HISTORY

OF

THE ENGLISH PEOPLE

BY

JOHN RICHARD GREEN, M. A. HONORARY FELLOW OF JESUS COLLEGE, OXFORD

VOLUME IV

THE REFORMATION, 1540-1593

LondonMACMILLAN AND CO. , LTD. NEW YORK: MACMILLAN & CO. 1896

_First Edition, Demy 8vo, November 1877, __Reprinted December 1877, 1881, 1885, 1890__Eversley Edition 1896_

CONTENTS

BOOK VI

THE REFORMATION. 1540-1603

CHAPTER I PAGETHE PROTESTANT REVOLUTION. 1540-1553 7

CHAPTER II

THE CATHOLIC REACTION. 1553-1558 72

CHAPTER III

THE ENGLAND OF ELIZABETH. 1558-1561 146

CHAPTER IV

ENGLAND AND MARY STUART. 1561-1567 195

CHAPTER V

ENGLAND AND THE PAPACY. 1567-1582. 247

CHAPTER VI

ENGLAND AND SPAIN. 1582-1593 323

BOOK VI

THE REFORMATION

1540-1603

AUTHORITIES FOR BOOK VI

1540-1603

For the close of Henry the Eighth's reign as for the reigns of Edwardand Mary we possess copious materials. Strype covers this period in his"Memorials" and in his lives of Cranmer, Cheke, and Smith; Hayward's"Life of Edward the Sixth" may be supplemented by the young king's ownJournal; "Machyn's Diary" gives us the aspect of affairs as theypresented themselves to a common Englishman; while Holinshed is nearenough to serve as a contemporary authority. The troubled period of theProtectorate is illustrated by Mr. Tytler in the correspondence which hehas published in his "England under Edward the Sixth and Mary, " whilemuch light is thrown on its close by Mr. Nicholls in the "Chronicle ofQueen Jane, " published by the Camden Society. In spite of countlesserrors, of Puritan prejudices, and some deliberate suppressions of thetruth, its mass of facts and wonderful charm of style will always giveimportance to the "Acts and Monuments" or "Book of Martyrs" of JohnFoxe, as a record of the Marian persecution. Among outer observers, theVenetian Soranzo throws some light on the Protectorate; and thedespatches of Giovanni Michiel, published by Mr. Friedmann, give us anew insight into the events of Mary's reign. 

For the succeeding reign we have a valuable contemporary account inCamden's "Life of Elizabeth. " The "Annals" of Sir John Hayward refer tothe first four years of the Queen's rule. Its political and diplomaticside is only now being fully unveiled in the Calendar of State Papersfor this period, which are being issued by the Master of the Rolls, andfresh light has yet to be looked for from the Cecil Papers and thedocuments at Simancas, some of which are embodied in the history of thisreign by Mr. Froude. Among the published materials for this time we havethe Burleigh Papers, the Sidney Papers, the Sadler State Papers, muchcorrespondence in the Hardwicke State Papers, the letters published byMr. Wright in his "Elizabeth and her Times, " the collections of Murdin, the Egerton Papers, the "Letters of Elizabeth and James the Sixth"published by Mr. Bruce. Harrington's "Nugæ Antiquæ" contain some detailsof value. Among foreign materials as yet published the "Papiers d'Etat"of Cardinal Granvelle and the series of French despatches published byM. Teulet are among the more important. Mr. Motley in his "Rise of theDutch Republic" and "History of the United Netherlands" has used theState Papers of the countries concerned in this struggle to pour a floodof new light on the diplomacy and outer policy of Burleigh and hismistress. His wide and independent research among the same class ofdocuments gives almost an original value to Ranke's treatment of thisperiod in his English History. The earlier religious changes in Scotlandhave been painted with wonderful energy, and on the whole withtruthfulness, by Knox himself in his "History of the Reformation. " Amongthe contemporary materials for the history of Mary Stuart we have thewell-known works of Buchanan and Leslie, Labanoff's "Lettres et Mémoiresde Marie Stuart, " the correspondence appended to Mignet's biography, Stevenson's "Illustrations of the Life of Queen Mary, " Melville'sMemoirs, and the collections of Keith and Anderson. 

