Heretic Queen (22 page)

Yet, despite numerous warnings, Elizabeth refused to believe that these men represented a clear threat to her or England. Her preoccupation remained with the civil wars on the Continent. With thousands of
tercio
troops in the Low Countries led by the world's most competent general threatening to murder its Protestants, naturally, she was right.

The arrival of the Duke of Alba and his army on September 1 in Brussels heralded a new era. His first act was to demobilize those “Lutheran” mercenaries whose loyalty Margaret of Parma had purchased to quell the fury of the Calvinists. Only five days later, Alba issued his patent creating the tribunal he called the “Council of Troubles.” Before long, it would be known as the “Council of Blood.” Orange, Egmont, George de Lalaing, count of Hoogstraten, and Horn had all traveled to Germany in the summer to regroup, but by September 9 Horn, Egmont, and their secretaries had returned at Margaret's specific invitation.

The moment they arrived, the Spanish soldiers swooped, and they were arrested. All their papers were seized. Margaret, though still regent, had not only lost the confidence of Philip but was now directly implicated as Alba's accomplice. Bewildered and disgusted, she resigned her post on December 30, but not before swearing in the Duke of Alba as captain-general of the Spanish forces and governor-general of all the Low Countries. Undaunted by Margaret's sudden resignation, Alba wrote to Philip that “there is a new world to be created here.”
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Over the next six months, Alba terrorized the country. He transferred executive power to his own trusted Spanish and Italian ministers from the local nobility. Spanish and Italian lawyers represented the Low Countries internationally, even running the chief towns as magistrates, or
corregidors.
Whenever a Netherlander died or resigned, a Spaniard took his place. What mattered was loyalty, or, as Alba called it, “a spotless character,” and to possess such a thing one had to be either Spanish or Italian.

That was only the beginning. By Lent 1568, thousands of people had been arrested, tried, and executed for their part in the “fury.” The swiftness and efficacy of the Council of Troubles was awe-inspiring. Those who had signed the petitions against Cardinal Granvelle in 1563 were hunted down. Albert van Loo, a revenue collector for the king, tried to commit suicide, fearing he would be blamed for the disorders in his jurisdiction. Orange, Culemborg, and Hoogstraten were summoned to appear before the court in January that year. They refused. They were, of course, tried in absentia, and all their property and possessions remaining in the Low Countries were forfeit. In all, over twelve thousand people were tried, and nine thousand condemned to lose most of their worldly possessions. Over one thousand were executed.

Orange and his followers were left no alternative: To recover their lost lands and property, they would need to invade the Low Countries at the head of an army. With Egmont and Horn imprisoned and other leaders under house arrest or dead, William of Orange emerged as the undisputed leader of the opposition to the Duke of Alba and his Council of Troubles. Alba's forced forfeiture of his hereditary title was illegal; and as the ruler of the principality of Orange and all its possessions, Orange was constitutionally within his rights to enter his lands to wage war on his enemies. Alba, suspecting reprisals, kidnapped Orange's eldest son, Philip William, then studying at Louvain. Orange, however, remained undaunted, vowing to rid the Low Countries of its scourge, Alba. The Calvinist movement had won over its unwilling leader, who also happened to be a Catholic. Orange would never see his son again.

That autumn and winter, Catherine de' Medici, too, faced a new rebellion. Catherine's nerves hadn't been the only ones to have jangled at the thought of Alba marching through France and settling on its northeastern border. The Huguenot leaders, the Prince de Condé and Admiral Coligny, had become convinced that Catherine was in league with Philip to exterminate them as part of the plan to eradicate the Calvinists from the Low Countries. When Charles IX and Catherine refused to either attack Alba or release their mercenary soldiers, suspicion erupted into conflict. Word of savage attacks by Huguenots against Catholics surged in from the countryside. Near Toulouse, monks were reportedly killed and Catholics beaten or run out of town without any possessions.

