Heretic Queen (26 page)

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Still, Elizabeth knew
that the entire plot against her had not been fully uncovered. So, instead of venturing widely throughout the southeast as was her custom on summer progress, Elizabeth only went to “safe havens.” She visited her errant cousin the Duke of Norfolk at his Audley End home to determine if he was sufficiently contrite after his earlier plan to marry the Scottish queen. Atonement for his actions would mean he would be welcomed back at court in the autumn. Seemingly, Elizabeth was delighted with her stay and impressed that the duke had mended his ways. She naturally told Burghley.

Then something quite unexpected happened. A Welsh draper urgently demanded to see Burghley, claiming he had a disturbing tale to tell. It seemed Norfolk had asked the draper, Thomas Browne, if he could deliver a package with some fifty pounds inside to his steward, Laurence Bannister, in Shrewsbury. As Norfolk's earlier transgressions were well known, and Shrewsbury was the home of Mary Stuart's jailer, Browne decided to peek into the package. Inside were six hundred pounds in gold—not fifty in silver as pretended—as well as a packet of encrypted letters and others that had been deciphered.

A man named Robert Highford (or Higford) had signed the correspondence to Norfolk's steward, Bannister. As it turned out, Highford was none other than Norfolk's secretary. Burghley now had his “two Englishmen” who Bailly had claimed were involved in the plot. Highford was immediately examined, and crumbled. Norfolk's hapless secretary deciphered the letters shown to him haltingly before he remembered that the codebook itself was “under a mat, hard by the window's side where the map of England doth hang” at Howard House in London.
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With the decoded letters in hand, Norfolk was once again placed under house arrest, naturally denying any involvement. Yet as soon as he was transferred to the Tower, Norfolk broke down, telling all without his jailers needing to resort to torture.

Norfolk explained how he had sent money to Scotland and was in correspondence with Mary again, despite promising Elizabeth only weeks earlier that he had abandoned the Scots queen. Among the encrypted letters, one was incriminating above all others. In February 1571, Mary had written to Ross saying that she knew Ridolfi was leaving the country. She proposed that the Florentine banker would be a most trustworthy envoy for them to send to Spain for help. Mary averred she would leave such decisions, nonetheless, to Norfolk.

Elizabeth seethed. Norfolk had lied to her face. Everything, despite Mary's continued imprisonment, was precisely as it had been two years earlier, only this time there were fresh plans to embroil Spain directly. She ordered both Norfolk's secretaries, Highford and Barker, to be put to the rack. In the three weeks that followed, the complete story was revealed. The plan was far wider than anyone in government had suspected.

Norfolk claimed that a servant of the Earl of Arundel had developed a plan to steal Mary from her captivity. Sir Henry Percy, brother of the disgraced Earl of Northumberland, who was rotting in prison, was implicated in a separate plan to overthrow Elizabeth. Still, Norfolk denied any dealings with Ridolfi.

Despite Norfolk's protestations, Burghley discovered that the Spanish Council of State had agreed to fund the plotters and invade England with a force of ten thousand soldiers from the Low Countries—if the English conspirators succeeded in deposing Elizabeth. Philip had written on September 14 to Alba, “I am so keen to achieve the consummation of this enterprise … I am so attached to it in my heart, and I am so convinced that God our Savior must embrace it as his own cause, that I cannot be dissuaded from putting it into operation.”
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Alba's spies informed him that Elizabeth had uncovered the plot. He quickly wrote to Philip that her discovery would
not
be the end of the matter.

So the bishop of Ross was examined at long last by a select committee of the Privy Council. He was afforded this honor as he held the rank of ambassador to Mary. Ross, apparently scared out of his wits, willingly spoke of the various plots and counterplots should the grander scheme fail—some involving Lord Stanley as well as Sir Henry Percy and scores of others sympathetic to Mary. Still, Ross went further than was strictly necessary. He claimed that Mary was “not fit for any husband, that she had poisoned the French King, her first husband, had been a party to the murder of her second and that she would not have kept faith with the Duke even if she had married him.”
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The mention of Mary's third husband, James Hepburn, Earl of Bothwell, still rotting in his Danish prison, stirred the hot embers of rebellion in everyone's mind.

