Part 26

His administration was singularly unsuccessful. In 1547 he won the great but barren victory of Pinkie Cleugh over the Scots, and attempted to push on the marriage and union by a mixture of conciliation and coercion. He made genuine and considerable concessions to Scottish feeling, guaranteeing autonomy and freedom of trade, and suggesting that the two realms should adopt the indifferent style of the empire of Great Britain. But he also seized Haddington in 1548, held by force the greater part of the Lowlands, and, when Mary was transported to France, revived the old feudal claims which he had dropped in 1547. France was, as ever, the backbone of the Scots resistance; men and money poured into Edinburgh to assist Mary of Guise and the French faction. The protector's offer to restore Boulogne could not purchase French acquiescence in the union of England and Scotland; and the bickerings on the borders in France and open fighting in Scotland led the French to declare war on England in August 1549. They were encouraged by dissensions in England. Somerset's own brother, Thomas Seymour, jealous of the protector, intrigued against the government; he sought to secure the hand of Elizabeth, the favour of Edward VI. and the support of the Suffolk line, secretly married Catherine Parr, and abused his office as lord high admiral to make friends with pirates and other enemies of order. Foes of the family, such as Warwick and Southampton, saw in his factious conduct the means of ruining both the brothers. Seymour was brought to the block, and the weak consent of the protector seriously damaged him in the public eye. His notorious sympathy with the peasantry further alienated the official classes and landed gentry, and his campaign against enclosures brought him into conflict with the strongest forces of the time. The remedial measures which he favoured failed; and the rising of Ket in Norfolk and others less important in nearly all the counties of England, made Somerset's position impossible. Bedford and Herbert suppressed the rebellion in the west, Warwick that in Norfolk (July-August 1549). They then combined with the majority of the council and the discontented Catholics to remove the protector from office and imprison him in the Tower (October).

Administration of the duke of Northumberland.

Establishment of Protestantism.

The Catholics hoped for reaction, the restoration of the mass, and the release of Gardiner and Bonner, who had been imprisoned for resistance to the protector's ecclesiastical policy. But Warwick meant to rely on the Protestant extremists; by January 1550 the Catholics had been expelled from the council, and the pace of the Reformation increased instead of diminishing. Peace was made with France by the surrender of Boulogne and abandonment of the policy of union with Scotland (March 1550); and the approach of war between France and the emperor, coupled with the rising of the princes in Germany, relieved Warwick from foreign apprehensions and gave him a free hand at home. Gardiner, Bonner, Heath, Day and Tunstall were one by one deprived of their sees; a new ordinal simplified the ritual of ordination, and a second Act of Uniformity and Book of Common Prayer (1552) repudiated the Catholic interpretation which had been placed on the first and imposed a stricter conformity to the Protestant faith. All impediments to clerical marriage were removed, altars and organs were taken down, old service books destroyed and painted windows broken; it was even proposed to explain away the kneeling at the sacrament. The liberal measures of the protector were repealed, and new treasons were enacted; Somerset himself, who had been released and restored to the council in 1550, became an obstacle in Warwick's path, and was removed by means of a bogus plot, being executed in January 1552; while Warwick had himself made duke of Northumberland, his friend Dorset duke of Suffolk, and Herbert earl of Pembroke.

But his ambition and violence made him deeply unpopular, and the failing health of Edward VI. opened up a serious prospect for Northumberland. He was only safe so long as he controlled the government, and prevented the administration of justice, and the knowledge that not only power but life was at stake drove him into a desperate plot for the retention of both. He could trade upon Edward's precocious hatred of Mary's religion, he could rely upon French fears of her Spanish inclinations, and the success which had attended his schemes in England deluded him into a belief that he could supplant the Tudor with a Dudley dynasty. His son Guilford Dudley was hastily married to Lady Jane Grey, the eldest granddaughter of Henry VIII.'s younger sister Mary. Henry's two daughters, Mary and Elizabeth, the descendants of his elder sister Margaret, and Lady Jane's mother, the duchess of Suffolk, were all to be passed over, and the succession was to be vested in Lady Jane and her heirs male. Edward was persuaded that he could devise the crown by will, the council and the judges were browbeaten into acquiescence, and three days after Edward's death (July 6, 1553), Lady Jane Grey was proclaimed queen in London. Northumberland had miscalculated the temper of the nation, and failed to kidnap Mary. She gathered her forces in Norfolk and Suffolk, Northumberland rode out from London to oppose her, but defection dogged his steps, and even in London Mary was proclaimed queen behind his back by his fellow-conspirators. Mary entered London amid unparalleled popular rejoicings, and Northumberland was sent to a well-deserved death on the scaffold.

Queen Mary. Restoration of the old religion.

Unpopularity of the Spanish marriage. Philip II.

