Chapter XX.

Policy And Government Of Queen Elizabeth.

Her Foreign Relations (1558-1603).

Elizabeth was at Hatfield when Mary died, a striking proof of the distrust which reigned between the two sisters, and which banished one from the death-bed of the other. The princess was devoting herself, as usual, to the serious occupations which were dear to her. Still more learned than her sister, brought up with care by the learned Roger Ascham, Elizabeth had continued the practice of reading some Greek every day; she even translated the rhetorician Isocrates. These literary recreations were interrupted by more urgent cares when the mortal illness of her sister began to bring about her the worshippers of the rising sun. Philip II. had been careful to send her a trustworthy ambassador. The Count of Feria had seen the princess before the death of the queen, and the king believed her to be gained over to the great Catholic confederation, and compelled to rely upon him and to regulate her conduct according to his counsels. She did not consult him, however, upon the course to be followed, when she was apprised of the death of her sister. Sir William Cecil, formerly secretary of state under Edward VI., who being in disgrace under Mary, had prudently submitted to the Roman Catholic requirements, had received all his orders by anticipation. {325} Parliament was sitting, Chancellor Heath repaired to the Houses, and there announced the accession of Queen Elizabeth, "the legitimate and rightful heir to the throne." Cries were raised of "Long live Queen Elizabeth!" Couriers were despatched by Cecil to all the sovereigns of Europe, announcing the accession, and the Lords hastened to Hatfield, to pay homage to the new sovereign. They asked her, upon arriving, what attitude she intended to assume. The Protestants, delivered from an odious yoke, were rejoicing, being convinced that, under the reign of her sister, the princess had concealed her real opinions. The Catholics, who were uneasy, counted upon the influence of Philip II. The first speech of Elizabeth did not enlighten them; it was cautious and measured, announcing no intention of abrupt changes. One indication alone, though slight in itself, soon caused people to feel from which quarter the wind blew; when the queen arrived at Highgate, the bishops came to meet her, and all kissed her hand, with the exception of Bonner, bishop of London, the principal persecutor of the Reformers, upon whom she turned her back. Notwithstanding the solemnity of the Catholic services celebrated in honour of Queen Mary and the Emperor Charles V., who had died a short time before, discreet observers saw that the queen inclined towards the party of the Reformation. Her ministers were yet more decided. Cecil, Pembroke, Northampton, and Lord John Grey, her intimate councillors, were all convinced of the immense progress which Protestantism had made during the persecution of Mary. They perceived, moreover, that the throne of their mistress rested exclusively upon Protestant principles. {326} Subject to the Pope, England must reject Elizabeth as illegitimate, since the marriage of Henry VIII. with Anne Boleyn had not been sanctioned by the Catholic Church, and the succession would be between Lady Catherine Grey, a younger sister of the unhappy Jane, grand-daughter of Mary Tudor, and Mary Stuart, queen of Scotland, dauphiness of France, grand-daughter of Margaret Tudor, wife of James IV., king of Scotland. The legitimacy of Elizabeth and her right to the throne sprang naturally from the act of supremacy. On the occasion of the ceremony of the coronation, on the 15th of January, all the bishops, with the exception of Doctor Oglethorpe, bishop of Carlisle, refused to officiate, striking a fatal blow to Roman Catholic influence in the kingdom by the hostile attitude which they thus assumed from the outset, either by their own action, or by orders emanating from Rome. Elizabeth was, however, crowned by Oglethorpe with all the ancient ceremonies, to the passionate delight of the populace of London, still in favour of the Reformation, who followed her through the streets upon her issuing forth from the Tower, where she had been formerly detained in terror of death; nosegays rained into her carriage, and shouts of gladness resounded in all quarters. Elizabeth received them with that kindly condescension which bound the hearts of her people to her, smiling when she heard the old men in the crowd declare that she resembled King Henry. "Be ye well assured," she said to the multitude that thronged around her at the Guildhall, "I shall stand your good queen." Amidst many faults and even crimes, Elizabeth was destined to keep her promise.

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The Protestants were eager to enjoy their triumph, the more eager indeed since they were a little uneasy; the queen had preserved in her chapel a crucifix and a holy-water basin; she had forbidden controversial preaching and the sermons at Paul's Cross. These measures were taken in the interest of peace and concord, it was said, but they did not satisfy the ardour of the Reformers. Lord Bacon relates that on the morrow of the coronation, one of the courtiers presented to Elizabeth a petition in favour of certain prisoners, entreating, since she had in honour of her accession delivered several captives, that she would please also to release the apostle Paul and the four evangelists so long detained in prison, in a foreign tongue, so that they could not converse with the common people. The queen gravely replied that it would be necessary first to ascertain of them whether it was agreeable to them to be released. She had, however, already authorized the reading of the liturgy in English; a commission of theologians were secretly entrusted to revise the Prayer-Book of Edward VI., before restoring it to use. Elizabeth did not approve of all the reforms practised by Cranmer; the English who had taken refuge abroad on account of their religion, and who had returned to England at her accession with a zeal increased by persecution, would soon have drawn the Church of England into a path which was not hers, if the secret tendencies of Elizabeth towards Roman Catholicism and her resolution to maintain the royal prerogative had not energetically resisted their influence. When Parliament met, on the 25th of January, 1559, the queen made no proclamation, leaving to Cecil and the keeper of the seals, Nicholas Bacon (father of the great Chancellor Bacon), the duty of making known her wishes. {328} She allowed the bill of supremacy and the restoration of the tithes and annates to the crown to be proposed and voted. She allowed the laws of King Edward concerning religion to be put in force again as well as the prayer-book as modified by her orders, but the law for the reinstatement of the married clergy interdicted under the reign of Mary, was set aside by her desire. She was never able to approve of the marriage of priests. She also discountenanced the project for a code of canon law, being uneasy, no doubt, concerning the discussions which might spring from it. This double check dissatisfied the party ardent for the Reformation. Elizabeth subsequently asserted that the Protestants had impelled her in her course at the moment of beginning her reign. She took credit to herself; Parliament had not yet raised its head. It was under the prolonged influence of the Reformation that it was destined to foster noble instincts of liberty, and even at times to triumph over the firm will of Elizabeth.

Everything depended upon the marriage of the queen, and of this all parties were sensible. The great bulk of the nation were not so anxious about the selection of a husband as about the husband himself. They ardently desired to see the succession assured, and in the first session of Parliament in 1559, a deputation presented themselves before the queen at Whitehall, with the message, that the Commons conjured her Grace to think of marriage, in order that her posterity might reign over the kingdom. {329} It was the first time that Elizabeth proclaimed that aversion to marriage which was definitely to triumph over so many assaults and momentary hesitations. "From my years of understanding, knowing myself a servitor of Almighty God," she said, "I chose this kind of life in which I do yet live as a life most acceptable unto Him, wherein I thought I could best serve Him, and with most quietness do my duty unto Him." Then, laying stress in a few sentences upon the difficulties which she had overcome under the reign of her sister, in remaining faithful to her resolution, she added, without promising the Commons to marry, that she would never choose any but a husband as devoted as herself to the happiness of her people. "I take your petition in good part, for it is simple and containeth no limitation of place or person. If it had been otherwise, I must have misliked it very much, and thought it in you a very great presumption, being unfit and altogether unmeet to require them that may command. And for me, it shall be sufficient that a marble stone declare that a queen, having reigned such time, lived and died a virgin." The Commons retired without having obtained anything definite. The same demand was to be repeated many times, and to receive answers of a very different kind; but until the end of her life Elizabeth took pleasure in keeping the world in suspense by her grave coquetries, in the expectation of a marriage which she never seriously desired.

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While Parliament was imploring the queen to take a husband, the King of Spain. Philip II., solemnly determined, by a conscientious sacrifice, to do her the supreme honour of offering his hand. Being resolved to preserve the place which he had acquired in England, and to retain that powerful kingdom in the bosom of the Catholic Church, he had written to Feria on the 10th of January, 1559, enumerating the objections which might be made to his union with his sister-in-law, and the inconveniences and sacrifices which must result from the step; but by an act of magnanimity of which he was the first to be convinced, Philip had resolved to set aside all obstacles. "You will understand in this what service I render to our Lord; through me her allegiance will be regained to the Church." Philip ended by settling beforehand all the conditions to which Elizabeth was to conform--all the submissions which she was to make to the Pope and to the Church, before being in a position to aspire to the elevation which he destined for her. Paul IV. had ill-prepared the way for the contrition of Queen Elizabeth. In the first days of her accession, when that event had been communicated to the Holy See, as well as to all the sovereigns of Europe, the Pope abruptly replied that, the Princess being illegitimate, she was to beware of laying hands upon the crown, and to lay down the sceptre as soon as possible until he should have declared concerning her rights. This claim had not inclined the queen to appreciate the generous sacrifice of Philip; she meekly rejected the advances of the Count of Feria, asserting that the friendship of her brother of Spain was as dear to her as his love could be, and that the Pope himself could not unite her to the husband of her sister. Feria spoke of the Queen of Scotland. Elizabeth did not suffer herself to be frightened, and without positively refusing the honour which the King of Spain did her, she said laughingly, that she was afraid he might be a bad husband, since he would come to England simply to marry her, but would not sojourn there with her. {331} The confidential letters of Philip had transpired: Feria understood that the definite reply would be unfavourable, but Elizabeth loaded the ambassador with attentions. A peace with France was negotiating at Cambray, and the queen who yet hoped to recover Calais, wanted the support of Philip for this important business. When peace was at length signed at Cateau-Cambresis and the violence of English resentment was appeased, on the 2nd of April, by the promise of the surrender of Calais at the end of eight years, Philip II. transferred to another Elizabeth the honour which he intended for his sister-in-law, by marrying the young Elizabeth of France, daughter of Henry II. "My name brings good-fortune." said the Queen of England on learning, not without ill-humor, the conditions of the treaty, with that singular coquetry which impelled her all her life to make use of every means to retain around her the suitors to whom she would grant nothing. The alliance between England and Spain still continued. "You will assure the queen that I remain her good friend," wrote Philip II. to Feria. He feared that she would turn towards the court of France, which was making great advances towards her. He might have reassured himself. France was then represented, in the eyes of Elizabeth, by Mary Stuart, and that princess had committed a mistake for ever ineffaceable in the eyes of Elizabeth, by quartering upon her escutcheon the arms of England with those of Scotland and France. The dauphin, in confirming the treaty, had also taken the title of King of England, Scotland, and Ireland, a fatal pretension which was to engender many crimes.

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Parliament was dissolved when Elizabeth called upon the bishops to conform themselves to the laws which had recently been re-established. All refused with the exception of Kitchen, bishop of Llandaff, formerly a Benedictine, whose habit it was to adopt at all times the religious belief of his sovereign. A certain number of dignitaries of the Church followed the example of the bishops, who found among the lower orders of the clergy very few adherents. Several bishoprics were vacant at the accession of Elizabeth. She gave pensions to a few of the clergy who retired on account of their religion, and provided for all the livings by placing in them the greater number of the exiles driven forth by the fanaticism of Mary. The Church of England was for ever lost to the Holy See, whatever hopes the Catholics might conceive in the future. The two statutes generally known under the names of the "Act of Supremacy," and the "Act of Uniformity," debarred from all public offices the conscientious Catholics who refused to recognise the religious authority of the queen, and at the same time prohibited the practice of their worship. Then began for the Catholics a silent, minute, continual persecution, penetrating into families, maintained by espionage, always vexatious, sometimes outrageous, mingling with politics and drawing therefrom the pretext for tyranny. This oppression did not break forth at first; it was in 1561 that Sir Edward Waldegrave and his wife were sent to the Tower for having entertained in their house a Catholic priest. {333} The bishops themselves were at first simply deposed; but their intemperate zeal having led some, towards the end of 1559, into presenting a petition which implored the queen to follow the example of her sister, of blessed memory, Elizabeth, greatly incensed, sent the petitioners to prison. Bonner was detained there until his death. The other prelates were at length released and even installed, sometimes with the Protestant bishops who had succeeded them, at other times with the rich clergy, to the great displeasure of both. The monasteries, recently reopened by Mary, were once more closed, and the crown again took possession of the property of the Church, which had been returned under the last reign. In the main, and notwithstanding a few modifications, the work of Cranmer and Edward VI. was restored. The opinion of the majority of the nation, and prudent policy, had overcome, in the mind of Elizabeth, her personal tastes and tendencies.

Political motives were about to unite her more and more with the Protestants of Europe. When she learned of the impertinent pretension of the dauphin to the title of King of England, she exclaimed, "I will take a husband who shall cause the head of the King of France to ache; he does not know what a rebuff I intend to give him." The queen had attributed to her the intention of uniting herself to the Earl of Arran, son of the former regent of Scotland, now known under the French title of Duke of Chatelleraut, heir presumptive to the throne of Scotland after the Stuarts. The Earl of Arran had ardently embraced the Protestant faith, and was in London in 1559, at the moment when Mary Stuart mortally offended "her good sister of England." {334} He had a secret interview with the queen at Hampton Court, and immediately set out, under an assumed name, for Scotland, accompanied by Randolph, a confidential emissary of Elizabeth. The condition of Scotland had become both complicated and aggravated by the death of the King of France, Henry II. Francis II., the husband of Mary Stuart, had determined, it was said, to expend all the property of France, if necessary, to put an end to the insurrection. It was to the support of the insurgents that the Protestant policy, then represented by Cecil, wished to pledge Queen Elizabeth, in order to bring about the marriage with the Earl of Arran, who had become King of Scotland, and that union of the two crowns which Henry VIII. had contemplated by the marriage of Edward VI. with Mary Stuart.

Nowhere had the Catholic Church offered so many vulnerable points to the Reformers as in Scotland, for nowhere were the clergy so corrupt. The Protestant doctrines, in their most austere and aggressive forms, had made such great progress there, that Knox may be regarded as the real chief of the insurrection which everywhere held the regent, Mary of Guise, in check. The violence of religious passions had already occasioned the destruction of a great number of churches and monasteries; the greater part of the nobility had abandoned the regent, to form themselves into a "Congregation of the Lord," under the direction of Lord James Stuart, an illegitimate son of James V., and a brother of Mary Stuart. {335} The troops from France alone allowed the regent to struggle against the insurgents; but the reinforcements were numerous and efficient. A French garrison had taken possession of Leith and threatened Edinburgh, when the agents of Queen Elizabeth set themselves to work, Randolph in Scotland, Sir Ralph Sadler at Berwick, where he was officially entrusted to negotiate with the delegates of the regent concerning the question of outrages upon the borders. The negotiations with the Lords of the Congregation were taking their course, still profoundly secret. Elizabeth was naturally parsimonious, and she had found the finances of England in great disorder. At the instigation of Cecil, however, she sent to Sadler considerable sums for the support of the malcontents. No blows had been struck since the recent arrangement between the regent and the great noblemen, and it was not until the month of October, 1559, that the insurgents laid siege to Leith. Hitherto Elizabeth had resolutely denied all relations with the Lords of the Congregation; but one of her agents were arrested, having in his possession a sum of two thousand pounds sterling. The hesitations and doubts of the queen often impeded the action of Cecil. She had no liking for the ardent Presbyterians. Knox, in particular, was odious to her; she had never forgiven him for a pamphlet upon female government, entitled, _The First Blast of the Trumpet against the monstrous Regiment of Women_, "I like not the audacity of Knox, whom you have well brought down in your answer," wrote Cecil to Sadler; "it does us no good here, and I suppress it as much as I can; however, fail not to send me what he writes." The subsidies did not suffice to maintain courage and discipline in the Scottish army. {336} Being repulsed before Leith, the Lords of the Congregation evacuated Edinburgh, and retired during the night to Stirling. Elizabeth resolved to adopt more efficacious measures. On the 27th of February, 1560, through the agency of Maitland of Lethington, formerly secretary of the queen regent, and who had gone over to the insurgent party, she concluded a treaty of alliance with the great Scottish noblemen, for the whole duration of the marriage of the Queen of Scotland with the King of France, undertaking not to lay down arms as long as the French should remain in Scotland. An English army crossed the frontier, under the orders of Lord Grey of Wilton; an English fleet, commanded by Winter, entered the Firth of Forth; and the Lords of the Congregation having assembled all their forces, siege was laid to Leith, on the 6th of April. The siege was still in progress on the 10th of June, when the Queen Regent, Mary of Guise, expired in Edinburgh Castle, where Lord Erskine had received her, as upon neutral ground. This death precipitated the conclusion of a peace desired by both parties. The French surrendered Leith, and went aboard their vessel again, thus delivering Scotland from their presence; and a council of twelve noblemen, chosen partly by the queen, partly by Parliament, was entrusted to govern the country in the absence of the sovereign. The court of France recognized the right of Queen Elizabeth to the throne, and her good sister Mary gave up bearing the arms of England. The treaty of Edinburgh secured in Scotland the supremacy of Protestantism, which had become the religion of the majority of the population. {337} The vote of the Scottish Parliament, in the month of August, 1560, officially severed all bonds with the court of Rome, by adopting a confession of faith drawn up by Knox and his disciples, according to the doctrines of Calvin, and striking the ecclesiastical organization at its basis, no less than the religious practices of Catholicism. Matters stood thus, when the Parliament deigned to think of the assent of the queen. Sir James Sandilands, formerly Prior of the Hospitallers, was dispatched to France to demand a ratification, which was immediately refused. It was said that the uncles of Mary, the Duke of Guise and the Cardinal of Lorraine, were making preparations for an invasion in Scotland, when the young King of France, Francis II., expired suddenly, on the 5th of December, 1560, after the reign of seventeen months. The power of Mary Stuart was suddenly eclipsed; the bright morning of her life was about to disappear behind a dark cloud heavy with misfortunes and with crimes.

