could they behold unmoved "a queen, a beauty," hurled from her throne, chased from her country by the rude hands of her rebellious subjects, and driven to implore their aid?

No surely,--ten thousand swords would spring from their scabbards to avenge her injuries;--so she hoped, so she reasoned;

for merited misfortune had not yet impaired her courage or abated her confidence, nor had the sense of guilt impressed upon her mind one lesson of humility.

Her situation, also, admitted of no other alternative than to confide herself to Elizabeth or surrender to Murray,--a step not to be thought of.

Time pressed; fear urged; and resolved to throw herself at the feet of her kinswoman, she crossed, never to return, the Rubicon of her destiny.

A common fishing-boat, the only vessel that could be procured, landed her on May 16th 1568, with about twenty attendants, at Workington in Cumberland, whence she was conducted with every mark of respect to Carlisle-castle; and from this asylum she instantly addressed to Elizabeth a long letter, relating her fresh reverse of fortune, complaining of the injuries which she had received at the hands of her subjects, and earnestly imploring her favor and protection.

With what feelings this important letter was received it would be deeply interesting to inquire, were there any possibility of arriving at the knowledge of a thing so secret.

If indeed the professions of friendship and offers of effectual aid lavished by Elizabeth upon Mary during the period of her captivity, were nothing else than a series of stratagems by which she sought to draw an unwary victim within her toils, and to wreak on her the vengeance of an envious temper and unpitying heart, we might now imagine her exulting in the success of her wiles, and smiling over the atrocious perfidy which she was about to commit.

If, on the other hand, we judge these demonstrations to have been at the time sincere, and believe that Elizabeth, though profoundly sensible of Mary's misconduct, was yet anxious to save her from the severe retribution which her exasperated subjects had taken upon them to exact, we must imagine her whole soul agitated at this crisis by a crowd of conflicting thoughts and adverse passions.

In the first moments, sympathy for an unhappy queen, and the intuitive sense of generosity and honor, would urge her to fulfil every promise, to satisfy or surpass every hope which her conduct had excited.

But soon the mingled suggestions of female honor, of policy, of caution, uniting with the sentiment of habitual enmity, would arise, first to moderate, then to extinguish, her ardor in the cause of her supplicant.

Further reflection, enforced perhaps by the reasonings of her most trusted counsellors, would serve to display in tempting colors the advantages to be taken of the now defenceless condition of a competitor once formidable and always odious; and gradually, but not easily, not without reluctance and shame and secret pangs of compunction, she would suffer the temptation,--one, it must be confessed, of no common force and aided by pleas of public utility not a little plausible,--to become victorious over her first thoughts, her better feelings, her more virtuous resolves.

For the honor of human nature, it may be believed that the latter state of feeling must have been that experienced by a princess whose life had been as yet unsullied by any considerable violations of faith, justice, or humanity: but it must not escape remark, that the first steps taken by her in this business were strong, decided in their character, and almost irretrievable.

Lady Scrope, sister of the duke of Norfolk, was indeed sent to attend the illustrious stranger at Carlisle, and lord Scrope warden of the west marches and sir Francis Knolles the vice-chamberlain were soon after dispatched thither with letters for her of kind condolence: but when Mary applied to these persons for permission to visit their queen, they replied, that, until she should have cleared herself of the shocking imputation of her husband's murder, public decorum and her own reputation must preclude a princess so nearly related to the late king of Scots from receiving her into her presence.

That it was however with regret that their mistress admitted this delay; and as soon as the queen of Scots should have vindicated herself on this point, they were empowered to promise her a reception suited at once to a sovereign and a kinswoman in distress.

Had not Elizabeth previously committed herself in some degree by interference in behalf of Mary, and by promises to her of support, no one could reasonably have blamed the caution or the coldness of this reply to a request, which, under all the circumstances, might justly be taxed with effrontery.

But in the judgement of Mary and her friends, and perhaps even of more impartial judges, the part already taken by Elizabeth had deprived her of the right of recurring to former events as a plea for the exclusion of the queen of Scots from her presence and favor.

Tears of grief and anger burst from the eyes of Mary on this unexpected check, which struck her heart with the most melancholy forebodings; but aware of the necessity of disguising fears which would pass for an evidence of guilt, she hastily replied, that she was willing to submit her whole conduct to the judgement of the queen her sister, and did not doubt of being able to produce such proofs of her innocence as would satisfy her and confound her enemies.

