An Accidental Tragedy (51 page)

Shrewsbury now tightened his grip on Mary, demanding that her servants leave her at nine in the evening and not return until six in the morning, that none of them wear a sword, that, except when accompanied by Mary, none of them carry bows or arrows, that no expeditions be made unless he was given an hour’s notice, and finally that, if an alarm was sounded, all of Mary’s household be confined to their quarters. Stable doors were being bolted across the kingdom.

Mary swiftly asked the Bishop of Ross to petition Elizabeth that she be allowed to take the waters at Buxton for her sickness
and ‘vomisement’, that physicians be brought from France ‘that knoweth my sickness better’, and that ‘since . . . the Queen is minded to hold me perpetually in this country’ she be allowed to ride out hawking and hunting. Mary assured Elizabeth that she would not try to escape, but she asked for the number of her servants to be increased, as well as for the payment of her Scottish revenues to be paid. Mary was here setting out the conditions for what she saw as the life in captivity that would be her lot if her various plots failed and no rescue came. There were various attempts either to free her by substituting another woman in her place, or to seize her by force. Secret letters arrived concealed in a walking stick but, thanks to the much-stretched vigilance of Shrewsbury, all failed and the investigations into the Ridolfi plot in London continued.

The third addressee of the intercepted letters was the Bishop of Ross and on 13 May 1571 he was promptly arrested and confined in the house of the Bishop of Ely in Holborn. His imprisonment was light: he travelled as part of the Bishop of Ely’s entourage, receiving gifts of venison and even perfumed gloves. Leslie confessed that Ridolfi had carried letters written in March from Mary to Alva, to the Pope and to Philip II. Money was to be paid to one noted as ‘40’ in the cipher and ‘after some long pause’ he confirmed that ‘40’ was Mary. On Mary’s behalf Ridolfi was to solicit Alva to land at Dumbarton or Leith, with money from the Pope. Ridolfi recommended a man called Johnson to Herries and Fleming in Dumbarton as ‘a mete man for the wars’. He also suggested a Spanish landing on the east coast, possibly at Harwich, which he wrongly described as being in Norfolk.

Leslie, in a lengthy confession, told Burghley that back in August of 1570 Ridolfi, while at Arundel, had suggested that Norfolk, Arundel and Pembroke might seize the treasury in the Tower, and he also gave details of what Ridolfi had done in past embassies. Burghley was told that Mary believed that with the Pope and Philip on her side, her friends in England would readily assist her deliverance and she had asked the bishop to find out Norfolk’s views. She had also asked the Pope to give 12,000
crowns to Ridolfi, and since his brother was a banker in Rome this could easily be arranged. Ridolfi was to give some to Westmoreland and some to Lady Northumberland, and to keep the rest for his own purposes. Norfolk now asked for fewer men than he had asked for in March, and Leslie was now almost certainly pulling numbers out of the air. Ridolfi had persuaded the bishop to solicit Norfolk to write personal letters of credence for him, although ‘The duke was very loath’, and Leslie, now bent entirely on survival, told Burghley that Norfolk must soon openly declare himself a Catholic. He also claimed that Norfolk liked the Treaty of Accommodation but was wary of having King James in England and had suggested that perhaps Shrewsbury could look after the child.

Shrewsbury, for his part, had questioned Mary, who flatly denied any correspondence with Ridolfi or any cipher with ‘30’ or ‘40’; she admitted that she had written to all foreign princes for aid against the Scottish rebels, but vehemently denied sending for aid against Elizabeth.

The results of the bishop’s examination and of Bailly’s betrayal provided more than enough evidence, and on 4 August 1571 Norfolk was arrested at Howard Place, his London house, by Sir Ralph Sadler. Norfolk had ‘two men in his chamber, four or five to dress his meat no one else’. Sir Henry Neville, with half a dozen guards in attendance, kept watch over the duke. Norfolk had received £600 in gold from the French ambassador and had sent it by messenger to Scotland. En route the messenger opened the bag and found the gold as well as a letter in cipher which was immediately passed to Burghley.

