Tudors (History of England Vol 2) (62 page)

Throgmorton had the opportunity to write a few words to the Spanish ambassador, in which he said that he had denied all knowledge of the writings and claimed that they had been planted in his house by one who wished to destroy him. He declared that he would be faithful and silent to the death, but he was sent to the Tower and to the persuasions of the rack. Elizabeth, faced with a serious conspiracy, agreed that he should be subject to ‘the pains’.

On his first racking he confessed nothing but, when he was tied to the frame for a second time, he broke down and confessed all the details of the plot. The founder of the Catholic League, Henry I, duke of Guise, had intended to land with an invasion force on the Sussex coast near Arundel; at which time the Catholic gentlemen and noblemen would rise up on behalf of Mary, queen of Scots. Philip of Spain ‘would bear half the charge of the enterprise’. Throgmorton also declared that Mary herself had known every detail of the plan. After he had made his confession, according to the official account, he collapsed in tears. ‘Now,’ he said, ‘I have disclosed the secrets of her who was the dearest queen to me in the world . . .’ He was hanged a few months later, when his testimony was no longer of any use.

On the news of his arrest and confession many prominent Catholics fled the country; others were suspected and placed under arrest. It has been estimated that 11,000 were confined to prison cells or, at best, to their own houses. The Inns of Court, long considered to be a haven of papists, were visited; conformity of religion now became essential for all lawyers. The queen at once realized the extent of Spanish hostility against her. At any minute the duke of Guise might reach English shores with the forces of the Catholic League; the navy was sent to guard the coast in the Downs, the Isle of Wight and the Scilly Islands. Most of the fleet would be sent to the west, which faced the greatest danger of a Spanish invasion, but in the event of an attack from the Channel the enemy would be followed and confronted. Money was urgently needed to restore forts and garrisons; trenches would have to be dug ‘to impeach landing’. Burghley also wrote a note to himself, ‘to have regard to Sheffield’, by which he meant Sheffield Castle. That was now the home, or prison, of Mary.

It was here she remained, plotting and planning in her relatively comfortable confinement. Her principal purpose was to regain her freedom and to ascend to the thrones of Scotland and of England. In this, she was tenacious and resourceful. There were many, Walsingham and Burghley among them, who were waiting for the opportunity to destroy her. Elizabeth was not yet of their mind. It was suggested that she might now recognize Mary’s son, James, as the lawful king of Scotland. Walsingham also proposed
an alliance with the Protestants of the Low Countries, in a situation where England needed all the allies it could find.

Some commissioners were sent to the queen of Scots. They found her in a fury, eager to tell once more the story of her wrongs ‘using bitter speeches of her misery’. One of the English delegation remarked, respectfully, that foreign observers believed her treatment to be one of ‘singular mercy’. The queen’s reply (here paraphrased) was royal: ‘Mercy? What had mercy to do with it? I am as much an absolute prince as her Majesty. I am not, and have never been, her inferior. I have been a queen from my cradle. I have been proclaimed queen of France, the greatest realm in Christendom. Mercy is for subjects. I am not a subject.’ The delegation reported that ‘all this was said with extreme choler’.

She calmed herself and went on to describe ‘her grief and her woeful estate’. She was younger than Elizabeth, she said, but suffering had made her look older. The leader of the delegation, Sir William Wade, then asked her about the plots and intrigues and conspiracies of which she was a part. ‘May I not ask my friends to help me? I have meant innocently and, if they have done wrong, they alone are to be blamed.’ Wade mentioned the proofs of her involvement. At which she flared out with ‘you are not of calling [rank] to reason with me’. Eventually peace was restored, and Mary sang to the English delegation. Yet she remained stubborn and defiant, convinced both of the justice of her cause and of her ultimate success. Any traveller in the neighbourhood of the castle was questioned, and no one could enter the stronghold without especial permission from the council. Whenever she rode out for the air, she was accompanied by an armed guard.