Mary was determined from the first to restore papalism as well as Catholicism, but she had to go slowly. The papacy had few friends in England, and even Charles V., on whom Mary chiefly relied for guidance, was not eager to see the papal jurisdiction restored. He wanted England to be first firmly tied to the Habsburg interests by Mary's marriage with Philip. Nor was it generally anticipated that Mary would do more than restore religion as it had been left by her father. She did not attempt anything further in 1553 than the repeal of Edward VI.'s legislation and the accomplishment of the Spanish marriage. The latter project provoked fierce resistance; various risings were planned for the opening months of 1554, and Wyat's nearly proved successful. Only his arrogance and procrastination and Mary's own courage saved her throne. But the failure of this protest enabled Mary to carry through the Spanish marriage, which was consummated in July; and in the ensuing parliament (Oct.-Jan. 1554-1555) all anti-papal legislation was repealed; Pole was received as legate; the realm was reconciled to Rome; and, although the holders of abbey lands were carefully protected against attempts at restitution, the church was empowered to work its will with regard to heresy. The Lollard statutes were revived, and between February 1555 and November 1558 some three hundred Protestants were burnt at the stake. They began with John Rogers and Rowland Taylor, and Bishops Ferrar of St Davids and Hooper of Gloucester. Ridley and Latimer were not burnt until October 1555, and Cranmer not till March 1556. London, Essex, Hertfordshire, East Anglia, Kent and Sussex provided nearly all the victims; only one was burnt north of the Trent, and only one south-west of Wiltshire. But in the Protestant districts neither age nor sex was spared; even the dead were dug up and burnt. The result was to turn the hearts of Mary's people from herself, her church and her creed. Other causes helped to convert their enthusiastic loyalty into bitter hatred. The Spanish marriage was a failure from every point of view. In spite of Mary's repeated delusions, she bore no child, and both parliament and people resisted every attempt to deprive Elizabeth of her right to the succession. Philip did all he could to conciliate English affections, but they would not have Spanish control at any price. They knew that his blandishments were dictated by ulterior designs, and that the absorption of England in the Habsburg empire was his ultimate aim. As it was, the Spanish connexion checked England's aspirations; her adventurers were warned off the Spanish Main, and even trade with the colonies of Philip's ally Portugal was prohibited. They had to content themselves with the Arctic Ocean and Muscovy; and they soon found themselves at war in Philip's interests. Philip himself refused to declare war on Scotland on England's behalf, but he induced Mary to declare war on France on his own (1557). The glory of the war fell to the Spaniards at St Quentin (1557) and Gravelines (1558), but the shame to England by the loss of Calais (Jan. 1558). Ten months later Mary died (Nov. 17), deserted by her husband and broken-hearted at the loss of Calais and her failure to win English hearts back to Rome.

Accession of Elizabeth. English national struggle with Spain.

The Spanish and Venetian ambassadors in London were shocked at what they regarded as the indecent rejoicings over Elizabeth's accession. The nation, indeed, breathed a new life. Papal control of its ecclesiastical, and Spanish control of its foreign policy ceased, and it had a queen who gloried in being "mere English." There was really no possible rival sovereign, and no possible alternative policy. The English were tugging at the chain and Elizabeth had to follow; her efforts throughout were aimed at checking the pace at which her people wanted to go. She could not have married Philip had she wished to, and she could not have kept her sea-dogs off the Spanish Main. They were willing to take all the risks and relieve her of all responsibility; they filled her coffers with Spanish gold which they plundered as pirates, knowing that they might be hanged if caught; and they fought Elizabeth's enemies in France and in the Netherlands as irregulars, taking their chance of being shot if taken prisoners. While Elizabeth nursed prosperity in peace, her subjects sapped the strength of England's rivals by attacks which were none the less damaging because they escaped the name of war.

Triumph of the new religion. The Act of Uniformity.

It required all Elizabeth's finesse to run with the hare and hunt with the hounds; but she was, as Henry III. of France said, _la plus fine femme du monde_, and she was ably seconded by Cecil who had already proved himself an adept in the art of taking cover. Nevertheless, English policy in their hands was essentially aggressive. It could not be otherwise if England was to emerge from the slough in which Mary had left it. The first step was to assert the principle of England for the English; the queen would have no foreign husband, though she found suitors useful as well as attractive. Spanish counsels were applauded and neglected, and the Spaniards soon departed. Elizabeth was glad of Philip's support at the negotiations for peace at Cateau Cambresis (1559), but she took care to assert the independence of her diplomacy and of England's interests. At home the church was made once more English. All foreign jurisdiction was repudiated, and under the style "supreme governor" Elizabeth reclaimed nearly all the power which Henry VIII. had exercised as "supreme head." The Act of Uniformity (1559) restored with a few modifications the second prayer-book of Edward VI. The bishops almost unanimously refused to conform, and a clean sweep was made of the episcopal bench. An eminently safe and scholarly archbishop was found in Matthew Parker, who had not made himself notorious by resistance to authority even under Mary. The lower clergy were more amenable; the two hundred who alone are said to have been ejected should perhaps be multiplied by five; but even so they were not one in seven, and these seven were clergy who had been promoted in Mary's reign, or who had stood the celibate and other tests of 1553-1554. Into the balance must be thrown the hundreds, if not thousands, of zealots who had fled abroad and returned in 1558-1559. The net result was that a few years later the lower house of convocation only rejected by one vote a very puritanical petition against vestments and other "popish dregs."

