Heretic Queen (14 page)

The whole regiment of the crown of France shall be in the hands of the Guisans; and to maintain their faction they will pleasure the King of Spain in all that they may. Hereupon shall follow a complot betwixt them two, to advance their own private causes; the King of Spain to unable the House of Navarre for ever from claiming the kingdom of Navarre; the House of Guise to promote their niece, the Queen of Scots, to the crown of England … and … the realm of Ireland to be given in a prey to the King of Spain.

In this meantime all the Papists in England shall be solicited not to stir, but to confirm their faction with comfort, to gather money and to be ready to stir at one instant when some foreign force shall be ready to assail this realm or Ireland. Whosoever thinketh that relenting in religion will assuage the Guisans' aspirations, they are far deceived.
9

For England, it was an invidious situation. To do nothing was not an option, and to venture forward was extremely risky. When Condé's envoy arrived in July 1562 to plead for ten thousand men this time, the choices available to England were narrowed. Besides, Throckmorton had become a liability in Paris with his undisguised hawkish behavior and was recalled at the end of the month. He was replaced by the diplomat Sir Thomas Smith, who was far better at keeping his own counsel. By the end of August, a “secret” course of action had been decided upon. The Earl of Warwick, Robert Dudley's elder brother Ambrose, would lead a fighting force of six thousand footmen to help the beleaguered Huguenot forces at Newhaven, leaving Admiral Coligny in charge of Dieppe.

Yet throughout this fraught period of negotiation and soul-searching, one thing was evident: Elizabeth now favored direct action. According to the ubiquitous de Quadra, “The Queen was quite furious at the Council, and replied to some of those who opposed the expedition that if they were so much afraid that the consequences of failure would fall upon them she herself would take all the risk and would sign her name to it.”
10

Of course Condé dangled the possibility of England's regaining Calais, but that was secondary. Elizabeth feared a Catholic or Guise victory in France would lead to an emboldened English Catholic population, just when the first green shoots of her religious settlement were becoming apparent. Religious unrest in France was tantamount to a clear and present danger within England itself.

The triumvirate that would dictate English policy until peace could be secured would be Queen Elizabeth herself, Sir Robert Dudley, and William Cecil. Dudley and his brother Ambrose would provide the military “expertise,” Cecil the administrative backup, and, of course, the queen would mastermind the foreign missions—both official and unofficial. It fell to Cecil to watch and neutralize the inveterate conspirator de Quadra. Once again, the Spanish ambassador would fare rather badly in his next brush with Cecil's fledgling secret service.

It was a combination of De Quadra's natural arrogance and Cecil's bravura that led the events in the autumn and winter of 1562–63. Starved of firsthand information from the battlefront in France, de Quadra hungered to become the focal point of his king's attentions once more. Most of our knowledge of what transpired at the English court in this period comes from de Quadra's angry dispatches to Spain and how he presented Philip's strongest protests against Elizabeth's invasion of France. He harangued Cecil repeatedly that England's only interest in French affairs was Elizabeth's desire to regain Calais. Cecil replied angrily that England would have never lost Calais in the first place if Philip hadn't prevailed on his lovelorn wife, Mary, to support his own wars in France in 1557–58.

None of this is surprising, but what happened in January 1563 is.

De Quadra gave refuge to the would-be assassin of an Italian officer at the Spanish embassy, then at Durham Place on the Strand in London. Somehow de Quadra himself became involved in a street brawl as his servants locked the doors of the embassy behind the assassin and drove the crowds away. Meanwhile, the fugitive was directed to the water gate of the embassy opening out onto the Thames and escaped by boat. Unfortunately for de Quadra, the man was captured a short time later. Within hours the incident was reported to Elizabeth personally, who ordered the locks on the water gate changed and the only set of new keys brought to the Queen's Keeper.