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Elizabeth had ordered
her councillors investigating the conspiracies (later known as the Ridolfi Plot) to concentrate their efforts on the English turncoats. Ridolfi himself was overseas, presumably licking his wounds at the Vatican. All those implicated were arrested, and Norfolk's trial date was set for January 1572. Philip had communicated to de Spes that “the thread of the business now being cut, there is no more to say to you about it.”
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Elizabeth was still outraged. De Spes would have to go—before Christmas. On December 15, 1571 she wrote to Philip and Alba in French, “We need not much repeat to you how long we have misliked Guerau de Spes … sent hither in place of Signor Guzman de Silva … so as we can no more endure him to continue than a person that would secretly seek to inflame our realm with fire brands, and hereupon we have given him order to depart.”
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De Spes skulked away at last on December 26, escorted by Henry Knollys to Canterbury where he was met by England's most intrepid sailor, Sir John Hawkins, who would see him off English soil at Dover. The delay beyond Christmas, it seemed, was due to yet another plot—this time by de Spes—to murder Burghley. It was Burghley's agent, Herle, who had detected the two young men de Spes had captivated with the idea, claiming that it would save the life of Norfolk. According to the testimony of one of the men arrested, Edmund Mather, it was actually de Spes's secretary, Venturini Borghese, who had devised the means with which to carry it out. Borghese was stopped from journeying on with de Spes at Canterbury and returned to London for questioning. The two hapless young men, Kenelm Berney and Mather, were executed on February 10, 1572. Borghese was eventually allowed to rejoin his master, as he, too, was immune from prosecution.

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While unraveling the
Ridolfi Plot, Elizabeth was plotting as well. Negotiations had been opened with Catherine de' Medici for the marriage of Elizabeth to her younger son, Henry, Duke of Anjou. It was deemed to be such an important matter of state, particularly as Parliament was in session, that the garrulous French ambassador, La Mothe Fénélon, was to be kept out of the loop on Elizabeth's express command. Catherine readily agreed and selected her trusted councilor Paul de Foix to handle the preliminaries in Paris with Walsingham.

Still, Elizabeth had acquired a shady reputation when it came to marriage. Catherine impressed on Walsingham the necessity of concluding this marriage treaty swiftly, for she knew full well that marriage was Elizabeth's way to promise much and deliver little. Though Catherine was aware of the tactic, she remained anxious to see the negotiations come to fruition. She saw this as France's best means of quelling disgruntled Huguenot voices and obtaining peace within her realm. Walsingham had to agree with her. Within weeks of the discussions commencing, England's enemies were at work to stop the talks.

Philip dangled the leadership of his league against the Ottoman Turk in front of Henry of Anjou's eyes, even though Henry had only acquitted himself marginally in France's third civil war. The papal nuncio urged the nineteen-year-old to reflect on how life would be, married to a heretic, and an old, barren woman of thirty-seven. The Guises, of course, had hoped Henry would marry the Scots queen, who was after all some ten years younger than Elizabeth. They even worked hard to persuade Henry that it would be a straightforward matter to invade England and free Mary.

In the end, the marriage plans faltered, as anticipated, on the grounds of religion. Henry refused any compromise regarding his devotions remaining a private affair, and so negotiations stopped. Two days later, it was a desperate Catherine who proposed her youngest son, sixteen-year-old Francis, Duke of Alençon, in his brother's stead. This time, it was Elizabeth who refused to entertain the marriage, imagining everyone mocking her for marrying a boy less than half her age. The most influential person against the match with the youngest Valois prince was Leicester.

In fact, Leicester and Walsingham had been exchanging correspondence about how the Protestants in England might prevail without Elizabeth marrying a Catholic prince—an anathema to them both. On August 3, 1571, Walsingham wrote to Leicester that the main stumbling block to creating a Protestant League against Spain, the papacy, and the Hapsburgs of Austria was “our ancient league with the House of Burgundy,” of which Philip was duke. With Philip's cousin as the Holy Roman Emperor in Vienna, and Austria acting as “the Pope's champion,” Leicester and Walsingham agreed that courting the anger of both the Austrian and Spanish Hapsburgs simultaneously was too dangerous to contemplate.