Yet despite Catherine's best efforts to assuage the Huguenot leadership, France was heading for its second religious civil war in five years. Moving the court to the fortified town of Meaux in late September, Catherine had sent word for her Swiss mercenaries to come to their aid just as the towns of Melun and Péronne were attacked by rampaging Huguenots. When the Swiss troops arrived, Catherine and the king escaped amid a “forest of Swiss pikes” along with the senior members of the court and made a dash for Paris. Finally Catherine saw that the days for reconciliation were over. As the city of Paris was surrounded by the Huguenot army, and supplies blockaded along roads and by the River Seine, Catherine sent out appeals to those she hoped would send help, including Philip and Pius V. Under the signature of Charles IX, Elizabeth received a letter “praying and exhorting her to make no move, and show the Huguenots no favor.”
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Elizabeth knew that England represented the strongest (albeit still weak) Protestant realm. She also recalled that it was the Huguenot desertion of the English at Newhaven in 1563 that lead to England's rout. Where only four years earlier they had abandoned the English and joined forces with the French Catholics, the Huguenots would now pay for their betrayal by her tacit support for Catherine. Moreover, Elizabeth would refuse exit visas to English Protestants sympathetic to their cause.

After all, Elizabeth could hardly argue with Moray in Scotland that subjects should not rise up against their anointed monarch, then say the opposite to Charles and Catherine in France. In Cecil's acknowledgment of Catherine's plea to the English ambassador in France, Sir Henry Norris, he confidently wrote, “Her Majesty much mislikes of the Prince of Condé and the Admiral.”
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In reality, Elizabeth breathed more easily when France was in turmoil. Not only would France be unable to undertake any foreign enterprise against England while tackling its own divisions, but it had to be vigilant on its northeastern border with the Low Countries against incursions by Netherlander Calvinists seeking to help the Huguenots. At the back of Catherine's mind was Parma's malevolence.

Consequently, during that harsh winter of 1567–68, Paris froze and starved. The Huguenots had received succor from German
Reiter
(mercenary cavalry), yet even their resources had dwindled to precarious levels. Condé had taken Chartres but had to halt his campaign due to lack of supplies and money to pay his mercenaries. The countryside had been laid waste, with the land ravaged and its peasantry starving. With both sides unable to continue, peace was the only solution. This was signed by Condé and the king at Longjumeau on March 23, 1568. Still, the Protestants refused to leave all the towns they had taken, mostly for fear of reprisals. They had burned churches, destroyed religious ornaments and statues, and desecrated relics. Similar barbarity and murder had occurred where the Catholic government forces had taken towns. Though peace had broken out, Catherine would never again follow the road of clemency with the Huguenots.

 

TWELVE

An Ill-Conceived Escape and Rebellion

Within this realm a practice [is] in hand for the alteration of religion and the advancement of the Queen of Scots to the crown.

—Franchiotto, an Italian spy, to Francis Walsingham, 1568

So, by the spring of 1568, England was the most peaceful country in northern Europe. Though friction existed between Protestant and Catholic, and the godly were on the increase in London, England seemed a relative haven when compared to the “hot wars” affecting Norway, Sweden, Denmark, France, the Low Countries, Ireland, and Scotland.

Then, on May 2, everything changed. Queen Mary escaped from her gilded prison at Lochleven. The Scots Queen immediately prepared for battle, having written to her Guise cousins and Elizabeth on May 1, signing, “Have pity on your good sister and cousin.”
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Cecil had heard of Mary's escape through his well-honed network of agents within a few days and sent a messenger by return with a simple statement to Moray—deal with Mary decisively and quickly.

Moray had hardly needed Cecil's urging. Within five days, Mary had raised an army of some six thousand men to help her reclaim her throne, many from the loyal Hamilton clan. Moray mustered his men, meeting Mary's at Langside. The queen's forces were utterly routed. Over a hundred were slain and three hundred taken prisoner. Moray suffered very few casualties. Meanwhile, Mary rode off from the battle with a few loyal supporters, hoping initially to reach Dumbarton and from there board a ship bound for France. However, Moray's men had swept ahead, blocking her way. Forced to flee across desolate passes in the Glenkens along the River Ken, Mary and her followers rested at the head of the valley of the Tarff, now called “Queen's Hill.” At their final resting place of Maxwell Castle at Terregles, the decision was taken, for good or ill, to flee farther southward instead, across the Solway Firth and into England.