While Mary, but lately queen of France, was preparing to return to her cold and rugged country, Elizabeth was keeping in check the suitors who were contending for her hand. The King of Sweden, who had been ambitious of the honour of becoming her husband when he was but heir apparent, and when she was watched at Hatfield by the spies of her sister, despatched his brother, the Duke of Finland, to renew his offer. The ambassador was courteously received, and treated with distinction by the queen; but scarcely had he been installed by order of Elizabeth in the bishop's palace at Southwark, when the King of Denmark sent his nephew, the Duke of Holstein, as a claimant to the same honour. {338} "It is said that the Archduke Philip is on the way here," wrote Cecil, "without pomp, and, so to say, in secret. The King of Spain supports him warmly; I would, in God's name, that her Majesty might accept one, and that the rest should be honourably sent back." The Archduke Charles, son of the Emperor Ferdinand, did not come; like Elizabeth herself, he hesitated. The King of Sweden was not easily put off with refusals, but the Duke of Finland was obliged to quit without having obtained anything. The Duke of Holstein at least carried away, for his uncle, the Order of the Garter, and a pension for himself. The queen was making sport of all these suitors, taking pleasure in keeping them upon the alert by her coquetry, but more tenderly concerned for a young nobleman of her court than with all the princes who were seeking her alliance. For several months past the attention of the courtiers had been excited by the signal favour which she manifested towards Lord Robert Dudley, son of the Duke of Northumberland and brother of Lord Guilford Dudley, husband of Lady Jane Grey. The passing fancy which Elizabeth had displayed for Sir William Pickering and Lord Arundel, had given place to a more durable attachment. Lord Robert, subsequently known in history under the title of the Earl of Leicester, had taken possession of the heart of the queen. He nourished the hope of marrying her, but he had a wife, whom he kept in a secluded spot in the country. One day she fell down a staircase and broke her neck, without any one being a witness of the accident. Court rumours were unfavourable to Lord Robert. He was loudly accused of having caused the death of his wife, and the queen felt how much public opinion in England was opposed to her desire to marry the man whom she loved. {339} Mary Stuart had returned to Scotland. Elizabeth, still uneasy at the claims of her rival to the crown, had tartly refused an authorization to pass through her dominions, which Mary had asked for, and the bitter feeling which had always existed between the princesses had only increased. The Lords of the Congregation had invoked the support of the Queen of England, when Mary Stuart refused to ratify the separation which they had determined upon between Scotland and Rome. Upon leaving, with regret, that France in which she had been reared, the young queen had scarcely set foot in her kingdom when she encountered the violent opposition of her subjects to the worship which she had sincerely at heart. Her Roman Catholic friends, among others the Bishop of Ross, had urged her to land in the Highlands, and surrounding herself with the forces of the Earl of Huntley, a fervent Catholic, to repair at once to Edinburgh. She rejected this clumsy proposal, which placed her at the outset in contention with the majority of the nation, and the plaudits of the population greeted her at Leith, on the 19th of August; but, on the first Sunday after her arrival when the fierce Protestants saw the altar prepared in Holyrood Chapel, an outcry was raised against the mass, and Lord James Stuart was obliged to remain before the door of the chapel, with his sword drawn during the whole time of the service, in order to prevent any scandal. He did not contrive to prevent a visit from Knox. {340} The ardent and indomitable preacher repaired to the residence of the queen, now urging her by formal solicitations, now loading her with reproaches. Mary wept; but she refused to listen any longer to Knox, and the Reformer acquired the habit of referring to her from the pulpit under the name of Jezebel. The abyss was already beginning to open between Mary Stuart and her people; the crimes of both were about to render the evil irreparable.

Queen Elizabeth had opened negotiations for persuading her good sister of Scotland to publicly renounce all claim to the crown of England, but Mary demanded to be recognized as the second person of the kingdom, heiress to the throne in case of the death of Elizabeth without issue. The queen would not admit this claim; she experienced an inexpressible repugnance towards settling the succession after her decease. Mary Stuart was not destined to be the only sufferer from this mean jealousy. Elizabeth was at times more than a man, as her minister, Robert Cecil, son of the great Burleigh, said subsequently, but she also became sometimes less than a woman. She had conceived suspicions concerning Lady Catharine Grey, sister of Lady Jane, and heiress to her rights, such as they were. It was discovered that Lady Catharine had secretly married Lord Hertford, son of the Duke of Somerset, formerly Protector. She was imprisoned in the Tower, as though she had conspired against the life and power of the queen. Her husband was travelling in France; he was peremptorily recalled and thrown into prison in his turn. The marriage was declared null, and the child that had recently been born to this pair was stamped as illegitimate. {341} Without any other pretext than state reasons the husband and wife were detained in the Tower, where Lady Catharine Grey died in 1569. The same cause had already cost the lives of two daughters of the Duchess of Suffolk; the third was shortly afterwards to pay, like them, for the royal blood which ran in her veins.

Arthur and Anthony Pole, nephews of the Cardinal, had made a vain attempt in favour of Queen Mary, whom there was a project it is said, for marrying to one of the two brothers, when they should have placed her upon the throne of England; but the queen felt no uneasiness from this source, and she pardoned all the accused persons. She could not, however, conceal from herself that the Catholic princes in general looked upon her with distrust, and would willingly seek a pretext in the illegitimacy of her birth to conspire against her in favour of the Queen of Scotland. This secret motive, far more than her religious convictions, lead her to maintain abroad the cause of the oppressed Protestants, who turned their eyes towards the Queen of England. In France, the Reformers, under the orders of the Prince of Condé and the Admiral de Coligny, had risen at the beginning of 1562, upon the violation by the Duke of Guise of the recent treaties and the massacre of the Protestants at Vassy. They immediately claimed the assistance of Queen Elizabeth. Philip II., who had sent six thousand men to support the Duke of Guise, advised him to keep out of the quarrel and to remain neutral; but Elizabeth had adopted the theory, that she was seconding the wishes of the King of France, by fighting against the Guises, who endeavoured to tyrannize over him. {342} Under this pretext, she sent three thousand men to France, with instructions to take possession of Havre, as a pledge for the good intentions of the Huguenots towards her. At the same time she furnished money to the prince of Condé. An English detachment sent to the assistance of the besieged people in Rouen, was cut to pieces, after the capture of the town. But the garrison of Havre had been reinforced; the Earl of Warwick, brother of Lord Robert Dudley, was in command of the town; he remained firm for nine months both against treachery and the armies of the French. He only yielded to the plague, when infection had thinned his forces. Wounded and ill himself, he was concerned only for the fate of the soldiers whom he brought back when he returned to England in the month of July, 1563, bringing with him the pestilence which had triumphed over all his efforts. Thousands of victims succumbed to the plague which ravaged London during the months of September and October. Elizabeth was negotiating with Queen Catharine of Medicis. The Protestants had been vanquished, but the Duke of Guise was dead, assassinated by Poltrot. Peace was signed on the 11th of April, 1564, at Troves, and the last hope of regaining Calais vanished with the departure of the hostages whom France had given shortly before; Elizabeth received in exchange the sum of a hundred and twenty thousand crowns, a sum very useful to her treasury, which was then empty.

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The Parliament of England had, nevertheless, voted considerable subsidies in the preceding year, not without repeating its constant request in favour of the marriage of the queen. The Commons had added on this occasion another petition, which sounded ill in the royal ears. In the event of her Grace having decided for ever against marriage, she was implored to permit Parliament to designate and recognize her legitimate successor. Once more Elizabeth led her people to hope that she was thinking of marriage. She was then engaged in the Scottish intrigues respecting the marriage of Mary Stuart, more probable, although as much debated as her own. Religious and political parties continued to rend Scotland asunder. The Catholics, under the order of the Earl of Huntly, had been defeated at Corrichie by the Earl of Murray, formerly Lord James Stuart, at the head of the Protestants. It was constantly repeated that such or such a one of the great opposing noblemen aspired to the hand of Queen Mary, and they were not the only aspirants. Her beauty, her charms, and the prospect of the crown of England added to the crown of Scotland, drew upon her the eyes and the ambitious hopes of a crowd of princes. The King of Spain proposed his son and heir Don Carlos, and the treaty had been sufficiently advanced by the care of the skilful ambassador of Philip in London, the Bishop of Quadra. When that prelate died, the negotiations relaxed [and] the Guises spoke of the Duke of Anjou, subsequently Henry III., of the Duke of Ferrara, and of several others; but all these claimants were Catholics, the Scottish nation was hostile to them, and Queen Elizabeth did not conceal the fact that any union with a foreign prince, opening up to her enemies the road to her dominions, would bring about war. {344} A personal interview had been projected between the two queens. Mary was, it was said, desirous of consulting her good sister and of proceeding according to her advice, but Elizabeth, vain as she may have been and whatever care she may have taken to cause her beauty to be exalted by her courtiers, at the expense of the charms of her rival, had no wish to face the comparison; the two princesses never saw each other. The Queen of England, meanwhile, proposed for the husband of Mary Stuart, the man whom she herself loved, Lord Robert Dudley, whom she soon raised to the rank of Earl of Leicester. Did she act sincerely? Did she seriously wish to make the fortune of Leicester through the hands of Mary, when politics and her personal scruples did not allow her to raise him to her own level? None will ever know this; but the negotiations were renewed several times, Elizabeth continuing to insist upon marrying the Queen of Scotland to a great English nobleman, and refusing to hear of any but Leicester. People spoke of Lord Darnley, the eldest son of the Earl of Lennox, and grandson, by his mother, of Lady Margaret Douglas, of the Earl of Angus and of Margaret Tudor, Queen of Scotland, and aunt of Elizabeth. He was, therefore, cousin-german to Mary Stuart, and his father, for a long while exiled from Scotland, whither he had recently returned, had immediately undertaken to bring about his marriage with the queen. His birthplace was in England, and he was an English subject, but Elizabeth did not favour his pretensions. Resting her hand upon the shoulder of Leicester, she said to Melville, the skilful and faithful envoy of Mary Stuart, "What do you think of this man? Is he not a good servant? And, nevertheless, you prefer that stripling to him?" referring to Darnley who bore the sword of justice before her. {345} Notwithstanding these objections, Darnley arrived in Scotland at the beginning of the year 1565. and was received kindly by Queen Mary. He was handsome and of good figure; his mother was skilful and intriguing. The confidants of Mary were all gained over; the queen was not opposed to this union. Lord Murray, who counted upon retaining power, counselled the marriage; Parliament did likewise. Queen Elizabeth was informed of what was happening and her anger was violent. Cecil still hoped that Mary Stuart would marry Leicester and so ward off from the head of his mistress the danger of a union which constantly occupied his thoughts. The grave objections of her "good sister" were made known to the Queen of Scotland. Elizabeth went further; the property which the Lennoxes possessed in England was confiscated, and the Countess of Lennox and her second son were sent to the Tower. Sir Nicholas Throgmorton, in whom Elizabeth had confidence was despatched to Scotland, to intrigue with the Lords of the Congregation; they were by slow degrees separating themselves from Mary, and Murray was the first to blame what he had himself advised a short time before. The preachers thundered against the possibility of a union with a Roman Catholic king. Mary was solemnly invited by the assembly of the Church to conform herself to the Protestant faith, by abolishing everywhere in her dominions the Catholic worship. {346} Plot succeeded plot, but Mary was, she said, too much involved to draw back, and on the 12th of July, Darnley, whom the queen had recently raised to the rank of Earl of Ross and Duke of Rothsay, married Mary Stuart in Holyrood Chapel. He was proclaimed king at the Cross in the market-place of Edinburgh. The Earl of Murray and the greater part of the Lords of the Congregation immediately rose in insurrection; but before they were able to assemble their forces, the queen marched upon them at the head of the royal army, and with pistols at her saddle-bow. The lords turned their horses' heads and retired without fighting. Lord Murray and the Duke of Chatellerault only stopped in their flight when they had crossed the frontier. They were ill-received by Elizabeth, though she had encouraged them in their revolt, for she liked neither the insurgents nor those who were vanquished, and she did not intervene in their favour with Mary, who had caused a bill of attainder to be declared by her Parliament against the chiefs of the insurrection. At the same time, Mary committed the error to which she had for a long time been solicited by her uncles of Guise. She united herself to the great Catholic alliance formed several years before between France and Spain, and renewed, it was said, at Bayonne, in 1564. The continual difficulties caused by the rebellions of the great nobles, and by the intrigues of England, naturally tended to throw Mary into the arms of the Catholic sovereigns; it was a fatal blunder on the part of the Queen of Scotland, but her guilt was of another kind.

[Image] Mary, Queen Of Scots.

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Darnley was both incompetent and unmannerly, violent and weak. The affection which he had inspired in Mary Stuart soon disappeared and gave place to contempt. She has been accused of worse still; the niece of the Guises, brought up by Catherine of Medicis, amidst all the disorder of morals which reigned at the court of France, had a bad reputation among the austere Presbyterians; they attributed the most unworthy motives to the elegant tastes for frivolous pastimes which led the queen to surround herself with young men, with foreigners and artists. No one was more suspected among the favourites of Mary than an Italian, David Rizzio, who had won her good graces by his musical talents, and to whom she had gradually confided important trusts. Rizzio had especially aroused the jealousy of Darnley; the Italian had, it was said, taken the liberty of reproaching the young king with his behaviour towards Mary; he also encouraged the queen in her refusal to confer upon Darnley the crown as her consort instead of the vain title which he bore. A plot was hatched against the life of Rizzio. At the head of the conspirators was Lord Ruthven, who had been a short time before in a dying condition, and who arose from his sick-bed to take part in a deed of blood with Lord Morton, chancellor of the kingdom. Their aim was to recall the Earl of Murray and the exiled lords, by revoking the acts passed against them by Parliament.

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On the 9th of March, 1566, Mary was supping in her apartment with her ladies, and Rizzio was in the room, when the young king came to the palace, followed by Ruthven. The queen rose in alarm, for the other conspirators had just entered. Ruthven ordered Rizzio to leave the chamber, but Mary placed herself before her favourite, who clung to her dress. Darnley seized the hands of his wife; the table was overthrown; the unhappy Italian cried, "Mercy! justice! justice!" George Douglas drew the dagger of Darnley, and struck the secretary. Andrew Ket, one of the conspirators, presented his pistol close to the body of the queen, who implored them to spare Rizzio. He was dragged out, and was pierced by numerous dagger-thrusts in the antechamber, while Morton guarded the doors of the palace with a troop of armed men. When Mary heard that Rizzio was dead, she stood erect. "I will now dry up my tears," she said, "and I will think of revenge." Darnley endeavoured to console the queen; she suffered him to believe that she accepted his excuses, and when his brother, Lord Murray, presented himself on the morrow at Holyrood, with the banished noblemen, she received him without anger, and contrived to detach him from those who had exerted themselves on his behalf, perhaps without his knowledge. Morton and Ruthven, abandoned by Darnley and Murray, immediately took to flight, while the Earl of Bothwell and Lord Huntley were bringing to the queen an army of eighteen thousand men, that they had immediately levied. Mary was once more mistress of the situation. Two obscure accomplices in the murder of Rizzio alone bore the penalty of the crime, and on the 9th of June, 1566, the queen gave birth to a son, who was to become James VI. of Scotland, and James I. of England. Elizabeth had promised to act as godmother to the child of the Queen of Scotland. When the prince was born, Melville departed in all haste, to bear the news to London.

[Image] "George Douglass Seized Darnley's Dagger And Struck Rizzio."

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Cecil was the first informed; he repaired to Greenwich; the queen was dancing after supper. "But," wrote Melville, "when the secretary of state whispered in her ear of the birth of a Prince, the merriment disappeared for the evening. Everybody was astonished at the change, but the queen sank into a chair, with her hand upon her cheek, saying to her ladies that the Queen of Scotland was the mother of a fine boy, while she was but a barren stem." On the morrow, Elizabeth had regained her composure, and she graciously congratulated the ambassador, despatching the Earl of Bedford to Scotland with her gifts, to be present at the baptism of the little prince. Darnley did not wish to take part in the ceremony; he knew that the Queen of England had forbidden her emissaries to bestow royal honours upon him.

He had, besides, other causes for dissatisfaction. A growing coldness existed between his wife and himself. The apparent reconcilliation which had followed the murder of Rizzio, had not lasted long, and Darnley thought of going away from Scotland, and travelling upon the Continent. Queen Mary had addressed a letter to the privy council of Elizabeth, claiming the recognition of her hereditary rights, a matter which had recently been mooted in the English Parliament, to the great exasperation of her Majesty. The Commons had even insisted more than usual, notwithstanding the ordinary promise of the queen to think of marriage. Elizabeth had recently been ill, and the terrors of a contested succession had drawn forth the deputies from their ordinary state of submission. {350} When the request of Mary arrived, the queen of England abruptly imposed silence upon the Commons. "Under the pretexts of marriage and succession, many amongst you conceal hostile intentions," she said, "but I have learnt to distinguish my friends from my enemies, and take care, whoever be the sovereign who holds the reins of government, not to wear out his patience as you have done mine." She gave instructions to the Earl of Bedford to induce Mary to ratify the treaty of Edinburgh, which yet remained pending, and which contained verbally, the renunciation of the rights which Mary claimed, promising to regulate the question of the succession by a fresh treaty. Mary refused, but, in order not to exasperate her powerful rival, she consented at the request of Bedford to pardon Morton, Ruthven, and Lindsay, who had taken refuge in England after the murder of Rizzio. Darnley no doubt conceived fears at the news of the return of Morton, for he immediately left the court and sought retirement at the residence of the Earl of Lennox near Glasgow.