The prognostications became ever more gloomy on the news of the assassination, in the summer of 1584, of the leader of the Dutch Protestants. William of Nassau, prince of Orange, had been killed on the orders of Philip II. Who could doubt that Elizabeth would be next? The duke of Guise, the leader of the Catholic League, had also become more dangerous. Elizabeth’s once determined suitor, the duke of Anjou, had died of a fever after a miserable failure in the Netherlands; when the queen heard news of his death, she cried for many days afterwards. She wore black for six months and put the court into mourning. ‘I am a widow
woman,’ she told the French ambassador, ‘who has lost her husband.’ His comment was that she was ‘a princess who knows how to transform herself as suits her best’. It was more significant that Anjou’s demise left the royal succession to a Protestant, Henry of Navarre, and Guise concluded a treaty with Philip to prevent that possibility. They had also entered an alliance against Elizabeth.

In the autumn of the year the queen posed two questions to her council. Should she protect and defend the Low Countries from the tyranny of Spanish rule? And, if she decided so to do, ‘what shall she do to provide for her own surety against the king of Spain’s malice and forces?’ The majority of her councillors were in favour of intervention, but still she hesitated. She wanted the support and co-operation of the French king. Otherwise England would be utterly alone.

This was the moment when Burghley and Walsingham drew up a document that became known as the Bond of Association; those who subscribed to it gave a solemn oath that they would defend Elizabeth’s life and guarantee a Protestant succession. The signatories promised that they ‘would pursue as well by force of arms as by all other means of revenge’ anyone who threatened the queen. It was also declared that no ‘pretended successor by whom or for whom any such detestable act shall be attempted or committed’ was to be spared. If Elizabeth were assassinated, Mary would be executed. It was a direct appeal to force. This was the time when portrait cameos of the queen were manufactured in quantity, creating a sacred image of majesty that would challenge those of the Virgin Mary on the continent.

Burghley went to further lengths to ensure that a Protestant would inherit the throne. He drew up a document proposing that, in the event of the queen’s death, a Grand Council would be called. This council would act as the governing body while at the same time summoning a parliament to consider the succession; since parliament was wholly Protestant, Catholics being excluded, their choice was not in doubt. ‘The government of the realm shall still continue in all respects,’ Burghley wrote in a memorandum. ‘This cannot be without an interreyne [interregnum] for some reasonable time.’ The queen was not happy with her principal
minister. It was unpardonable of him to meddle in such matters and to question the principle of hereditary rule. To imagine the queen’s death was, in any case, itself an act of treason. It may have seemed to her that a group of males, with shared religious and ideological convictions, was springing up around her. That is why she preferred to see her councillors individually, or in twos and threes. It may also be the reason she often seemed to listen more attentively to foreign ambassadors than to her own men. The novel situation may serve to elucidate the latter part of her reign.

The parliament of November 1584 met in a state of some excitement. The members confirmed the details of the Bond of Association by passing an Act for the Queen’s Safety. The arrangements for the ‘interreyne’ were never discussed, and it is likely that Elizabeth’s severe displeasure prevented their being taken any further. The importance of the Bond of Association, however, was immediately emphasized at the beginning of 1585 in a further conspiracy against the queen’s life that was engineered by a curious double agent, William Parry, who was supposed to act as a spy against English Catholics. Instead he turned against his mistress and lay in wait in her garden at Richmond; eventually, when she appeared, he was so daunted by her majesty that he gave up the attempt. That is one story. Another records that he had gained an audience with the queen and came into her presence with a knife concealed in his shirt. Once more his nerve failed him.

Nevertheless he was seized before being questioned by Walsingham. He was dispatched to the Tower and afterwards sent to the gallows. ‘It makes all my joints to tremble,’ one member of parliament wrote after his arrest, ‘when I consider the loss of such a jewel [Elizabeth].’ Parry himself wrote a confession to the queen that ended on a tender note. ‘And so farewell, most gracious and the best natured and qualified Queen that ever lived in England. Remember your unfortunate Parry, overthrown by your hard hand. Amend that in the rest of your servants, for it is past with me if your grace be not greater than I look for. And last and ever, good madam, be good to your obedient Catholic servants. For the bad I speak not.’