In borrowed clothes, covering her shorn head with a cloak, Mary made her way by fishing boat toward the small port of Workington. It was seven in the evening when her party of some twenty people stumbled ashore. Lord Herries, one of the four noblemen who had accompanied her, sent word to Sir Henry Curwen of Workington (whom he knew) claiming that he had eloped with a Scottish heiress and hoped to find refuge there. Fortunately, Curwen's servants replied that though Sir Henry was away, the group would be most welcomed. Still, despite her disguise, Mary was immediately recognized by one of the servants. The following morning the deputy governor of the region, Lord Sheriff, Richard Lowther, greeted the party with four hundred horsemen to take Mary to Carlisle. There she was installed in Carlisle Castle to await Elizabeth's pleasure.

*   *   *

The north of England
had a large Catholic population, and the presence of the Scots queen there, hotly pursued by Scotland's regent, was far from a pleasurable prospect. Elizabeth swiftly called an emergency council meeting to discuss the unprecedented matter. Cecil and Leicester feared that Elizabeth's loyalty to her cousin Mary would win out over the political and religious imperatives of the past ten years.

For the council, leaving Mary in the north of England was nonsense, as she would be seen as England's future Catholic queen. Moving her south suggested coercion and possible long-term imprisonment, which would offend France, Spain, and the pope. Then, of course, there was the open question of why she had been imprisoned on the island fortress of Lochleven in the first place. Had Mary knowingly conspired with Bothwell to murder her own husband, the king of Scotland and an English subject? It was a tricky situation.

Much of their discussion centered on how Elizabeth should react. Mary requested a face-to-face meeting with England's queen to set out her woes. Moray insisted that Mary should be returned to Scotland and prison. Cecil led the council discussions. Was Mary guilty of conspiring to kill Darnley? It seemed to him that only by answering this query in the Scots queen's favor should Mary be restored to her throne. Yet if Mary were guilty, then her treatment must be commensurate with the crime. The only way to determine the way forward, Cecil argued, was to evaluate the evidence supporting her guilt or innocence. Only then could a popular uprising in the north be avoided.
2

The council agreed to send Sir Francis Knollys, Elizabeth's cousin by marriage, and the Duke of Norfolk northward to parlay with Mary. There they would be joined by the warden of the West Marches, Lord Scrope, to deal with Mary and her advisers. They proposed that there be no formal trial or judgment, merely an airing of the evidence both for and against the Scots queen. Reluctantly, Mary agreed; it was obvious she would not be allowed the freedom to continue to journey onward to France, as she maintained she wanted to, unless she did. Elizabeth doubted Mary would be welcomed in France, after the near-cataclysm of the second religious war.

Time rumbled on. It was mid-July before it was decided to keep Mary in England. Elizabeth insisted that all allegations against Mary must be proven false before she could be released. Moray traveled south and produced the Casket Letters—named after the gilt and silver casket-shaped box holding them—which the Privy Council and Elizabeth read. Mary claimed that these were forgeries perpetrated by Moray. Of course, she would, wouldn't she? The evidence in these letters seemed to compromise Mary beyond doubt. Mary, to prove her innocence, would have to refute their authenticity in a manner that would convince the English.

Instead, Mary first tried to bribe Cecil. She sent word to him that if he helped her regain her throne, she would agree to the establishment of a Protestant church in Scotland “after the English pattern.”
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It was an act of desperation too far and rebounded against her. So, in an about-face, Mary withdrew from the proceedings. She refused to acknowledge the jurisdiction of the Privy Council to judge her in the matter as Scotland's anointed queen and refused to participate any further in the process.

Elizabeth wrote to Mary that the proceedings were merely examining the evidence to help her regain the throne. Of course, Elizabeth added, this could only occur if Mary were innocent of killing Darnley. Moray, too, received a letter allaying his fears that England's queen had been swayed to Mary's cause. Still, Mary would not be dissuaded. She rejected Elizabeth's viewpoint that in not responding, the stain would remain on her honor. Mary simply refused to plead.