1568 TO 1570.

Proceedings of the commissioners at York in the cause of Mary.—Intrigues of the duke of Norfolk with the regent Murray.—The conferences transferred to Westminster.—Mary's guilt disclosed.—Fresh intrigues of Norfolk.—Conspiracy for procuring his marriage with Mary.—Conduct of Throgmorton.—Attempt to ruin Cecil baffled by the queen.—Endeavour of Sussex to reconcile Norfolk and Cecil.—Norfolk betrayed by Leicester—his plot revealed—committed to the Tower.—Mary given in charge to the earl of Huntingdon.—Remarks on this subject.—Notice of Leonard Dacre—of the earls of Westmorland and Northumberland.—Their rebellion.—Particulars of the Norton family.—Severities exercised against the rebels.—Conduct of the earl of Sussex.—Rising under Leonard Dacre.—His after-fortunes and those of his family.—Expedition of the earl of Sussex into Scotland.—Murder of regent Murray.—Influence of this event on the affairs of Elizabeth.—Campaign in Scotland.—Papal bull against the queen.—Trifling effect produced by it.—Attachment of the people to her government.

The three commissioners named by Elizabeth to sit as judges in the great cause between Mary and her subjects, of which she had been named the umpire, were the duke of Norfolk, the earl of Sussex, and sir Ralph Sadler, a very able negotiator and man of business. On the part of the Scottish nation, the regent Murray, fearing to trust the cause in other hands, appeared in person, attended by several men of talent-456-
-vol i- and consequence. The situation of Mary herself was not more critical or more unprecedented, and scarcely more humiliating, than that in which Murray was placed by her appeal to Elizabeth. Acting on behalf of the infant king his nephew, he saw himself called upon to submit to the tribunal of a foreign sovereign such proofs of the atrocious guilt of the queen his sister; as should justify in the eyes of this sovereign, and in those of Europe, the degradation of Mary from the exalted station which she was born to fill, her imprisonment, her violent expulsion from the kingdom, and her future banishment or captivity for life:—an attempt in which, though successful, there was both disgrace to himself and detriment to the honor and independence of his country; and from which, if unsuccessful, he could contemplate nothing but certain ruin. Struck with all the evils of this dilemma; with the danger of provoking beyond forgiveness his own queen, whose restoration he still regarded as no improbable event, and with the imprudence of relying implicitly on the dubious protection of Elizabeth, Murray long hesitated to bring forward the only charge dreaded by the illustrious prisoner,—that of having conspired with Bothwell the murder of her husband.

In the mean time Maitland, a Scottish commissioner secretly attached to Mary, found means to open a private communication with the duke of Norfolk, and to suggest to this nobleman, now a widower for the third time, the project of obtaining for himself the hand of Mary, and of replacing her by force on the throne of her ancestors. The vanity of Norfolk, artfully worked-457-
-vol i- upon by the bishop of Ross, Mary's prime agent, caused him to listen with complacency to this rash proposal; and having once consented to entertain it, he naturally became earnest to prevent Murray from preferring that heinous accusation which he had at length apprized the English commissioners that he was provided with ample means of substantiating. After some deliberation on the means of effecting this object, he accordingly resolved upon the step of discovering his views to the regent himself, and endeavouring to obtain his concurrence. Murray, who seems to have felt little confidence in the stability of the government of which he was the present head, and who judged perhaps that the return of the queen as the wife of an English protestant nobleman would afford the best prospect of safety to himself and his party, readily acceded to the proposal, and consented still to withhold the "damning proofs" of Mary's guilt which he held in his hand.

But neither the Scottish associates of Murray nor the English cabinet were disposed to rest satisfied with this feeble and temporizing conduct. Mary's commissioners too, emboldened by his apparent timidity, of which the motives were probably not known to them all, began to push their advantage in a manner which threatened final defeat to his party: the queen of England artfuly incited him to proceed; and in spite of his secret engagements with the duke and his own reluctance, he at length saw himself compelled to let fall the long suspended stroke on the head of Mary. He applied to the English court for encouragement and-458-
-vol i- protection in his perilous enterprise; and Elizabeth, being at length suspicious of the intrigue which had hitherto baffled all her expectations from the conferences at York, suddenly gave orders for the removal of the queen of Scots from Bolton-castle and the superintendence of lord Scrope, the duke's brother-in-law, to the more secure situation of Tutbury-castle in Staffordshire and the vigilant custody of the earl of Shrewsbury. At the same time she found pretexts for transferring the conferences from York to Westminster, and added to the number of her commissioners sir Nicholas Bacon, lord-keeper, the earls of Arundel and Leicester, lord Clinton, and Cecil.

Anxious to preserve an air of impartiality, Elizabeth declined giving to the regent all the assurances for his future security which he required; but on his arrival in London she extended to him a reception equally kind and respectful, and by alternate caresses and hints of intimidation she gradually led him on to the production of the fatal casket containing the letters of Mary to Bothwell, by which her participation in the murder of her husband was clearly proved.

