Early Modern England 1485-1714: A Narrative History (32 page)

It was probably inevitable, given the queen’s apparent sympathy for Protestantism, her Scottish cousin’s presence in England, the Jesuits’ courage and zeal, and Spain’s wealth, power, and sense of grievance, that some Catholics, including, eventually, the pope, would call for violent action, even a Holy Crusade against Elizabeth. In 1568 Thomas Howard, fourth duke of Norfolk (1538–72), a nominal Protestant but the leader of the most powerful Catholic family in England, devised a plot to wed Mary,
¹²
purge Cecil and other Protestants from the Council, and dictate terms to the queen. His scheme had the support of several disgruntled northern Catholic peers whose local power had been reduced by the Tudors, most prominently Thomas Percy, earl of Northumberland (1528–72), and Charles Neville, earl of Westmorland (1542/3–1601). More surprisingly, some avid Protestants, including the earl of Leicester, also promoted the plot, in its early stages at least, hoping to break Cecil’s hold on power. At the crucial moment, late in 1569, Norfolk lost his nerve and failed to go through with the plan. But when the court summoned Northumberland and Westmorland to explain themselves, they concluded that they had already passed the point of no return. They raised their affinities, marched south, entered Durham Cathedral (November 14), ripped the English Bible into pieces, and celebrated a Latin mass before large crowds. They then continued south, bearing the banner of the Five Wounds of Christ last seen in the Pilgrimage of Grace, with 3,800 footsol-diers and 1,600 cavalry. But the Catholic nobility of Yorkshire and Lancashire, whether out of loyalty to the queen, a lack of direction from Rome, fear, or inertia, refused to join them and the farmers who made up the rebel army began to drift home. In the end, the duke of Norfolk was seized and imprisoned in the Tower. The earls of Northumberland and Westmorland fled to Scotland. Westmorland eventually made it to the continent, but the Scots handed Northumberland to the English early in 1570, who executed him along with about 450 of their followers. This was virtually the last popular Catholic rebellion in English history.

One alleged reason for the failure of the Northern Rebellion of 1569–70 was Rome’s ambiguous stance toward the queen. Too late to aid the revolt, in February 1570 Pope Pius V (1504–72; reigned 1566–72) issued the bull
Regnans in Excelsis,
excommunicating Elizabeth, absolving her subjects of allegiance to her, and calling for her deposition in favor of Mary Queen of Scots. This move was, in fact, a blunder. It put Catholics in the terrible position of having to choose their faith and pope over their State and queen. Most, even priests, tacitly chose Elizabeth by refusing to take up arms against her. Nevertheless, to Protestants, the papal bull of 1570 was one more sign of an international Catholic conspiracy against England, its queen, and Church.

Their fears received additional confirmation in the following year in the so-called
Ridolfi Plot
. In 1571 Roberto di Ridolfi (1531–1612), a Florentine banker and Catholic agent, secured the endorsement of Pope Pius, Philip
II
, Mary Queen of Scots, and the imprisoned duke of Norfolk for another plot against the queen. The king of Spain, however, refused to send troops until English Catholics actually rebelled; those Catholics who might have acted would not do so until they saw Spanish troops. In the meantime, Secretary Walsingham had infiltrated the Catholic movement with spies. This enabled the government to uncover the plot, arrest the conspirators, and execute Norfolk in 1572.

These events had no effect on who wore the crown, but they did produce two other developments. First, they solidified anti-Catholic feeling in England. After 1569 all JPs were made to swear an Oath of Supremacy. In 1571 Parliament, over the queen’s objections, revived the old Henrician treason statutes, making it a capital crime to call the queen a schismatic or a heretic, to question her title to the throne, or to promote in speech, writing, or deed her death or removal. Another Act made it treason to distribute, receive, or possess papal documents. In 1581, following the arrival of the first Jesuits, an Act was passed against recusancy. Absence from church services now cost the offender
£
20 per month. This was an impossible sum for cottagers and artisans earning, at best, a pound a month; these fines were meant to cripple the Catholic elite. It also became illegal to convert anyone from his or her allegiance to the Church of England, or to allow oneself to be so converted. Finally, in 1585, Parliament made it treason to be a Catholic priest in England and otherwise tightened the existing treason laws in order to further secure the queen’s safety. These measures drove the Catholic missionary movement and the community it was supposed to sustain even further underground. The queen liked to say that she prosecuted Catholics for their subversive political activities, not their religious beliefs, but Jesuits attacked this distinction as hypocrisy. It is true that, in practice, the government persecuted few Catholic lay people for breaking the law against recusancy. Butin the last two decades of the reign Elizabeth’s regime executed roughly 120 priests and 60 lay Catholics for treason. By starving Catholics of priests and proscribing missionary activity, the government was slowly eradicating Roman Catholicism from England. By 1603, only about 35,000 Catholics remained in the kingdom with perhaps the same number of “church papists” – Catholics who conformed outwardly to the Church of England but remained true to the Old Faith in their hearts.