One sign of lack of total support for Elizabeth appeared in the county of Norfolk, where Protestant refugees from Alva’s strict rule in the Netherlands had settled. Local Catholics under three local landowners – Throckmorton, a distant relative of the ambassador, Appleyard and Redman – were arrested and confessed to fomenting a revolt to free the Duke of Norfolk and remove Elizabeth from the throne. Mary was never mentioned in the confessions and was probably not aware of the rising, but her
planned enthronement in Elizabeth’s place was implicit. On 30 August the three ringleaders were hanged, drawn and quartered, while one Hobert and eleven others were sentenced to life imprisonment. On the scaffold Throckmorton said, ‘They be full merry now that will be as sorry within these few days.’ This caused another shiver of fear to run through Elizabeth, and Burghley’s worried frown deepened. First the Northern Rising, now this display of revolt, and always the Scots queen waiting in the wings, albeit passively. Messages were immediately sent to Shrewsbury to tighten his security even further.

A month after his arrest, on 7 September, Norfolk was returned to the Tower ‘without any difficulty and with such servants as were our friends’. The following day Sadler reported, ‘[he] very humbly behaved himself, on his knees submitting himself, with tears, to her highness’s mercy, declaring great sorrow that he hath offended her highness and great will to make amends’.

At first Norfolk claimed to know nothing of the plot since he had read none of the letters and did not know where the cipher was kept. This was clearly nonsense since a few days earlier Robert Higford, Norfolk’s servant, revealed that ‘the “Alphabet” was ‘under the mat by the window in the entry to my Lord’s chamber’.

Norfolk then wrote a long and rambling apology to Elizabeth on 10 September and three weeks later he revealed that the code for Roberto Ridolfi was ‘RR’ but claimed he had only met the Italian once. There was, he had thought, great good will towards Mary’s claim to the throne and he had intended to write to Alva. He knew of no actual commission to Alva, nor of any list of conspirators, and he had never spoken of any ports of entry. Since his ‘last trouble’ he never had any talk of marriage or of aid to Mary by speech, letters or messengers. He had only talked to John Leslie, the Bishop of Ross, about ‘Articles of Deliverance’ for Mary and he had had no knowledge of Ridolfi since he had left the country. The duke was now simply tidying up loose ends, and since he presumed that he would soon be executed, he had no regard for the truth.

Norfolk’s imprisonment in the Tower was so relaxed that he was smuggling messages out and gold in, and ciphers for new communications were found hidden in his Bible. On 13 October he gave his views on the Treaty of Accommodation, believing that James should be sent south and that the Scottish castles should remain in the hands of Mary’s friends. He also said that he had no knowledge of correspondence to and from Scotland and, although he had been told by Hugh Owen, Arundel’s man, of an escape plan, and also of Stanley’s plan, he had told Owen that he disliked all these plans and had taken no part in them. He had told Ridolfi that he would not deal with any foreign prince or subject. Otherwise he knew nothing. He had refused the offer of marriage to Mary made by Lethington at York and he knew that Mary had been upset by his previous promise to have no more to do with her, but it had been necessary to make the statement to ensure his previous release from the Tower.

In September Shrewsbury had been told by Burghley to ‘Let her [Mary] know that her letters and discourses in articles being in cipher to the duke of Norfolk are found, and he hath confessed the same, and delivered the alphabet, so as she may not now find it strange that her Majesty uses her in this sort, but rather think it strange that it is no worse. Indeed we have the Scottish Queen’s writing and the ciphers.’ This initiative may have been intended to prepare Mary for what would come if Elizabeth were persuaded to try her cousin for an apparent treason.

Norfolk was formally tried, with Shrewsbury as Lord High Steward presiding. The outcome was a foregone conclusion, and on 16 January 1572 he was found guilty and sentenced to beheading. On 6 February he made a will of sorts in which Sussex got his Garter, George and chain – these were the very valuable gold collar, of the Order of the Garter as well as the jewelled pendant of St George – and Burghley was to inherit a piece of cloth of gold and a ruby ring. He made his last confession on 26 February, saying that he had always been a Protestant and was now truly sorry that he was thought to favour papists. He accepted that he ‘did arrogantly presume, without her Highness’s
privity to enter into dealing with the Queen of Scots’ even after he had promised Elizabeth to desist. Norfolk also admitted that he had dealt with Ridolfi more than he had confessed, and the long and tragic document was duly signed by ‘The woeful and repentant hand, now too late, of Thomas Howard’.