Scarcely had the young king arrived at his father's house when he caught the small-pox. He was in great danger, and the queen sent her physician to him, without going to see him herself, as long as he was seriously ill. She remembered, no doubt, that while in a dying condition the preceding summer, at Jedburgh, her husband had not troubled himself to go and see her. When Darnley was convalescent, Mary consented to a fresh reconciliation. She repaired to Glasgow and took the king with her to Edinburgh. {351} She took up her residence as usual at Holyrood, but the fear of infection caused Darnley to be installed in an isolated house, where the queen went to see him. Rumours of conspiracy were already afloat; the insolent Darnley had few friends and many enemies. He was, however, warned by the Earl of Orkney that if he did not promptly quit this place, he would lose his life there, but the king had been smitten again with a capricious passion for his wife. He only saw through his eyes, and a word from the mouth of Mary soon quieted his suspicions. On the 9th of February, 1567, the queen supped with him, then left him at eleven o'clock for a ball which she was giving at Holyrood, in honour of the marriage of one of her servants. Three hours after her departure, at two o'clock in the morning, the house in which Darnley was alone with five servants, was suddenly blown up, and the body of the unhappy king was found in the garden, beside that of a page, without trace of burning or of any violence, while the other victims remained buried beneath the rubbish. No one had escaped. The blow had been struck by a sure hand. Mary was again a widow.

The public voice immediately accused the Earl of Bothwell. His violent passion for the queen was known; it was even whispered that it was mutual, notwithstanding the signs of grief shown by Mary, who remained shut up in an apartment hung with black. The details of the crime indicated long premeditation and skilful accomplices. Nearly all the ministers of the queen, Maitland especially, were implicated in the suspicions of the public. Nobody laid hands upon the principal person accused, even when the Earl of Lennox demanded his arrest. {352} He was allowed to take possession of Edinburgh Castle before a warrant of arrest was granted against him. He appeared at the bar of the court of justice, but rather in triumph than as an accused person. The Earl of Lennox, alarmed at the attitude of the assassins of his son, had fled and taken refuge in England. Bothwell was acquitted, and bore the sceptre before the queen at the opening of Parliament. Darnley had been sleeping only one month in his bloody tomb, and already the rumour was afloat that the queen was about to marry the Earl of Bothwell, whom general opinion regarded as the murderer of her husband. Bothwell had been married six months before to the sister of the Earl of Huntley.

In the midst of this court agitated by such violent passions and tainted by such dark acts of treachery, the queen had a few faithful friends, and these warned her of the sinister rumours which circulated concerning her. Her honest envoy, Melville, relates how he took her a letter from England upon this subject; the queen showed it to the Secretary Maitland: "Bothwell will kill you," said the politician; "retire before he comes within this place." And, as Melville persisted, the queen sharply replied that matters had not yet come to that, although she refused to go into details.

Bothwell had, however, taken his precautions and secured powerful partisans. He brought together at a banquet all the principal members of Parliament, and there, protesting his innocence of the murder of Darnley, he announced his intention of marrying the queen. Whether from fear or from promises of advantage, the guests signed a document which Bothwell produced, recommending the earl for the husband of Mary, and they undertook to favour the marriage by every means. {353} Four days later Bothwell gathered together a thousand horses. He planted himself in the way of the queen, who was returning from Stirling, between Linlithgow and Edinburgh, where she had been to see the little prince. He fell upon the royal escort, and himself laying hands upon the bridle of Mary's horse, he dragged her, with her principal councillors, into Dunbar Castle, exclaiming at the moment of the capture, "that he would marry the queen, whether people wished it or not, whether she wished it herself or not," he detained her for five days in the fortress, without her subjects attempting the slightest effort to deliver her. On the 29th of April, when she was restored to liberty, the queen appeared before the session court, announcing with shame that notwithstanding the outrages which the Earl of Bothwell had made her suffer, she was disposed to pardon him and to raise him to fresh honours. On the 15th of May, the marriage was celebrated publicly at Holyrood, according to the Protestant rites, and in private according to the Catholic rites. Bothwell had legally separated himself from his wife; the murderer had obtained the object of his crime.

Hitherto silence had been preserved as to the guilt of Bothwell, but the public conscience was shocked by the marriage. At the same time burst forth the plots which had long been in preparation to hurl Mary from the throne. Scarcely had she, whether willingly or under compulsion, concluded this odious union, when revolt suddenly threw off its mask. {354} The great nobles had signed the engagement of Bothwell; now they loudly accused him of the murder of Darnley, manifested their fears for the life of the little prince, and announced the intention of delivering the queen from the yoke of her husband. An attempt to take possession of Bothwell's person having failed, the confederates marched upon Edinburgh, where they seized the government; but Mary rarely shrank from violence; she was resolute and quick; on the 15th of June, a month after her marriage, she was at Carbery Hill at the head of the troops that she had raised, in the face of the army of the insurgents. No blows were struck. The ambassador of France, the aged Le Croc, endeavoured to negotiate between the two parties. The forces of the confederates increased every moment; the soldiers of the queen appeared valiant. Bothwell proposed single combat to the hostile chiefs. Several accepted, but without result. It was at length agreed to allow Bothwell to proceed without obstacle, provided the queen should consent to return to her capital, where her faithful subjects surrounded her with honour and respect. Two hours later Bothwell departed at a gallop, and placed himself in safety; but Mary was a prisoner, and she was conducted to the house of the Provost of Edinburgh, where she remained shut up for twenty-four hours without being approached by any one. On the morrow, after nightfall, a numerous guard took the captive to Lochleven Castle, under the custody of William Douglas and his mother, formerly the mistress of James V. and the mother of Murray. Bothwell soon left the kingdom.

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The anger of Elizabeth, at the news of the arrest of Mary, was violent and unfeigned. Not that she took much interest in the rival whose power she had incessantly endeavoured to ruin, through fear of the enterprises which she might attempt against England, but the outrage suffered by the Queen of Scotland cast a reflection upon all sovereigns. It was a blow at the regal dignity, the fruit of the pernicious principles which Knox and his adherents propagated. Sir Nicholas Throgmorton was sent to the confederate noblemen to command them to deliver their queen; but Cecil was in no such haste as his mistress to see Mary out of prison. His private instructions relaxed the ardour of the negotiator. The lords of the council had lost no time. Lord Lindsay appeared at Lochleven, the bearer of an act of abdication in favour of the little prince. The queen was invited to sign it; she refused. Lindsay took hold of her arm, and squeezing it in his iron gauntlet, "Sign," he said, "if you do not wish to die as the assassin of your husband." The queen signed without looking at the paper, merely raising her sleeve to show to those present the traces of the violence which she had just suffered. The uncouth warrior was himself ashamed. "I did not know that the flesh of women was like newly-fallen snow," he muttered; but he carried away the document. King James VI. was proclaimed and crowned on the 20th of June, and on the 22nd of August the Earl of Murray, who had returned to Scotland, after a prudent absence, was declared regent of the kingdom. He paid a visit to his sister at Lochleven, and asserted that he only accepted that office out of consideration for the prayers and tears of Mary. {356} In the month of December, an act of the council declared the queen an accomplice in the murder of her husband, and in the abduction of her person by Bothwell. The deed was proved, it was said, by a correspondence between Mary and Bothwell, recently discovered by the Earl of Morton. The responsibility of the deposition of the queen fell entirely on her own head, and was but the just punishment of her crimes.

Justice or the violence of men might take everything from Mary Stuart, except the power of her charms. Even at Lochleven, she contrived to make partisans and win friends. On the 2nd of May, 1568, the lords of the council suddenly learnt that the queen had escaped from Lochleven, through the skill of a young man who had contrived to steal the keys. She arrived by night at Hamilton Castle, and had already revoked her abdication. A week had not elapsed before she had gathered an army around her.

The situation was critical, but the regent and his friends contrived to face the danger. As Mary advanced towards Dunbarton Castle, she encountered a body of troops, small in number, but disciplined and well armed; her partisans sprang to the combat with more zeal than strategy; they were soon defeated and put to flight. The deserted queen at first escaped the pursuit of her enemies, but she felt that she was closely pressed. The thought of the horrors of a prison chilled her with fear; she had expected death when she had been in the hands of her revolted subjects; she resolved to place herself under the protection of her good sister, Queen Elizabeth, and to proceed to England. The friends who yet surrounded her were opposed to this project. {357} The Archbishop of St. Andrew's implored her upon his knees to abandon it; but Mary would listen to nothing; she stepped into a little fishing-boat to cross the Solway, and landed, on the 16th of May, at Workington, a fortnight after her escape from Lochleven, hence to direct her course at once towards Carlisle. Arrived there, she despatched a messenger to solicit an interview with Elizabeth. The fugitive queen was already lodged in a fortress, rather as a prisoner than as a sovereign, when she received the reply of Elizabeth to her request. The Queen of England could not see her, it was said, until she should have cleared herself of all suspicion with regard to the death of her husband.

Elizabeth had refused to grant the title of regent to Murray, and she had appeared to espouse the cause of Mary; but the policy of Cecil received too opportune an assistance from the imprudent confidence of the Queen of Scotland, to allow the opportunity to pass without profiting by it. The captive committed the mistake of asking that, if the queen could not protect her, she would at least allow her to traverse her kingdom, to go and beg the support of the foreign princes, "the King of France and the King of Spain being bound to come to her assistance on this occasion." The Catholic confederation in Scotland, at the threshold of England, was too real a danger for the wisdom of Elizabeth not to be struck with it. She consented to the proposal of Cecil, and offered to serve as arbitrator between the Queen of Scotland and her subjects, through the agency of an English commission. Mary indignantly refused. She could not and would not degrade the crown of Scotland to the condition of vassalage; she was the queen and independent. {358} The judges who were suggested to her, had at all times fomented the agitations against her, and supported her enemies. She asked for no other favour than liberty to return to Scotland, or to repair to France. She had come to England upon the faith of the assurances of friendship which Queen Elizabeth had transmitted to her while she was at Lochleven. "Being innocent, as, thank God, I know I am, do you not (she asked) do me a wrong by keeping me here?"

In reply to this appeal, which it was difficult to reject with common justice, Mary was transferred from Carlisle to Bolton Castle. The agents of Elizabeth, in all the courts of Europe, appeared to have given the signal to each other to alarm her concerning the consequences of the liberation of the Queen of Scotland. "Her Grace now holds the wolf who wished to devour her," wrote, from Paris, Sir Henry Norris; "it is said that there is a conspiracy between the King of France, the King of Spain, and the Pope, to ruin her Majesty, and to put the Queen of Scotland in her place."

Elizabeth sent a messenger to Scotland, to call upon the regent and the confederate lords to cease hostilities; but her representations had little effect, while the manœuvres of the Scottish insurgents powerfully impressed her. She began to believe in the crime of which Mary so vigorously protested her innocence, and she demanded that the Queen of Scotland should exculpate herself in her eyes, promising to place her again upon the throne if her innocence should be proved; for, at the bottom of her heart, and in her royal sympathy for sovereigns, she had been and remained shocked at the audacity of the Scots, who had dared to dethrone their queen, whatever might have been her faults. {359} The regent had replied to the reproaches and threats of the Queen of England, that "if Elizabeth wished to wage war against them, they would not sacrifice their lives, and would not risk their possessions, by passing as rebels in the world, when they had in their hands the means of justifying themselves, whatever regret that might occasion them."

The die was cast; the accusers of Queen Mary, her brother, Lord Murray, and his constant enemy, Lord Morton, were to come from Scotland, to be confronted with her before the commission of English judges. All parties were equally uncertain, respecting the result of the conference, for all distrusted Queen Elizabeth, who had lavished upon both sides the most contradictory promises. Mary counted upon her to replace her again upon her throne. "I have abandoned despatching my letters to the courts of France and Spain, relying upon the promises of your Grace, and wishing, if I am to be restored to the throne, that it may be solely by the means of the court of England." However, Cecil had assured Murray "that it was not intended to re-establish the Queen of Scotland, if her crime is proved, whatever her friends may say."

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The conferences opened at York, upon the 4th of October. There were repeated all the arguments, there were enumerated all the facts well known in history. Mary threw the guilt of the crime not only upon Bothwell, but upon his accomplices, causing it to be clearly understood that her accusers had good reasons for making the whole weight of it fall upon her. She resolutely denied the genuineness of the letters found in her casket, of which copies only had been produced at first, and she demanded to be admitted to the queen, to defend herself in her presence. The conferences were transferred from York to Westminster. The Queen of England and her ministers felt the necessity for following more closely the dark intrigues which intersected each other in all directions around the captive queen. The secretary Maitland had opened negotiations for the marriage of the Queen of Scotland with the Duke of Norfolk, affirming that the Protestantism of the great English nobleman would reassure the reforming party in Scotland, and would definitively re-establish the throne of the Queen. It is probable that the designs of the skilful intriguer went further. He was aware of the secret discontent of the English Catholics, of the powerful friends whom Norfolk could rally around him, and he hoped no doubt to raise a revolt in England. The wisdom of Cecil saw through the manœuvre. The liberty of Mary was for ever lost, even could her innocence have been proven, which it assuredly was not. Mary in Scotland constantly threatened the throne of Elizabeth. The servants of the Queen of England were even alarmed for her life. Mary in prison was dangerous, no doubt, but the peril was less and the question of the justice of the detention of a sovereign who had voluntarily come to place herself under the protection of her relative, did not enter into the matter. {361} On the 11th of January, 1569, after three months of conferences and intrigues, Elizabeth publicly declared to the Regent Murray that nothing had been proved against his honour or that of his partisans, but that the crimes imputed to Queen Mary had not been demonstrated with sufficient clearness to inspire her with a bad opinion of her good sister. Nevertheless, Murray returned freely to Scotland, supplied with the money which was necessary for the support of his government, and Mary remained in prison, in spite of her protestations and anger. Elizabeth several times found means of counselling her to abandon the crown and to lead a peaceful life in England, but Mary firmly replied that she was determined to die rather than to comply with such suggestions; that justice required that she should be reestablished upon her throne, after which "she would show as much clemency to the authors of her troubles, as should appear to her compatible with her honour and the good of her kingdom." The captive also protested that she would not consent to proceed further away from the frontier; but, on the 26th of January, in cold and gloomy weather, the beautiful queen was compelled to mount a wretched horse, and accompanied by a few ladies, and a small number of servants, to ride as far as Tutbury Castle in Staffordshire, a fortress belonging to the Earl of Shrewsbury. This nobleman was henceforth entrusted with her custody, a constant anxiety to the sovereign who under the influence of female jealousy had belied the nobler side of her character, and who now could find no place sufficiently strong, no jailor sufficiently vigilant to keep the prisoner whom she was unjustly detaining.

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The affairs of Queen Elizabeth were as much complicated abroad as at home, and her external policy was neither frank nor sincere. The oppression of the United Provinces by the King of Spain had aroused a general discontent which brought about insurrections in the towns, and the beginning of that indomitable rebellion which was to end in the dismemberment of the Low Countries. The Prince of Orange had placed himself at the head of the oppressed people, protecting the religious and political liberties of his country, and his great struggle with the terrible Duke of Alba had begun. Everywhere the Protestants felt themselves threatened, and conspiracies recommenced in France. The Prince of Orange and the Prince of Condé both applied to Queen Elizabeth for assistance and money. The queen secretly supported them in a niggardly and unwilling fashion, though urged by Cecil, whose policy was more firm, whose intelligence was more clear-sighted, and whose views were broader than those of his mistress; but she took care loudly to protest her friendship for the King of Spain and Charles IX., while encouraging the open or secret enemies who were struggling against their power. Upon all stages and in all countries of Europe the policy of the sixteenth century continually presents that character of duplicity and falsehood which necessarily results from the absence of publicity and control, but which renders history difficult to understand, and more difficult to relate.

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Amidst the embarrassments which the claimants of the succession to the crown of England caused her, Elizabeth had resumed, it, indeed, she had ever abandoned her matrimonial negotiations. The Archduke Charles was yet unmarried, and, in 1567, the queen solemnly sent the Earl of Sussex, as ambassador, to Vienna, to deal with the great question of religion. The archduke had never come to England, although he had several times been invited, and the queen declared that she would never marry a man without having seen him. Sussex lavished upon her descriptions of the person of the Archduke, not without adding to them the attraction of his domains, and of the great position which he occupied at the court of the Emperor. He assured the prince that this time the queen wished to proceed seriously in the matter, since she was free to marry whomsoever she should think fit, and she had never inclined towards any other union. The archduke felt much honoured, but when the question of religion was opened, he frankly declared that his ancestors had always professed the same religion as himself, that he knew no other, and would never change it. Elizabeth then urged the Protestant feeling of her subjects, without, however, breaking off the negotiations, which only ended on the day when the archduke married the daughter of the Duke of Bavaria.