After steps on the part of his sovereign from which the duke might have inferred her knowledge of his secret machinations; after discoveries respecting the conduct of Mary which impeached her of guilt so heinous, and covered her with infamy so indelible; prudence and honor alike required that he should abandon for ever the thought of linking his destiny with hers. But in the light and unbalanced mind of Norfolk, the ambition of matching with royalty unfortunately prepon-459-
-vol i-derated over all other considerations: he speedily began to weave anew the tissue of intrigue which the removal of the conferences had broken off; and turning once more with fond credulity to Murray, by whom his cause had been before deserted, he again put confidence in his assurances that the marriage-project had his hearty approbation, and should receive his effectual support. Melvil informs us that this fresh compact was brought about by sir Nicholas Throgmorton, "being a man of a deep reach and great prudence and discretion, who had ever travelled for the union of this isle." But notwithstanding his "deep reach," he was certainly imposed upon in this affair; for the regent, insincere perhaps from the beginning, had now no other object than to secure his present personal safety by lavishing promises which he had no intention to fulfil. Melvil, who attended him on his return to Scotland, thus explains the secret of his conduct: "At that time the duke commanded over all the north parts of England, where our mistress was kept, and so might have taken her out when he pleased. And when he was angry at the regent, he had appointed the earl of Westmorland to lie in his way, and cut off himself and so many of his company as were most bent upon the queen's accusation. But after the last agreement, the duke sent and discharged the said earl from doing us any harm; yet upon our return the earl came in our way with a great company of horse, to signify to us that we were at his mercy."

It is difficult to believe, notwithstanding this po-460-
-vol i-sitive testimony, that the duke of Norfolk, a man of mild dispositions and guided in the main by religion and conscience, would have hazarded, or would not have scrupled, so atrocious, so inexpiable an act of violence, as that of cutting off the regent of Scotland returning to his own country under sanction of the public faith and the express protection of the queen: but he may have indulged himself in vague menaces, which Westmorland, a bigoted papist, ripe for rebellion against the government of Elizabeth, would have felt little reluctance to carry into effect, and thus the regent's duplicity might in fact be prompted and excused to himself by a principle of self-defence.

Whatever degree of confidence Norfolk and his advisers might place in Murray's sincerity, they were well aware that other steps must be taken, and other confederates engaged, before the grand affair of the marriage could be put in a train to ensure its final success. There was no immediate prospect of Mary's regaining her liberty by means of the queen of England, or with her concurrence; for since the production of the great charge against her, to which she had instructed her commissioners to decline making any answer, Elizabeth had regarded her as one who had suffered judgement to go against her by default, and began to treat her accordingly. Her confinement was rendered more rigorous, and henceforth the still pending negotiations respecting her return to her own country were carried on with a slackness which evidently proceeded from the dread of Mary, and the reluctance-461-
-vol i- of Elizabeth, to bring to a decided determination a business which could not now be ended either with credit or advantage to the deposed queen.

Elizabeth had dismissed the regent to his government without open approbation of his conduct as without censure; but he had received from her in private an important supply of money, and such other effectual aids as not only served to establish the present preponderance of his authority, but would enable him, it was thought, successfully to withstand all future attempts for the restoration of Mary. Evidently then it was only by the raising of a formidable party in the English court that any thing could be effected in behalf of the royal captive; but her agents and those of the duke assured themselves that ample means were in their hands for setting this machine in action.

Elizabeth, it was now thought, would not marry: the queen of Scots was generally admitted to be her legal heir; and it appeared highly important to the welfare of England that she should not transfer her claims, with her hand, to any of the more powerful princes of Europe; consequently the duke entertained little doubt of uniting in favor of his suit the suffrages of all those leading characters in the English court who had formerly conveyed to Mary assurances of their attachment to her title and interests. His own influence amongst the nobility was very considerable, and he readily obtained the concurrence of the earl of Pembroke, the earl of Arundel (his first wife's father), and lord Lumley (a catholic peer closely connected with the house of Howard). The design was now im-462-
-vol i-parted to Leicester, who entered into it with an ostentation of affectionate zeal which ought perhaps to have alarmed the too credulous duke. As if impatient to give an undeniable pledge of his sincerity, he undertook to draw up with his own hand a letter to the queen of Scots, warmly recommending the duke to her matrimonial choice, which immediately received the signatures of the three nobles above mentioned and the rest of the confederates. By these subscribers it was distinctly stipulated, that the union should not take place without the knowledge and approbation of the queen of England, and that the reformed religion should be maintained in both the British kingdoms;—conditions by which they at first perhaps believed that they had provided sufficiently for the interests of Elizabeth and of protestantism: it was however immediately obvious that the duke and his agents had the design of concealing carefully all their measures from their sovereign, till the party should have gained such strength that it would no longer be safe for her to refuse a consent which it was well known that she would always be unwilling to grant.

But when, on encouragement being given by Mary to the hopes of her suitor, the kings of France and Spain, and even the Pope himself, were made privy to the scheme and pledged to give it their assistance, all its English, and especially all its protestant supporters, ought to have been aware that their undertaking was assuming the form of a conspiracy with the enemies of their queen and country against her government and personal safety; against the public-463-
-vol i- peace, and the religion by law established; and nothing can excuse the blindness, or palliate the guilt, of their perseverance in a course so perilous and so crooked.

Private interests were doubtless at the bottom with most or all of the participators in this affair who were not papists; and those,—they were not a few,—who envied or who feared the influence and authority of Cecil, eagerly seized the occasion to array against him a body of hostility by which they trusted to work his final and irretrievable ruin.

