Anonymous

REIGN OF ELIZABETH (continued).

Affairs of Ireland: Shane O'Neil's Rebellion—Plantation of Ulster—Spanish Descent on Ireland—Desmond's Rebellion—Religious Conformity—Campian and Parsons—The Anabaptists—Affairs of Scotland—Death of Morton—Success of the Catholics in Scotland—The Raid of Ruthven—Elizabeth's Position—Throgmorton's Plot—Association to Protect Elizabeth—Mary removed to Tutbury—Support of the Protestant Cause on the Continent—Leicester in the Netherlands—Babington's Plot—Trial of Mary—Her Condemnation—Hesitation of Elizabeth—Execution of Mary.

It is now necessary to trace the course of events in Ireland during the years we have just passed over. A great work had been going on in that country, the object of which was to reduce the turbulent native chiefs to obedience, and to establish English settlers in the lands of those who were driven out or exterminated.

The most distinguished of those chiefs was Shane O'Neil, the Earl of Tyrone. Henry VIII. had granted the succession to Matthew, an illegitimate son of the old earl's; but Shane, the eldest legitimate son, would not submit to this arrangement. He was supported in his claims by the people, and vindicated his rights. By the persuasion of the Earl of Sussex, at that time governor, he was induced to appear at the Court of Elizabeth in 1562. He laid his claims before her, and excited a great sensation by appearing in his native costume, attended by a guard armed with battle-axes, and clad in saffron-coloured vests. Elizabeth did not grant all his requests, but expressed herself highly pleased with his presence, and made him great promises. But Shane was too sensitive and independent in his feelings and ideas to be a very orderly subject. Frequently he did essential service as the ally of the English Government, but more frequently was compelled to seek vengeance for injuries and encroachments. In 1565, three years after his appearance at the English Court, he was driven into open rebellion; and after a severe struggle, was compelled to seek refuge in the wilds of Ulster amongst the Scots. There, at the instigation of Piers, an English officer, he was assassinated (1567), his estates were confiscated, with those of all his followers, comprising one-half of Ulster, and the name and dignity of O'Neil were abolished for ever.

That which was done in Ulster had to be done in every other province of Ireland. Whenever insurrection broke out and was suppressed, the lands were forfeited to the Crown. But so long as the Crown held nominally these lands, the natives continued to hold them really. To remedy this, and to ensure a certain forfeiture by the rebels, and a reward to the English conquerors, Sir Thomas Smith proposed that these lands should be granted in various portions to English settlers, who, in prosecution of their own claims, would drive out the rebel natives and cultivate the soil. It needs no reflection to perceive that this system must be fruitful beyond conception in crimes, murders, and miseries. Lands were granted to a bastard son of the projector's, and to numerous other adventurers. They drove out the Irish, and these came back in infuriated numbers, with fire and desolation. Under this frightful system the country soon became a desert. To put an end to these sanguinary scenes, Walter Devereux, Earl of Essex, represented that it needed only a sufficient force on the part of the English. He offered to bring under subjection, and to colonise, the district of Clandeboy in Ulster. His proposals were that the queen and himself should furnish equal shares of the charge, and the colony, being organised, should be divided equally between them. The courtiers who had envied him his favour with Elizabeth pretended to promote his design till he had embarked all his fortune in it, when they threw all possible obstacles in his way. Through these hindrances, it was late in the summer of 1573 before he arrived in Ireland, and then only to find that the Lord-deputy Fitzwilliam questioned his powers; and on proceeding to the lands of Clandeboy, Phelim O'Neil and his adherents contended with him for its possession fort by fort. He maintained his ground, however, through the winter, though grievously suffering from the bad quality of the provisions furnished by the queen's contractors, and from the ill-armed condition of his troops—for the evils which mowed down our army in the Crimea were among the most ancient evils of the English Government. Essex is said to have invited Phelim O'Neil to a banquet, and there assassinated him and his attendants; but this did not mend his position. The Lords Dacre and Rich, and many gentlemen, abandoned the enterprise and returned home. Though deserted and unable to conquer his own allotted territory, he assisted the Lord-Deputy to suppress the rebels in other parts of the island. He returned to England in 1575, and was appointed Earl Marshal of Ireland, but with no adequate force; and ultimately died, September 22nd, 1576, at Dublin.

After the death of Essex, the system of planting Ireland, as it was called, still went on. The destruction of the O'Neils all the other clans regarded as only preliminary to their own. They therefore appealed to the Kings of Spain and France for assistance; and on their declaring themselves unable, from their own dangers and insurrections at home, to assist them, they implored the protection of the Pope, Gregory XIII. His holiness launched a bull at the heretic queen, declaring Ireland forfeited, as previous bulls had declared England and Wales forfeited. Under his encouragement two adventurers, Thomas Stukely and James Fitzmaurice, set out to proclaim the bull, and to carry the arms of his holiness all over Ireland. Stukely, however, having obtained a ship of war, 600 soldiers, and 3,000 stand of arms, carried them to the service of the King of Portugal, and died fighting in his wars against the Moors. Fitzmaurice, a brother of the Earl of Desmond, and a deadly enemy of the English invaders, was more faithful; and after suffering shipwreck on the coast of Galicia, landed at Smerwick, in Kerry, in June, 1579. He had with him, however, only eighty Spanish soldiers, and a few Irish and English refugees; and his expedition proved an utter failure, for the inhabitants had no faith in so insignificant a knot of adventurers. Fitzmaurice being killed in a private quarrel, his followers fled into the territories of his brother, the Earl of Desmond.