The embarrassments of Elizabeth in England were complicated through the progress of the intrigue having for its object the marriage of Mary with the Duke of Norfolk. Elizabeth had openly spoken of it to the Duke, who had excused himself, affirming that he could never think of uniting himself to a princess who had raised claims to the throne of England, nor to a woman whose husband could not sleep peacefully upon his pillow. {364} This allusion to the fate of Darnley had for a moment lulled the distrust of the Queen of England, but Cecil was alive to all the dangers which threatened his mistress. He had a short time before discovered the marriage of Lady Mary Grey, sister of Lady Jane and Lady Catherine. "What a mischance!" he wrote; "Sergeant Portier, the tallest and fattest of the gentlemen of the court, has conceived the idea of secretly marrying Lady Mary Grey, the shortest of all the ladies. They have been placed in separate prisons, the crime being very great." And the jealousy of Elizabeth towards any who approached the throne closely, or at a distance, was so excessive, that the unhappy Mary remained in prison until her death, without ever seeing her husband again. Deplorable end of a family doomed to the most tragic reverses!

Cecil had personal reasons for watching the intrigue for the marriage of Mary with the Duke of Norfolk. The Earl of Leicester, always jealous of the influence of the great Minister with his mistress, endeavoured secretly to undermine a power which he dared not attack face to face, and he exerted himself to attach the powerful Norfolk by urging him on in his perilous undertaking. The duke hesitated, but the Earl of Arundel and the Earl of Pembroke united themselves with Leicester. They despatched to Queen Mary articles of marriage, intended to insure the security of Elizabeth, by the total renunciation by Mary of her pretensions to the crown of England, and by an alliance, offensive and defensive, with the queen, her good sister. Mary Stuart was to allow the reformed religion to be established in Scotland, and to give her hand to the Duke of Norfolk.

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People who are anxious to get out of prison are ready to accept harsh conditions, especially when they are not firmly resolved to observe them. Mary promised all that was desired with the sole reservation that the consent of Elizabeth should be obtained to the marriage. "All my misfortunes," she said, "have arisen from the anger of my sister, when I married Darnley." Leicester was counted upon to obtain this favour, and the duke wrote the most passionate letters to Mary, through the agency of the Bishop of Ross, who was still faithful to his mistress. The consent of the Kings of Spain and France had been asked for, and Murray was to propose to the Parliament of Scotland the liberation of the Queen.

He proposed it, in effect, though probably without any great sincerity. Mary had brought many misfortunes and few benefits to Scotland, and her brother had not that attachment for her which causes all other considerations to be forgotten. The articles coming from England were rejected; the question of the divorce which Bothwell had caused to be declared in Denmark was not even examined, and Queen Elizabeth was warned of what was preparing in the dark. She was at Farnham; the rumour of the marriage circulated at the court. Leicester had taken no step with regard to it as yet. Norfolk was there, not daring to go away; he dined at the table of the queen, who one day said to him, with a significant look, which reminded him of his own words, "Good evening, my lord duke; be careful upon what pillow you rest your head." Norfolk took alarm. A few days afterwards, the court was at Titchfield. {366} Leicester fell ill; the queen hastened to his bedside, and there impelled by remorse and keeping up the farce of passion, Leicester avowed to her with tears that he had acted disloyally towards her, by endeavouring, unknown to her, to marry her rival to the Duke of Norfolk. Leicester obtained his pardon, but the royal displeasure rested upon the Duke of Norfolk. The disfavour of Elizabeth was dangerous; the Duke retired to Kenninghall, whence he was soon recalled. A French servant of Mary Stuart, arrested in Scotland, had, it is said, made fresh revelations upon the complicity of his mistress in the murder of Darnley; the servant was executed, but the imprisoned queen remained exposed to the anger and indignation of Elizabeth. An insurrection in the North was feared, for the Earls of Arundel and Pembroke had both quitted the court. Norfolk was conducted to the Tower; the Bishop of Ross was arrested, although he pleaded the privilege of an ambassador, and all the noblemen compromised in the intrigue received an order to retire to their homes. The anxieties of Elizabeth, real or feigned, were not without some foundation. The Catholics of her kingdom, groaning under a secret but cruel oppression, naturally turned towards the Queen of Scotland, in their eyes the legitimate heiress to the throne, sanctified by her misfortunes, surrounded by the double fascination of her charms and of that faith towards which she had always manifested the most sincere attachment. The Huguenots had recently suffered great disasters at the battle of Jarnac, where the Prince of Condé had been killed, and also at the battle of Moncontour. {367} The English noblemen whom the queen had gradually allowed to pass into the service of the French Protestants were compelled to return to England, whither they brought gloomy tales of the cruelty of the victorious Catholics, and of their resolve to cause Catholicism to triumph everywhere, no matter by what means. To complete the hostility of the Continent, Queen Elizabeth, always greedy for money, had taken possession in time of peace of a fleet of Spanish galleons, bearing to the Duke of Alba the sums sent him by the King of Spain, which fleet had taken refuge upon the coast in order to escape the Huguenot vessels. It was pretended, at the court of England, that the money did not belong to Philip II., but to some Genoese and Lombard bankers, who could have no objection to lend it to Queen Elizabeth. The vessels of the English merchant navy had all become pirates, stopping and pillaging Spanish and French ships, seconding the attempts and projects of the Huguenots upon all coasts, and bringing arms and supplies to them. Some convoys setting out for La Rochelle were even accompanied by royal vessels, and the queen secretly authorized a great number of noblemen to take service in the army of the Huguenots, or in that of the Prince of Orange, while she replied to the complaints of the Spanish and French ambassadors by the assurance of her friendship for their sovereigns and of her wish to preserve the peace. Treachery was met by treachery. A conspiracy, half Spanish, half French, was preparing upon the Continent, to encourage the insurrection of the Catholics. Ridolfi, an agent sent from Italy, had communication with the Duke of Alba on passing through the Low Countries. {368} Evil designs were secretly meditated against the life of Elizabeth, and the representations of the governor-general, who did not believe in the possibility of success, having had no effect upon his master, the intrigue was developed in the north of England; the tyranny of Elizabeth had itself paved the way for it.

Captive princes always find means of communicating with their partisans, however close may be their prison, and however strict the supervision may appear. Mary Stuart had entered into relations with all the great Catholic noblemen of Yorkshire, Durham and Northumberland. An attempt at escape had even been organized, which was to place her at the head of her little army, but the project collapsed, and, on the 16th of November, 1569, the Earls of Northumberland and Westmoreland, with a great number of noblemen and retainers, raised the standard of revolt, with the intention of marching upon Tutbury, to deliver and proclaim the captive queen. Upon the way the insurgents burnt in the churches the prayer books, while announcing everywhere that the Catholic religion was re-established, and summoning all good Catholics to join them. But Mary had already been transferred from Tutbury to Coventry. The populations did not respond to the appeal of the rebels; the southern counties took up arms against them. A goodly number of Catholics joined the royal army, assembled at York. Uneasy and irresolute, the two earls fell back upon Praby Castle. They besieged Sir George Bowes, in Barnard Castle, compelled him to capitulate, and planted themselves in the little port of Hartlepool, hoping to receive Spanish assistance through the Low Countries.

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Meanwhile the Earl of Sussex, who had delayed so long at York that suspicions had been aroused as to his loyalty, was at length advancing against the rebels with the reinforcements which the Earl of Warwick had brought him. The insurgents fell back slowly towards the frontier of Scotland, and soon took refuge, without fighting, in that kingdom, the support of which they had hoped for. Elizabeth at once demanded the surrender of all the chiefs. Murray could not or would not satisfy this requirement. The Earl of Northumberland alone was in his hands. The Earl of Westmoreland, Egremont, Ratcliff, and the other great noblemen were in safety at the residences of their Scottish friends, who furnished them with means to reach the Low Countries. The regent sent his prisoner to Lochleven, saying that he would exchange him for Queen Mary; but before the negotiation had begun, even before Lord Leonard Dacre, the last of the insurgents who still held out in England, had been in his turn obliged to take refuge in Scotland, Murray was assassinated on the 22nd of January, 1570, in the streets of Linlithgow, and Queen Elizabeth wreaked her vengeance upon the counties which had taken part in the insurrection. "There are so many guilty persons to condemn," wrote the Bishop of Durham to Cecil, "that difficulty is experienced in finding enough men innocent of all rebellion, to make juries of them." A royal declaration was read in all the churches in the peaceful districts, as well as in the regions bristling with gibbets, reminding the people of the peaceful years which England had enjoyed under the reign of Elizabeth, and affirming that she claimed, as chief of the Church, no other authority than that which her predecessors had exerted, her noble father, King Henry VIII., and her dear brother, King Edward VI. {370} She did not intend to put a constraint upon the conscience of her subjects, provided the Christian religion, as it was established in the acts of faith, should in nowise be molested, and that people should conform themselves to the laws of the kingdom, for the practice of public worship. Liberty, as understood by Queen Elizabeth, consisted in doing exactly as she commanded.

The death of Murray, the only man sufficiently skilful and influential to maintain a little order in unhappy Scotland, had again delivered up that kingdom to the dissensions of parties. The Duke of Chatellerault and the Earl of Argyle immediately took possession of the government in the name of Queen Mary; but Morton, at the head of the _king's men_, as the partisans of James VI. were called, had taken up arms, summoning England to his aid. Elizabeth sent him an army and a regent. She had taken back into favour the Earl of Lennox, father of Darnley, and grandfather of the little king, and despatched him to Scotland, to govern in the name of his grandson, while the English troops entered several times into Scotland, devastating all the southern counties, burning down the towns and villages, and supporting the efforts of the new regent, who was implacable in ravaging the domains of the Duke of Chatellerault and of all the family of the Hamiltons. When Sir William Drury returned to Berwick, on the 3rd of June, after the recent campaign, the ravages had been so great, that the authority of Lennox appeared to be established upon the ruin of all his adversaries.

{371}

The Catholic arms had failed as well as the Catholic conspiracies. Pope Pius V. was anxious to try the spiritual thunders of the Vatican. A bull declaring the excommunication of Elizabeth, depriving her of her pretended rights to the crown of England, and absolving her subjects from their allegiance, had been prepared for some time; it was signed after the insurrection had failed, and several copies of it were sent to the Duke of Alba; but Philip II. prohibited the publication of them in the Low Countries. On the 13th of May, 1570, however, the bull was posted upon the door of the palace of the Bishop of London. During the investigations which were immediately made in courts of law, of evil notoriety both in political and religious affairs, it was ascertained from a student under torture, that he had received a copy of the bull from a rich Catholic gentleman named Felton. The latter was arrested, and he avowed without hesitation that he had posted up the bull, but no punishment could make him reveal the names of his accomplices. Being condemned to a traitor's death, he walked to the place of execution as to a martyrdom, designating the queen by the name of "Pretender," and remaining firm in his enthusiasm until the last moment. Before his death, and while upon the scaffold, however, he asked that the pardon of Elizabeth might be solicited for aught in which he might have offended her, and sent her, as a token a magnificent ring of great value, which he took from his finger. Even among those who contended against her with the greatest tenacity, Elizabeth contrived to win from her people so sincere and loyal an affection, that condemned persons sent presents to her, and criminals whom she had caused to have a hand cut off for having written against her, seized their hats with their left hands and waved them above their heads, exclaiming, "God bless Queen Elizabeth!"

{372}

The faithful attachment of the English nation to its sovereign did not, however, prevent the progress of a new principle of liberty which grew with the independent and firm opinions of a portion of the Protestant population. Elizabeth had preserved at the bottom of her heart considerable affection for the Catholic doctrines, still more for the external practices of their worship. She loved sacerdotal garments and pompous ceremonies. She retained in her chapel some candles and a crucifix, and she had a horror of married priests. All the weight of her authority did not prevent the most fervent Protestants of her kingdom, especially among the middle classes, from being convinced that the Reformation had been too quickly checked in England, and had not been sufficiently thorough. They thus inclined more and more towards the religious practices and doctrines of the Continent in their austere simplicity. The "Puritans," as they were already called, were in bad odour with Elizabeth, and she often persecuted them, all the more because she attributed to them, and not without reason, the republican and democratic tendencies fostered in Scotland by Knox, of which she had seen the effect in the revolts against Mary Stuart. {373} A certain number of Bishops and many great noblemen secretly inclined towards the Puritan ideas. Even Cecil was not hostile to them, although he had the royal favor more at heart than all the sects and doctrines. In the Parliament of 1571, the Puritans raised their heads for the first time. Thomas Cartwright, a distinguished professor who occupied, at Cambridge, the Margaret Professorship of Theology, maintained that the Episcopal system was opposed to the Holy Scriptures. He was suspended, but not without commotion among the public. The laws proposed to Parliament were hostile to the Catholics; they prohibited, under the penalties of treason, claiming the succession to the crown, for whomsoever it might be, during the lifetime of the Queen; they placed an absolute veto upon any communication with the Pope, and all obedience rendered to his bulls; but at the same time they required assiduity in the worship established by the State, and, four times a year, participation in the communion of the Anglican Church. This last article was abandoned by the Queen, but the Anglican worship was as odious to the Puritans as to the Catholics. They presented to Parliament seven bills for the progress of reform and the repression of abuses. The Queen, in a passion, ordered the member of the House who had proposed them, Mr. Stickland, to abstain from appearing at the sittings; but the Puritans had gained more ground than the Queen was aware of; they introduced a motion to summon Strickland to the bar, and to cause his exclusion to be explained to him, declaring that the House which could decide the right to the throne, had the privilege of occupying itself in ecclesiastical matters. The wise prudence of Elizabeth prevailed over her anger. {374} Strickland reappeared on the morrow in Parliament, and was received with acclamations by his colleagues; but the Queen had been vanquished, and her aversion to the Puritans was thereby increased. It was the first triumph gained by the fathers of the liberties of England over the political and religious despotism winch rose in the shadow of the throne of the Tudors. At the end of the session, after the Commons had been reprimanded for their indocility, by the Lord Keeper of the Seals, Nicholas Bacon, Parker, archbishop of Canterbury, caused Mr. Wentworth, one of the great orators of the House of Commons, to be summoned, to demand of him how they had dared to suppress some of the articles of faith which had been presented to their vote. "We were too busy to have time to ascertain whether they were in conformity with the word of God," boldly replied Wentworth. "What?" said the Bishop; "you are mistaken, you must refer to us in this matter." "No," said the Puritan, "by the faith which I have in God, we will vote nothing without understanding what it relates to, for that would be to make you Pope; it will not be by our hands." Nevertheless, and notwithstanding the proud resistance of the Houses, the Bishops continued to insist upon the preservation of the new edition of the articles of faith, under thirty-nine heads, which had replaced the forty articles of Edward VI. A complete submission was required of the pastors, and they were deprived of their livings at the first refusal declared before the court of high commission, entrusted to judge all ecclesiastical disputes. {375} "Matters will soon be ended with them," wrote Parker to Cecil, speaking of the nonconformist ministers, "for I know that they are cowards." The learned archbishop was never more completely mistaken. The courage of the Puritans was to remain firm through all persecutions. A hundred years were not destined to elapse without bringing the day of their triumph. The friends of Queen Mary had resolved upon her marriage. The Duke of Norfolk was in the Tower. People began to talk of causing the Queen of Scotland to marry her brother-in-law, the Duke of Anjou. Queen Elizabeth was alarmed, and in order to cut short this new intrigue, she made overtures on her own behalf to the Court of France. Her most skilful diplomatist, Walsingham, was sent to Paris, entrusted with this negotiation, complicated by the secret support which the queen continued to give to the Huguenots. The parley lasted for several months, but the Duke of Anjou positively refused to change his religion; people turned their eyes towards the Duke of Alençon, the youngest son of Catherine of Médicis; he had scarcely reached his eighteenth year; the queen was drawing near her fortieth. The negotiations nevertheless took their course, amusing Elizabeth by outward tokens of gallantry, in which she still took delight, and, at the same time, preventing all the assistance which the court of France might have brought to avert the unhappy fate of Mary Stuart. Charles IX. had claimed, for his sister-in-law, permission to live in France; but, piqued at the reports of the French ambassadors, upon the relations of the captive with the King of Spain, and by her correspondence with the Duke of Alba, he at length exclaimed, "Ah! the poor fool will never cease till she shall have lost her head; she will be put to death through her own fault, I see it clearly; but I am powerless in the matter." {376} The prospect of the throne of England for the Duke of Alençon was too brilliant to be sacrificed to the interests of Mary. Queen Catherine was negotiating an alliance, offensive and defensive, with Walsingham.