It seems to have been by an ambitious rivalry with the secretary, that sir Nicholas Throgmorton, whose early life had exhibited so bold a spirit of resistance to tyranny and popery when triumphant and enthroned, had been carried into a faction which all his principles ought to have rendered odious to him. In his intercourses with the queen of Scots as ambassador from Elizabeth, he had already shown himself her zealous partisan. In advising her to sign for her safety the deed of abdication tendered to her at Loch-Leven, he had basely suggested that the compulsion under which she acted would excuse her from regarding it as binding: to the English crown he also regarded her future title as incontrovertible. He now represented to his party, that Cecil was secretly inclined to the house of Suffolk; and that no measure favorable to the reputation or authority of the queen of Scots could be carried whilst he enjoyed the confidence of his mistress. By these suggestions, the duke, unfortunately for himself, was led to sanction an at-464-
-vol i-tempt against the power and reputation of this great minister.

Leicester, who had long hated his virtues; the old corrupt statesmen Winchester, Pembroke, and Arundel; and the discontented catholic peers Northumberland and Westmorland, eagerly joined in the plot. It was agreed to attack the secretary in the privy-council, on the ground of his having advised the detention of the money going into the Low Countries for the service of the king of Spain, and thus exposing the nation to the danger of a war with this potentate; and Throgmorton is said to have advised that, whatever he answered, they should find some pretext for sending him to the Tower; after which, he said, it would be easy to compass his overthrow.

But the penetration of Elizabeth enabled her to appretiate justly, with a single exception, the principles, characters, and motives of all her servants; and she knew that, while his enemies were exclusively attached to their own interests, Cecil was attached also to the interests of his prince, his country, and his religion; that while others,—with that far-sighted selfishness which involves men in so many intrigues, usually rendered fruitless or needless by the after-course of events,—were bent on securing to themselves the good graces of her successor, he was content to depend on her alone; that while others were the courtiers, the flatterers, or the ministers, of the queen, he, and perhaps he only, was the friend of Elizabeth. All the rest she knew that she could replace at a moment;—him never. Secret information was carried to her of-465-
-vol i- all that her council were contriving, and had almost executed, against the secretary: full of indignation she hurried to their meeting, where she was not expected, and by her peremptory mandate put an instant stop to their proceedings; making Leicester himself sensible, by a warmth which did her honor, that the man who held the first place in her esteem was by no one to be injured with impunity.

The earl of Sussex, the true friend of Norfolk, and never his abettor in designs of which his sober judgement could discern all the criminality and all the rashness, was grieved to the soul that the artifices of his followers should have set him at variance with Cecil. He was doubtless aware of the advantage which their disagreement would minister against them both to the malignant Leicester, his and their common enemy; and trembling for the safety of the duke and the welfare of both, he addressed to the secretary, from the north, where he was then occupied in the queen's service, a letter on the subject, eloquent by its uncommon earnestness.

He tells him that he knows not the occasion of the coldness between him and the duke, of which he had acknowledged the existence; but that he cannot believe other, esteeming both parties as he does, than that it must have had its origin in misrepresentation and the ill offices of their enemies; and he implores him, as the general remedy of all such differences, to resort to a full and fair explanation with the duke himself, in whom he will find "honor, truth, wisdom and plainness."

These excellent exhortations were not without effect:-466-
-vol i- it is probable that the incautious duke had either been led inadvertently or dragged unwillingly, by his faction, into the plot against the secretary, whose ruin he was not likely to have sought from any personal motive of enmity; and accordingly a few weeks after (June 1569) we find Sussex congratulating Cecil, in a second letter, on a reconciliation between them which he trusts will prove entire and permanent[68].

Hitherto the queen had preserved so profound a silence respecting the intrigues of the duke, that he flattered himself she was without a suspicion of their existence; but this illusion was soon to vanish. In August 1569, the queen being at Farnham in her progress and the duke in attendance on her, she took him to dine with her, and in the course of conversation found occasion, "without any show of displeasure," but with sufficient significance of manner, to give him the advice, "to be very careful on what pillow he rested his head." Afterwards she cautioned him in plain terms against entering into any marriage treaty with the queen of Scots. The duke, in his first surprise, made no scruple to promise on his allegiance that he would entertain no thoughts of her; he even affected to speak of such a connexion with disdain, declaring that he esteemed his lands in England worth nearly as much as the whole kingdom of Scotland, wasted as it was by wars and tumults, and that in his tennis-court at Norwich he reckoned himself equal to many a prince.—These demonstrations were all insincere; the duke remained steady to his-467-
-vol i- purpose, and his correspondence with the queen of Scots was not for a single day intermitted in submission to his Sovereign. But he felt that it was now time to take off the mask; and fully confiding in the strength of his party, he requested the earl of Leicester immediately to open the marriage proposal to her majesty, and solicit her consent. This the favorite promised, but for his own ends continued to defer the business from day to day.

Cecil, who had recently been taken into the consultations of the duke, urged upon him with great force the expediency of being himself the first to name his wishes to the queen; but Norfolk, either from timidity, or, more probably, from an ill-founded reliance on Leicester's sincerity, and a distrust, equally misplaced, of that of Cecil, whom he was conscious of having ill treated, neglected to avail himself of this wise and friendly counsel, by which he might yet have been preserved. Leicester, who watched all his motions, was at length satisfied that his purpose was effected,—the victim was inveigled beyond the power of retreat or escape, and it was time for the decoy-bird to slip out of the snare.