Ridolfi wrote to Mary on 30 September reporting on his European travels. He had travelled to Rome – ‘after stopping some days at my house in Florence to look after my own affairs’ – where he gained Pius V’s approval and sympathy for Mary’s plight, travelling on to Madrid, but by the time he had persuaded the cautious Philip II it was too late. The Bishop of Ross and Norfolk were both in the Tower, and Ridolfi was forced to retire ‘to some place where there can be no jealousy of me’. He never returned to England. He died at the age of fifty and was buried in his native Florence.

Norfolk was never in love with Mary, as so many other suitors who had suffered under the headsman’s axe had been, but as a member of one of the great families of England he was a dynast, taking as much care over the Norfolk bloodline as he did over the mating of his dogs and horses. To marry an anointed queen, a royal Stewart with Tudor blood, as his fourth wife was an attractive ambition. He was too stupid to understand that it was also treasonable to the queen from whom his power derived, and the combination of stupidity and arrogance led him to the block. It is hard not to have a scintilla of sympathy for Thomas Howard.

Elizabeth sent orders to the Sheriff of London on 9 April ‘to proceed to the execution and judgement of the late Duke of Norfolk’. Elizabeth then cancelled the warrant and, as she did so frequently, hesitated before spilling blood; but the duke was finally beheaded on 2 June 1572, being guilty of ‘Imagination and device to deprive the Queen from her crown and royal style, name and dignity, and consequently from her life. Comforting and relieving of the English Rebels that stirred the rebellion in the North since they have fled out of the realm. Comforting and relieving of the Queen’s enemies in Scotland that have succoured
and maintained the said English Rebels. His seeking of the Scottish Queen’s marriage. He also sought to obtain this marriage by force.’

Since Mary had made no vows of fidelity to Elizabeth as her sovereign, she could not, technically, be guilty of treason, although, from now on, public opinion in England turned more vigorously against Mary. Her waning popularity received another blow when Buchanan’s
Detectio
was published in England. Although it made no reference to the Ridolfi plot, the inferences of Mary’s involvement in Darnley’s death reappeared, further damaging her in public opinion. It was the last direct attack made by George Buchanan on his erstwhile patron. The historian Alastair Cherry in his
Princes, Poets and Patrons
, said of it, ‘It is now widely agreed that his history is untrustworthy as an account of Mary’s personal reign, being based on insinuation, half-truth and blatant falsehood, all inextricably woven together.’ It is a disgusting example of vitriol for hire.

Demands were made by Elizabeth’s council for the execution of Mary but, for the moment, she resisted them. As 1572 ended, John Leslie, Bishop of Ross, ordered his cook to prepare a lavish feast for his Christmas celebrations.

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

Stranger, papist and enemy

While Shrewsbury was in London attending to Norfolk’s trial, his place at Sheffield was taken by Sir Ralph Sadler, whose turn it was to receive Mary’s complaints against her imprisonment. She displayed a certain arrogance when she said of Norfolk and the other conspirators, ‘let them answer for themselves’, and told him that she never knew Ridolfi. As for her ambassador, the Bishop of Ross, he ‘will say whatever you will have him say’. Sadler and Bess oversaw the delivery of some medicines sent from France accompanied by a letter with a seemingly innocent content, but with a quantity of blank paper. Sadler tried to heat the paper – invisible writing with lemon juice would turn brown and reveal itself when heated – but found nothing. Next morning Mary, accompanied by Bess, walked in the gardens of the castle and Sadler delivered the letter, overriding her complaints that it had been opened. He noted Mary’s lack of exercise, walking sometimes on the ‘leads’, and her bitter weeping at the news of Norfolk’s sentence. She plunged into grief and fasted, on alternate days sending vitriolic letters to Elizabeth, who responded by sending an answer with the returning Shrewsbury. Mary was reminded, inevitably, of her failure to endorse the Treaty of Edinburgh, and then, in a long list, of her rejection of Elizabeth’s friendship, of Mary’s defiance in marrying Darnley against Elizabeth’s wishes, of her plotting with Norfolk and Ridolfi to seize the throne and of her plans to use foreign aid to invade England. Shrewsbury was commanded to read the document to Mary ‘once or twice, or oftener, as she shall require it’. The days of Elizabeth as ‘dearest sister’ were over.