The Earl of Desmond professed himself a loyal subject; but he was suspected of favouring the insurgents, and the English marched into his demesnes, and plundered them. Another detachment from the Pope, however, landed at Smerwick, the port which Fitzmaurice had made. It consisted of several hundred men, having a large sum of money, and 5,000 stand of arms, under the command of San Giuseppe, an Italian. Lord Grey de Wilton, the new Lord-Deputy, had recently suffered a defeat in the vale of Glandaclough; but he managed to besiege this foreign force in their newly-erected fort, while Admiral Winter blockaded them on the sea side. After three days' resistance, the handful of Italians and Spaniards put out a flag of truce, and offered to surrender on condition that their lives were spared. Foreign writers all assert that this was granted them; but Sir Richard Bingham, who was present, says that they surrendered one night at the pleasure of the Lord-Deputy, to have mercy or not, as he willed. Sir Walter Raleigh and Spenser, the poet, were in Grey's army, and their conduct reflects no honour upon them. Sir Walter entered the fort to receive their arms, and then ordered them all to be massacred (1580); and this proceeding Spenser endeavours to vindicate. He was Lord Grey's secretary; and while he styles him "a most gentle, affable, loving, and temperate lord," he gives this account of his act:—"The enemy begged that they might be allowed to depart with their lives and arms according to the law of nations. He asked to see their commission from the Pope or the King of Spain. They had none: they were the allies of the Irish. 'But the Irish,' replied Grey, 'are traitors, and you must suffer as traitors. I will make no terms with you; you may submit or not.' They yielded, craving only mercy, which it not being thought good to show them, for danger of them, if being saved, they should afterwards join the Irish, who were much emboldened by those foreign successes, and also put in hope of more ere long. There was no other way but to make that short end of them as was made."

This was a fatal precedent to the French and Spaniards, against whom our own countrymen were fighting in the very same manner by the orders of Elizabeth, in France, in the Netherlands, and in South America; and whilst we denounce the savage slaughter of English adventurers in the trans-Atlantic lands of Spain wherever they were found without mercy or quarter, we are bound to remember that we thus set the Spaniards the example, and furnished them with warrant.

After this butchery Grey and his myrmidons combined to chase Desmond from spot to spot in his mountain fastnesses. Three years later (1583) a party of the English, attracted by a light, entered a hut, where they found a venerable old man lying on the hearth before the fire, quite alone. On their demanding who he was, he replied, "The Earl of Desmond," when Kelly of Moriarty instantly struck off his head, which he sent as a grateful present to Elizabeth, by whom it was fixed on London Bridge. With Desmond fell for some time the resistance of the hunted natives in Ireland. From the forfeited lands of these immolated Irish, Sir Walter Raleigh received 42,000 acres, other gentlemen from 5,000 to 18,000, and Spenser the poet 3,000 and a castle of the unfortunate Desmond's—Kilcolman—which the exasperated natives burnt over his head, and with it one of his children. Spenser's concern in this bloody affair proved, in fact, his ruin.

MURDER OF THE EARL OF DESMOND. (See p. 296.)

Returning to England, we find that Elizabeth during this period had been persecuting every form of Christianity which did not agree with her own. There were three parties against whom she felt herself aggrieved—the Puritans, the Papists, and the Anabaptists; and she set to work resolutely to squeeze them into the mould of her orthodoxy, or to crush them. Many of the Puritans who had imbibed the sternest spirit of Geneva had got into the pulpits of the State Church and refused to wear the robes, to perform the rites, or to preach the exact doctrines as prescribed by law. If they did not accord with that Church, they certainly had no business there, and had no right to complain that Elizabeth turned them out. The time to complain was when she had expelled them, and they set up a Church of their own, which she would not allow. Their freedom was their birthright; but the queen would not suffer them to exercise it. She had but one word in her religious vocabulary—conform; and this rigid conformity was carried out ruthlessly by the very ministers and clergy who had so manfully complained of compulsion in the last reign. They purged one diocese after another by expelling Puritan clergy. These acts of arbitrary power were loudly denounced in the House of Commons, where there was a strong Puritan party, and numerous bills were brought in to advance the Reformation. Out of doors, Parker, the old Archbishop of Canterbury, faithfully executed the will of the sovereign; and opinion, suppressed in the Church and in Parliament, where the queen even sent personal and most dictatorial messages stopping all religious discussion, now burst forth through the press. Pamphlets of a most inflammatory nature and abusive style issued in shoals; and one Burchell, a student of the Middle Temple, became so inflamed by zeal that he murdered Hawkins, an officer, mistaking him for Hatton, the queen's new favourite. In prison he also killed his keeper under the delusion that he was Hatton; and though palpably insane, he was hanged for murder.

Parker died in 1575 and was succeeded by Grindal, who, Elizabeth soon discovered, was too much of a Puritan himself to persecute them severely, and she suspended him, and harassed him to such a degree that he died in 1583. To him succeeded Whitgift, a man after Elizabeth's own heart, who framed a test of orthodoxy, which he put to all clergymen or others whom he suspected, which consisted of these three notable dogmas—the queen's supremacy, the perfection of the Ordinal and Book of Common Prayer, and the complete accordance of the Thirty-nine Articles with the Scriptures. All those clergymen who refused to subscribe to this he expelled; and in defiance of clamour and intrigue in Council or Convocation, he held on his way immovably. Nor did the queen long satisfy herself with mere expulsion. Thacker and Copping, two Brownists, were indicted for objecting to the Book of Common Prayer, which was treated as an attack on the royal supremacy, and were put to death. The persecution of the Catholics was still more severe than that of the Puritans.