He summoned to his aid a fit of sickness, the never-failing resource of the courtiers of Elizabeth in case of need. His pitying mistress, as he had doubtless anticipated, hastened to pay him a charitable visit at his own house, and he then suffered her to discover that his malady was occasioned by some momentous secret which weighed upon his spirits; and after due ostentation of penitence and concern, at length reveal-468-
-vol i-ed to her the whole of the negotiations for the marriage of the duke with the queen of Scots, including the part which he had himself taken in that business.

Elizabeth, who seems by no means to have suspected that matters had gone so far, or that so many of her nobles were implicated in this transaction, was moved with indignation, and commanded the immediate attendance of the duke, who, conscious of his delinquency, and disquieted by the change which he thought he had observed in the countenance of her majesty and the carriage towards him of his brother peers, had sometime before quitted the court, and retired first to his house in London, and afterwards to his seat of Kenninghall in Norfolk. The duke delayed to appear, not daring to trust himself in the hands of his offended sovereign; and after a short delay, procured for him by the compassion of Cecil, who persisted in assuring the queen that he would doubtless come shortly of his own accord, a messenger was sent to bring him up to London. This messenger, on his arrival, found the duke apparently, and perhaps really, laboring under a violent ague; and he suffered himself to be prevailed upon to accept his solemn promise of appearing at court as soon as he should be able to travel, and to return without him.

Meanwhile the queen, now bent upon sifting this matter to the bottom, had written to require the Scottish regent to inform her of the share which he had taken in the intrigue, and whatever else he knew respecting it. Murray had become fully aware how much more-469-
-vol i- important it was to his interests to preserve the favor and friendship of Elizabeth than to aim at keeping any measures with Mary, by whom he was now hated with extreme bitterness; and learning that the confidence of the duke had already been betrayed by the earl of Leicester, he made no scruple of acquainting her with all the particulars in which he was immediately concerned.

It thus became known to Elizabeth, that as early as the conferences at York, the regent had been compelled, by threats of personal violence on his return to Scotland, to close with the proposals of the duke relative to his marriage;—that it was with a view to this union that Mary had solicited from the states of Scotland a sentence of divorce from Bothwell, which Murray by the exertion of his influence had induced them to refuse, and thus delayed the completion of the contract: but it appeared from other evidence, that written promises of marriage had actually been exchanged between the duke and Mary, and committed to the safe keeping of the French ambassador. It was also found to be a part of the scheme to betroth the infant king of Scots to a daughter of the duke of Norfolk.

The anger of Elizabeth disdained to be longer trifled with; and she dispatched a messenger with peremptory orders to bring up the duke, "his ague notwithstanding," who found him already preparing to set out on his journey. Cecil in one of his letters to sir Henry Norris, dated October 1569, relates these circumstances at length, and expresses his satisfaction in the last, both for the sake of the state and-470-
-vol i- of the duke himself, whom, of all subjects, he declares he most loved and honored. He then proceeds thus: "The queen's majesty hath willed the earl of Arundel and my lord of Pembroke to keep their lodgings here, for that they were privy of this marriage intended, and did not reveal it to her majesty; but I think none of them did so with any evil meaning, and of my lord of Pembroke's intent herein I can witness, that he meant nothing but well to the queen's majesty; my lord Lumley is also restrained: the queen's majesty hath also been grievously offended with my lord of Leicester; but considering that he hath revealed all that he saith he knoweth of himself, her majesty spareth her displeasure the more towards him. Some disquiets must arise, but I trust not hurtful; for her majesty saith she will know the truth, so as every one shall see his own fault, and so stay.... My lord of Huntingdon is joined with the earl of Shrewsbury for the Scots queen's safety. Whilst this matter was in passing, you must not think but the queen of Scots was nearer looked to than before."

The duke on his arrival was committed to the Tower; but neither against him nor any of his adherents did the queen think proper to proceed by course of law, and they were all liberated after a restraint of longer or shorter duration.

It is proper to mention, that the adherents of Mary in her own time, and various writers since, have conspired to cast severe reflections upon Elizabeth for committing her to the joint custody of the earl of Huntingdon, because this nobleman, being descended-471-
-vol i- by his mother, a daughter of Henry Pole lord Montacute, from the house of Clarence, was supposed to put his right of succession to the crown in competition with hers, and therefore to entertain against her peculiar animosity. But on the part of Elizabeth it may be observed, First, that there is not the slightest ground to suspect that this nobleman, who was childless, entertained the most distant idea of reviving the obsolete claims of his family; and certainly if Elizabeth had suspected him of it, he would never have held so high a place in her confidence. Secondly, nothing less than the death of Mary would have served any designs that he might have formed; and by joining him in commission with others for her safe keeping, Elizabeth will scarcely be said to have put it in his power to make away with her. Thirdly, the very writers who complain of the vigilance and strictness with which the queen of Scots was now guarded, all acknowledge that nothing less could have baffled the plans of escape which the zeal of her partisans was continually setting on foot. Amongst the warmest of these partisans was Leonard Dacre, a gentleman whose personal qualities, whose errors, injuries and misfortunes, all conspire to render him an object of attention, illustrative as they also are of the practices and sentiments of his age.