Parliament had made one significant change to the Bond of Association; on the orders of Elizabeth herself, they had expressly
exempted Mary’s son, James, from the threat of reprisals. At the same time the queen opened negotiations with the young man, with the prospect of her recognizing him as James VI of Scotland. This also implied that he might have some claim to the English throne in the event of her death. Of course James had already inherited the crown of Scotland, since at the age of thirteen months he had ascended the throne after the forced abdication of his mother. Yet the formal acceptance of his position by Elizabeth would immensely strengthen his rule. The queen herself would appreciate the support of the Protestant monarch in the event of Spanish intrigue or invasion.

James now wrote to his mother, assuring her that she would always be honoured with the title of ‘queen mother’. She fell into a rage. ‘I pray you to note,’ she wrote in reply, ‘I am your true and only queen. Do not insult me further with this title of queen mother . . . there is neither king nor queen in Scotland except me.’ She threatened to disinherit and to curse him if he signed any separate agreement with England, but that was precisely the decision he took. Mary herself was removed to the stricter confinement of Tutbury, where she might be able to reflect upon her diminished sovereignty. Soon after this a young Catholic priest was also confined in the castle, where after three weeks he managed to hang himself in his cell. The next morning Mary found him suspended in front of her own windows. She believed this to be a presage of her own death, and wrote once more to Elizabeth with a desperate plea for her life and liberty.

Her Catholic allies were meanwhile in retreat. Philip Howard, the earl of Arundel, had for a long time been suspected of recusancy; when finally he was privately reconciled to the Catholic Church he wrote a long letter to the queen in which he enumerated his woes and his failure to gain friends at court. He knew well enough the fate of his father, the fourth duke of Norfolk, who had been executed as a traitor. He had now come to that point where he must ‘consent either to the certain destruction of my body or the manifest endangering of my soul’. He had therefore decided to leave the realm without royal licence.

He gave the letter to a messenger and then proceeded to embark on a boat off the coast of Sussex. He did not know that
his servants had been in the pay of the privy council, or that the master of the ship in which he travelled was also a spy of the government. He was followed by two ships and was obliged to surrender after a short fight. He was then taken to the Tower, where he remained for the rest of his life.

The arrest of Howard was followed by the death of Henry Percy, eighth earl of Northumberland; he had been consigned to the Tower after being implicated in the plot of Francis Throgmorton against the queen, and had remained for a year in his cell without trial. On the evening of 20 June 1585 he was found dead in his bed with three pellets in his heart. It was concluded that, in fear of the shame of public execution, he had determined to kill himself. If he did not suffer the death of a traitor, then at least his inheritance would be preserved. He was supposed to have cried out that ‘the bitch shall not have my estate’. Others believed, however, that he had been assassinated for want of evidence against him.

In the summer of 1585 Elizabeth finally signed a treaty with the Netherlands, pledging her support for their cause against the Spanish. She agreed to send 4,000 men, their wages paid for three months, on the understanding that she would eventually be recompensed. In return she had been given possession of the sea towns of Ostend and Sluys, Brielle and Flushing. A long declaration announced that ‘our next neighbours, the natural people of the Low Countries, being by long wars, and persecution of strange [foreign] nations there, lamentably afflicted, and in present danger to be brought into a perpetual servitude’ had to be assisted.

The agreement came too late, however, to save Antwerp; the city had fallen to the duke of Parma three days before. In the previous months the duke had occupied Flanders and much of Brabant, while Bruges and Ghent had surrendered to him. The queen had finally come out into the open, however, after years of covert negotiation and secret alliances. Yet she did not wish to become queen of the Low Countries; that would open her to fresh dangers and fresh expense. She merely wished to uphold their
liberties under Spanish rule. She would be their protector rather than their sovereign.

In the early autumn of the same year she also helped to finance Sir Francis Drake in a voyage to the West Indies, with the purpose of rifling Spanish vessels and Spanish-held towns of the region. His force numbered twenty-nine ships and 2,300 men. He captured St Domingo on the island of Hispaniola, with the pillage from that town filling the holds of his vessels. He then went on to Cartagena, on the Spanish Main, and held it to ransom for 107,000 ducats. He was about to set sail for Panama, when an epidemic of yellow fever among his men prevented him.