Abandoned by her relatives and her friends in France, Mary Stuart had not ceased to conspire with Spain; but her agents were so closely watched, the supervision of Cecil was so strict, that several emissaries fell in succession into his hands. On one occasion, the Bishop of Ross, recently restored to liberty, contrived to substitute innocent letters for the compromising papers, which his messenger brought; but enough was soon known to make it certain that Mary was urging the Spaniards to attempt an invasion of England, and that the Duke of Alba promised to make arrangements with a person designated in cypher. Suspicion immediately fell upon the Duke of Norfolk. The plague having broken out in the Tower, he had been guarded in his house in London for fifteen months. He was taken back to his prison, and his trial began. The duke at first made a bold denial; then, when the confessions were shown him, which had been extorted by torture or fear from his servants and the agents of Queen Mary, including the Bishop of Ross, he admitted certain things, still maintaining that he had never conspired against the queen, that he had only engaged in the negotiation for the marriage, because he thought she was informed of it, and that, in marrying Queen Mary, he did nothing prejudicial to her Majesty. {377} He formally resented all accusations of correspondence abroad or with the rebels during the insurrection. No witness was confronted with him; only the depositions, written after the tortures, were communicated to him. He was accused of having maintained relations with the Pope. Norfolk, the old pupil of Fox, the author of the Protestant martyrology, declared that he would rather be drawn by four horses than change his religion. He recalled the solicitations which the Earl of Leicester had made him, before he had become concerned in this affair. Leicester sat at the council listening without pity to the complaints of his confiding victim. He voted the death of the duke, who immediately turned toward his judges. "This is the punishment of traitors, my lords," he exclaimed: "but I am faithful to God and the queen, as I have always been. I do not desire to live and do not ask you for my life. You have this day cut me off from your company, but I hope soon to find a better one. I only beg you, my lords, to intercede with her Majesty, in order that she may have pity upon my poor orphan children." Even in his letters to the queen, full of repentance for having offended her, and for having acted in several matters without her knowledge, the duke never asked for mercy, and refused to make any confession which might drag other victims to the unhappy fate which awaited him. Norfolk had been condemned since the middle of January, and the queen had signed his sentence on the 8th of February; but during the night, she became agitated, and caused Cecil, whom she had raised to the rank of Lord Burleigh, to be summoned. {378} She forbade him to have the sentence executed, saying that she wished to reflect again; three times the sentence was signed, and three times Elizabeth recalled it, hesitating to put to death her relative and former friend. At length Parliament intervened. The nation was profoundly agitated by rumours of plots. The documents found upon the emissaries of Mary had circulated among the public; already they saw the Duke of Alba, the ferocious butcher of the Low Countries, invade England at the head of those Spanish soldiers whose dark exploits had terrified Europe. On the 16th of May, the Commons presented to the queen a petition accepted by the Lords, demanding the execution of the duke, for the security of the country. This time the sentence was not withdrawn, and, on the 2nd of June, 1572, the Duke of Norfolk was beheaded on Tower Hill, protesting to the last his devotion to his sovereign and his attachment to the reformed faith. He refused the handkerchief with which it was proposed to bind his eyes. "I do not fear death," he said. When his head fell, the crowd wept as they had wept twenty-five years before at the death of his father, the Earl of Surrey, beheaded on the same spot, by order of King Henry VIII. Two months later, on the 22nd of August, the Duke of Northumberland, captured by treachery when he thought himself delivered at the price of an enormous ransom paid by his wife, died upon the scaffold at York. He was seized upon the vessel which was to take him to the Low Countries, and the "attainder" which overtook him, avoided the embarrassment of a trial. His father had also died upon the scaffold, upon the same day, nineteen years before.

{379}

All these prosecutions and deaths upon the scaffold tended towards the same end. Mary Stuart had been condemned before her accusation. Protestant opinion, and Protestant fears were violently excited against her. Burleigh and Walsingham were both convinced that the repose of England was only to be purchased at the price of her blood. Parliament, always ardent in such a matter, proposed to proceed against the prisoner by means of an attainder, but the queen opposed this. The Houses contented themselves with depriving Mary of her hereditary rights, and declaring her unfit to succeed to the throne of England. The captive queen was then at Sheffield, in the custody of Sir Ralph Sadler, and the Countess of Shrewsbury. None of the details of the death of the Duke of Norfolk had been spared her. She had refused to leave her apartment during all the time of the trial. Her faithful servants were everywhere losing ground in Scotland. The archbishop of St. Andrew's, seized by Lennox in Dunbar Castle, had been hanged without more ado, and the murder of Lennox himself by the Hamiltons had not sufficed to compensate for the blows to the Catholic cause. The new regent, the Earl of Mar, was less powerful than Morton, his fiercest enemy. Meanwhile Edinburgh Castle still held out for Mary, and the Highlanders recognized no other sovereign.

A crime committed far off, and for which she was in nowise responsible, was destined to condemn the unfortunate Mary to death, however long the alternations between hope and fear might be. In the night of the 23rd to the 24th of August, 1572, following the day of St. Bartholomew, the Protestants, gathered together in great numbers in Paris, upon the occasion of the marriage of the King of Navarre to Marguerite of Valois, sister of King Charles IX, were surprised and massacred, in their beds, in the streets, or while flying upon the housetops; and the same slaughter, spreading from town to town like a fire, soon extended through the whole of France. {380} Thirty to forty thousand persons perished thus in a few days. Almost all the chiefs of the Protestants had fallen. The most illustrious, the Admiral de Coligny, was killed in his apartment, and his body thrown out of the window. It was to free themselves from the preponderating influence which he was beginning to assume over the king, that Catherine of Medicis and her son, the Duke of Anjou, formerly an aspirant to the hand of Elizabeth, now king-elect of Poland, had concerted and accomplished the massacre, for which they had only obtained the authorization of Charles IX. by dint of harassments which had almost reduced the monarch to imbecility. The public outcry was terrible in all Protestant countries, nowhere, however, more than in England, whither the fugitives, who escaped from their executioners, flocked from all quarters. The queen went into mourning, and refused for several days to receive the French ambassador, M. de La Mothe-Fénelon; but she felt no real sympathy for the French Huguenots, and the horrors which caused the blood of her subjects to boil in their veins, did not interrupt the tranquil course of her policy. Walsingham courteously thanked the king, inasmuch as his house had been spared during "the riot." The excuses and explanations of Charles IX., transmitted by his ambassador, were accepted. {381} The project of marriage with the Duke of Alençon was not abandoned: but Walsingham gave Queen Catherine to understand that the time was not favourable for the visit of the Duke of Alençon to England, considering the extreme exasperation of the people against the Catholics.

The fruits of this exasperation were the counsels which queen Elizabeth received from all quarters for the destruction of her rival, so long a prisoner. The bishops, in a body, advised her to rid herself of the Queen of Scotland, "the origin and source of all the evils;" but Elizabeth shrank from the State crime which has sullied her name in the eyes of posterity. She would have wished that the natural enemies of Mary Stuart, the subjects whom she had misgoverned and who had revolted against her, might have steeped _their_ hands in the blood of their sovereign. She dispatched Killigrew, one of her most skilful agents, to negotiate for the liberation of Mary Stuart, who was to be consigned to the justice of the people, in exchange for certain hostages of the great families of Scotland. "It was becoming too difficult to keep the Queen of Scotland (Killigrew was to say); she drew too many dangers upon the Kingdom, and the queen preferred to consign her into the hands of her subjects."

This attempt failed through the royal uprightness of the Earl of Mar, then engaged in the difficult task of reconciling the factions. After taking part in a banquet at the residence of Lord Morton, in the course of his patriotic negotiations, he fell ill and died, not without suspicion of foul play, and, on the 14th of October, 1572, Morton, who for a long time previously, had been a dependant of Elizabeth, was raised under her auspices to the dignity of Regent. {382} Killigrew assisted him in negotiating for the surrender of Edinburgh Castle, which was reduced to the last extremities by the private treaty concluded by Lord Huntley and the Hamiltons. The secretary, Maitland, shut up in the castle with the brave Kircaldy of Grange, poisoned himself a few days after the capitulation, ending, by his voluntary death, a life of ingenious and subtile intrigues which were almost always doomed to final collapse. Kircaldy was hanged as a traitor, and Queen Mary lost her last friends in Scotland. Charles IX. had refused assistance to the faithful defenders of the citadel of Edinburgh, for fear that Elizabeth might support the Protestants, who depended upon La Rochelle. Secretly, she had several times come to their assistance, and she encouraged the naval expedition of the Earl of Montgomery in their favour. When the unhappy Charles IX. died in 1574, haunted upon his deathbed by the remembrance of his victims, the efforts of the French reformers were suddenly seconded by the support of the Duke of Alençon leagued against his brother, Henry III., who had returned from Poland to ascend that throne of France whereon the sons of Catherine of Medicis sat successively, to the misfortune and shame of their country. When the new king had discovered the plot, the Duke of Alençon was already engaged in concert with the young King of Navarre in raising an army: both asked assistance of Elizabeth, but she preferred the position of mediator, and it was through her good offices that the peace of St. Germain was concluded in 1576, securing to the Protestants the free exercise of their religion, and to the Duke of Alençon the appanage and title of Duke of Anjou. {383} The peace was not of long duration, and the formation of the League, the progress of the influence of the Guises in the kingdom, and their authority over King Henry III. as well as the fanatical party, soon put arms once more into the hands of the reformers. A brilliant prospect was opened up at the same time in the Low Countries to the new Duke of Anjou.

The affairs of the Prince of Orange and the cause of liberty in the United Provinces had been under a cloud since the commencement of the struggle; but through defeat after defeat, from disaster after disaster oppression after oppression, the indomitable courage of William the Taciturn and his fellow-citizens had by degrees gained so much ground, that Spain was upon the point of losing for ever half of the Low Countries. The Duke of Alba had been recalled after that government, the fearful memory of which yet causes us to tremble. His successor, the great commander Requesens, died in 1576; shortly afterwards the Prince of Orange, not knowing where to look for a support in his growing embarrassments offered the Protectorate of Holland and Zealand to Queen Elizabeth, as the descendant of the former sovereigns of the country through Philippine of Hainault, wife of Edward III. The Queen of England refused, not desiring, she said, to encourage the subjects of her good brother the King of Spain in revolt. William the Taciturn offered the sovereignty to the Duke of Anjou. {384} Don Juan of Austria, then governor of the Low Countries, longed to invade England, to deliver Queen Mary, marry her, and sit with her upon the throne of Elizabeth. The project was chimerical, and was not encouraged by Philip II.; but it was a plausible pretext for Elizabeth with regard to the King of Spain. She affirmed that the offensive and defensive alliance which she had concluded with the Prince of Orange, was solely intended to defend the Low Countries against the invasions of France, and to protect England from the invasions of Don Juan. Queen Elizabeth had already given a great deal of money to the revolted provinces; she gave yet more upon the pledges which the State-general furnished her; but the Duke of Anjou took no steps, and the patriotic armies were twice defeated by Alexander Farnèse, nephew of the King of Spain. The French prince excused himself for his tardiness by the fear of offending the Queen of England. He had resumed his matrimonial negotiations with her. The agent whom he sent to London, M. de Simier was a man of talents and of pleasant manners; he obtained great influence over the queen, and revealed to her a circumstance of which she was ignorant, namely, the secret marriage of the Earl of Leicester with the widow of the Earl of Essex, then very recently deceased. Elizabeth flew into a passion; the man who had occupied for thirty years the first place at her court was closely confined in his mansion at Greenwich. Simier did still more: he induced his master to attempt a romantic venture with the queen; in the middle of the summer of 1580 the Duke of Anjou appeared in England under a disguise. He was short, lean, marked with small-pox; but his amorous ardour, his youth, his journey, pleased the queen. {385} When the duke was about to return, it seemed that, for the first time, Elizabeth really wished to contract a princely union. The council was much divided: the queen was forty-eight years of age, the prince was very young and a Catholic. The most skilful politicians could not contrive to discover the secret feelings of their sovereign; but the time of petitions for her marriage had gone by; the queen bitterly felt it. The negotiations with Simier continued with alternations of favour and discontent on the part of Elizabeth. It was at length announced that the marriage would take place in six weeks. The States-general of the Low Countries proclaimed the Duke of Anjou, and when he entered the provinces with an army of sixteen thousand men, his royal affianced wife sent him a present of a hundred thousand crowns. After having achieved several successes and delivered the city of Cambray, besieged by the Spaniards, he repaired to England, where he was favorably received. The queen gave him her ring, and commanded that the contract should be prepared. There was rejoicing at the marriage in Paris and in the Low Countries. Even in England it was believed that the queen was at length about to take a husband. This was the 22nd of November, 1581. When the duke appeared before the queen on the morning of the 23rd, he found her pale and in tears; it is said that she had changed her mind during the night upon the representations of her ladies, and at the idea of the danger which threatened her if she should have children; she declared to the prince that she would never marry. {386} The duke in a passion, returned to his residence, throwing the ring upon the ground, and accusing the women of England of being as capricious as the waves of their seas. The change which had been wrought in the designs of the queen was not yet made public; the Protestant preachers thundered against the Catholic marriage, and libels abounded against the Duke of Anjou, which were severely punished by the queen, who accompanied the prince as far as Canterbury, weeping bitterly at his departure. She was never to see him again; the defeats suffered by his arms in the Low Countries, his retreat into France, and his death in the month of June, 1584, caused so much grief to the queen, that the ambassador of her Majesty in Paris dared not write her the details of his last moments, fearing "to cause her too much sorrow."

The affairs of Scotland caused great anxieties to Elizabeth. As long as Morton governed she was assured of the support of a mortal enemy of Queen Mary; but the great Scottish noblemen, had become wearied of the iron hand of a master sullied by so many crimes; and in 1578 the assembly of the nobility declared the young king, then thirteen years of age, competent to exercise his authority himself. Morton retired to Lochleven Castle, then reappeared at Court, powerful with the young king, and abusing his power as usual; but the ground was undermined beneath his feet; King James had a favorite, the first of a long list, Esme Stuart, his cousin, son of a brother of the Earl of Lennox. The young monarch had raised him to the title of Duke of Lennox; he was seconded by another Stuart, son of Lord Ochiltree; both accused Morton of the murder of Darnley. {387} The earl was arrested. Queen Elizabeth sent Randolph, her former agent, to Scotland, to plead in his favour. It was even attempted to intimidate the Scots by movements of troops; but all was useless; Elizabeth did not wish to wage war to save the head of Morton; he was condemned, and perished upon the scaffold. The young Duke of Lennox and Stuart, who had become Earl of Arran, governed the kingdom in the name of James VI.

This revolution in Scotland, this resistance to the pressure of Elizabeth and even the Protestant princes of the continent, revived the hopes of the Catholics. James had been brought up with great care in the Protestant religion. His tutor, George Buchanan, celebrated for his genius and learning, was a distinguished theologian, and had inspired the taste for that science in him, but it was hoped that the Catholic blood of the Guises would strengthen his power, and that the desire of delivering his mother would inspire in the young monarch opinions favourable to the intrigues which were still in progress on her behalf. The Earl of Arran, who wished to supplant Lennox in the favour of James, lent himself to these manœuvres. Queen Mary offered to legalize the irregular assession of her son, and to abdicate in his favour. But at the moment when the agents of the Catholic party abroad brought to James the approval of the the Pope and of Spain, he was lured into the residence of the Earl of Gowrie, son of old Ruthven, where he suddenly found himself a prisoner. The power fell again entirely into the hands of the Protestant lords. Arran was cast into prison. Lennox fled to France, where he perished shortly afterwards, and Queen Mary, trembling for her only son, wrote to Elizabeth, imploring her to preserve the life of the young king. {388} James had already contrived to deliver himself from the snares of his enemies; he had promised pardon, he was free, and lived in the midst of a crowd of contradictory and confused intrigues which occasionally embarrassed even the penetration of Walsingham, who had been sent to Scotland by Queen Elizabeth. Meanwhile, the presence of the son upon the throne of Scotland had awakened the hopes of the mother in her prison, as well as the ardour of her friends in England and on the Continent. A number of isolated Catholic plots, of no serious importance, were constantly renewed and inevitably followed by torture and the gallows. The penal law against the Catholic priests were applied with extreme rigour, being often favoured by public opinion, which saw in them only so many conspirators. The most celebrated victim of this persecution was the Jesuit Campion, a distinguished and able man, whose execution excited a certain amount of passion. Burleigh was compelled to exonerate himself for having ordered him to be tortured. The wooden horse had been applied so gently, he affirmed, that the Jesuit had been able to walk at once to sign his confession. The prisons were filled with Catholics; those whom the persecutors dared not send to gallows, sometimes died there of grief and suffering. This was the fate of the Earl of Arundel, son of the Duke of Norfolk, formerly in great favour with Elizabeth. Having become a Catholic and fallen into disgrace, he was arrested while endeavouring to escape; being thrown into the Tower, he languished there for several years, and finally died without being permitted to see his wife and children again. {389} The formidable abuses of absolute power manifested themselves vigorously, for the strong intellect of Burleigh had not, any more than that of his mistress, conceived the least idea of the rights of conscience. While Elizabeth forbade the Catholic priests to say mass, she drove from their livings the nonconformist ministers until 1589, and caused the anabaptists and heretics to be burned. A circumstance which aggravated the situation of the Catholics, was the suspicion, very often well founded, that they had a secret understanding with foreign countries, and mixed politics with the religious interests. In 1584, the ambassador of Spain, Mendoza, received his passports and quitted the kingdom, much compromised by the revelations of Francis Throgmorton, who was condemned to death for having conspired against the queen, with the object of delivering Mary Stuart. Parliament voted fresh measures against the Catholic priests; these measures were attacked by a Welsh member named Parry, who was sent to the Tower; his confessions were so complete, he denounced so many accomplices, he revealed dangers so imminent, that he was suspected of being simply the instrument of the Protestant party, intended to prove the peril which surrounded the queen. But if Parry had counted upon pardon, he was mistaken; he was executed on the 25th of February, 1585, retracting at the last moment all his revelations, and exclaiming upon the scaffold, "God grant that in taking my life Queen Elizabeth may not have killed the best keeper of her park." {390} It was supposed that Parry was mad, but his accusations agitated the Catholics, who resolutely protested against any disloyal project and in particular against the theory of _permissible assassination_, which Parry had attributed to their Church. The gentleman who presented this protest to the queen was cast into prison where he died. A Protestant association was formed, to protect the life of her Majesty, and to avenge her death in case of crime. The Earl of Leicester placed himself at the head of the movement, which received the sanction of Parliament. Mary Stuart looked upon this league as her death-warrant; she trembled, with good reason, in her prison, for her son made no effort in her favour; he was negotiating with the Queen of England for a treaty of alliance against the Catholic powers, without the name of Mary being uttered between them. In reply to the pathetic appeals of his mother, James VI. contented himself with replying that she was Queen-Mother, and had nothing to do with the affairs of Scotland. "I love my mother, as I ought, by duty and by nature," he said to the French ambassador, "but I cannot approve of her conduct, and I know that she wishes no more good to me than to the Queen of England." The end of the long drama was approaching.