This was enough for Elizabeth: she was now constituted umpire between the queen of Scots and her subjects, and the future fate of both might be said to lie in her hands; in the mean time she had gained a pretext for treating as a culprit the party who had appealed to her tribunal.

We learn that lord Scrope and sir Francis Knolles had from the first received secret instructions not only to watch the motions of Mary, but to prevent her departure; her person had also been surrounded with sentinels under the semblance of a guard of honor.

But hitherto these measures of precaution had probably remained concealed from their object; they were now gradually replaced by others of a more open and decided character, and it was not much longer permitted to the hapless fugitive to doubt the dismal truth, that she was once more a prisoner.

Alarmed at her situation, and secretly conscious how ill her conduct would stand the test of judicial inquiry, Mary no sooner learned that Elizabeth had actually named commissioners to hear the pleadings on both sides, and written to summon the regent to produce before them whatever he could bring in justification of his conduct towards his sovereign, than she hastened to retract her former unwary concession.

In a letter full of impotent indignation, assumed majesty and real dismay, she now sought to explain away or evade her late appeal.

She repeated her demand of admission to the presence of Elizabeth, refused to compromise her royal dignity by submitting to a trial in which her own subjects were to appear as parties against her, and ended by requiring that the queen would either furnish her with that assistance which it behoved her more than any one to grant, or would suffer her to seek the aid of other princes whose delicacy on this head would be less, or their resentment of her wrongs greater.

This last proposal might have suggested to Elizabeth the safest, easiest, and most honorable mode of extricating herself from the dilemma in which, by further intermeddling in the concerns of Scotland, she was likely to become involved.

Happy would it have been for her credit and her peace of mind, had she suffered her perplexing guest to depart and seek for partisans and avengers elsewhere!

But her pride of superiority and love of sway were flattered by the idea of arbitrating in so great a cause; her secret malignity enjoyed the humiliation of her enemy; and her characteristic caution represented to her in formidable colors the danger of restoring to liberty one whom she had already offended beyond forgiveness.

She laid Mary's letter before her privy-council; and these confidential advisers, after wisely and uprightly deciding that it would be inconsistent with the honor and safety of the queen and her government to undertake the restoration of the queen of Scots, were induced to add, that it would also be unsafe to permit her departure out of the kingdom, and that the inquiry into her conduct ought to be pursued.

In spite of her remonstrances, Mary was immediately removed to Bolton-castle in Yorkshire, a seat of lord Scrope's; her communications with her own country were cut off; her confinement was rendered more strict; and by secret promises from Elizabeth of finally causing her to be restored to her throne under certain limitations, she was led to renew her consent to the trial of her cause in England, and to engage herself to name commissioners to confer with those of the regent and of Elizabeth at York.

It would be foreign from the purpose of the present work to engage in a regular narrative of the celebrated proceedings begun soon after at the city last mentioned, and ended at Westminster: some remarkable circumstances illustrative of the character of the English princess, or connected with the fate of her principal noble, will however be related hereafter, as well as their final result;--at present other subjects claim attention.

An embassy arrived in London in 1567, from Ivan Basilowitz czar of Muscovy, the second which had been addressed to an English sovereign from that country, plunged as yet in barbarous ignorance, and far from anticipating the day when it should assume a distinguished station in the system of civilized Europe.

It was by a bold and extraordinary enterprise that the barrier of the Frozen Sea had been burst, and a channel of communication opened between this country and Russia by means of which an intercourse highly beneficial to both nations was now begun: the leading circumstances were the following.

During the reign of Henry VII.

, just after the unparalleled achievement of Columbus had rendered voyages of discovery the ruling passion of Europe, a Venetian pilot, named Cabot, who had resided long in Bristol, obtained from this monarch for himself and his sons a patent for making discoveries and conquests in unknown regions.

By this navigator and his son Sebastian, Newfoundland was soon after discovered; and by Sebastian after his father's death a long series of maritime enterprises were subsequently undertaken with various success.

For many years he was in the service of Spain; but returning to England at the close of Henry the eighth's reign, he was received with merited favor at court.