On January 7, de Quadra lodged a complaint before the Privy Council. The Duke of Norfolk presided, and the Spanish ambassador remained confident that his complaint would be upheld. Cecil replied on behalf of the queen. He pointed out that the would-be assassin had been a constant visitor to the Spanish embassy, had often received his meat and drink from the ambassador, had attended Mass there as many foreign Catholics did, and, most importantly, while in hiding in the embassy on the day of the attempted murder, held a private audience with de Quadra in his private chambers. Cecil went on to explain how the Spanish embassy made use of its private water gate to create mayhem in the city, with the perpetrators escaping through the embassy and onto the Thames. He read out a litany of known and notorious traitors and conspirators against the queen, including the most recent attempt against Elizabeth's life by Arthur Pole, the unfortunate nephew of Cardinal Reginald Pole, who proclaimed himself king of England as a direct descendant of Edward IV's brother the Duke of Clarence. Cecil, though never saying as much, had evidently placed a number of people within the Spanish embassy to spy on the ambassador.

Even if Norfolk had been sympathetic, with such overwhelming evidence against de Quadra, he was left no alternative but to do as the queen wished in the circumstances. The Spanish ambassador was offered suitable quarters—without a water gate—elsewhere in London, while Elizabeth wrote a scathing letter recounting the whole disgraceful affair to Philip. She demanded he either put a stop to de Quadra's ceaseless plotting or recall him at once. It had taken three separate incidents to completely neutralize the Spaniard: the pseudo-Catholic plot of Arthur Pole in 1562, the affairs of Borghese Venturini, and, finally, the refugee assassin.

For the sin of having been discovered and humiliated, Philip made the uncharitable decision of leaving de Quadra in London but without further pay. When the Spaniard died in August 1563, he was so heavily in debt that local tradesmen took possession of the body, refusing to release it until they were paid. Two years after he died, his body was secreted back to Spain for burial.

*   *   *

While Cecil was unmasking
the Spanish ambassador in the autumn of 1562, the news from France was bleak. Rouen was in danger of falling, and Dieppe's weak fortifications meant that the likelihood of its holding out was remote. All Huguenot efforts would be reduced to the sole stronghold of Newhaven, where the English reinforced Coligny's men. Throckmorton had entered Condé's service, allegedly as a free agent, but reported back to Elizabeth in December that “the Prince is weary of warfare and inclineth wholly to the Queen Mother's affections.”
11

Elizabeth ordered that Warwick and his men must remain within the walls of Newhaven, since if they were to break out and relieve Dieppe or even Rouen, it could be construed as an overt act of war against an anointed king, Catherine's young son, Charles IX. So that her intervention should not be misunderstood, Elizabeth sent word to her ambassador in Spain, Thomas Chaloner, to explain to Philip II England's worries and why she had been obliged to intervene in French affairs.

*   *   *

Then disaster hit.
Elizabeth was struck down with smallpox. For three weeks she hovered between life and death. To the entire court's distress, she named Robert Dudley as Lord Protector in the event of her death. So they prayed for her survival. While she personally believed in and felt his loyalty, others in power remained extremely doubtful. The English people, too, held bad memories of “protectorship” at the hands of Dudley's father, Northumberland. They, too, prayed loudly for the queen's full recovery. For the English, it was their act of faith and prayer that allowed Elizabeth to survive unscathed.

*   *   *

By the time the queen
had recovered, relations between the allies were near breaking point. The Huguenots had finally lost Rouen during her illness, and they blamed Elizabeth personally for her impossible order to keep her forces within Newhaven's city walls. Both Condé and Coligny turned against the garrison. They looked to Catherine de' Medici to sue for peace. Abandoned by their untrustworthy allies, the English were left to face an exceptionally harsh winter under constant threat of attack from disgruntled Huguenot forces or the French, both funded by the king of Spain.

Then the Battle of Dreux took place. The Prince of Condé was taken prisoner along with the former ambassador Throckmorton. Command of the Huguenot forces fell to Admiral Coligny, who was a far superior soldier to his predecessor. He persuaded Elizabeth in short order to supply more money and men, and this time, Elizabeth agreed immediately. However, by the time the money to pay Coligny's mercenaries arrived in February 1563, it was all over. The leader of the Catholic forces, Francis, Duke of Guise, had been assassinated by a Huguenot sympathizer named Poltrot de Mérey, who may well have been in the pay of Coligny.
12

*   *   *

The political, if not
religious, landscape had changed. Catherine de' Medici was doing all in her substantial power to woo the Huguenots back to the crown of France without the able command of Francis of Guise. On March 10, Condé, while still a prisoner of the French crown, came to terms with the queen mother, ignoring all that Coligny hoped to achieve, and leaving the English in charge of the fortress town of Newhaven, uncertain of their role.