The fury of persecution in England stimulated the Roman Catholics abroad to a corresponding enthusiasm of martyrdom. Gregory XIII. followed the example of William Allen—who had founded an English seminary at Douay—and established a second English seminary in the hospital of Santo Spirito, in Rome, from which emissaries were despatched into the heretical kingdom. First and foremost the general of the Jesuits selected in 1580 two Englishmen of distinguished abilities, and sent them from this college. Robert Parsons and Edmund Campian arrived with a reputation, and with rumours of the dark conspiracy in which they were engaged, which roused all the alarm and the vigilance of the Government. Rewards were offered for their discovery, and menaces of punishment issued for remissness in tracing them out. The queen sent forth a proclamation, calling on every person who had children, wards, or relatives gone abroad for education to make a return of their names to the ordinary, and to recall them within three months; and all persons whatsoever who knew of any Jesuit or seminarist in the kingdom, and failed to give information, were to be punished as abettors of treason.

As soon as Parliament met in January of 1581, still more stringent laws were passed for the punishment of Roman Catholics. It was made high treason merely to possess the power of absolution, or to receive any person into the church of Rome. The fines for hearing or saying Mass were re-enacted. Absence from church was made punishable at the rate of twenty pounds per month, and, if prolonged to a whole year, besides the penalty, the offender must produce two securities for his good behaviour of £200 each. The concealment of Roman Catholic tutors, schoolmasters, or priests entailed a year's imprisonment, a priest or tutor being also amenable to the same punishment, and the employer of them to a fine of ten pounds per month. There was but one step possible beyond this outrageous despotism, and that was to the stake, as in Mary's time; but the very fury of legal punishment defeated its own object.

Parsons and Campian put into the hands of their friends written statements of their objects in coming into the country, which they declared to be solely to exercise their spiritual functions as priests, not to interfere with any worldly concerns or affairs of State; but they declared that all the Jesuits in the world had entered into a league to maintain the Catholic religion at the risk of imprisonment, torture, or death. This announcement excited the greatest alarm, and the most fiery persecution burst forth on the whole body of the Romanists, whilst every means was exerted to discover and secure these missionaries. The names of all the recusants in the kingdom, amounting to 50,000, were returned to Government, and no man included in that number had any longer the least security or privacy in his own house. The doors were broken open without notice given, and the pursuivants, rushing in, spread themselves all over the dwelling. Cabinets, cupboards, drawers, closets were forced and ransacked, beds torn open, tapestry or wainscot was dragged down, and every imaginable place explored, for the purpose of obtaining evidence by vessels, vestments, books, or crosses, of heretical worship. The inmates were put under strict watch, till they had been searched and interrogated; and many were driven nearly or wholly out of their senses by the rudeness and the insults which they received from brutal officers. Lady Neville was frightened to death in Holborn, and Mrs. Vavasour was deprived of her reason at York.

In July, Campian was taken at Lyfford, in Berkshire, and was committed to the Tower; and Parsons, seeing no prospect of long escaping pursuit, contrived to get over again to the Continent. Campian was repeatedly racked, and under the force of torture and the promises that no injury should be done to his entertainers, he related the whole course of his peregrinations in Yorkshire, Lancashire, Denbigh, Northampton, Warwick, Bedford, Buckingham, and elsewhere, and the names of those who had given him hospitality. No sooner, however, had the Council the names than they summoned all those who had harboured him, and fined some and imprisoned others.

In November, Campian and twelve other priests and a layman were put upon their trial, and were charged with a horrible conspiracy to murder the queen and to overturn Church and State. Rome and Rheims were declared to be the places where this direful plot had been hatched. The astonishment of the prisoners, several of whom had never been out of England, was extreme. Not an atom of evidence was produced to authenticate these charges, yet the whole were pronounced guilty. One of them was saved by an alibi established by Lancaster, a Protestant barrister; the rest were executed as traitors, except those who were still kept prisoners. On the scaffold (December 1, 1581), Campian lamented that the weakness of the flesh on the rack had forced him to disclose the names of some of his entertainers, by which they had been brought into trouble.

The Anabaptists, who had created great scandals and disturbance in Germany, made repeated visits to London under pretence of belonging to the Dutch Church. They denied the propriety of infant baptism; they also denied that Christ assumed the flesh of the Virgin; they believed it wrong to take an oath, or to accept the office of a magistrate. In some of these tenets they resembled the Society of Friends which afterwards rose, and their creed did not interfere with the quiet of the State; yet numbers of them were imprisoned, ten of them were sent out of the kingdom, and two, Peters and Turwert, were burnt in Smithfield in July, 1575. Again, in 1579, Matthew Hammond, a ploughman, was burnt at Norwich.

In no quarter had Elizabeth for a long time any security except in Scotland. There Morton was her faithful ally, inasmuch as she held fast the King of Scots, and so guaranteed the chief means of his own tranquil enjoyment of power. But Morton's rule was not such as any country would long tolerate. He was essentially a base and selfish man, and his severity and rapacity alienated the public from him more and more. He debased the coin, multiplied forfeitures to enrich himself, appropriated the estates of the Church, and at the same time was so subservient to Elizabeth, that the national pride resented it. In 1578, Athole and Argyll made their way to the presence of the young king, who was now approaching thirteen years of age, and assured him that it was now quite time that he freed himself from the tutelage of Morton and ruled the country himself. James readily listened to them, and sent Morton an order to resign, and to attend a council at Stirling, where the friends of Athole and Argyll were summoned.

Morton, though taken by surprise, appeared to obey with perfect acquiescence; but he lost no time in intriguing with the Erskines, and in three months had again possessed himself of the person of the king, and resumed his authority in the State. Athole and Argyll mustered their friends to force the reins from the hands of Morton, who boldly met them in the field, when the ambassador of England appeared as a mediator, and persuaded them to a reconciliation. But it was not in the nature of Morton to forget the opponents of his power, although they now appeared as nominal friends. He invited Athole, the chief actor in his late fall, to a banquet, from which he retired, as Mar had done, to die. Like Mar, he was poisoned. Secure as he now seemed, Morton let loose his vengeance on his enemies; and the Hamiltons, the friends of Mary, were compelled, in spite of the treaty of Perth, to fly to England for security; and being freed from their restraint he indulged freely his insatiable avarice at the expense of the country.