Young king Edward listened with eagerness to the relations of the aged navigator;

and touched by the unquenchable ardor of discovery which still burned in the bosom of this contemporary and rival of Columbus, granted with alacrity his royal license for the fitting out of three ships to explore a north passage to the East Indies.

The instructions for this voyage were drawn up in a masterly manner by Cabot himself, and the command of the expedition was given to sir Hugh Willoughby, and under him to Richard Chancellor, a gentleman who had long been attached to the service of the excellent sir Henry Sidney, by whom he was recommended to this appointment in the warmest terms of affection and esteem.

The ships were separated by a tempest off the Norwegian coast; and Willoughby, having encountered much foul weather and judging the season too far advanced to proceed on so hazardous a voyage, laid up his vessel in a bay on the shore of Lapland, with the purpose of awaiting the return of spring.

But such was the rigor of the season on this bleak and inhospitable coast, that the admiral and his whole crew were frozen to death in their cabin.

Chancellor in the mean time, by dint of superior sailing, was enabled to surmount the perils of the way.

He doubled the North Cape, a limit never passed by English keel before, and still proceeding eastward, found entrance into an unknown gulf, which proved to be the White Sea, and dropped anchor at length in the port of Archangel.

The rude natives were surprised and terrified by the appearance of a strange vessel much superior in size to any which they had before beheld; but after a time, venturing on an intercourse with the navigators, they acquainted them, that they were subjects of the czar of Muscovy, and that they had sent to apprize him of so extraordinary an arrival.

On the return of the messenger, Chancellor received an invitation to visit the court of Moscow.

The czar, barbarian as he was in manners and habits, possessed however strong sense and an inquiring mind; he had formed great projects for the improvement of his empire, and he was immediately and fully aware of the advantages to be derived from a direct communication by sea with a people capable of supplying his country with most of the commodities which it now received from the southern nations of Europe by a tedious and expensive land-carriage.

He accordingly welcomed the Englishmen with distinguished honors; returned a favorable answer to the letter from king Edward of which they were the bearers, and expressed his willingness to enter into commercial relations with their country, and to receive an ambassador from their sovereign.

Edward did not live to learn the prosperous success of this part of the expedition, but fortunately his successor extended equal encouragement to the enterprise.

A Russia company was formed, of which the veteran Sebastian Cabot was made governor, and Chancellor was dispatched on a second voyage, charged with further instructions for the settlement of a commercial treaty.

His voyage was again safe and prosperous, and he was accompanied on his return by a Russian ambassador; but off the coast of Scotland the ship was unhappily wrecked, and Chancellor with several other persons was drowned; the ambassador himself reaching the land with much difficulty.

The vessel was plundered of her whole cargo by the neighbouring peasantry; but the ambassador and his train were hospitably entertained by the queen-regent of Scotland, and forwarded on their way to London, where their grotesque figures and the barbaric pomp of their dress and equipage astonished the court and city.

The present embassy, which reached its destination without accident, was one of greater importance, and appeared with superior dignity.

It conveyed to the queen, besides all verbal assurances of the friendship of the czar, a magnificent present of the richest furs, and other articles of great rarity; and the ambassadors had it in charge to conclude a treaty of amity and commerce, of which the terms proved highly advantageous for England.

They were accompanied by an Englishman named Jenkinson, who had been sent out several years before, by the Russia company, to explore the southern and eastern limits of that vast empire, and to endeavour to open an overland trade with Persia.

By the assistance of the czar he had succeeded in this object, and was the first Englishman who ever sailed upon the Caspian, or travelled over the wild region which lies beyond.

In return for all favors, he had now undertaken on behalf of the czar to propose to his own sovereign certain secret articles in which this prince was more deeply interested than in any commercial matters, and which he deemed it unsafe to commit to the fidelity or discretion of his own ambassadors.

Ivan, partly by a marked preference shown to foreigners, which his own barbarians could not forgive, partly by his many acts of violence and cruelty, had highly incensed his subjects against him.

In the preceding year, a violent insurrection had nearly hurled him from the throne; and still apprehensive of some impending disaster, he now proposed to the queen of England a league offensive and defensive, of which he was anxious to make it an article, that she should bind herself by oath to grant a kind and honorable reception in her dominions to himself, his wife and children, should any untoward event compel them to quit their country.