For the religious history of Elizabeth's reign Strype, as usual, givesus copious details in his "Annals, " his lives of Parker, Grindal, andWhitgift. Some light is thrown on the Queen's earlier steps by theZürich Letters published by the Parker Society. The strife with thelater Puritans can only be fairly judged after reading the MartinMarprelate Tracts, which have been reprinted by Mr. Maskell, who hasgiven a short abstract of the more important in his "History of theMartin Marprelate Controversy. " Her policy towards the Catholics is setout in Burleigh's tract "The Execution of Justice in England, not forReligion, but for Treason, " which was answered by Allen in his "Defenseof the English Catholics. " On the actual working of the penal laws muchnew information has been given us in the series of contemporarynarratives published by Father Morris under the title of "The Troublesof our Catholic Forefathers"; the general history of the Catholics maybe found in the work of Dodd; and the sufferings of the Jesuits inMore's "Historia Provinciæ Anglicanæ Societatis Jesu. " To these may beadded Mr. Simpson's biography of Campion. For our constitutional historyduring Elizabeth's reign we have D'Ewes's Journals and Townshend's"Journal of Parliamentary Proceedings from 1580 to 1601, " the firstdetailed account we possess of the proceedings of the House of Commons. Macpherson in his Annals of Commerce gives details of the wonderfulexpansion of English trade during this period, and Hakluyt's collectionof Voyages tells of its wonderful activity. Amidst a crowd ofbiographers, whose number marks the new importance of individual lifeand action at the time, we may note as embodying information elsewhereinaccessible the lives of Hatton and Davison by Sir Harris Nicolas, thethree accounts of Raleigh by Oldys, Tytler, and Mr. Edwards, the Livesof the two Devereux, Earls of Essex, Mr. Spedding's "Life of Bacon, " andBarrow's "Life of Sir Francis Drake. "

CHAPTER I

THE PROTESTANT REVOLUTION

1540-1553

[Sidenote: Cromwell and the Monarchy. ]

At the death of Cromwell the success of his policy was complete. TheMonarchy had reached the height of its power. The old liberties ofEngland lay prostrate at the feet of the king. The Lords were cowed andspiritless; the House of Commons was filled with the creatures of theCourt and degraded into an engine of tyranny. Royal proclamations weretaking the place of parliamentary legislation; royal benevolences wereencroaching more and more on the right of parliamentary taxation. Justice was prostituted in the ordinary courts to the royal will, whilethe boundless and arbitrary powers of the royal Council were graduallysuperseding the slower processes of the Common Law. The religiouschanges had thrown an almost sacred character over the "majesty" of theking. Henry was the Head of the Church. From the primate to the meanestdeacon every minister of it derived from him his sole right to exercisespiritual powers. The voice of its preachers was the echo of his will. He alone could define orthodoxy or declare heresy. The forms of itsworship and belief were changed and rechanged at the royal caprice. Halfof its wealth went to swell the royal treasury, and the other half layat the king's mercy. It was this unprecedented concentration of allpower in the hands of a single man that overawed the imagination ofHenry's subjects. He was regarded as something high above the laws whichgovern common men. The voices of statesmen and priests extolled hiswisdom and authority as more than human. The Parliament itself rose andbowed to the vacant throne when his name was mentioned. An absolutedevotion to his person replaced the old loyalty to the law. When thePrimate of the English Church described the chief merit of Cromwell, itwas by asserting that he loved the king "no less than he loved God. "

[Sidenote: Cromwell and the Parliament. ]

It was indeed Cromwell who more than any man had reared this fabric ofking-worship. But he had hardly reared it when it began to give way. Thevery success of his measures indeed brought about the ruin of hispolicy. One of the most striking features of Cromwell's system had beenhis developement of parliamentary action. The great assembly which theMonarchy had dreaded and silenced from the days of Edward the Fourth tothe days of Wolsey had been called to the front again at the Cardinal'sfall. Proud of his popularity, and conscious of his people's sympathywith him in his protest against a foreign jurisdiction, Henry set asidethe policy of the Crown to deal a heavier blow at the Papacy. Both theparties represented in the ministry that followed Wolsey welcomed thechange, for the nobles represented by Norfolk and the men of the NewLearning represented by More regarded Parliament with the same favour. More indeed in significant though almost exaggerated phrases set itsomnipotence face to face with the growing despotism of the Crown. Thepolicy of Cromwell fell in with this revival of the two Houses. Thedaring of his temper led him not to dread and suppress nationalinstitutions, but to seize them and master them, and to turn them intomeans of enhancing the royal power. As he saw in the Church a means ofraising the king into the spiritual ruler of the faith and consciencesof his people, so he saw in the Parliament a means of shrouding theboldest aggressions of the monarchy under the veil of popular assent, and of giving to the most ruthless acts of despotism the stamp andsemblance of law. He saw nothing to fear in a House of Lords whosenobles cowered helpless before the might of the Crown, and whosespiritual members his policy was degrading into mere tools of the royalwill. Nor could he find anything to dread in a House of Commons whichwas crowded with members directly or indirectly nominated by the royalCouncil. With a Parliament such as this Cromwell might well trust tomake the nation itself through its very representatives an accomplice inthe work of absolutism. 

