Heretic Queen (15 page)

It was these Puritans who held the strongest prejudices against Elizabeth's desire to please all her people. They railed against the continued use of the surplice in the Church of England, known as the Vestments Controversy. Edmund Grindal, bishop of London, when licensing ministers to preach, asked them to “exhort the godly so to frame their judgments that they conceive no offence.” However, it was the Puritans' mission to proselytize that saved England's wayward flock, so they believed, and Grindal's instructions were ignored. For them, the English were doomed to an eternity in purgatory, unless they mended their ways. “There is but one way to prevent the danger that may be feared from this generation and their practices,” John White, an outspoken Lancashire preacher, wrote, “that sin be severely punished and a preaching ministry settled, as much as possible, in all places of the land, and painful preaching effectually maintained against the manifold discouragements of this iron age.”
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Even if the licensed preachers hadn't ignored Grindal, by the mid-1560s the godly Puritans had begun to abandon England's churches for the meetinghouses “to turn to the Lord in all sincerity.” The family home was rapidly becoming the new Puritan parish, out of reach of the authorities. Within twenty years, Robert Browne and his small sect of Brownists would take this to an extreme and find themselves exiled in the Low Countries.

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Still, the most dangerous
of the godly Puritans to the Elizabethan settlement were not mere merchants, aldermen, aristocrats, or lesser courtiers but rather the godly members of Parliament like Paul Wentworth and his elder brother Peter. Paul, the more outspoken of the two, became troublesome to Elizabeth in her Parliaments of 1563 (reconvened in 1566) and 1572. For him, the 1560s was a pivotal decade. The early part of the decade had been devoted to the Elizabethan settlement, the counterattack by the papacy at the Council of Trent, and the proliferation of English seminaries on the Continent. Like-minded godly professors, including the Wentworth brothers, believed that Elizabeth had ignored the great Catholic threat. The Catholic nations had convened their Council of Trent, to which England and other Protestant nations sent no representative. When it was suspended in December 1563, it was, of course, no closer to a solution regarding schism. So Puritan voices rose ever louder in alarm. Indeed, the battle lines had been drawn, with each side of the religious divide working ceaselessly to promote its own interests. As the decade progressed, the sense of general unease grew, along with the Wentworths' earnest Puritan zeal for England.

At the same time, Trent debated the issues surrounding schism and heresy, Elizabeth convened her Parliament of 1563 to fulfill its primary function: the granting of much-needed money following the debacle at Newhaven. It was a heated session, with Elizabeth steadfastly refusing to countenance marriage or discuss the succession, as “there is no need to prate about my death,” she said.
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The fact that she had come perilously close to death the preceding year had been quite forgotten by the queen. However, the Commons was determined that Elizabeth should name either Catherine Grey, still imprisoned for marrying without royal assent, or the Scots' queen, Mary, as her successor. The Puritan faction strongly favored Mary.

Though surprising, it did make sense. Scotland had officially become a Protestant realm when the edict of Parliament was passed at Edinburgh in August 1560. By the time Mary returned to Scotland, being a Roman Catholic had become a dangerous thing. The proselytizing, godly John Knox grudgingly agreed to tolerate Mary, as “content to live under Your Grace as Paul was to live under Nero.” Knox knew he held great sway over the hearts and minds of the Presbyterian Scots with his ubiquitous sermons repeated in print and on the lips of the devoted. On meeting Mary, Knox recognized a shrewd and calculating mind. He told his friends that “if there be not in her a proud mind, a crafty wit and an indurate heart against God and His truth, my judgment faileth me.” At least, that's what he wrote to Cecil.
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Knox was intolerant, but he saw at once Mary's ability to master the ungovernable. He could not fail to be impressed with Mary's desire to tame the “wild Scots” of the Highlands and understand the workings of Scottish society. In fact, she had learned a great deal about her kinsmen in precious little time. The swaggering Scots magnates; the feudalistic notions of kinship and clans; the “manrent” of formal bonds between the population and their lairds, who granted protection in exchange for service; primitive communications; widespread villainy and piracy; and a land divided by geography and language with wild Highlanders speaking Gaelic—“that language of savages”—all conspired to make Scotland virtually ungovernable for any monarch, much less a young woman who had only lived in the country as a toddler. Naturally, when an opportunity arose to gracefully “export” some of her troublesome clansmen to Ireland, Mary showed herself a master of Machiavellian politics. Of course, there was a dual benefit to the maneuver: She would be rid of the clansmen in Scotland while destabilizing Elizabeth's troubled province of Ireland.