But that never-failing caution which, in all the complication and diversity of her connexions with foreign powers, withheld Elizabeth from ever, in a single instance, committing herself beyond the power of retreat, caused her to waive compliance with the extraordinary proposal of Ivan.

She entertained his ambassadors however with the utmost cordiality, gratified his wishes in every point where prudence would permit, and finally succeeded, by the adroitness of her management, in securing for her country, without sacrifice or hazard on her own part, every real benefit which an intercourse with such a people and such a sovereign appeared capable of affording.

To have come off with advantage in a trial of diplomatic skill with a barbarous czar of Muscovy, was however an exploit of which a civilized politician would be ashamed to boast,--on him no glory could be won,--and we may imagine Elizabeth turning from him with a kind of disdain to an antagonist more worthy of her talents.

The king and court of France were at this time subjected to the guidance of the execrable Catherine dei Medici.

To this woman the religious differences which then agitated Europe were in themselves perfectly indifferent, and on more than one occasion she had allowed it to be perceived that they were so: but a close and dispassionate study of the state of parties in her son's kingdom, had at length convinced her that it was necessary to the establishment of his authority and her own consequence, that the Hugonot faction should be crushed, and she stood secretly prepared and resolved to procure the accomplishment of this object by measures of perfidy and atrocity from which bigotry itself, in a mind not totally depraved, must have revolted.

By the secret league of Bayonne, the courts of France and Spain had pledged themselves to pursue in concert the great work of the extirpation of heresy; and while Catherine was laying hidden trains for the destruction of the Hugonots, Philip II.

, by measures of open force and relentless cruelty, was striving to annihilate the protestants of the Low Countries, and to impose upon those devoted provinces the detested yoke of the inquisition.

Elizabeth was aware of all that was going on; and she well knew that when once these worthy associates had succeeded in crushing the reformation in their own dominions, Scotland and England would become the immediate theatre of their operations.

Already were the catholics of the two countries privately encouraged to rely on them for support, and incited to aid the common cause by giving all the disturbance in their power to their respective governments.

Considerations of policy therefore, no less than of religion, moved her to afford such succours, first to the French protestants and afterwards to the Flemings, as might enable them to prolong at least the contest;

but her caution and her frugality conspired to restrain her from involving herself in actual warfare for the defence of either.

At the very time therefore that she was secretly supplying the Hugonots with money and giving them assurances of her support, she was more than ever attentive to preserve all the exteriors of friendship with the court of France.

It suited the views of the queen-mother to receive with complacency and encouragement the dissembling professions of Elizabeth; by which she was not herself deceived, but which served to deceive and to alarm her enemies the protestants, and in some measure to mask her designs against them.

We have seen what high civilities had passed between the courts on occasion of the admission of the French king into the order of the garter,--but this is little to what followed.

In 1568, after the remonstrances and intercession of Elizabeth, the succours lent by the German protestants, and the strenuous resistance made by the Hugonots themselves, had procured for this persecuted sect a short and treacherous peace, Catherine, in proof and confirmation of her entire friendship with the queen of England, began to drop hints to her ambassador of a marriage between his mistress and her third son the duke of Anjou, then only seventeen years of age.

Elizabeth was assuredly not so much of a dupe as to believe the queen-mother sincere in this strange proposal; yet it was entertained by her with the utmost apparent seriousness.

She even thought proper to give it a certain degree of cautious encouragement, which Catherine was doubtless well able rightly to interpret; and with this extraordinary kind of mutual understanding, these two ingenious females continued for months, nay years, to amuse themselves and one another with the representation of carrying on of negotiations for a treaty of marriage.

Elizabeth, with the most candid and natural air in the world, remarked that difference of religion would present the most serious obstacle to so desirable an union: Catherine, with equal plausibility, hoped that on this point terms of agreement might be found satisfactory to both parties; and warming as they proceeded, one began to imagine the conditions to which a catholic prince could with honor accede, and the other to invent the objections which ought to be made to them by a protestant princess.

The philosophical inquirer, who has learned from the study of history how much more the high destinies of nations are governed by the permanent circumstances of geographical position and relative force, and the great moral causes which act upon whole ages and peoples, than by negotiations, intrigues, schemes of politicians and tricks of state, will be apt to regard as equally futile and base the petty manoeuvres of dissimulation and artifice employed by each queen to incline in her own favor the political balance.