Marital Diplomacy II

The plots against Elizabeth almost certainly convinced both her and Philip that a war between their two nations was all but inevitable. But not yet. Throughout the 1570s one group in the council, led by the earl of Leicester and Secretary Walsingham, advocated aggressive support for the Dutch rebels as part of a Protestant crusade against Philip II. But Secretary Cecil (Lord Burghley from 1571 and lord treasurer from 1572), Lord Sussex, and their supporters persuaded the queen that England was simply not ready, either financially or militarily, for war against the most powerful empire on earth. Rather, they urged her to negotiate and, if possible, to avoid an expensive and bloody conflict; if that proved impossible, to buy time to build up England’s first line of defense against invasion, the Royal Navy.

Elizabeth pursued these suggestions on two fronts. First, she toned down her support for the Protestant rebels in the Netherlands and became more secretive about her encouragement of privateers like Drake. Second, the Virgin Queen spent the 1570s and early 1580s pursuing a series of negotiations for a diplomatic marriage. The most serious of these involved François, duke of Alençon and Anjou (1554–84), brother to Henry III of France, who visited England in 1579 and 1581–2. Evidence suggests that, for a time in 1579, the queen was in love – if not, perhaps, with Alençon (she called the pock-marked prince her “ape” and her “frog,” but these seem to have been terms of endearment), then with the idea of marriage. Perhaps she realized that this was her last chance at domestic bliss. Whatever her feelings, Elizabeth wanted to convince the Catholic powers that war might be unnecessary. Why invade when she and her realm might be conquered peacefully, through love?

The queen’s double game worked remarkably well for a time. But by the mid- 1580s it was clear that a Catholic marriage was unpopular not only with her council but with her people as well. Moreover, the continued weakness and division in France would have rendered such a union of limited diplomatic usefulness to England as it faced growing Spanish power. In 1580 Spain annexed Portugal, thus adding Brazil and much of the Far East to Philip’s already immense holdings. In the summer of 1584 a Catholic fanatic assassinated William of Orange and the Dutch revolt came close to collapse. Over the course of the next year, town after town fell to the Spanish army, now commanded by the veteran Alexander de Farnese, duke of Parma (1545–92). It was now or never: Elizabeth had to decide whether or not to prop up the Protestant revolt on a grand and public scale. For once, driven by events to a decision, she struck boldly, sending six to seven thousand troops to the Spanish Netherlands under the command of her beloved Leicester.

This, Philip could only regard as an act of war. The ensuing conflict, fought against the superpower of the age, would be the greatest challenge faced by the Tudor State. In the first half of Elizabeth’s reign, her regime had tried to settle England’s religion and place on the international stage. Now that settlement would be threatened by the mightiest empire on the planet. The Tudor State would rise to the challenge, but at the cost of the internal stability that the queen and her advisers had fought so hard to achieve.

CHAPTER FIVE

The Elizabethan Triumph and Unsettlement, 1585–1603

In December 1585, the earl of Leicester landed in the Netherlands to lead English troops in support of the Dutch rebellion against Spain. In response, Philip II began to plan the invasion of England. The English assumed that his goal was to place Mary Queen of Scots on the throne, restore Roman Catholicism as the State religion, and bring England back into the Spanish sphere of influence. In fact, he would have been content simply to force the English to tolerate Catholicism and withdraw from the Netherlands. His plan was to assemble a vast armada of 130 war and merchant ships which would ferry Parma’s army across the Channel. It would take three years to fund, build, and assemble this fleet, the largest oceangoing navy yet seen on the face of the earth. The fate of everything that the Tudors had worked for hinged on its defeat.