But justice reached this minister of evil when it was least expected. EsmÉ Stuart, the Lord of Aubigny, a son of the younger brother of the Earl of Lennox, who had become naturalised in France, returned to Scotland. With a handsome person and French accomplishments, he soon captivated the young monarch, who could not live at any period of his life without a favourite. He created Aubigny captain of the guard, first lord of the bed-chamber, and finally Duke of Lennox, being the nephew of the late earl, and cousin of Darnley. Associated with Lennox was another and far more deep and designing Stuart—James, commonly called Captain Stuart, the second son of Lord Ochiltree. He was also related to the king, and lent essential aid to Lennox, not only from his genius for intrigue, but because Lennox was suspected of being an emissary of the Duke of Guise. Lennox and his friend Stuart, who was now created by James Earl of Arran, instilled every possible suspicion into the king's mind against Morton, who, they averred, intended to convey him to England and give him up to Elizabeth. To seize Morton, and arraign him for the multitude of illegal acts which he had perpetrated in his position of Regent, might not succeed, for the wily offender had taken care to procure bills of indemnity for whatever he had done. They determined, therefore, to accuse him of Darnley's murder, of which he was notoriously guilty in common with others.

One morning, therefore, Captain Stuart, now Earl of Arran, fell on his knees in the Council, and charged Morton to the king with the murder of his (the king's) father. Morton, thunderstruck at this bold and sudden act, stoutly denied the charge, but he was ordered to be guarded in his own house, and soon after sent off to the Castle of Dumbarton. Morton despatched a messenger to his trusty friend the Queen of England, who forthwith despatched Randolph to intercede with the king, the Council, and the Parliament for the precious life of this vile murderer. Elizabeth, as she had not been ashamed to countenance and support him, so neither was she now ashamed to plead for him, and to beg that he might be set at liberty as a special favour to her, in recompence of the many services she had rendered Scotland. She accused Lennox of being in league with the French Government for the invasion of England, and Randolph produced documents to prove it. On examining these papers, the Council pronounced them forgeries, and the trial was ordered to proceed. On perceiving his failure with the king and Council, Randolph had recourse to his old arts of endeavouring to stir up sedition, and did his utmost to rouse Mar and the Earl of Angus to rise in arms for Morton's rescue. This becoming known, Randolph, who had been twice sent out of the country for his traitorous meddling, was now glad to flee for his life.

To save this execrable villain, but very useful tool, Elizabeth induced the Prince of Orange and the King of Navarre to support the exertions of her ambassador on his behalf, but all in vain. James was firm in following out the advice given him. Elizabeth ordered a body of troops to march to the Border, as if she were resolved to invade Scotland for the rescue of Morton; but James, far from being intimidated, called all his subjects to arms, ordered Angus to retire beyond the Spey, Mar to surrender the charge of Stirling Castle, and demanded of Elizabeth whether she meant peace or war.

The fall of Morton and the display of independence in the young King James opened up the most extravagant hopes in the minds of the friends of Queen Mary, and of the Papists in general. They were ready to believe that James would soon show his regard for his mother, and a deep sense of her wrongs. Morton had been the stern adherent of Protestantism, scandalous as he was; but who should say that Aubigny, educated in France, and with many friends and relatives there, would not incline to favour the Papists, and that James, under his guidance, though educated by the disciples of Knox, might not, young as he was, return to the religion of his ancestors? Parsons, the Jesuit, was enthusiastic in this behalf, and he despatched Waytes, an English Popish clergyman, to Holyrood, and soon afterwards Creighton, a Scottish Jesuit. These emissaries returned with the most flattering accounts of their reception by James and his ministers. Probably, in prospect of no very friendly relations with Elizabeth, the advisers of James might adopt the policy of conciliating the Romanists, and thus securing the ancient support of France, and also of Spain. Be that as it may, James professed to feel deeply the wrongs of his mother, and to cherish great filial affection for her. He assured them that he would always receive with favour such persons as came with an introduction from her, and he consented to receive an Italian Catholic into his Court as his tutor in that language.

Elated by these tidings, Parsons and Creighton hastened to Paris in May of 1582. There happened to be present an extraordinary number of persons interested in the cause of Popery—the Duke of Guise; Castelli, the Papal nuncio; Tassis, the Spanish ambassador; Beaton, Archbishop of Glasgow; Matthieu, the Provincial of the French Jesuits; and Dr. Allen, the provost of the seminary of Douay. They all agreed that Mary ought to be restored without deposing James; that they should reign jointly; and Parsons was sent to Spain to solicit assistance, and Creighton to the Pope for the same object. Both missions were successful: Philip gave 12,000 crowns to relieve the necessities of James, and the Pope engaged to pay the expenses of his body-guard for twelve months. Both Mary and James assented to this proposal, Mary offering to leave all the exercise of power in James's hands.

Successful as this scheme appeared, every movement in it had been watched by the Court of England, and a counterplot of a most startling kind was set on foot. In August, 1581, the Earl of Gowrie, the son of the murderer Ruthven, was induced to invite the king to his castle of Ruthven, when he made him prisoner. The government was then seized by the Earl of Mar, the Master of Glamis, the Lord Oliphant, and others. Lennox, the king's chief minister, escaped to France, but died soon after, as was suspected, from poison. Arran, the successful destroyer of Morton, was thrown into prison. The pulpit was set to work to proclaim that there had been a plot to restore "the limb of Satan," the lewd Queen Mary, with all the ceremonial of the Mass; and that Lennox was at the bottom of it, though he died professing himself a staunch Protestant.