The Protestant policy had completely gained the ascendant in the councils of Elizabeth; she was still officially at peace with Spain; but, for many years her great admirals, Drake, Hawkins, and Sir Walter Raleigh, freely overran the seas, taking possession of all the Spanish vessels which they encountered, furnished with letters of marque, pillaging at times the Spanish towns, and constantly the Spanish settlements in America. {391} For a long while, moreover, the cause of liberty in the Low Countries had been secretly protected by the money and assistance of Elizabeth, and she had recently lent her brilliant support by sending an army of six thousand men, under the orders of the Earl of Leicester, to support the war which had lost (a year before, on the 10th of July, 1584,) its illustrious chief, William the Taciturn, by the dagger of Balthazar Gérard, an assassin in the pay of Philip II. The Queen of England again declined the Protectorate of the United Provinces; but she accepted as a pledge of her close alliance with that rising state the surrender of the towns of Brill and Flushing. On his own motive, and without consulting the queen, Leicester even went so far as to cause himself to be nominated governor by the States-general of the Low Countries. But he had presumed too much upon his past influence over his queen; she had never forgiven him for his marriage with the Countess of Essex; he gained no success in the Low Countries; his military talents were not as great as his political skill. Elizabeth flew into a passion against him, with a violence which gave uneasiness to the members of the council; great difficulty was experienced in preventing her from recalling Leicester at once, and the States-general, who had thought to satisfy the Court of England, soon perceived with grief that Elizabeth was growing cold toward their cause.

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A fresh effort was being prepared in favour of Queen Mary, the last link of the long succession of plots which were to bring her to the scaffold. Anthony Babington, a young man of good birth, a fervent Catholic, rich, for a long while devoted to the unhappy captive, engaged in a project of conspiracy, supported, it is said, by the Duke of Parma, Alexander Farnèse, who was to make a descent upon England as soon as he should succeed in assassinating Queen Elizabeth. Babington was desirous of delivering Mary Stuart and placing her upon the throne; he did not take heed of the means proposed by Savage, the prime mover in the plot, and he gathered around him a few friends as bold and imprudent as himself. It appears certain that from this point Walsingham was aware of the conspiracy, but he allowed matters to proceed until Queen Mary had written twice to Babington. As soon as the captive was compromised, the accomplices were all arrested. Savage and Babington alone had desired and plotted the murder of the queen; a few of the conspirators contemplated only the deliverance of Mary Stuart, others limited themselves to keeping silence concerning the conspiracy. "It is my cruel destiny," exclaimed Jones, before the tribunal, "that I should betray my friend whom I love as myself or fail in my allegiance, and become a false friend or a miserable traitor. My tender feeling for Thomas Salisbury has ruined me, but God knows that I meditated no treason." The less guilty among the conspirators were condemned to be hanged; the chiefs of the conspiracy suffered the horrible punishment at traitors. They were so young and of such good appearance that their punishment caused a certain degree of emotion in London. These were the last victims of the beauty and misfortunes of Mary Stuart.

{393}

The captive queen had been transferred from prison to prison, each day more closely confined, each day treated with less consideration and respect. She had at one time reproached Lord Shrewsbury for too much severity, but she felt herself protected by his honour; Lord Shrewsbury was no longer her guardian, she was entrusted to Sir Amyas Pawlet and Sir Drew Drury, fierce Protestants, almost Puritans, who felt no pity for the corrupt, murderous, and idolatrous woman whom they held in their hands. Mary had been removed from Chartley Castle, in Staffordshire, a few days before the arrest of Babington; when she was taken back there, she found all her coffers open, her papers abstracted: her two secretaries, Nam and Curie, had been taken to London. She looked for a moment at the havoc, then, turning towards Pawlet, "There are two things, sir, which you cannot take from me," she said, with dignity, "the royal blood which gives me the right to the succession, and the attachment which unites me to the faith of my ancestors." Alas! Mary would willingly have repurchased her life and liberty at the price of the faith of her ancestors; she had formerly made the offer to Elizabeth, but the approach of death, which she felt to be inevitable, brought her back to the real convictions of her soul. Throughout all the faults and crimes of her life, she had been sincerely Catholic; purified by long sufferings, she was to die a Catholic, leaving to a rival whose life she had embittered, the odious stain of her execution.

{394}

Parliament now voted a law, which, without naming Mary, condemned her by anticipation. The council of Elizabeth urged the queen to place the captive upon her trial. The repeated plots of which she had been the occasion, the inexhaustible interest which she had excited in Europe, appeared to Burleigh, Walsingham, and Sadler, sufficient reasons for her destruction. Elizabeth hesitated, irresolute and perplexed; she foresaw, perhaps, better than her councillors the harm which would be done her by the death of her relative, who had taken refuge under her protection and was without defence in her hands. Leicester, who had recently returned to England proposed to have recourse to poison; Walsingham opposed this suggestion resolutely; he was specially entrusted with the matter. Burleigh was old, and perhaps had a repugnance, like the queen, to striking the last blow; but Walsingham insisted upon a trial in due form and a public condemnation. "That conduct is alone worthy of your Grace," he said. He carried with him the majority of the council, and the queen nominated a commission entrusted to try "her good sister, the Queen of Scotland," according to the new law of Parliament, against "any person claiming the succession who might have encouraged or supported plots, invasions, or attempts against the safety of the of kingdom and the person of the queen." It was not necessary to bring together the great names which formed the commission for signing a sentence already written in the law itself.

Mary was brought, a few days after the execution of Babington, to Fotheringay Castle, in Northamptonshire. It was there that the commissioners arrived, on the 11th of October, 1586, the bearers of a letter of Queen Elizabeth, which informed the captive that she was compromised in the recent conspiracy, and that she was about to be tried upon that count, as well as several other points, according to the laws of England, under the protection of which she had lived. {395} Mary was old before her time, infirm and overwhelmed with sorrows, but her royal pride was aroused by this arrogant pretension of her rival. "I do not recognize the laws of England," she replied; "and I know that what the Parliament has just voted is directed against me; but I will not derogate from the honour of my ancestors, Kings of Scotland, by submitting to be tried as the subject of my sister of England, and as a criminal." The legists were before her when she made this protest "We will try you then as absent and contumacious," said Burleigh. "Look to your conscience," replied Mary. "If you are innocent, you have nothing to fear," insisted the old chamberlain, Hatton: "but in rejecting the trial, you sully your reputation with eternal infamy." Mary at length yielded, on condition that her protest should be admitted. Protestation and resistance was equally useless.

On the 14th of October, the commissioners assembled in the great hall of Fotheringay Castle. A throne, with a canopy, occupied the place of Queen Elizabeth; lower down, a chair without a canopy awaited Queen Mary. The judges were surrounded by their assessors, with tables for their documents. The accused queen had neither assessors, advocates, nor documents; but her pride, her skill, her presence of mind sufficed, for two days, to hold in check the most able lawyers of England. It was no longer a question of defending herself from past accusations, from the murder of her husband, or her complicity with Bothwell; she was accused of having participated in plots for the overthrow and death of the Queen of England, and, notwithstanding her denials, it is difficult for history to exonerate her from this crime. {396} She had probably implicated herself in the conspiracies against Elizabeth at the time when she was yet a sovereign and free. What a temptation to do so when she was detained, a prisoner, in defiance of justice as well as royal hospitality! The light of those eyes which had made so many victims was extinguished, the elegant figure bent, but the subtle wit, the majestic grace, the infinite seductiveness which had been the danger and the charm of Mary Stuart still existed. She covered her face with her hands when the Earl of Arundel, still in prison at the Tower was mentioned. "Alas!" she exclaimed, "what has the noble House of Howard endured for my sake?" She asked that her two secretaries, whose depositions had been read, should be brought before her. They were in London, and she challenged the authenticity of their testimony, as well as that of a letter written, it was said, by her, to provoke an invasion of England. "I think that that document is the work of the secretary of State, Walsingham," she said. Walsingham rose, protesting that he had never acted through malice, and had done nothing which was unworthy of an honest man. He, no doubt, congratulated himself inwardly on having rejected the suggestion of poison put forth by the Earl of Leicester. The weight of the accusation rested upon the recent conspiracy of Babington, and upon the testimony of the two secretaries. Mary demanded to be heard by Parliament and to see the queen in person. {397} The instructions of the commissioners were formal. Elizabeth _would_ not see the captive. When the judges quitted Fotheringay and assembled at Westminster, the witnesses were summoned before them, but the accused was not there. On the 25th of October, 1586, in the Star Chamber, the commissioners declared that Mary Stuart, daughter of James V., known as the Queen of Scotland, had taken part in the conspiracy of Anthony Babington and in several others to the prejudice of and against the life of her Majesty the Queen of England, in the name and under the pretext of her pretended rights to the crown; consequent upon which, she was condemned to death, without this sentence being in any wise prejudicial to James VI., King of Scotland, who retained all his rights and privileges as though the said condemnation had not existed.

The sentence was passed, but Elizabeth hesitated to put it in execution, as she had hesitated to bring her royal cousin to trial. Parliament made an effort to deliver her from the odious responsibility which she dreaded, and, on the 12th of November, the two Houses implored the queen to provide for her safety, by causing, as soon as possible, the punishment which her crimes deserved, to fall upon the guilty head. Elizabeth replied to her faithful subjects, while dwelling upon the absence of any rancour in her soul, "If we were two milk-maids, with pails upon our arms, and it was merely a question which involved my own life, without endangering the religion and welfare of my people, I would willingly pardon all her offences." She prayed God to enlighten her upon the course to follow, promising to make known her resolution within a short time. {398} In the meanwhile, she caused the two Houses, through the chancellor, to be asked whether there was not some means of placing her life in safety without interfering with that of Mary. Parliament replied in the negative. But the hesitations of Elizabeth were not yet at an end; a fresh speech expounded her scruples to her people. "Many opprobrious books and pamphlets (she said) accuse me of being a tyrant, which is indeed news to me; but what would they now say if a maiden queen should shed the blood of her own kinswoman? Yet it were a foolish course to cherish a sword to cut my own throat, and I am infinitely beholden to you who seek to preserve my life. If I should say I will not do what you require, it might peradventure be saying more than I should mean, and if I should say I will do it, it might, perhaps, breed greater perils than those from which you would protect me; for an answer, I will dismiss you, then, without an answer." The sentence of death was meanwhile posted up in all parts of London, and greeted with shouts of joy by the people.

Lord Buckhurst was chosen to announce her condemnation to Mary; it was hoped that some confession would be obtained from her, in the agitation and despair of an approaching death. But whatever might have been the crimes of Mary in the past, and her wrongs towards Queen Elizabeth, her courage had not relaxed in misfortune, and did not abandon her at the supreme hour. A bishop had accompanied the fatal messenger; the queen refused to see him, asking for her chaplain, "I am weary of this world," she said, "and glad that my troubles are about to end." {399} She repeated that she had never taken part in any plot against the life of Elizabeth, and her last care was to write to the Pope and the Archbishop of Glasgow, to enjoin that her reputation should be cleared of all stain; it was a task above the power of those to whom it was entrusted by the unfortunate woman, who could not appeal to her son to defend her.

In her quality of a condemned person, the Queen of Scotland was degraded from all the honours which had hitherto been rendered her. Her jailor, Sir Amyas Pawlet, would sit down before her without permission. "I am an anointed queen," said the fallen sovereign; "in spite of the Queen of England, her council, and her heretical judges, I will still die a queen." The last letter of Mary to Elizabeth was truly a royal epistle, without complaints or recriminations, thanking God inasmuch as He was good enough to put an end to a sorrowful pilgrimage, and asking no other favour than that of dying in the presence of her servants, to whom she begged the queen to cause the small legacies indicated in her will to be given. It was in the name of Jesus Christ, of their kinship, of the memory of Henry VII., their ancestor, and of the royal dignity which was common to them, that the captive, upon the point of dying, proudly demanded these modest favours of her triumphant rival.

{400}

The King of France, Henry III., had not absolutely abandoned his sister-in-law in her extremity; he sent to the court of England an ambassador extraordinary to plead her cause. Elizabeth delayed before giving him an audience; when she admitted him into her presence, with great ceremony, it was not without keen tokens of emotion that she affirmed that the Queen of Scotland had three times attempted her life. All the arguments of Bellièvre were useless; when he declared that his sovereign would consider as a cause of rupture the execution of a Dowager Queen of France, Elizabeth flew into a passion. The emissary received his passports. The ordinary ambassador, M. de l'Aubespine, accused of having been implicated in a fresh conspiracy against the life of the queen, saw his secretary cast into prison. A third emissary was no more successful.

While he was interceding for Mary with the Queen of England, King Henry III. was endeavouring to awaken in the breast of James VI. the natural feelings of a son for his mother. What more cruel condemnation of the conduct of the King of Scotland could be imagined than the fact that it shocked and scandalized Henry III.! He succeeded in obtaining a preliminary mission to Elizabeth, but by a personage of so little importance, and so deep in the interests of England, that France was not satisfied with this proceeding, which, nevertheless, aroused the anger of Queen Elizabeth. James hastened to write, excusing himself humbly, alleging that he in nowise imputed to her the blame of what she had done against his mother. Sir Robert Melville accompanied the second embassy. "Why does the Queen of Scotland seem so dangerous to you?" asked the emissaries. "Because she is a Papist and wishes to succeed to my throne," said Elizabeth, flatly. "Does her grace still live?" said Melville, tremblingly. "I think so," replied the queen, "but I would not answer for it in an hour." {401} The old servant of Mary interceded ardently for her, but his colleague, Gray, assured the ministers that it was not a dangerous affair, adding coarsely, "A dead woman does not bite." Walsingham was seriously astonished that a Protestant monarch should not feel that the existence of his mother was incompatible with the safety of the Reformed Churches in England and Scotland. James VI. recalled his ambassadors and contented himself with recommending his mother to the prayers of all his subjects; the greater number of Presbyterian pastors refused to obey his orders.

Elizabeth had repelled all foreign intervention; meanwhile, she still hesitated; she was heard to mutter between her teeth, in Latin "_Aut ferire, aut feriri; ne feriare, feri._" (Either to strike or to be stricken; in order not to be stricken, strike). The warrant had been ready for six weeks, when the queen signed it, in private, on the 1st of February, consigning it to the secretary of state, Davison, "without other orders," as she subsequently asserted. She only suggested that Sir Amyas Pawlet might spare her all that trouble, and she commanded that he should be written to in that strain, Pawlet formally refused, saying that his property and life were at the disposition of her majesty, but that God did not permit him to sacrifice his conscience, nor to leave an infamous stain upon his name. None would incur the responsibility of the crime; the queen did not even command the warrant to be sent. It went, however, without her having inquired into it, a precaution which was useful to her subsequently. On the 7th of February, while the scaffold was being erected in the courtyard of Fotheringay, Elizabeth told Davison that he should write again to Sir Amyas. {402} "It is useless, I think," began the secretary; she did not allow him time to explain himself, and turned towards one of her ladies who was entering. Davison was never to see his mistress again.

The Earl of Shrewsbury now arrived at Fotheringay. Queen Mary immediately understood what the arrival of the Earl-Marshal meant. When the sentence was read, Mary made the sign of the cross, then, without agitation, she said that death was welcome, but that she had not expected, after being detained twenty years in prison, that her sister Elizabeth would thus dispose of her. She at the same time placed her hand upon a book beside her, swearing that she had never contemplated nor sought the death of Elizabeth. "That is a Popish Bible," exclaimed the Earl of Kent, brutally, "your oath is of no value." "It is a Catholic testament," said the captive, "and therefore, my lord, as I believe that to be the true version my oath is the more to be relied on;" and she asked what would be the time of the execution. "Tomorrow morning, at eight o'clock," said Lord Salisbury, in great agitation. "Your death will be the life of our religion," said Kent, "as your life would have been its death." The queen smiled bitterly. She was left alone with her servants: she bade farewell to them, drinking to their health at her last repast, and asking pardon of them all. She passed a portion of the night in writing to her confessor, to the King of France, and to the Duke of Guise.

[Image] Mary Stuart Swearing She Had Never Sought The Life Of Elizabeth.