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The Scots entered
Ireland fomenting their own brand of lawlessness in Ulster, but this most remote part of Elizabeth's realm had always harbored a troubled soul. Only five years earlier, when Philip of Spain was also king of England, the first plantations in Laois-Offaly, comprising Englishmen and Anglo-Irish settlers, were reported to be at peace. This was considered quite a coup as the chaos of the Irish clan system (known as “septs”), and in particular the O'More and the O'Connor clans of the region, had continually wrought havoc. Even in the previous year, the Lord Lieutenant of Ireland, Thomas Radcliffe, Earl of Sussex, claimed smugly that “all the rebellions which I found in Ireland be now subdued, the knots and maintenances broken, the principal persons of the realm brought to acknowledge such obedience as heretofore they have not done, and all the realm remains in quiet.”
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Nothing could have been further from the truth.

Sussex had erased the “bad boy” of the Irish chieftains during this period, Shane O'Neill, from the picture. When Shane's father died in 1562, he was elected “the O'Neill”—head of the Ulster clan—but did not receive his father's English title of Earl of Tyrone. Ambitious and hungry for power, Shane viewed the withholding of the English title as an intolerable slight. He also knew that so long as Sussex remained Lord Lieutenant, he would never receive it. After all, Shane had been inciting trouble with his allies, the Scottish “redshanks” MacDonald and McDonnell clans, in the province since 1548.
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In an attempt to circumvent Sussex, O'Neill wrote to Elizabeth that his “rude uncivil and disobedient people will fall to civility and hereafter be faithful obedient and true subjects” should England's queen recognize his power through the granting of his father's lapsed English title.
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Sussex, however, argued strongly against him and prevailed. He convinced Elizabeth that Shane was a villain who sought to turn the Gaelic chieftains in Ireland against her, but it was Sussex's argument that Shane could equally employ the strength of the Catholic Church and Europe's Catholic monarchs against England that finally won over the queen.

This made the daunting task of ruling Ireland all the more difficult for Elizabeth. Shane O'Neill, for all his bravura, bullying, and murderous ways, was no less an exceptionally capable leader of men and outstanding military strategist. He transformed his lordship of the sprawling and most Gaelic of Ireland's provinces, Ulster, into a battleground in the coming years that employed thousands of Scots mercenaries. Shane's capture of the O'Donnell chieftain and his family allowed him to extend his stronghold into Tyrconnell. Once the province was captured, Shane summarily divorced his own wife and forced O'Donnell's daughter, Mary, into a vile marriage that was only cemented by the threat of torturing and killing her parents if she did not accede to his every wish, which included maintaining Mary's mother, Katherine, as his mistress. Sussex was apoplectic with rage and made the subjugation of Shane to the English crown his overwhelming priority.

Shane, too, was outraged. “You began with a conquest in my land without cause,” Shane wrote to Sussex. “And so long as there be any English man in my country against my will, I … will send my complaint in another way to the Queen's Majesty to declare unto Her Grace how you interrupted my going.”
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Sussex's reply to Elizabeth warned, “If Shane be overthrown all is settled, if Shane settle all is overthrown.”
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Yet Elizabeth saw the bigger picture. With Mary freely exporting her own troublesome clansmen to Ireland as mercenaries, Ireland was becoming an unbearable threat to England's security from its western back door, or, as Elizabethans called Ireland, “the postern gate.” It was more important to have Shane openly submit to Elizabeth's will than to withhold the title of Earl of Tyrone he so coveted. Sussex, she reasoned, would need to be overruled. Cecil suggested that the queen have the Earl of Kildare treat with Shane to broker a settlement. It was reached at a cost of the earldom and £2,000 to defray the expenses of his journey to court and a pardon with safe conduct.