But the position of affairs in Scotland was calculated to excite the utmost vigilance of both France and England. Henry III. saw with terror the young King of Scotland in the hands of the English faction, and sent thither La Motte Fenelon and Maigneville to encourage James to call together the Estates, to insist by their means on his liberty, and on the liberation of his mother to govern with him. The English Court, on the other hand, instructed its agents, Bowes and Davidson, to demand the dismissal of the French envoys, and to show him the danger of the measures which they proposed. James appeared to listen to both parties; and ostensibly in order to consult on their advice, he summoned a council of the nobility to meet at the castle of St. Andrews. Once in their midst, James felt his freedom; and to prevent any contest on the question, published a pardon to all who had been concerned in the Raid of Ruthven, as it was called, or the conspiracy of Gowrie. This bold stroke of the young king so took the English Court by surprise that Walsingham was sent, notwithstanding his age and important duties at home, to the Scottish Court. Walsingham must have been amazed at the small success which attended his mission, for James received him with little consideration, appeared to regard his communications with indifference, and dismissed him with a paltry present on his departure. Elizabeth could not help complaining of the palpable slight to her ambassador, and the friends of Queen Mary drew fresh hope from the circumstance.

But little solid hope could be entertained of Mary's enfranchisement by any one who considered the real situation of affairs. The King of France was far from sincere in his wish for her release. So long as she was in the hands of Elizabeth, he was secure from any further meddling of Elizabeth in the internal affairs of France. At any moment he could alarm her by rumours of designs to set the Scottish queen free, at the same time that James, as a young man, was open to influence from France against England. For these reasons a fresh conference in Paris on Mary's behalf came to nothing. The Duke of Guise, Castelli, the Archbishop of Glasgow, and Matthieu met again, this time with the addition of Morgan, a Welsh gentleman, one of the commissioners of her dower in France. They proposed that Guise should land in the south of England with an army, while James should simultaneously enter it at the north. James at once assented to the project; but Mary, who knew very well that her life would be sacrificed at once if there were a formidable attempt at her rescue, resorted to the hopeless course of endeavouring to persuade Elizabeth to treat with France for her release on safe terms. Elizabeth appeared to listen; but the rumours of the invasion speedily caused her to abandon any such negotiation, on the plea that, once at liberty, Mary could not be trusted. Revenge might induce her to ally herself with France and Spain, to the great peril of England.

No situation in the world could be conceived more miserable than that of Elizabeth. The captive queen had become to her a source of perpetual alarms—alarm of invasion from France and from Scotland—alarm at insurrections among the Papists, whom persecutions kept in a state of the deepest disaffection. For two years the prisons had been crowded with Catholics, and the scaffolds drenched with their blood. They had been persecuted and insulted till they must have been more than mortal to have felt no desire for revenge. Therefore the country swarmed with spies and informers; and Walsingham, as a skilful unraveller of plots, was kept hard at work to trace, by his secret emissaries, every concealed movement of sedition. Both at home and abroad he had a host of agents under a multitude of disguises. The Jesuits never had a more expert and fearless general, nor a more varied army of informers. They presented themselves in the shape of travelling noblemen, of physicians, of students in Popish seminaries. They swarmed in sea-ports lying between England and the different Continental routes. There was scarcely a Roman Catholic gentleman or nobleman into whose house they had not found their way. To those whom they suspected of a leaning towards the Queen of Scots they professed to be confidential agents of her or of her adherents, and presented forged letters by which they might entrap the unwary into compromising answers.

At length the chief of the conspirators was brought to justice in the person of Thomas Throgmorton, the son of Sir John Throgmorton, Chief Justice of Chester. Walsingham intercepted letters, and by his spies made his way into every abode and company. He received from his trusty emissaries the information that Charles Paget, one of the commissioners of the Queen of Scots' dower—Morgan, just mentioned, being the other—had landed on the coast of Sussex under the name of Mope. A letter of Morgan's was also intercepted, and from something in its contents the two sons of Sir John Throgmorton, Thomas and George, were immediately arrested and committed to the Tower. The Earl of Northumberland, with his son the Earl of Arundel, his countess, uncle, and brothers, were summoned before the Privy Council and repeatedly questioned. The Lord Paget, brother of Charles Paget, and Charles Arundel, escaped to the Continent, but sent a declaration that they had fled, not from any sense of guilt, but from the utter hopelessness of acquittal where Leicester had any influence. Northumberland and Lord Arundel, with their wives and relatives, stoutly denied all concern with plots or any species of disloyalty, and no proof could be brought against them. Meanwhile it was asserted that the Duke of Guise was proceeding with his scheme of invasion, and that many English noblemen and gentlemen were co-operating in it; that a letter had been intercepted from the Scottish Court to Mary, informing her that James was quite ready to perform his part of the scheme by invading the kingdom from the north, having had the promise of 20,000 crowns; but that he was desirous to know who were the influential persons in England that might be calculated upon for support. All this was soon wonderfully corroborated by the confession of Thomas Throgmorton, in whose trunks were found two catalogues, one of the chief ports, and the other of the principal Romanists in the kingdom. He admitted that these were for the use of Mendoza, the Spanish minister, and that he had devised a plan with that ambassador to raise troops in the name of the queen through the Catholics, who were then to call on her to tolerate Catholicism, or to depose her. This was a strong case indeed against the prisoners and the fugitives; and Burleigh, with Throgmorton's confession in his hand, charged the Spanish ambassador with his breach of all the laws of nations and of his office. Mendoza had the impudence to deny the charges; but he was ordered to withdraw from England, and Throgmorton was hanged (1583). From that hour war with Spain was inevitable.

The patriotism of England was now awake. An association was formed, under the influence of the Government, by which all the members bound themselves to pursue and kill every person who should attempt the life of the queen, and every person for whose advantage it should be attempted. This palpably pointed at the Scottish Queen. The bond of association was shown to Mary as a means of intimidating her. At the first glance she perceived that it was aimed at her life; but, after a moment of astonishment, she proposed to sign the bond herself so far as she was concerned, which, of course, was not permitted, as it would have neutralised the whole intention, but it was industriously circulated for signature amongst those who dared not well do otherwise.