Leonard was the second son of William lord Dacre of Gilsland, descended from the ancient barons Vaux who had held lordships in Cumberland from the days of the Conqueror.

In 1568, on the death without issue of his nephew,-472-
-vol i- a minor in wardship to the duke of Norfolk, Leonard as heir male laid claim to the title and family estates, but the three sisters of the last lord disputed with him this valuable succession; and being supported by the interest of the duke of Norfolk their step-father, to whose three sons they were married, they found means to defeat the claims of their uncle, though indisputably good in law;—one instance in a thousand of the scandalous partiality towards the rich and powerful exhibited in the legal decisions of that age.

Stung with resentment against the government and the queen herself, by whom justice had been denied him, Leonard Dacre threw himself, with all the impetuosity of his character, into the measures of the malcontents and the interests of the queen of Scots, and he laid a daring plan for her deliverance from Tutbury-castle. This plan the duke on its being communicated to him had vehemently opposed, partly from his repugnance to measures of violence, partly from the apprehension that Mary, when at liberty, might fall into the hands of a foreign and catholic party, and desert her engagements with him for a marriage with the king of Spain. Dacre, however, was not to be diverted from his design, especially by the man with whom he was at open enmity, and he assembled a troop of horse for its execution; but suspicions had probably been excited, and the sudden removal of the prisoner to Wingfield frustrated all his measures.

This was not the only attempt of that turbulent and dangerous faction of which the inconsiderate ambition-473-
-vol i- of the duke had rendered him nominally the head but really the tool and victim, which he had now the grief to find himself utterly unable to guide or restrain.

The earls of Northumberland and Westmorland, heads of the ancient and warlike families of Percy and Nevil, were the first to break that internal tranquillity which the kingdom had hitherto enjoyed, without the slightest interruption, under the wise and vigorous rule of Elizabeth. The remoteness of these noblemen from the court and capital, with the poverty and consequent simplicity, almost barbarism, of the vassals over whom they bore sway, and whose homage they received like native and independent princes, appears to have nourished in their minds ideas of their own importance better suited to the period of the wars of the Roses than to the happier age of peace and order which had succeeded.

The offended pride of the earl of Westmorland, a man destitute in fact of every kind of talent, seems on some occasion to have conducted him to the discovery that at the court of Elizabeth the representative of the king-making Warwick was a person of very slender consideration. The failure of the grand attack upon the secretary, in which he had taken part, confirmed this mortifying impression; and the committal of his brother-in-law, the great and powerful duke of Norfolk himself, must subsequently have carried home to the bottom of his heart unwilling conviction that the preponderance of the ancient aristocracy of the country was subverted, and its proudest chieftains fast sinking to the common level of subjects. His attachment-474-
-vol i- to the religion, with the other practices and prejudices of former ages, gave additional exasperation to his discontent against the established order of things: the incessant invectives of Romish priests against a princess whom the pope was on the point of anathematizing, represented the cause of her enemies as that of Heaven itself; and the spirit of the earl was roused at length to seek full vengeance for all the injuries sustained by his pride, his interests, or his principles.

Every motive of disaffection which wrought upon the mind of Westmorland, affected equally the earl of Northumberland; and to the cause of popery the latter was still further pledged by the example and fate of his father, that sir Thomas Percy who had perished on the scaffold for his share in Aske's rebellion. The attainder of sir Thomas had debarred his son from succeeding to the titles and estates of the last unhappy earl his uncle, and he had suffered the mortification of seeing them go to raise the fortunes of the house of Dudley; but on the accession of Mary, by whom his father was regarded as a martyr, he had been restored to all the honors of his birth, and treated with a degree of favor which could not but strengthen his predilection for the faith of which she was the patroness. It appears, however, that the attachment of the earl to the cause of popery had not on all occasions been proof against immediate personal interest. Soon after the marriage of the queen of Scots with Darnley, that rash and ill-judging pair esteeming their authority in the country sufficiently-475-
-vol i- established to enable them to venture on an attempt for the restoration of the old religion, the pope, in furtherance of their pious designs, had remitted the sum of eight thousand crowns. "But the ship wherein the said gold was," says James Melvil in his memoirs, "did shipwrack upon the coast of England, within the earl of Northumberland's bounds, who alleged the whole to appertain to him by just law, which he caused his advocate to read unto me, when I was directed to him for the demanding restitution of the said sum, in the old Norman language, which neither he nor I understood well, it was so corrupt. But all my entreaties were ineffectual, he altogether refusing to give any part thereof to the queen, albeit he was himself a catholic, and professed secretly to be her friend." And through this disappointment Mary was compelled to give up her design.

An additional trait of the earl's character is furnished by the same author, in transcribing the instructions which he carried home from his brother sir Robert Melvil, then ambassador to England, on his return from that country, after announcing the birth of the prince of Scotland. "Item, that her majesty cast not off the earl of Northumberland, albeit as a fearful and facile man he delivered her letter to the queen of England; neither appear to find fault with sir Henry Percy as yet for his dealing with Mr. Ruxbie," (an English spy in Scotland) "which he doth to gain favor at court, being upon a contrary faction to his brother the earl."