{403}

At eight o'clock the sheriff of the county entered the oratory where she was in prayer; she raised herself immediately, took the crucifix from the altar, and advanced with a firm step; she was clad in the rich and sober costume of a Dowager Queen. At the door of the antechamber, she found her faithful servant, Melville, who for three weeks had waited in vain to be permitted to see her. He threw himself upon his knees before her, weeping and sobbing. "Cease to lament, good Melville," said the queen, "for thou shalt now see a final period to Mary Stuart's troubles; the world, my servant, is naught but vanity, and subject to more sorrow than an ocean of tears can wash away. But, I pray thee, take this message when thou goest, that I die true to my religion, to Scotland and to France. Commend me to my son, and tell him that I have done nothing to prejudice the kingdom of Scotland." She asked that her servants might be present at her execution. The Earl of Kent refused; she insisted, with warmth: "In regard of womanhood," she said, "your mistress would not deny me to have some of my women about me at my death." The point was conceded: two of the ladies of the queen accompanied her to the scaffold, as well as Melville and a few servants. When the sentence had been read, Mary reminded the spectators that she was a sovereign princess, and had nothing to do with the laws of England, that she died by injustice and violence, without ever having conspired against the life of Elizabeth. The Dean of Peterborough began to speak; the queen interrupted him several times. "I am fixed in the ancient religion," she said, "and, by God's grace, I will shed my blood for it." Seeing that she could not impose silence upon him, she turned round looking on the other side of the scaffold but he followed her movements, and proceeded to place himself in front of her. {404} While he prayed aloud in English, the queen repeated in Latin the Penitential Psalms, with profound contrition. When the dean had finished, she prayed aloud in English for the Church, her son, and Queen Elizabeth. She kissed the crucifix; the Earl of Kent exclaimed, "Madam, you had better put such Popish trumpery out of your hand and carry Christ in your heart." "I can hardly bear this emblem in my hand without at the same time bearing Him in my heart," said the queen. The executioners laid hands upon her to undress her; as her women burst into sobs in their indignation, she placed her finger to her lips and embraced them, saying to the spectators, "I am not accustomed to be undressed by such attendants, nor to put off my clothes before so much company." Her eyes were bound with a handkerchief embroidered with gold, and the executioners conducted her to the block. She laid her head upon it without trembling. "Into Thy hands, O Lord, I commend my spirit," she said aloud. The executioner was more agitated than the victim; he was compelled to strike three times. When he raised the bleeding head, exclaiming, "God save Queen Elizabeth," the dean and the Earl of Kent alone replied, "Thus perish all her enemies." No one said _Amen_. The queen's little lap-dog had hidden himself in her clothing; he could not be separated from the body while it remained upon the scaffold.

{405}

The news of the execution soon spread abroad in London, and many people manifested their joy thereat, before anyone dared to announce the fact to the queen. She feigned great anger, shedding tears, and asserting that she had given no order. The secretary of state, Davison, was sent to the Tower; Burleigh and the other ministers were disgraced. Walsingham had been prudent enough to absent himself; when he reappeared, his colleagues were not long in returning into favour, but a victim was necessary. Davison remained in prison during all the remainder of the reign of Elizabeth, and his whole fortune was confiscated to pay the fine which was imposed upon him.

The first care of Elizabeth was to communicate to King James the grief which she experienced at the unhappy event which had occurred without her knowledge in her kingdom. The king wept on learning the death of his mother, asserting that he would move heaven and earth in his vengeance. His anger was immediately appeased; the pension which he received from Elizabeth was increased; one of the obstacles which might impede his succession to the throne of England had disappeared. The royal Pretender consoled himself with this expectation. "Could an only son forget his mother?" Mary Stuart had asked on learning her condemnation. The conduct of King James proved that he could.

King Henry III. would have been much embarrassed to accomplish his threats and to wage war in England to avenge his unhappy sister-in-law. He groaned under the yoke of the League and of the Guises, and no doubt easily forgave Elizabeth for the blow which she had struck at the haughty House of Lorraine. L'Aubespine reproached Elizabeth for the assistance which she had so long been giving to Henry of Navarre. "I have done nothing against your sovereign," said the queen, resorting to her former argument; "I support the King of Navarre against the Duke of Guise." L'Aubespine did not persist.

{406}

For a long time past, the expeditions of the English Buccaneers in the West Indies had completed the exasperation occasioned to Philip by the assistance accorded by Elizabeth to the rebels of the Low Countries. The death of Queen Mary furnished him with a natural pretext for the bursting forth of his resentment. The Queen of England made some efforts to appease it as she had appeased the anger of the Kings of France and Scotland. In the Netherlands her arms had not been covered with glory. Leicester was the weakest and most incompetent of the generals, and in his absence, while he was in England to assist in the condemnation of Mary Stuart, a body of his troops commanded by malcontent officers, had restored Deventer to the King of Spain, passing at the same time into his service. The return of the Earl into the Low Countries did not repair matters. The Dutch were discontented and uneasy; the queen recalled her forces, retaining merely the hostage towns, and she accepted the provisional nomination of Maurice of Nassau, son of William the Taciturn, as Stadtholder of the United Provinces. She had even opened up a secret negotiation with the Duke of Parma, who still held out in the Low Countries, but although endeavouring to preserve the peace, she understood that war was becoming imminent, and the great preparations to which the King of Spain was devoting himself were not unknown to her. {407} As a preliminary to hostilities, Sir Francis Drake was despatched with a fleet of thirty vessels, with orders to destroy, even in their ports, all the Spanish vessels which he might encounter. Never was a mission executed with more satisfaction and success. On the 19th of April, 1587, that bold seaman forced the entrance of the port of Cadiz, where he destroyed thirty great vessels; then, following the coast-line as far as Cape St. Vincent, he captured, burnt, and sunk a hundred other ships, and destroyed on his way, four fortresses. At length he entered the Tagus, recently become tributary to Philip II., who had taken possession of Portugal, to console himself for the loss of Holland, and Drake took possession, under cover of the Spanish standard, of the St. Philip, the largest vessel of the royal navy, laden with a precious cargo, The exploits of Drake delayed by more than a year the expedition which the King of Spain contemplated, and gave time to Elizabeth to complete her preparations. "I have singed the King of Spain's beard," said the victorious admiral on returning to England. The anger of Philip redoubled under these insults. The Pope, Sixtus the Fifth, had supplied him with money and renewed the bull of excommunication against Elizabeth. All the vessels of the kingdoms of Naples and Sicily were confiscated for the service of the king. The republic of Venice and that of Genoa lent their fleets to him. Every where in all the ports of Spain vessels were in course of construction. A fleet of flat-bottomed vessels prepared in Flanders were to transport to England the Duke of Parma and his thirty thousand soldiers. {408} The humblest Spanish sailor thought himself assured of the conquest of England. Philip II., promised himself the triumph of the Catholic faith in this haunt of the heretics. It is allowable to doubt that the Pope Sixtus the Fifth was as sure of success. "_Un gran cervello di principessa_" (She has the mind of a great princess), he often said in speaking of Elizabeth. But Europe, Protestant or Catholic, had not yet lost the habit of trembling before the power of Spain. All eyes were fixed upon England, against which country so many preparations were being made.

Meanwhile England did not remain idle. In the month of November, 1587, the queen convoked a council of war, to which she had summoned all the distinguished soldiers and seamen of that time, and which was destined to found the great navy of England. Sir Walter Raleigh took a large share in the deliberations, and vigorously maintained the opinion, that it was necessary both to meet the enemies at sea, and to prepare for them on land. The fleet of Elizabeth was not large. She had never waged war, and the money of which she could dispose did not suffice for the demands she received from all the Protestant countries, opposed and struggling for their faith. Thirty-six vessels only composed the royal navy, but merchant ships abounded. The progress of wealth had been rapid during the reign of Elizabeth; the devotion of her subjects provided for all wants; private persons armed the commercial ships for war, to do homage to the queen with them, and the great seamen who had acquired their renown and experience in waging war as buccaneers against the Spanish in all the seas of the world--Drake, Hawkins, Frobisher--took command of the vessels, under the orders of the High Admiral, Lord Howard of Effingham. {409} A hundred and ninety-one ships were at length gathered together, and the Dutch sent to the assistance of their allies sixty others manned by the fierce Zealanders, ever eager to fight the Spaniards. The fleet was disposed in squadrons to cover the coasts, while the land forces, under the orders of Leicester, assembled from all parts to resist the invasion. All the ancient fortifications were repaired, and new redoubts were raised as though by enchantment. A camp was formed at Tilbury Fort, opposite Gravesend. The queen repaired thither herself, to be present at a review. Her subjects had vied with each other in devotion. Catholics as well as Protestants had generously responded to her appeal. Catholic gentlemen, when command was refused them, enrolled themselves as private soldiers. A hundred and thirty thousand men were raised in the kingdom. When the queen assembled her forces at Tilbury, she had around her more than sixty thousand men. The Earls of Essex and Leicester marched at the bridle of her war-horse; she carried in her hand the staff of command. All her courage glistened in her eyes. "My loving people," she said, "we have been persuaded by some that are careful for our safety to take heed how we commit ourselves to armed multitudes for fear of treachery, but I assure you that I do not desire to live to distrust my faithful and loving people. Let tyrants fear! I have always borne myself so that, under God, I place my chiefest strength and safeguard in the loyal hearts and good will of my subjects; and therefore I am come amongst you at this time, not as for my recreation and sport, but being resolved in the midst and heat of battle to live or die amongst you all, to lay down for my God, for my kingdom, and for my people, my honour and my blood even in the dust. {410} I know that I have but the body of a weak and feeble woman; but I have the heart of a king and of a King of England too, and think foul scorn that Parma or Spain should dare to invade the borders of my realms. To which rather than any dishonour shall grow by me I myself will take up arms." The popular enthusiasm was great, but general terror equalled the enthusiasm. The terrible reputation of the Spanish troops had preceded them. The inexperienced recruits who formed the greater portion of the land forces would have been unable to resist the veterans of the Duke of Parma; the English navy was to save England.

The invincible Armada, as the Spaniards arrogantly called it, issued forth from the Tagus on the 29th of May, 1588. It numbered about a hundred and thirty ships, of which some were enormous. The sea appeared to fight in favour of England, in directing the course of the invaders towards Corunna, where the fleet was to take reinforcements. In the vicinity of Cape Finisterre a storm arose which dispersed the squadron and destroyed a certain number of vessels. The news of the disaster arrived in England; the people thought themselves delivered of the enemy. Elizabeth, always economical, immediately wrote to Lord Howard to disarm the four largest vessels of the fleet, and to disband the crews. {411} The Admiral refused to do so, saying that he would prefer to maintain them with his private fortune; this was fortunate for him, for the _Armada_ had re-formed, and on the 19th of June it was signalled in the vicinity of Plymouth. It advanced majestically, in the form of a crescent, covering the sea, measuring from one horn of the crescent to the other a space of three leagues. An immediate landing was expected, but the orders of Philip were to approach the coast of Flanders, there to rally the Duke of Parma, his fleet and his soldiers. Lord Howard followed the enemy, in readiness to attack the ships separated from the squadron by accidents of the sea. Thus began a series of combats, all disastrous to the Spaniards, though often impeded on the side of the English by the failure of supplies. On the 22nd, 23rd, 24th, 25th, 26th of July, Howard, Drake, Hawkins, Frobisher, engaged either in concert or separately, fought almost without intermission. On the 28th at length, "this morrice-dance upon the waters," as Sir Henry Wotton called it, was approaching its end. The Duke of Medina-Sidonia, a Spanish Admiral, had asked assistance of the Duke of Parma; he was in the vicinity of Calais, but the English vessels blockaded the Strait between Nieuport and Dunkirk. The Flemings could not pass; a great battle began. The Spaniards presented a compact mass which impeded the movements of the English vessels, smaller than theirs. During the night, fire-ships were launched against them. The Spaniards had had terrible experience of this method of warfare from the Dutch in the Scheldt; confusion spread through the squadron. The vessels quitted their positions and crowded all sail to escape from the explosion of the fire-ships; in vain did their admiral endeavour to reassemble them; the English attacked the isolated vessels at their ease. {412} Everywhere minor encounters were signalled; almost everywhere the English were the victors. The Duke of Medina-Sidonia had already taken the course of abandoning any invasion and of returning to Spain by doubling Scotland. The English pursued him. "We have the Spaniards before us," wrote Drake to Walsingham, "and with the grace of God, we intend to join them yet. God grant that the Duke of Parma be watched, for, with the grace of God, if we are living, we will not delay in seizing the Duke of Medina-Sidonia, so that he may wish himself at St. Mary amidst his vines." The failure of supplies put an end to the pursuit; it was necessary to abandon the Spaniards to the mercy of the sea. A terrible storm assailed them near the Orkney Islands. A great number of vessels stranded upon the coast of Scotland, and the crews were made prisoners. Those ships that were driven to Ireland did not save one man. The English colonists cut them to pieces to prevent them from seconding the Irish insurrection. When the Duke of Medina-Sidonia returned in the month of September, to Santander, in the Bay of Biscay, he had but sixty vessels, and those in bad condition, while their crews, overwhelmed with fatigue, looked like spectres. The English had lost but one ship of importance. For some time people feared a descent of the Duke of Parma, "who," wrote Drake, "I take to be as a bear robbed of her whelps;" but the alarm soon subsided, and the queen caused the camp at Tilbury to be raised. {413} The army was disbanded, and the Earl of Leicester set out for his castle at Kenilworth. He died there on the 4th of September, shortly after his arrival. The queen, whose favorite he had been for thirty years, did not appear greatly afflicted at his loss; she caused his effects to be sold at auction, to pay his debts to the public treasury. She had chosen a new favourite, as yet almost a child, the Earl of Essex, son-in-law of Leicester. The charm of his person, the gaiety and frankness of his manners, amused Elizabeth. She was fifty-five years of age; Essex was not twenty, when, in 1587, she made him Knight of the Garter, and captain-general of the cavalry. At the death of Leicester, he was raised to the dangerous position of titled favourite at the court of an imperious, exacting woman, accustomed to the most extravagant flatteries, and moreover jealous yet of her beauty and personal charms. The greatness of Essex was to cost him dearly.

A fruitless expedition to Spain, in favour of Don Antonio, Pretender to the crown of Portugal, did more honour to the bravery of the Earl of Essex than to his military talents. When he returned to England, he imprudently entered into a fierce struggle against the influence of the Cecils. Walsingham had died, in 1590, and Burleigh desired to have his office bestowed upon his son, Robert Cecil. Essex supported the cause of the unhappy Davison, unjustly disgraced for several years; the queen gave the office to Burleigh, authorizing him to obtain the assistance of his son. Hence there sprang a constant hostility which was to terminate in the ruin of Essex. {414} Elizabeth had often differed in opinion from her great minister; she had offended him, ill-used him, vexed him, but none had ever succeeded in destroying his influence with her. Leicester had attempted it in vain. Essex was endeavouring to attain the same object in his turn, with as little chance of success. The queen knew to whom she owed in a great measure the prosperity of her reign, and the memory of the father was destined to constantly increase in her eyes the services and merits of the son.