The same object was pursued in the Parliament, which met on the 23rd of November. After the clergy had granted an aid of six shillings in the pound to be paid in three years, and the Commons a subsidy and two-fifteenths, an Act was passed condemning as traitors any one who had been declared by a court of twenty-four commissioners cognisant of any treasonable designs against the queen; and Mary and her issue were excluded from the succession in case of the queen coming to a violent death. The Roman Catholics were also treated with increased severity, in consequence of the alleged plots. No Popish clergyman was to be allowed to remain in the kingdom; if found there after forty days he was pronounced guilty of high treason; any one knowing of his being in the country, and not giving information within twelve days, was to be fined and imprisoned during the queen's pleasure; and any one receiving or relieving him was guilty of felony. All students in Popish seminaries were called on to return to their native country within six months after proclamation; parents sending their children to such seminaries without licence were to forfeit for every such offence a hundred pounds; and the students themselves forfeited all right to the property of their parents.

To avoid, if possible, the fate which the bill of this Session prepared for them, the Roman Catholics drew up an earnest and loyal memorial to the queen, declaring it as their settled and solemn conviction that she was their sovereign de jure and de facto; that neither Pope nor priest had power to license any one to lift their hand against her, nor to absolve them were such a crime committed, and that they renounced and abominated any one who held a contrary doctrine.

All these transactions only tended to aggravate the situation of the Queen of Scots. She was now taken out of the hands of the Earl of Shrewsbury, and consigned to the custody of Sir Amyas Paulet, a dependent of Leicester's, a man of a rigid, gaoler-like disposition, but not destitute of honour. She was removed from Sheffield Park to the ruinous stronghold of Tutbury. Finding that all appeals to Elizabeth and all protestations of her innocence of any participation in, and even ignorance of, the plots charged on different persons were alike disregarded, she turned to her son, but only to receive from that quarter a disregard still harder to bear. James coldly announced to her that he had nothing to do with her concerns, nor she with his: he was now, in fact, in the pay of Elizabeth. He bade her remember that she was only the queen-mother, and enjoyed no authority in Scotland, though she bore the empty title of queen. Abandoning all hope of assistance from him, Mary now demanded of Elizabeth to liberate her on any conditions she pleased—she asked only liberty and life. But her requests were unheeded.

Meanwhile Elizabeth was supporting Protestantism abroad. Henry of Navarre had become the next in succession to the crown of France, by the death of the Duke of Anjou in 1584. Being well known as a Protestant, the Roman Catholics in France, with the Duke of Guise at their head, reorganised their league, and compelled the French King to subscribe to it. The King of Spain, a member of the league, promised it all his support. On the other hand, Elizabeth, anxious to see a Protestant prince on the throne of France, sent Henry large remittances, and invited him to make England his home in case his enemies should compel him to retreat for a time, when he could wait the turn of events. In all this there was nothing to complain of. Henry had a clear right to the throne of France, and justice as well as the Reformed faith called upon her to support it; but not so honourable were her proceedings in the Netherlands. There she secretly urged to insurrection the subjects of a power with whom she was at peace, and maintained them by repeated supplies of money.

Sympathising as she did with the oppressed Protestants of the Netherlands, her course was quite obvious. She could call on Philip to give to them free exercise of their religion, and if he refused, she had a fair plea to break with him and to support the cause of the common religion. But Elizabeth had too much politic regard for the rights of kings openly to support against them the rights of the people; and, what was still more embarrassing, she was practising the very intolerance and persecution against her Roman Catholic subjects that Philip was against his Protestant ones.

The Primate, when appealed to, stated broadly this fact, and declared that Philip had as much right to send forces to aid the English Roman Catholics as Elizabeth had to support the Belgian Protestants. When, therefore, in June of 1585 the deputies of the revolted provinces of the Netherlands besought Elizabeth to annex them to her own dominions, she declined; but in September she signed a treaty with them, engaging to send them 6,000 men, and received in pledge of their payment the towns of Brielle and Flushing, and the strong fortress of Rammekens. This was making war on Philip without any declaration of it; but she still persisted that she was not assisting the Flemings to throw off their allegiance to their lawful prince, but was only helping them to recover undoubted privileges of which they had been deprived.

But the fact was, that Elizabeth had long been warring on Spain, and it was the fault of Spain that it had not declared open war in return. In 1570 she had sent out the celebrated Admiral Drake, to scour the coasts of the West Indies and South America, on the plea that Spain had no right to shut up the ports of those countries, and to exclude all other flags from those seas. Under her commission, Drake and other captains had ravaged the settlements of Spain in the New World, had plundered Carthagena, St. Iago, and St. Domingo, and almost every town on the coasts of Chili and Peru. They had intercepted the Spanish galleons, or treasure vessels, and carried off immense booty of silver and other precious articles. But as Drake had received special marks of royal favour—the queen had dined on board his vessel, the Golden Hind, when it lay at Deptford, and had knighted him (1581) for his services,—and as there was no declaration of war, all these were clear cases of piracy; but Philip was too much engaged at home to defend these trans-Atlantic possessions from the daring sea captains of Elizabeth, and if he did declare war he at once sanctioned her interference both in the Spanish seas and in the Netherlands.