The machinations of the two earls, however cau-476-
-vol i-tiously carried on, did not entirely escape the penetration of the earl of Sussex, lord president of the north, who sent for them both and subjected them to some kind of examination; but no sufficient cause for their detention then appearing, he dismissed them, hoping probably that the warning would prove efficacious in securing their peaceable behaviour. In this idea, however, he was deceived: on their return they instantly resumed their mischievous designs; and they were actually preparing for an insurrection, which was to be supported by troops from Flanders promised by the duke of Alva, when a summons from the queen for their immediate attendance at court disconcerted all their measures.

To comply with the command seemed madness in men who were conscious that their proceedings had already amounted to high treason;—but to refuse obedience, and thus set at defiance a power to which they were as yet unprepared to oppose any effectual resistance, seemed equally desperate. They hesitated; and it is said that the irresolution of Northumberland was only ended by the stratagem of some of his dependents, who waked him one night with a false alarm that his enemies were upon him, and thus hurried him into the irretrievable step of quitting his home and joining Westmorland, on which the country flocked in for their defence, and they found themselves compelled to raise their standard.

The enterprise immediately assumed the aspect of a Holy War, or crusade against heresy: on the banners of the insurgents were displayed the cross, the five-477-
-vol i- wounds of Christ, and the cup of the eucharist: mass was regularly performed in their camp; and on reaching Durham, they carried off from the cathedral and committed to the flames the bible and the English service books.

The want of money to purchase provisions compelled the earls to relinquish their first idea of marching to London; they took however a neighbouring castle, and remained masters of the country as long as no army appeared to oppose them; but on the approach of the earl of Sussex and lord Hunsdon from York, with a large body of troops, they gradually retreated to the Scotch borders; and there disbanded their men without a blow. The earl of Westmorland finally made his escape to Flanders, where he dragged out a tedious existence in poverty and obscurity, barely supplied with the necessaries of life by a slender pension from the king of Spain. Northumberland, being betrayed for a reward by a Scottish borderer to whom, as to a friend, he had fled for refuge, was at length delivered up by the regent Morton to the English government, and was beheaded at York.

Posterity is not called upon to respect the memory of these rebellious earls as martyrs even to a mistaken zeal for the good of their country, or to any other generous principle of action. The objects of their enterprise, as assigned by themselves, were the restoration of the old religion, the removal of evil counsellors, and the liberation of the duke of Norfolk and other imprisoned nobles. But even their attachment to popery appears to have been entirely subservient to their-478-
-vol i- views of personal interest; and so little was the duke inclined to blend his cause with theirs, that he exerted himself in every mode that his situation would permit to strengthen the hands of government for their overthrow; and it was in consideration of the loyal spirit manifested by him on occasion of this rebellion, and of a subsequent rising in Norfolk, that he soon after obtained his liberty on a solemn promise to renounce all connexion with the queen of Scots.

In the northern counties, however, the cause and the persons of the two earls, who had well maintained the hospitable fame of their great ancestors, were alike the objects of popular attachment: the miserable destiny of the outlawed and ruined Westmorland, and the untimely end of Northumberland through the perfidy of the false friend in whom he had put his trust, were long remembered with pity and indignation, and many a minstrel "tuned his rude harp of border frame" to the fall of the Percy or the wanderings of the Nevil. There was also an ancient gentleman named Norton, of Norton in Yorkshire, who bore the banner of the cross and the five wounds before the rebel army, whose tragic fall, with that of his eight sons, has received such commemoration and embellishment as the pathetic strains of a nameless but probably contemporary bard could bestow. The excellent ballad entitled "The Rising in the North[69]" impressively describes the mission of Percy's "little foot page" to Norton, to pray that he will "ride in his-479-
-vol i- company;" the council held by Richard Norton with his nine sons, when

"Eight of them did answer make,
Eight of them spake hastily,
O father! till the day we die
We'll stand by that good earl and thee;"

while Francis, the eldest, seeks to dissuade his father from rebellion, but finding him resolved, offers to accompany him "unarmed and naked." Their standard is then mentioned: and after recording the flight of the two earls, the minstrel adds,

"Thee Norton with thine eight good sons
They doomed to die, alas for ruth!
Thy reverend locks thee could not save,
Nor them their fair and blooming youth!"

But how slender is the authority of a poet in matters of history! It is quite certain that Richard Norton did not perish by the hands of the executioner, and it is uncertain whether any one of his sons did. It is true that the old man with three more of the family was attainted, that his great estates were confiscated, and that he ended his days a miserable exile in Flanders. We also know that two gentlemen of the name of Norton were hanged at London: but some authorities make them brothers of the head of the family; and two of the sons of Richard Norton, Francis, and Edmund ancestor of the present lord Grantley, certainly lived and died in peace on their estates in Yorkshire.

It is little to the honor of Elizabeth's clemency, that a rebellion suppressed almost without bloodshed should have been judged by her to justify and require-480-
-vol i- the unmitigated exercise of martial law over the whole of the disaffected country. Sir John Bowes, marshal of the army, made it his boast, that in a tract sixty miles in length and forty in breadth, there was scarcely a town or village where he had not put some to death; and at Durham the earl of Sussex caused sixty-three constables to be hanged at once;—a severity of which it should appear that he was the unwilling instrument; for in a letter written soon after to Cecil he complains, that during part of the time of his command in the north he had nothing left to him "but to direct hanging matters." But the situation of this nobleman at the time was such as would by no means permit him at his own peril to suspend or evade the execution of such orders as he received from court. Egremond Ratcliffe his half-brother was one of about forty noblemen and gentlemen attainted for their concern in this rebellion; he had in the earl of Leicester an enemy equally vindictive and powerful; and some secret informations had infused into the mind of the queen a suspicion that there had been some wilful slackness in his proceedings against the insurgents. There was however at the bottom of Elizabeth's heart a conviction of the truth and loyalty of her kinsman which could not be eradicated, and he soon after took a spirited step which disconcerted entirely the measures of his enemies, and placed him higher than ever in her confidence and esteem. Cecil thus relates the circumstance in one of his letters to Norris, dated February 1570.