But in justice to the memories of Catherine and Elizabeth,--women whom neither their own nor any after-times have taxed with folly,--it ought at least to be observed, that in mistaking the excess of falsehood for the perfection of address, the triumphs of cunning for the masterpieces of public wisdom, they did but partake the error of the ablest male politicians of that age of statesmen.

The same narrow views of the interest of princes and of states governed them all: they seem to have believed that the right and the expedient were constantly opposed to each other; in the intercourses of public men they thought that nothing was more carefully to be shunned than plain speaking and direct dealings, and in these functionaries they regarded the use of every kind of "indirection" as allowable, because absolutely essential to the great end of serving their country.

Amongst the wiser and better part of Elizabeth's council however, such a profound abhorrence of the measures of the French court at this time prevailed, and such an honest eagerness to join heart and hand with the oppressed Hugonots for the redress of their intolerable grievances, that it required all her vigilance and address to keep them within the limits of that temporizing moderation which she herself was bent on preserving.

In the correspondence of Cecil with sir Henry Norris, then ambassador in France, the bitterness of his feelings is perpetually breaking out, and he cannot refrain from relating with extreme complacency such words of displeasure as her majesty was at any time moved to let fall against her high allies.

In November 1567, when civil war had again broken out in France, he acquaints the ambassador that the queen dislikes to give assistance to Conde and his party against their sovereign, but recommends it to him to do it occasionally notwithstanding, as the council are their friends.

In September 1568 he writes thus: "The French ambassador has sent his nephew to require audience, and that it might be ordered to have her majesty's council present at the bishop's missado.

Her majesty's answer was, that they forgot themselves, in coming from a king that was but young, to think her not able to conceive an answer without her council: and although she could use the advice of her council, as was meet, yet she saw no cause why they should thus deal with her, being of full years, and governing her realm in better sort than France was.

So the audience, being demanded on Saturday, was put off till Tuesday, wherewith I think they are not contented."

Again: "Monsieur de Montausier...

was brought to the queen's presence to report the victory which God had given the French king by a battle, as he termed it, wherein was slain the prince of Conde; whereunto, as I could conceive, her majesty answered, that of any good fortune happening to the king she was glad; but that she thought it also to be condoled with the king, that it should be counted a victory to have a prince of his blood slain;

and so with like speech, not fully to their contentation[67]."

[Note 67: Scrinia Ceciliana.

] With the Spanish court the queen was on the worst possible terms short of open hostilities.

Her ambassador at Madrid had been banished from the city to a little village in the neighbourhood; the Spanish ambassador at London had been placed under guard for dispersing libels against her person and government; and in consequence of her adroit seizure of a sum of money belonging to some Genoese merchants designed as a loan to the duke of Alva, to enable him to carry on the war against the protestants in Flanders, the king of Spain had ordered all commerce to be broken off between those provinces and England.

In the midst of these menaces of foreign war, cabals were forming against Elizabeth in her own kingdom and court which threatened her with nearer dangers.

Of all these plots, the Scottish queen was, directly or indirectly, the cause or the pretext; and in order to place them in a clear light, it will now be necessary to return to the conferences at York.

CHAPTER XVI. 1568 TO 1570.

Proceedings of the commissioners at York in the cause of Mary.

--Intrigues of the duke of Norfolk with the regent Murray.

--The conferences transferred to Westminster.

--Mary's guilt disclosed.

--Fresh intrigues of Norfolk.

--Conspiracy for procuring his marriage with Mary.

--Conduct of Throgmorton.

--Attempt to ruin Cecil baffled by the queen.

--Endeavour of Sussex to reconcile Norfolk and Cecil.

--Norfolk betrayed by Leicester--his plot revealed--committed to the Tower.

--Mary given in charge to the earl of Huntingdon.

--Remarks on this subject.

--Notice of Leonard Dacre--of the earls of Westmorland and Northumberland.

--Their rebellion.

--Particulars of the Norton family.

--Severities exercised against the rebels.

--Conduct of the earl of Sussex.

--Rising under Leonard Dacre.

--His after-fortunes and those of his family.

--Expedition of the earl of Sussex into Scotland.

--Murder of regent Murray.

--Influence of this event on the affairs of Elizabeth.

--Campaign in Scotland.

--Papal bull against the queen.

--Trifling effect produced by it.

--Attachment of the people to her government.