To conduct her campaign in the Netherlands, Elizabeth had appointed the Earl of Leicester. The way in which he conducted himself there was not calculated to increase his reputation for honesty or military talent. No sooner did he arrive, than, without consulting the queen, he induced the States to nominate him governor-general of the United Provinces, with the title of Excellency, and with supreme power over the army, the State, and the executive. In fact, his ambition rested with nothing short of being a king: with nothing but possessing all the title and authority enjoyed by the Duke of Anjou. When this news reached Elizabeth she flew into a terrible rage, charged him with presumption and vanity, with contempt of her authority, and "swore great oaths that she would have no more Courts under her abeyance than one;" desired him to remember the dust from which she had raised him, and let him know if he were not obedient to her every word, she would beat him to the ground as quickly as she had raised him.

The unfortunate States, who thought they were gratifying the Queen of England when they were honouring her favourite, were confounded at this discovery; but Leicester, as if he really thought that he could render himself independent of his royal patroness, remained lofty, insolent, and silent. Trusting to the position into which he had thus stepped, he left it to the ministers at home to pacify the queen. He had so long ruled her that he appeared to think he could still do as he pleased. The great Burleigh and the cunning Walsingham were at their wits' end to satisfy Elizabeth: the only letter which they got from Leicester being one to Hatton, so insolent and arrogant that they dared not present it till they had remodelled it. Meanwhile, Elizabeth continued to write to the new captain-general the most bitter reproaches and menaces, and to heap upon his friends fierce epithets which could not reach him and produced no effect on him. With all the airs of a great monarch, Leicester progressed from one city to another, receiving solemn deputations, and giving grand entertainments in return.

In the field his conduct was as contemptible as in the government. He had an accomplished general, Alexander Farnese, the Prince of Parma, to contend with, and never did an English general present so pitiable a spectacle in a campaign as did Leicester. His great object appeared to be to avoid a battle, and the only conflict which he engaged in, which has left a name, is the attack upon Zutphen, on September 22, 1586, because there fell the gallant and gifted Sir Philip Sidney, in the thirty-second year of his age.

As autumn approached Leicester marched back his forces to the Hague, and was greatly disgusted and astonished to be called to account by what he pleased to name an assembly of shopkeepers and artisans. Not the less loudly, however, did the merchants and shopkeepers of the Netherlands upbraid him with the utter failure of the campaign, with the waste of their money, the violation of their privileges, the ruin of their trade, and the extorting of the people's money in a manner equally arbitrary and irritating. In a fit of ineffable disgust he broke up the assembly: the assembly continued to sit. He next resorted to entreaties and promises; it regarded these as little. He announced his intention of returning to England, and in his absence nominated one of his staff to exercise the supreme government. The assembly insisted on his resigning that charge to them; he complied, yet, by a private deed, reserved it to himself; and thus did this proud, empty, inefficient upstart dishonour the queen who had raised him, the country which had tolerated him, and which had long impatiently witnessed his arrogance, and his abuse of the queen's favour. At length, on the approach of winter, he obeyed the call of his sovereign and returned home. Scarcely had he quitted the Netherlands when the officers whom he had left in command surrendered the places of strength to the Prince of Parma, and went over to the Spaniards. The campaign was, from first to last, a scandal and a disgrace to the English name and government.

Mary had now been removed, in the early part of this year, to Chartley Castle, in Staffordshire, under the care of Sir Amyas Paulet; and the gentlemen in England whom the foreign adherents of the Queen of Scots had pitched upon to carry out their plan, were a young enthusiastic Papist—Anthony Babington, of Dethick, near Matlock, in Derbyshire—and his friends and companions, all men of fortune, family, and education. Babington had long been an ardent admirer of the Queen of Scots, had corresponded with her whilst she was at Sheffield Park, and was ready to devote himself to the death in her cause. At the same time he had such an idea of the peril of meddling with the government of Elizabeth, that he despaired of accomplishing Mary's enfranchisement during Elizabeth's life. Ballard, a Jesuit, assured him that Elizabeth would be taken off, by command of the Pope; that Savage, an officer who had served in Flanders, and was exasperated at the death of Throgmorton, had determined to do it; and that the Prince of Parma would land simultaneously with that event, and set Mary at liberty. The plan was made known to Mary, and received her sanction. "When all is ready," she wrote, "the six gentlemen must be set to work."

Walsingham, who had long been on the watch, was now in possession of all the evidence that he was likely to get, for Babington soon discovered that he had been betrayed by somebody, whom he could not tell; and though he remained in London as though there were no danger, he made preparations for the escape of Ballard to the Continent, by procuring him a passport under a feigned name. Every moment might throw fresh light on the deception, and allow the escape of the victims. On the 4th of August, therefore, Babington found his house entered by the pursuivants of Walsingham, and Ballard, who had not got off, was there seized. Babington escaped for the moment, but was arrested on the 7th, and was taken to the country house of Walsingham, but escaped from the servants into whose charge he was given. With his friends and accomplices, Gage, Charnock, Barnewell, and Donne, he concealed himself in St. John's Wood, till they were compelled by hunger to make their way to the house of their common friend Bellamy, at Harrow, who concealed them in his outhouses and gardens. But the cunning Walsingham had his agents on their trail the whole time, and on the 15th they walked into the premises of Bellamy, secured the concealed conspirators, together with their host, his wife and brother, and conveyed them, amid the shouts and execrations of the populace, and the universal ringing of bells, to the Tower, whither also were soon brought Abingdon, Tichbourne, Tilney, Travers; the only one of the friends of Babington that escaped being Edward Windsor, the brother of Lord Windsor.

On the 13th of September, Babington, Ballard, Savage, Donne, Barnewell, and Tichbourne were put upon their trial, charged with a conspiracy to murder Elizabeth, and raise a rebellion in favour of the Queen of Scots. They pleaded guilty to one or other of the charges, and seven others pleaded not guilty; but all were alike convicted, and condemned to the death of traitors. The greater part of them appear to have taken no part in the blacker part of the conspiracy, the design to murder Elizabeth; and some of them, as Tichbourne and Jones, declared that they had taken no part whatever, but merely kept the secret for the sake of their friends. Bellamy was condemned for affording them an asylum; his wife escaped through a flaw in the indictment. Pooley, the decoy, was imprisoned as a blind, and then liberated; and Gifford was already in prison in Paris, where, three years later, he died. On the 20th and 21st of September, 1586, they were executed in Lincoln's Inn Fields, because they used there to hold their meetings.