When, at last, Shane and his “Gallowglass” warriors appeared at court, their presence caused quite a stir, “with their bare heads, ash-coloured hanging curls, golden saffron undershirts, if not the colour of infected human urine, loose sleeves, short tunics, and shaggy lace.”
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Yet, true submission to England was far from the Irish chieftain's mind. While Shane put his case for his Earldom of Tyrone to the queen, he mingled with the archplotter de Quadra and openly worshipped at the Catholic Mass held in the Spanish embassy. On learning of his treachery, Elizabeth and her councillors deemed O'Neill to be nearly more dangerous in London than he had been in Ireland.

While Elizabeth ascribed to the school of “keeping her friends close and her enemies closer,” O'Neill was proving an elusive man to pin down. It was one thing to have Mary's bellicose clansmen fighting as mercenaries for O'Neill and quite another to have him plot with de Quadra and the might of Spain. With Sussex also present at court declaiming labyrinthine conspiracies throughout the troubled province of Ireland, Elizabeth concluded her interview with Shane O'Neill prematurely, before the matter of his true allegiance and the Earldom of Tyrone was resolved. Shane vowed revenge.

On his return to Ireland, unrestrained feudal warfare broke out between Shane and the clan chieftains who were “infringing” on his proclaimed territories. The Earl of Ormond (the Butler family) and his clients—all of whom were Anglo-Irish—ostensibly fought on behalf of the English crown against O'Neill. In reality Ormond and his men were hoping to manipulate his bitter enemy, the Earl of Desmond, and his “Geraldine” followers, who fought alongside the treacherous Shane. As few locals hadn't aligned themselves with the various feuding lords, a state of virtual civil war gripped Ireland. Shane laid waste to much of the country—burning crops, butchering Irish men, and raping Irish women. Pius IV, Philip II, and the Scots queen watched and waited in dismay.
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Shane's scorched earth policy, though, directly affecting only Irish affairs, would later be held up to Irish Catholics as a sign of Irish barbarity.

While Shane pretended that his outrage was religious, it remained a purely sectarian struggle for power against the crown. Fortunately, Elizabeth saw the endgame in Ireland clearly. Where English Catholics had been forced into submission by the Act of Settlement with further legislation rammed through the Parliament of 1563 for their reticence to adopt the Anglican Church, Ireland had by and large escaped the same scrutiny. The perception at court was that the Irish remained lawless and that governance of the land by England's Lord Lieutenants was akin to moving in “a dark and dangerous labyrinth.”
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Even the Catholic Church feared to tread into the Irish “Wild West” replete with adventurers, scoundrels, and thugs who masqueraded as either Anglican or Catholic clergy as suited their personal agendas.

Nonetheless, Pius IV dipped a toe in the water, perhaps not believing the outpourings of lawlessness he had heard, and carelessly appointed the flamboyant Miler Magrath as archbishop of Down and Connor. Within no time, Magrath would change sides and become Elizabeth's eyes and ears as her Anglican bishop in Cashel, riding in full body armor, carrying a skull on a tall pole as his trademark, and trailing an army of outriders behind him.
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With characteristic political blindness, Pius IV wrote to Shane O'Neill as Prince of Ulster on July 14, 1564, commending him in “his indefatigable zeal and steadfast courage” in the defense of the Catholic faith. The papacy, still believing in its temporal role outside of the Papal States, had joined battle directly with England's postern gate of Ireland. The Antichrist, as Elizabeth's godly ministers called the pope, must be stopped.

 

EIGHT

Mary Stuart, the Great Catholic Threat

The Pope greatly deplores that the peace of the Queen, the Cardinal's niece, and her realm should be thus broken, but he trusts in God that the authors of the mischief will pay the penalty of their rashness.

—Pope Pius IV to Charles, cardinal of Lorraine, October 1565

Within the year, trouble brewed between Elizabeth and Mary. Robert Dudley had been elevated to the rank of Earl of Leicester and was offered to Mary as a handsome bridegroom to seal amity between England and Scotland. Mary famously shunned Elizabeth's dashing Master of the Horse. Instead, Mary had, it seemed, settled on a far worthier English subject, Henry Darnley.