-481-
-vol i-

"The earl of Sussex... upon desire to see her majesty, came hither unlooked for; and although, in the beginning of this northern rebellion, her majesty sometimes uttered some misliking of the earl, yet this day she, meaning to deal very princely with him, in presence of her council, charged him with such things as she had heard to cause her misliking, without any note of mistrust towards him for his fidelity; whereupon he did with such humbleness, wisdom, plainness and dexterity, answer her majesty, as both she and all the rest were fully satisfied, and he adjudged by good proofs to have served in all this time faithfully, and so circumspectly, as it manifestly appeareth that if he had not so used himself in the beginning, the whole north part had entered into the rebellion."

A formidable mass of discontent did in fact subsist among the catholics of the north, and it was not long before a new and more daring leader found means to set it again in fierce and violent action.

Leonard Dacre had found no opportunity to take part in the enterprise of the two earls, though a deep participator in their counsels; for knowing that their design could not yet be ripe for execution, and foreseeing as little as the rest of the faction those measures of the queen by which their affairs were prematurely brought to a crisis, he had proceeded to court on his private concerns, and was there amusing her majesty with protestations of his unalterable fidelity and attachment, while his associates in the north were placing their lands and lives on the hazard of rebellion. Learning on his journey homewards the total discomfiture of the earls, he carefully preserved the semblance-482-
-vol i- of a zealous loyalty, till, having armed the retainers of his family on pretence of preserving the country in the queen's obedience, and having strongly garrisoned its hereditary castles of Naworth and Greystock, which he wrested from the custody of the Howards, he declared himself, and broke out into violent rebellion.

The late severities had rather exasperated than subdued the spirit of disaffection in this neighbourhood, and three thousand men ranged themselves under the scallop-shells of Dacre;—a well known ensign which from age to age had marshalled the hardy borderers to deeds of warlike prowess. Lord Hunsdon, the governor of Berwick, marched promptly forth with all the force he could muster to disperse the rebels; but this time they stood firmly on the banks of the little river Gelt, to give him battle. Such indeed was the height of fanaticism or despair to which these unhappy people were wrought up, that the phrensy gained the softer sex; and there were seen in their ranks, says the chronicler, "many desperate women that gave the adventure of their lives, and fought right stoutly." After a sharp action in which about three hundred were left dead on the field, victory at length declared for the queen's troops; and Leonard Dacre, who had bravely sustained, notwithstanding the deformity of his person, the part of soldier as well as general, seeing that all was lost, turned his horse's head and rode off full speed for Scotland, whence he passed into Flanders and took up at Lovain his melancholy abode.

The treason of this unfortunate gentleman was, it must be confessed, both notorious and heinous; and-483-
-vol i- had he been intercepted in making his escape, no blame could have attached to Elizabeth in exacting the full penalty of his offence. But when, five-and-twenty years after this time, we find his aged mother at court "an earnest suitor" for the pardon of her two sons[70]; obtaining, probably by costly bribes, a promise of admission to the queen's presence, and at length gaining nothing more,—it is impossible not to blame or lament that relentless severity of temper which rendered Elizabeth so much a stranger to the fairest attribute of sovereign power. The case of Francis Dacre indeed was one which ought to have appealed to her sense of justice rather than to her feelings of mercy. This gentleman, after the expatriation and attainder of his elder brother, had prosecuted at law the claims to the honors and lands of the barony of Gilsland which had thus devolved upon him; but being baffled in all his appeals to the equity of the courts, he had withdrawn in disgust to Flanders, and on this account suffered a sentence of outlawry. He lived and died in exile, leaving a son, named Ranulph, heir only to poverty and misfortunes, to noble blood, and to rights which he was destitute of the power of rendering available. Lord Dacre of the south, as he was usually called, settled on this poor man, his very distant relation, a small annuity; and on his death the following lord Dacre, becoming the heir male of the family, received by way of compromise from the Howards no less than thirteen manors which they had en-484-
-vol i-joyed to the prejudice of Leonard Dacre, of his brother and of his nephew.

On the suppression of this second rising in the north, the queen, better advised or instructed by experience, granted a general pardon to all but its leader; and such was the effect of this lenity, or of the example of repeated failure on the part of the insurgents, that the internal tranquillity of her kingdom was never more disturbed from this quarter, the most dangerous of all from the vicinity of Scotland.

The earl of Sussex had been kept for some time in a state of dissatisfaction, as appears from one of his letters to Cecil, by her majesty's dilatoriness in conferring upon him such a mark of her special favor as she had graciously promised at the conclusion of his satisfactory defence of himself before the council; but she appeased at length his wounded feelings, by admitting him to the council-board and giving him the command of a strong force appointed to act on the Scottish border.