Though no mention was made on the trial of any participation of the Queen of Scots in this conspiracy, nothing was farther from the intention of Elizabeth and her ministers than her escape. They had already prepared for her death by the bill passed empowering twenty-four or more of the Lords of the Council and other peers to sit in judgment on any one concerned in attempts to raise rebellion, or to injure the queen's person. To procure every possible evidence for this end the following stratagem was used:—The Queen of Scots was kept in total ignorance of the seizure of the conspirators, and on the copy of her letter to Babington being laid before the Council, an order was sent down to Sir Amyas Paulet to seize all her papers and keep her in more rigorous confinement. Accordingly, one morning, Mary took a drive in her carriage, accompanied, as was her custom, by Paulet, but with a larger attendance. When Mary desired to return, Paulet told her that he had orders to convey her to Tixall, a house belonging to Sir Walter Aston, about three miles distant. Astonished and alarmed, Mary refused to go, and declared that if they took her there it should be by force. She must have suspected the design of searching her cabinets during her absence; but, in spite of her protestations and her tears, she was compelled to proceed. There she was confined to two rooms only, was guarded in the strictest manner, and debarred the use of pen, ink, and paper. Meanwhile Sir William Wade arrived at Chartley, and proceeded to break open the cabinets and take possession of all her letters and papers, as well as those of her secretaries. A large chest was filled with these papers, amongst which were Mary's own minute of the answer to Babington, and other damning proofs. It was determined to bring her to a public trial.

Mary was now removed to Fotheringay Castle in Northamptonshire, in preparation for her trial. It was first proposed to convey her to the Tower, but they feared her friends in the City; then the castle of Hertford was suggested, but that also was thought too near the capital; and Grafton, Woodstock, Coventry, Northampton, and Huntingdon were all proposed and rejected, showing that her enemies were well aware of the seriousness of the business they contemplated.

On the 5th of October a commission was issued to forty-six persons, peers, privy councillors, and judges, constituting a court competent to inquire into and determine all offences committed against the statute of the 27th of the Queen, either by Mary, daughter and heiress of James V., late of Scotland, or by any other person whomsoever. The moment this was known, Chasteauneuf, the French ambassador, demanded in the name of his sovereign that Mary should be allowed counsel, according to the universal practice of civilised nations. But Elizabeth sent him a message by Hatton, that "she did not require the advice or schooling of foreign powers to instruct her how she ought to act."

On the 12th the commissioners arrived at the castle. They were the Lord Chancellor Bromley, the Lord Treasurer Burleigh, and many other magnates.

On the 14th the Court assembled in the great hall of Fotheringay, at the upper end of which was placed a chair of State with a canopy, as for the queen of England; and below it, at some distance, a chair without a canopy, for the Queen of Scots. The Chancellor, Bromley, opened the Court by informing Mary that the Queen of England, having heard that she had conspired against her state and person, had deputed them to inquire into the fact. Upon this Mary, who had at first refused to plead at all, entered her solemn protest against their authority, declaring that she had come as a friendly sovereign to seek aid from her cousin, the Queen of England, and had been unjustly detained by her as a prisoner; on that ground she denied their authority to try her. It was permitted to record her protest, together with the Chancellor's reply.

The charges against her were two: first, that she had conspired with traitors and foreigners to invade the realm, and secondly, to compass the death of the queen. As to the first charge Mary pleaded guilty to it, and justified it. They grounded this charge on a host of letters intercepted or found in her cabinets, to and from Mendoza, Paget, Morgan, and others. From these it appeared that she had sanctioned an invasion on her behalf, had offered to raise her friends to support it, and had requested that those in Scotland should make themselves master of the person of her son, and prevent any aid from being sent to the Government of England. When they came to the second charge, the conspiracy to murder Elizabeth, she denied any participation in it totally, indignantly, and with tears. She called God to witness the truth of her assertion, and prayed Him, if she were guilty of such a crime, to grant her no mercy. The proofs produced to establish her approval of this design were—first, the copy of the letter of Babington, in which was this passage:—"For the dispatch of the usurper, from the obedience of whom, by the excommunication of her, we are made free, there be six noble gentlemen, all my private friends, who, for the zeal they bear to the Catholic cause and your majesty's service, will undertake the tragical execution." Next there was a copy of seven points, which were professedly derived from her answer to Babington, the sixth of which was, "By what means do the six gentlemen deliberate to proceed?" After these came the confessions of Mary's secretaries, and, finally, reported admissions in her letters to her foreign correspondents of having received these intimations of their intention to assassinate the queen, and of having given them cautions and instructions on this point.

Mary at first denied any correspondence with Babington, but she soon saw enough to convince her that they had the correspondence in their possession, and admitted having written the note of the 18th, but not any such answer to Babington on the 17th of July, as they asserted. She demanded the production of the original letters, and the production of her secretaries Nau and Curle face to face with her, for that Nau was timid and simple, and Curle so accustomed to obey Nau, that he would not do otherwise; but she was sure that in her presence they would not venture to speak falsely. But neither of these things, no doubt for the strongest of reasons, was consented to. As to her letters, she said it was not the first time that they had been garbled and interpolated. It was easy for one man to imitate the writing and ciphers of another; and she greatly feared that Walsingham had done it in this instance, to practise against the lives of both herself and her son. In fact, her defence was most ingenious but quite unconvincing.

TRIAL OF MARY QUEEN OF SCOTS IN FOTHERINGAY CASTLE. (See p. 308.)