Worse still, the French heir was no great catch since most of England's overseas trade still took place at Hamburg or Antwerp. What France did offer, however, was an “advancement of the Gospel there but also elsewhere, and therefore though it yieldeth not so much temporal profit, yet in respect of spiritual fruit that thereby may ensue, I think it worthy the embracing.”
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As the wedding plans crumbled, both Elizabeth and Catherine agreed that a Protestant League would resolve many of their mutual problems on religious matters. The odd thing was that the French Catholic “war party” was
not
opposed. They viewed the struggle with Spain and Austria in dynastic terms of Valois against Hapsburg, as in the bad old days of the first half of the sixteenth century. So the
politiques
and the Huguenots at court presented Charles IX with a comprehensive policy against Spain through a Protestant League with England.

Fortuitously, William of Orange's younger brother, Louis of Nassau, had fled to France for asylum and was at the French court at the time of these discussions. He had fought on behalf of the Huguenots during the third civil war and settled at La Rochelle. From there, Nassau had been successfully launching piratical raids against Spanish shipping with his small fleet of Beggars. Just as Walsingham hatched his plan, Nassau had been attempting to entice Charles IX into an invasion of the Netherlands by sea. When Nassau heard that the English were contemplating an intervention, he addressed his heartfelt appeal to Walsingham instead. As Spain had just received Irish rebels at Philip's Escorial palace, Walsingham grasped how through Nassau's plan Elizabeth might be “revenged for the pretended troubles in Ireland by keeping the King of Spain occupied in Flanders.”
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For Walsingham, all else would flow from the resolution of the prickly religious issues surrounding the queen of Scots. That meant the establishment of an effective Protestant League—both offensive and defensive—against the pope and Spain and not directly embroiling England in a ragtag invasion force in Flanders.

When the breakthrough in negotiations occurred at last, it seems to have been due to Walsingham's silent ability to read people and situations. Unexpectedly, Admiral Coligny returned to Charles IX's side at court in the autumn, leaving the disgraced Guise faction exiled from power. Within days, word came that the papal nuncio desired an audience with the king to present a sword blessed by Pius V and, more significantly, to prevent the negotiations succeeding with England. Philip had empowered the nuncio to speak on his behalf to entice Anjou into accepting his earlier offer to head up the Catholic League.

Just as all appeared to be lost, Walsingham could see by Catherine's demeanor that religion and, especially, the queen of Scots had become less important than the treaty. Walsingham had pressed Catherine on the issue of Mary and Scotland several times after the queen mother's private conferences with her son the king. Each time, Catherine admitted freely that she had forgotten to mention Mary. It was the breakthrough the English commissioners, Walsingham and Sir Thomas Smith, needed. What Walsingham hadn't known was that Catherine did discuss Mary's latest shenanigans with Charles, who said, “Alas, the poor fool will never cease until she loses her head … It is her own fault and folly.”
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In the end, an offensive league was dropped from the treaty negotiations, and Charles IX provided a private side letter to Elizabeth promising to come to her aid in the event of an attack or invasion of England for religious reasons. Significantly for Elizabeth, the commissioners had obtained two further major concessions. First, France and England would join together to bring Scotland under the rule of one government. This concession may have been cemented by the unwelcome news that a band of Mary's followers had attacked Stirling Castle, murdering the regent, Lennox. Second, France would provide a secure base for England's cloth trade, which had become semi-itinerant since the loss of Calais in 1557. The establishment of Anglican churches in France for the English merchant community was an essential part of this provision. The Treaty of Blois was finally signed by the French and English commissioners on April 19, 1572.

The treaty held great promise for the future. It resolved the issue of a French or English partisan Scotland, created a home for the cloth trade, and provided a framework for both countries to work together for each other's defense. Above all, it strengthened the Protestant position in Europe, and in particular, Huguenot influence in France. Although it was an imperfect treaty, relying as so many do on the goodwill of the signatories to it, no one could foresee that a few short months later, all would be lost.