The occasion for this military movement arose out of the tragical incident of the assassination of the regent Murray, which had proved the signal for a furious inroad upon the English limits by some of the southern clans, who found themselves immediately released from the restraints of an administration vigorous enough to make the lawless tremble. Sussex was ordered to chastize their insolence; and he performed the task thoroughly and pitilessly, laying waste with fire and sword the whole obnoxious district.

Besides recognising in Murray a valuable coadjutor,-485-
-vol i- neighbour and ally, Elizabeth appears to have loved and esteemed him as a man and a friend, and she bewailed his death with an excess of dejection honorable surely to her feelings, though regarded by some as derogatory from the dignity of her station. It was indeed an event which broke all her measures, and which, at a period when difficulties and dangers were besetting her on all hands, added fresh embarrassment to her perplexity and presented new chances of evil to her fears. What degree of compunction she felt for her unjustifiable detention of Mary may be doubtful; but it is certain that her mind was now shaken with perpetual terrors and anxieties for the consequences of that irrevocable step, and that there was nothing which she more earnestly desired than to transfer to other hands the custody of so dangerous a prisoner.

She had nearly concluded an agreement for this purpose with Murray, to whom she was to have surrendered the person of the captive queen, receiving six Scottish noblemen as hostages for her safe keeping; and though the interference of the French and Spanish ambassadors had obliged her to suspend its execution, there is no reason to suppose that the design was relinquished, when this unexpected stroke rendered it for ever impracticable. The regency of Scotland, too, was now to be contested by the enraged factions of that distracted country, and it was of great importance to Elizabeth that the victory should fall to the party of the young king; yet such were the perplexities of her political situation, that it was some time before she could satisfy herself that there would not be-486-
-vol i- too great a hazard in supporting by arms the election of the earl of Lenox, to whom she gave her interest.

Her first recourse was to her favorite arts of intrigue; and she sent Randolph, her chosen instrument for these occasions, to tamper with various party-leaders, while Sussex, whose character inclined him more to measures of coercion, exhorted her to put an end to her irresolution and throw the sword into the scale of Lenox. She at length found reason to adopt this counsel; and the earl, re-entering Scotland with his army, laid waste the lands and took or destroyed the castles of Mary's adherents.

Sir William Drury, marshal of the army, was afterwards sent further into the country to chastize the Hamiltons, of which clan was the assassin of Murray.

The contemporary accounts of this expedition, amid many lamentable particulars of ravages committed, afford one amusing trait of manners. Lord Fleming, who held out Dumbarton castle for the queen of Scots, had demanded a parley with sir William Drury, during which he treacherously caused him to be fired upon; happily without effect. Sir George Cary, burning to avenge the injury offered to his commander, sent immediately a letter of defiance to lord Fleming, challenging him to meet him in single combat on this quarrel, when, where and how he dares; concluding thus: "Otherwise I will baffle your good name, sound with the trumpet your dishonor, and paint your picture with the heels upward and bear it in despite of yourself." That this was not the only species of affront to which portraits were in these-487-
-vol i- days exposed, we learn from an expression of Ben Jonson's:—"Take as unpardonable offence as if he had torn your mistress's colors, or breathed on her picture[71]."

The Scotch war was terminated a few months after, by an agreement between Elizabeth and Mary, by virtue of which the former consented to withdraw her troops from the country on the engagement of the latter that no French forces should enter it in support of her title. After this settlement, Elizabeth returned to her usual ambiguous dealing in the affairs of Scotland; and so far from insisting that Lenox should be named regent, she sent a request to the heads of the king's party that they would refrain for a time from the nomination of any person to that office. In consequence of this mandate, which they dared not disobey, Lenox was only chosen lieutenant for a time; an appointment which served equally well the purposes of the English queen.

Connected with all the other measures adopted by the zeal of the great catholic combination for the destruction of Elizabeth and the ruin of the protestant cause, was one from which their own narrow prejudices or sanguine wishes, rather than any just views of the state of public opinion in England, led them to anticipate important results. This was the publication of a papal bull solemnly anathematizing the queen, and dispensing her subjects from their oath of allegiance. A fanatic named Fulton was found willing to earn the crown of martyrdom by affixing this instrument to the gate of the bishop of London's-488-
-vol i- palace. He was taken in the fact, and suffered the penalty of treason without exciting a murmur among the people. A trifling insurrection in Norfolk ensued, of which however the papal bull was not openly assigned as the motive, and which was speedily suppressed with the punishment of a few of the offenders according to law. Even the catholic subjects of Elizabeth for the most part abhorred the idea of lifting their hands against her government and the peace of their native land; and several of them were now found among the foremost and most sincere in their offers of service against the disaffected.

On the whole, the result of the great trial of the hearts of her people afforded to the queen by the alarms of this anxious period, was satisfactory beyond all example. Henceforth she knew, and the world knew, the firmness of that rock on which her throne was planted;—based on religion, supported by wisdom and fortitude and adorned by every attractive art, it stood dear and venerable to her people, defying the assaults of her baffled and malignant enemies. The anniversary of her accession began this year to be celebrated by popular festivals all over the country;—a practice which was retained not only to the end of the reign, but for many years afterwards, during which the 17th of November continued to be solemnly observed under designation of the Birthday of the Gospel.

end of the first volume.

Printed by R. and A. Taylor, Shoe-Lane.

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