Elizabeth and Scotland.

Struggle against the Spanish dominion at sea.

The next step was to expand the principle of England for the English into that of Britain for the British, and Knox's reformation in 1559-1560 provided an opportunity for its application. By timely and daring intervention in Scotland Elizabeth procured the expulsion of the French bag and baggage from North Britain, and that French avenue to England was closed for ever. The logic of this plan was not applied to Ireland; there it was to be Ireland for the English for many a generation yet to come; and so Ireland remained Achilles' heel, the vulnerable part of the United Kingdom. The Protestant religion was forced upon the Irish in a foreign tongue and garb and at the point of foreign pikes; and national sentiment supported the ancient faith and the ancient habits in resistance to the Saxon innovations. In other directions the expansion of England, the third stage in the development of Elizabeth's policy, was more successful. The attractions of the Spanish Main converted the seafaring folk of south-west England into hardy Protestants, who could on conscientious as well as other grounds contest a papal allocation of new worlds to Spain and Portugal. Their monopoly was broken up by Hawkins, Drake, Frobisher, Raleigh, and scores of others who recognized no peace beyond the line; and although, as far as actual colonies went, the results of Elizabeth's reign were singularly meagre, the idea had taken root and the ground had been prepared. In every direction English influence penetrated, and Englishmen before 1603 might be found in every quarter of the globe, following Drake's lead into the Pacific, painfully breaking the ice in search of a north-east or a north-west passage, hunting for slaves in the wilds of Africa, journeying in caravans across the steppes of Russia into central Asia, bargaining with the Turks on the shores of the Golden Horn, or with the Greeks in the Levant, laying the foundations of the East India Company, or of the colonies of Virginia and Newfoundland.

Mary, queen of Scots.

This expansion was mainly at the expense of Spain; but at first Spain was regarded as Elizabeth's friend, not France. France had a rival candidate for Elizabeth's throne in Mary Stuart, the wife of the dauphin who soon (1559) became king as Francis II.; and Spanish favour was sought to neutralize this threat. Fortunately for Elizabeth, Francis died in 1560, and the French government passed into the hands of Catherine de' Medici, who had no cause to love her daughter-in-law and the Guises. France, too, was soon paralysed by the wars of religion which Elizabeth judiciously fomented with anything but religious motives. Mary Stuart returned to Scotland with nothing but her brains and her charms on which to rely in her struggle with her people and her rival. She was well equipped in both respects, but human passions spoilt her chance; her heart turned her head. Elizabeth's head was stronger and she had no heart at all. When Mary married Darnley she had the ball at her feet; the pair had the best claims to the English succession and enjoyed the united affections of the Catholics. But they soon ceased to love one another, and could not control their jealousies. There followed rapidly the murders of Rizzio and Darnley, the Bothwell marriage, Mary's defeat, captivity, and flight into England (1568). It was a difficult problem for Elizabeth to solve; to let Mary go to France was presenting a good deal more than a pawn to her enemies; to restore her by force to her Scottish throne might have been heroic, but it certainly was not politics; to hand her over to her Scottish foes was too mean even for Elizabeth; and to keep her in England was to nurse a spark in a powder-magazine. Mary was detained in the hope that the spark might be carefully isolated.

Rebellion of 1569 and excommunication of Elizabeth.

Plots against Elizabeth. Relations with France and Spain.