Elizabeth eventually ordered Ambrose Dudley to surrender, but only if England could regain Calais. By June, even that bluster was nothing but a hollow threat. Plague had struck the garrison, and the English were dying at a rate of seventy-five men a day. They were out of food, and their communications to the rest of France had been cut off. A rescue by sea had been hoped for but never came. Finally, on July 27, Elizabeth authorized Warwick's surrender. The French allowed him and his surviving men to return home. Though abandoned by the Huguenots and decimated by plague, the English had held out, but their return would spread the plague along the south coast of England up to London as if by some divine retribution for the invasion of France.

From London, Elizabeth composed her “Prayer Wisdom in the Administration of the Kingdom” in which she begged the Lord to “send therefore, O inexhaustible Fount of all wisdom, from Thy holy heaven and the most high throne of Thy majesty, Thy wisdom to be ever with me, that it may keep watch with me in governing the commonwealth, and that it may take pains, that it may teach me, Thy handmaid, and may train me that I may be able to distinguish between good and evil, equity and iniquity.”
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Elizabeth had learned the most valuable lesson of her reign. Wars were costly in men, money, and matériel and were to be avoided at all costs. Most importantly, their outcome could never be reliably predicted.

 

SEVEN

Christ's Soldiers

The Pope is so affected by the pitiable plight of the Catholics of England that the greater are the persecutions which they suffer, the more he is moved to compassionate [
sic
] them, and desire to succour and aid them by all possible means.

—Cardinal archbishop of Milan to the papal nuncio in Spain

While Elizabeth's eyes were turned toward the Catholic threat symbolized by the papacy, France, and Spain, another home-grown menace emerged. Scorned as “precisians,” “gospellers,” “scripture men,” or even “saints,” these men and women are branded “Puritans” by history. All these epithets were hurled at them by a Christian community that derided their chosen path. The common complaint against these “godly people” is best expressed by sayings like “I perceive you are a Puritan outright: you are one of these new men that would have nothing but preaching.” Then there was the alternative exclamation “It was never a merry world since that sect came first among us.”
1

In the 1560s, the godly, or “professors” as they liked to call themselves, were a minority of Protestants in England. Like their French counterparts, the Huguenots, they were seen as a troublesome sect on the rise whose evangelistic message would no doubt rock the fragile religious boat with Catholics and Protestants alike. They were heavily reliant on pastors capable of enthralling and preaching the Word, breathing hellfire and damnation. Demographically, the godly were sprinkled lightly in rural areas with the mainstay of their strength in the populous regions of London, Essex, East Anglia, and the Weald of Kent—in other words, in the areas that held the greatest power in the realm.

The poor, uneducated and disenfranchised, sought whatever religion they could from their local customs, which were more akin to magic than religion. However, the profile of the godly, or Puritan, is more difficult to assess. Generally, they derived from a broad cross-section of society that was in the main economically independent. Minor courtiers, aristocrats, aldermen, and merchants could be counted among the elite Puritan brethren. They shunned the alehouses—“a little hell” to them—as well as bowling alleys and bearbaiting. Later in the reign, they would embark on an all-out war against the theater.

Their leisure time was devoted to religious “exercises” where like-minded godly folk gathered together across parishes as “gadders” to hear sermons. These exercises became so prevalent that “the preaching might be only upon the Sabbath day,” one Essex man complained, “but now they run in the week-days and leave their business and beggar themselves.”
2
Soon, their gatherings would spill out of churches into house-meetings, which became known as “night conventicles,” where the great Puritan writers of the day would engage them in discussion of the proper way to celebrate the Sabbath.