As Philip assembled his armada in the mid-1580s, all that stood between it and victory was the Royal Navy. The Royal Navy had more or less been founded by Henry VIII, who had delighted in spending royal treasure on its ships and dockyards. He also established a Navy Board under a lord high admiral which supervised the building, outfitting, manning, and provisioning of ships. After a period of dormancy under Edward VI and Mary, the navy had been revived by Elizabeth. Though Charles, Lord Howard of Effingham (1536–1624), was lord high admiral, its brain was Hawkins; its heart, Drake. Together, they had designed a new generation of English warship: longer, faster, more maneuverable, and more heavily gunned than its Spanish counterpart. By 1588 the queen had but 35 of these, although she could requisition additional merchant ships.

During the previous three years, the Royal Navy had done what it could to even the odds. In 1585 Drake had captured and burned the Spanish port of Vigo. Two years later he attacked Cadiz harbor, where the Armada was assembling, and destroyed 30 ships. When
El Draque
“singed the King of Spain’s beard,” as he boasted, he not only wounded Spanish prestige; he delayed the invasion for a crucial year.

What about Mary?

Elizabeth’s government braced for invasion in another way: by taking care of its most dangerous guest, Mary Queen of Scots. As the living, Catholic alternative to the Protestant queen, Mary had long been the focus of plots. In the mid-1580s Mary herself began to correspond with foreign agents and potential conspirators. Even though Secretary Walsingham intercepted and read her letters, he and the Privy Council knew that they needed more evidence to convince Elizabeth to get rid of her cousin. They also needed to be sure that Mary’s young son, James VI, would go along with it. In mid-1586 Walsingham engineered the Treaty of Berwick: in addition to the usual pledges of mutual assistance, the Scottish king received a pension of £4,000 a year and the tacit assurance that if he allowed Elizabeth free rein with his mother, he would succeed to the English throne at Elizabeth’s death. In the meantime, yet another plot, organized by a former page to Mary named Anthony
Babington
(1561–86), gave Walsingham his opportunity. As with previous conspiracies, Babington hoped to rally native Roman Catholics to support a Spanish invasion which would place Mary on the throne. But there was a new twist which would have dire consequences for one of the two rival queens: Elizabeth was to be assassinated. Walsingham learned about the plot through his spy system, but he took his time in suppressing it because he wanted to know Mary’s reaction. Eventually, the Scottish queen gave her approval; the letter in which she did so would seal her fate. With the incriminating letter in hand, the Privy Council persuaded Elizabeth to try Mary in the autumn of 1586; the ensuing trial convicted Mary of violating the 1585 legislation to secure the queen’s person. Still, even with unequivocal proof that her cousin had authorized her death, Elizabeth hesitated. She signed an execution warrant, then left it in the hands of her other secretary of state, William Davison (d. 1608), with no clear instruction that it be implemented.

There followed one of the most remarkable episodes in English history. Davison held the object that Elizabeth’s loyal advisers had so long coveted – Mary’s death warrant – but without clear royal permission to use it. He summoned his fellow councilors together and they decided to waste no time. They agreed to back Davison as he sent the warrant up to Fotheringhay Castle, Northamptonshire, where Mary resided under house arrest. Within hours, on February 8, 1587, she was beheaded. The news made Elizabeth furious. She gave Mary a full state funeral; pleaded innocence to James; and sacked, fined, and sent Davison to the Tower. But Elizabeth’s sincerity is questionable, for in 1588 he was released quietly, given valuable lands for his troubles, and had his secretary’s salary paid until his death in 1608. Was Elizabeth’s anger toward Davison and her council dissimulated to placate Scottish, French, and Spanish opinion? Even more intriguingly, what was Elizabeth’s motivation in signing the death warrant, but refusing to send it, in the first place? A Machiavellian manipulation of her advisers in order to deflect blame from herself? The recourse of a perennially hesitant mind, always reluctant to commit irrevocably to one policy or another? Or, perhaps, the tortured maneuvers of a soul torn about a deed which was at once abominable yet necessary? And what about James? He wrote to Elizabeth demanding satisfaction, but remained an ally of sorts – and continued to take his pension.