But there was too much inflammable material about. The duke of Norfolk was a Protestant, but his convictions were weaker than his ambition, and he fell a victim to Mary's unseen charms. The Catholic north of England was to rise under the earls of Westmorland and Northumberland, who objected to Elizabeth's seizure of their mines and jurisdictions as well as to her proscription of their faith; and the pope was to assist with a bull of deposition. Norfolk, however, played the coward; the bull came nearly a year too late, and the rebellion of the earls (1569) was easily crushed. But the conspiracies did not end, and Spain began to take a hand. Elizabeth, partly in revenge for the treatment of Hawkins and Drake at San Juan de Ulloa, seized some Spanish treasure on its way to the Netherlands (Dec. 1569). Alva's operations were fatally handicapped by this disaster, but Philip was too much involved in the Netherlands to declare war on England. But his friendship for Elizabeth had received a shock, and henceforth his finger may be traced in most of the plots against her, of which the Ridolfi conspiracy was the first. It cost Norfolk his head and Mary more of her scanty liberty. Elizabeth also began to look to France, and in 1572, by the treaty of Blois, France instead of Spain became England's ally, while Philip constituted himself as Mary's patron. The massacre of St Bartholomew placed a severe strain upon the new alliance, but was not fatal to it. A series of prolonged but hollow marriage negotiations between Elizabeth and first Anjou (afterwards Henry III.) and then Alencon (afterwards duke of Anjou) served to keep up appearances. But the friendship was never warm; Elizabeth's relations with the Huguenots on the one hand and her fear of French designs on the Netherlands on the other prevented much cordiality. But the alliance stood in the way of a Franco-Spanish agreement, limited Elizabeth's sympathy with the French Protestants, and enabled her to give more countenance than she otherwise might have done to the Dutch.

The Jesuit missions.

Execution of Mary, queen of Scots, 1587.

The Great Armada, 1588.

Gradually Philip grew more hostile under provocation; slowly he came to the conclusion that he could never subdue the Dutch or check English attacks on the Spanish Main without a conquest of England. Simultaneously the counter-Reformation began its attacks; the "Jesuit invasion" took place in 1580, and Campion went to the block. A papal and Spanish attempt upon Ireland in the same year was foiled at Smerwick. But more important was Philip's acquisition of the throne of Portugal with its harbours, its colonies and its marine. This for the first time gave him a real command of the sea, and at least doubled the chances of a successful attack upon England. But Philip's mind moved slowly and only on provocation. It took a year or two to satisfy him that Portugal was really his; not until 1583 was the fleet of the pretender Don Antonio destroyed in the Azores. The victor, Santa Cruz, then suggested an armada against England, but the English Catholics could not be brought into line with a Spanish invasion. The various attempts to square James VI. of Scotland had not been successful, and events in the Netherlands and in France disturbed Philip's calculations. But his purpose was now probably fixed. After the murder of William the Silent (1584) Elizabeth sided more openly with the Dutch; the Spanish ambassador Mendoza was expelled from England for his intrigues with Elizabeth's enemies (1586); and on the discovery of Babington's plot Elizabeth yielded to the demand of her parliament and her ministers for Mary's execution (1587); her death removed the only possible centre for a Catholic rebellion in case of a Spanish attack. It also removed Philip's last doubts; Mary had left him her claims to the English throne, and he might, now that she was out of his path, hope to treat England like Portugal. Drake's "singeing of Philip's beard" in Cadiz harbour in 1587 delayed the expedition for a year, and a storm again postponed it in the early summer of 1588. At length the armada sailed in July under the incompetent duke of Medina Sidonia; its object was to secure command of the narrow seas and facilitate the transport of Parma's army from the Netherlands to England. But Philip after his twenty years' experience in the Netherlands can hardly have hoped to conquer a bigger and richer country with scantier means and forces. He relied in fact upon a domestic explosion, and the armada was only to be the torch. This miscalculation made it a hopeless enterprise from the first. Scarcely an English Catholic would have raised a finger in Philip's favour; and when he could not subdue the two provinces of Holland and Zeeland, it is absurd to suppose that he could have simultaneously subdued them and England as well. English armies were not perhaps very efficient, but they were as good as the material with which William of Orange began his task. Philip, however, was never given the opportunity. His armada was severely handled in a week's fighting on its way up the Channel, and was driven off the English ports into the German Ocean; there a south-west gale drove it far from its rendezvous, and completed the havoc which the English ships had begun. A miserable remnant alone escaped destruction in its perilous flight round the north and west of Scotland.

The defeat of the armada was the beginning and not the end of the war; and there were moments between 1588 and 1603 when England was more seriously alarmed than in 1588. The Spaniards seized Calais in 1596; at another time they threatened England from Brest, and the "invisible" armada of 1599 created a greater panic than the "invincible" armada of 1588. It was not till the very end of the reign that what was in some ways the most dangerous of Spanish aggressions was foiled at Kinsale. Nor were the English counter-attacks very happy; the attempt on Portugal in 1589 under Drake and Norris proved a complete failure. The raid on Cadiz under Essex and Raleigh in 1596 was attended with better results, but the "Islands" voyage to the Azores in 1597 was a very partial success. Still it was now a war upon more or less equal terms, and there was little more likelihood that it would end with England's than with Spain's loss of national independence. The subjection of the Netherlands was now almost out of the question, and although Elizabeth's help had not enabled the Protestant cause to win in France, Henry IV. built up a national monarchy which would be quite as effectual a bar to the ambitions of Spain.

Last years of Elizabeth.