The Earl of Essex consoled himself for his defeat at court, by departing for France at the head of the troops whom Elizabeth sent to the assistance of Henry of Navarre, now become Henry IV., king of France. Henry III. was stabbed by Jacques Clément, on the 21st of July, 1589, and since then, his legitimate successor was labouring to rescue his kingdom from the Leaguers obeying the Duke of Guise, and supported by Spain. He was besieging Rouen when the Earl of Essex joined him, at the head of the English reinforcements. He distinguished himself in the skirmishes, in one of which his brother, Walter Devereux, was killed: but the impatient attachment of his mistress recalled him to England. Duplessis-Mornay advised Henry IV. to send back Essex to Queen Elizabeth, if he wished to obtain of the latter fresh aids in men and money, which were becoming every day more necessary in order to check the attacks of the Duke of Parma, who had recently entered France. The war was popular in England, the English gentlemen having always been eager to enroll themselves in the ranks of the Huguenots. The queen had been, for a long while past, the faithful ally of Henry of Navarre. {415} When he resolved, in 1593, to secure the peace of his kingdom and the establishment of his throne by adjuring Protestantism, indignation in England was violent. Elizabeth accused the king of treachery, but the Edict of Nantes soon satisfied the English Protestants, while securing to their brethren the free exercise of their religion, and the hostilities which continued between France and Spain, served the policy of Elizabeth too well for her to withdraw from her ally the efficacious support which she had always given him. The moment would not have been propitious for abandoning him; for the Spanish armies had again penetrated into France, and in the month of April, 1596, the Archduke Albert of Austria took possession of Calais which Elizabeth claimed of Henry IV., in exchange for her services. Amiens, Doullens, Cambray, were taken in succession. "It is very well to make a King of France," exclaimed Henry IV., on placing himself at the head of his troops; "it is time to make a King of Navarre," and he repulsed and defeated his enemies, while Queen Elizabeth, carrying war to their coasts, sent the Earl of Essex to Spain with Sir Walter Raleigh. The fleet commanded by Lord Howard bombarded Cadiz. Essex stormed the town and took possession of it; he wished to retain his prize, but, the council of England not approving that measure, Cadiz was delivered up to the flames before the English weighed anchor to return to their country. A second expedition directed against the Azores, brought about few results. The influence of the Cecils over the queen was still hostile to Essex, notwithstanding an apparent reconciliation. {416} The earl retired to Wamstead House, inhabited by his wife, the daughter of Walsingham, and widow of the celebrated Sir Philip Sydney, the Christian hero of the chivalry of the sixteenth century, slain at thirty years of age, before Zutphen. The jealousy and affection of the queen soon recalled Essex to court; he was nominated earl-marshal. Notwithstanding the opposition of the court of England, the King of France had concluded, in 1598, with Philip II., the treaty of Verdun, and Sir Robert Cecil, who had been on a mission to Paris, brought back the Spanish proposals for peace. Essex, who only lived for war, and who could not exert his influence elsewhere, rose vigorously against these overtures. The queen was not in favour of peace, but the Cecils dwelt upon the embarrassments of the situation, upon the gravity of affairs in Ireland, upon the distress of the treasury. Burleigh, drawing from his pocket a book of Psalms, showed this prophetic verse: "The bloodthirsty man shall not live half his days." The quarrel became bitter. Essex flew into a passion, and turned his back upon the queen, who had reprimanded him. Elizabeth rose and gave a box on the ear to her insolent subject. Essex had his hand upon his sword: "I would not have such an affront from the hands of the king, her father," he said, "and I will not accept it of a petticoat." Lord Howard arrested his arm, and the earl impetuously quitted the council, to proceed to Wamstead, where he remained in retirement for four months. When he reappeared at the court, still powerful in appearance, Burleigh had disappeared from the scene; he died on the 4th of August, 1598, at the age of seventy-eight. His loss had cost his mistress bitter tears. {417} Sir Robert Cecil, able and sagacious, but more corrupt than his father, and less faithfully attached to the interests of the queen, could not replace with Elizabeth the constant and sincere union of the sovereign and the minister, during forty years. The great consolation of the queen at this period was the death of Philip II. The war soon languished, and peace being concluded at the end of the year 1598, between the Spaniards and the United Provinces, delivered Elizabeth from the enormous subsidies which she had for a long time furnished her Dutch allies. The States-general recognized their debt to her Majesty, and undertook to discharge it by degrees. People in England were now only occupied with the imaginary or real plots which were discovered every day against the life of the queen, some hatched, it was said, by the Catholics, who still groaned under the weight of the most oppressive penal laws, others attributed to the Spanish influence. The King of Scotland was even accused of a project of assassination. He defended himself warmly against the charge. The queen wrote him that she could not think him guilty; but her confidence in his honour was so like a pardon for the alleged crime, that King James was not content, and demanded the trial of the accused, Valentine. The court of England contented itself with detaining in prison the wretch who had dared to tarnish the name of James VI.; when the latter succeeded to the throne, he enjoyed the pleasure of sending Valentine to the galleys.

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The state of Ireland had for a long while preoccupied Queen Elizabeth and her ministers. A serious insurrection at the beginning of the reign had for a moment placed Shane O'Neil at the head of all the Irish of pure race. He had been betrayed and assassinated, but his country was not subjugated. The projects of colonization of the Earl of Essex, father of the favourite of Elizabeth, and encouraged by her, had not succeeded better than the devastating campaigns of the Lords-Lieutenant, Sir Henry Sidney and Fitzwilliam. The English had undertaken to civilize Ireland by destroying its inhabitants, as they had undertaken to establish Protestantism by prohibiting Catholic worship in a country entirely devoted to that religion. Both efforts had justly failed, and the jealous rivalries of the Irish noblemen, the ever-recurring quarrels of the Butler's and the Fitzgeralds, the revolts, the submissions, the arrests, the murders of the chiefs of these two houses, the rival pretensions of the Earls of Ormond and Desmond wearied the patience of the queen and council, exhausted the public treasury, and maintained the hopes of the enemies of England. Two adventurers, Stuckely and Fitzmaurice, conceived the idea of taking advantage of the papal pretensions to the possession of the islands, to attempt a bold stroke upon Ireland. They obtained a bull relieving the Irish of their allegiance to Elizabeth, besides assistance in money, a few soldiers and some arms. Stuckely remained in Portugal, and perished at the battle of Alcazar against the Moors, but Fitzmaurice, brother of the Earl of Desmond, landed in Ireland, in 1579, in the hope of bringing about an insurrection. He was coldly received, and compelled to take refuge at the residence of his brother. {419} A reinforcement of pontifical soldiers, besieged in the fortress of Smerwick, were put to the sword by Sir Walter Raleigh. The Earl of Desmond, suspected of having taken part in the insurrection, was beheaded by the English troops, who seized him in a hut; Lord Grey de Wilton, who had become Lord-Lieutenant, restrained the revolt with a hand of iron, without obtaining any amelioration in the moral or material situation of the country. Sir John Perrot succeeded him in 1585; as severe as Lord Grey, but more just, he had the misfortune to give himself up in a fit of exasperation, to bitter words, not only against the queen, but against her "dancing chancellor," Hatton. The vengeance of the minister and the anger of the sovereign appeared to slumber, but when Perrot, weary of asking in vain for assistance and money, obtained his recall, he was accused of high treason, overwhelmed by the testimony of men whose excesses he had restrained during his government, and was soon condemned to death. His son had married a sister of Essex, and the influence of the earl counterbalanced that of his enemies. Grief or poison averted his execution, he died on the 20th of June, 1591, at the moment when the power of the Earl of Tyrone, Hugh, son of O'Neil, baron of Duncannon, was becoming great in Ireland. He was regarded by his fellow-citizens as the legitimate sovereign of Ulster. He claimed for his country liberty of conscience and the maintenance of ancient local customs, savage privileges having little compatibility with civilization. At the same time he also claimed all the property which had formerly belonged to his ancestors. Skilful and of noble appearance, he had contrived to discipline his fierce soldiers, and he conducted them in battle array against the troops of the queen. {420} Sir John Norris had died of grief and anger. Sir Henry Bagnall was defeated and killed at Blackwater, in County Tyrone, and the insurrection spread throughout the whole of Ireland. It was asserted that the Pope and the King of Spain had promised assistance to the rebels. In this perilous situation the council of the queen decided that no other but the Earl of Essex could take command of the army. For a long time he refused. The viceroys of Ireland had all suffered disgrace or death. He finally yielded to the personal entreaties of Elizabeth, and left London in the month of March, 1599, accompanied by the flower of the English nobility. His absence was to inflict upon him a mortal blow. The troops were despatched slowly, ill armed, ill fed. In vain he demanded reinforcements. Sir Walter Raleigh and Sir Robert Cecil assured the queen that her general had no other desire than to prolong the war. When he entered the province of Ulster, the centre of the rebellion, he had less than six thousand men with him. He concluded an armistice with the Earl of Tyrone, then without waiting for authority for this settlement he embarked in haste for England. Scarcely arrived in London, he repaired to the palace of the queen; she was at her toilet; he entered and threw himself upon his knees before her, kissing her hands. When he issued forth, he appeared radiant, congratulating himself after suffering far from home stormy troubles and inward griefs, and finding once more peace and quietude in his own country. {421} On the morrow everything was changed. The Earl received orders to remain a prisoner in his apartment. Sir John Harrington, who had accompanied Essex to Ireland, was summoned to appear before the queen: "she chafed much, walked to and fro, looked with discomposure in her visage," says Sir John, "and when I kneeled to her she clutched at my girdle, saying, 'By God's son I am no queen, that man is above me! Who gave him command to come here so soon? I did send him on other business.' She bid me go home, I did not stay to be bidden twice. If all the Irish rebels had been at my heels, I should not have made better speed." On the morrow, Essex was summoned before the council. He replied with gravity and moderation, but was consigned to the care of the keeper of the seals. All the affection of the queen for the Earl appeared to have turned to anger. She forbade the friends, the physicians, and particularly the wife of the prisoner, to have any access to his person. He was ill, and had been detained for eight months, when, in the month of May, 1600, he wrote to the queen, reminding her of her former favour, of which his enemies had been so jealous that they continued to hate him habitually, "now that he was forgotten and thrown into a corner, like a dishonoured corpse." On the 26th of August, liberty was restored to him, but orders were given to him not to appear at court. Terrible is the intoxication of love of power and royal favour! Essex was learned; he had a taste for arts and literature; he might have retired into the country, and concealed the check he had received, but he desired to tempt fortune once more. His secretary, Cuffs, an enterprising man, without principle, urged him to attempt the rule of his enemies by a bold stroke. {422} He was beloved by the population of London. An insurrection might rid him of Cecil, Raleigh, Cobham, the party of the court, as they were called, the earl opened the doors of his house to all malcontents, and assembled together the officers who had served under him. He involved in his cause King James VI., asserting that Cecil and his friends were endeavoring to banish him from the succession, in favour of the Infanta of Spain, Clara-Eugenia, daughter of Philip II., married to the Archduke Albert. Secret advices warned the Earl that his projects were known to the council. He resolved to act. He was surrounded by his friends on Sunday, the 8th of February, 1601, preparing to march to the City to rouse to insurrection the populace assembled at the cross of St. Paul's, at the moment of the sermon, and thus to open up a way for himself to the queen with the assistance of the mob. The keeper of the seals, and Lord Egerton and Sir William Knollys, arrived at his house at the same moment, demanding an explanation of this noisy assemblage. "There is a plot against my life: letters have been forged in my name; men have been hired to murder me in my bed," exclaimed Essex violently; then, as the magistrates promised justice, he invited them to enter an inner apartment; the door was closed upon them. Essex hastened to the City with Lord Rutland, Lord Southampton and a few others. The streets were deserted; no sermon had been delivered at the cross of St. Paul's. The citizens remained shut up in their houses. The aldermen had received the orders of the queen. Essex called every one to arms; none responded. He had great difficulty in re-entering his house, which he in vain endeavoured to defend. {423} At the sight of the cannon leveled against the walls, he, as well as his friends, surrendered, and he was conducted to the Tower with the Earl of Southampton. When the accused appeared before the peers, on the 19th of February, Essex asserted that he had only obeyed the law of nature in defending his reputation and his life. The indictment of the crown was supported by Francis Bacon, whose career was soon to present so strange a mixture of greatness and infamy. He owed his elevation to the friendship and the protection of the Earl of Essex. He was less violent than his compeer, Coke, who accused the Earl of having desired to raise an insurrection. "He would have called a Parliament, and a bloody Parliament would that have been, where my Lord of Essex, that now stands all in black, would have worn a bloody robe; but now, in God's just judgment, he of his earldom shall be Robert the Last, that of a kingdom thought to be Robert the First." All the arguments of Essex were demolished by Bacon, although the latter reminded him of the language which he had himself used regarding the party which he now supported. No witness was confronted with the accused, whose condemnation to death was unanimously pronounced by the peers.

When the usual question was put to the two earls, whether they knew of any reason why they should not be condemned, Essex did not complain of the fate which awaited him. He was weary of life, he said, but he interceded keenly for his friend. Lord Southampton. He was urged to ask mercy of the queen. {424} "Do not accuse me of pride," said the Earl, "but I could not ask for mercy in that way, though with all humility I pray her Majesty's forgiveness; I would rather die than live in misery; I have cleared my accounts, and have forgiven all the world." A confession signed by Essex was circulated, but many people believed it to be forged. It was also asserted that he had expressly asked to be executed in secret, although that fact was formally denied by King Henry IV. "Quite on the contrary," said the monarch, "he would have desired nothing so much as to die in public." The popularity of the Earl of Essex was dreaded, and the prolonged emotion which his death caused proved that this dread was not without foundation. He was beheaded on the 25th of February, 1601, at eight o'clock in the morning, in an outer court of the Tower. He was not thirty-three years of age. Sir Walter Raleigh witnessed the execution from a window, as well as that of several of the friends of the Earl. He did not know that the day would come in like manner when other eyes would in their turn come to contemplate his death. The Earl of Southampton remained in prison until the accession of King James, with whom he was soon in great favour.

If the King of Scotland had now found himself, as his mother had been, under the rule of the English law, he would have incurred serious dangers. His correspondence with Essex had compromised him so much that he felt compelled to send ambassadors to London to exonerate himself with Elizabeth. Sir Robert Cecil was in the service of the King of Scotland, faithful to the instinct of the courtier, who turns to the rising sun. {425} The queen was appeased and increased the pay of her successor. If the chroniclers do not wrong her, she had shortly before been concerned in a strange plot, in which the king had narrowly escaped perishing by the hand of the sons of the Earl of Gowrie, beheaded for rebellion in 1584. The queen and her destined successor had little liking for each other, and bitter recollections estranged them. In despatching his emissaries to London, the King of Scotland had recommended them to proceed prudently between the two precipices of the queen and the people. The emissaries were sufficiently skilful to secure the best of guides. It was then that Sir Robert Cecil began with King James a correspondence which would have cost him his head if his mistress had been aware of it. Less skilful, Sir Walter Raleigh and Cobham did not contrive to gain in time the good graces of the future monarch, a fatal imprudence, as one of them afterwards found.

The war continued in Ireland, supported by a considerable body of Spaniards. Lord Mountjoy had besieged them in Kinsale and pressed them vigorously, when the Earl of Tyrone advanced, at the head of six thousand Irish, to second his allies. He was repulsed after a desperate fight; the Spaniards were obliged to capitulate and re-embark in their vessels. Mountjoy pursued Tyrone from retreat to retreat, until he was compelled to surrender, towards the end of 1602. The expenses of the war had been enormous; the Queen had convoked Parliament for the last time in the month of October, 1601. She was sick and depressed in spirits; but she appeared before the Houses more magnificently attired than ever, and obtained considerable supplies. {426} The Commons, however, had determined to cause their favours to be paid for. They protested violently against the monopolies granted or sold by the Crown, which allowed the possessors to fix the price of articles of first necessity as suited them. The sale of wine, oil, salt, tin, steel and coal, were all objects of these monopolies. It was asked why bread was not among the number. "If no remedy is found for these," said a member, "bread will be there before the next Parliament." The discussion, formal and categorical in its nature, lasted four days. The ministers endeavoured to defend the prerogative, but Parliament held firm; the spirit of the Puritans had constantly gained ground during recent years, and the queen was compelled to yield. A promise was given to abolish the existing monopolies, and not to grant fresh ones. This engagement was not strictly kept, but the worst features of the evil diminished. Elizabeth no longer governed as of old. The energy of her will yielded to the growing feebleness of her body. She had always contrived to know the moment when it was necessary to make concessions; and she felt, besides, with bitter sorrow, that her popularity had diminished among the nation. The day of complete decline was approaching. The anxieties of absolute power, remorse for past cruelties, and regret for the death of the Earl of Essex, weighed upon that head, bent with age and sickness. Elizabeth did not seek confidants. Secret in her griefs as in her resolves, she bore alone the burden of her weariness; but the beginning of the year 1603 saw her strength diminishing day by day. {427} She no longer showed herself in public, alleging the sorrow which she experienced at the recent death of the Countess Nottingham. She no longer slept, and scarcely ate; "She remains seated upon cushions," wrote the French Ambassador, at the beginning of March, "refusing to take any medicine or to go to bed." She no longer rose, yet she did not lie down; her eyes remained fixed upon the ground, and days elapsed without her saying a word. On the 21st of March her women put her to bed, and she listened attentively to the prayers of the Archbishop of Canterbury, Whitgift. On the morrow, the 22nd of March, Cecil, the Lord Admiral, and Lord Keeper of the Seals, approached her to ask her to name her successor. She trembled. "I told you my seat has been the seat of Kings; I will have no rascal to succeed me." The lords looked at each other, uncertain as to the meaning of her words. "I tell you that I will have no rascal. I must have a king, and who could that be but my cousin of Scotland?" "Is your Grace quite determined?" asked Cecil. She made a sign indicating yes, asking that she should be left in peace. She had again seen the archbishop, and was speechless when the lords of the council returned. "May your Grace deign to make a sign to indicate if you have chosen the the King of Scotland for your successor," they asked again. She raised herself, and joined her hands above her head as though to form a crown. Then she sank back upon her pillows and died in the night of the 24th of March, 1603, without having uttered a word. She was nearly seventy, and had wielded the sceptre for forty-five years.

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Queen Elizabeth had willed and accomplished great things. She had governed England despotically, but was skilful, nevertheless, in observing the national tendencies and in yielding to them when resistance became dangerous. Under the influence and upon the advice of her faithful minister, Lord Burleigh, she had often been the arbitrator of Europe, constantly the patron and protector of the persecuted Protestants. She had tarnished the brilliancy of her reign, and for ever sullied her glory, by weaknesses and bad passions, while obstinately refusing to devote herself to the duties and to share in the legitimate happiness of a woman's life. Courageous, proud, farsighted, and persevering, she had displayed many great intellectual faculties and moral qualities, but rarely or never the tender and modest virtues which both inspire and retain private affections. She had long contrived to inspire sentiments of another nature. When in the midst of her glorious career, Elizabeth, asking a lady of her court how she preserved the affection of her husband, the latter replied, "By assuring him of mine, madam," the queen exclaimed, "It is thus that I possess the love of my many husbands, the people of England, by causing them to feel that which I bear to them." She had indeed possessed the love of her people, and she had made common cause with them during long years, and through great trials. When she died, the evils and dangers inherent in absolute power had done their worst. The English nation began to grow weary of the domination of its great queen, and to contemplate political and religious liberties which had no place in the mind or heart of Elizabeth Tudor.

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