[Sidenote: Growth of Parliamentary power. ]

His trust seemed more than justified by the conduct of the Houses. Itwas by parliamentary statutes that the Church was prostrated at the feetof the Monarchy. It was by bills of attainder that great nobles werebrought to the block. It was under constitutional forms that freedom wasgagged with new treasons and oaths and questionings. One of the firstbills of Cromwell's Parliaments freed Henry from the need of paying hisdebts, one of the last gave his proclamations the force of laws. In theaction of the two Houses the Crown seemed to have discovered a means ofcarrying its power into regions from which a bare despotism has oftenhad to shrink. Henry might have dared single-handed to break with Romeor to send Sir Thomas More to the block. But without Parliament to backhim he could hardly have ventured on such an enormous confiscation ofproperty as was involved in the suppression of the monasteries or onsuch changes in the national religion as were brought about by the TenArticles and the Six. It was this discovery of the use to which theHouses could be turned that accounts for the immense developement oftheir powers, the immense widening of their range of action, which theyowe to Cromwell. Now that the great engine was at his own command, heused it as it had never been used before. Instead of rare and shortassemblies of Parliament, England saw it gathered year after year. Allthe jealousy with which the Crown had watched its older encroachments onthe prerogative was set aside. Matters which had even in the days oftheir greatest influence been scrupulously withheld from the cognizanceof the Houses were now absolutely forced on their attention. It was byParliament that England was torn from the great body of WesternChristendom. It was by parliamentary enactment that the English Churchwas reft of its older liberties and made absolutely subservient to theCrown. It was a parliamentary statute that defined the very faith andreligion of the land. The vastest confiscation of landed property whichEngland had ever witnessed was wrought by Parliament. It regulated thesuccession to the throne. It decided on the validity of the king'smarriages and the legitimacy of the king's children. Former sovereignshad struggled against the claim of the Houses to meddle with the royalministers or with members of the royal household. Now Parliament wascalled on by the king himself to attaint his ministers and his Queens. 

[Sidenote: The New Nobles. ]

The fearlessness and completeness of such a policy as this brings hometo us more than any other of his plans the genius of Cromwell. But itssuccess depended wholly on the absolute servility of Parliament to thewill of the Crown, and Cromwell's own action made the continuance ofsuch a servility impossible. The part which the Houses were to play inafter years shows the importance of clinging to the forms ofconstitutional freedom, even when their life is all but lost. In theinevitable reaction against tyranny they furnish centres for thereviving energies of the people, while the returning tide of liberty isenabled through their preservation to flow quietly and naturally alongits traditional channels. And even before Cromwell passed to his doomthe tide of liberty was returning. On one occasion during his rule a"great debate" on the suppression of the lesser monasteries showed thatelements of resistance still survived; and these elements developedrapidly as the power of the Crown declined under the minority of Edwardand the unpopularity of Mary. To this revival of a spirit ofindependence the spoliation of the Church largely contributed. Partlyfrom necessity, partly from a desire to build up a faction interested inthe maintenance of their ecclesiastical policy, Cromwell and the kingsquandered the vast mass of wealth which flowed into the Treasury fromthe dissolution of the monasteries with reckless prodigality. Threehundred and seventy-six smaller houses had been suppressed in 1536; sixhundred and forty-five greater houses were surrendered or seized in1539. Some of the spoil was devoted to the erection of six newbishopricks; a larger part went to the fortification of the coast. Butthe bulk of these possessions was granted lavishly away to the noblesand courtiers about the king, and to a host of adventurers who "hadbecome gospellers for the abbey lands. " Something like a fifth of theactual land in the kingdom was in this way transferred from the holdingof the Church to that of nobles and gentry. Not only were the olderhouses enriched, but a new aristocracy was erected from among thedependants of the Court. The Russells and the Cavendishes are familiarinstances of families which rose from obscurity through the enormousgrants of Church-land made to Henry's courtiers. The old baronage wasthus hardly crushed before a new aristocracy took its place. "Thosefamilies within or without the bounds of the peerage, " observes Mr. Hallam, "who are now deemed the most considerable, will be found, withno great number of exceptions, to have first become conspicuous underthe Tudor line of kings and, if we could trace the title of theirestates, to have acquired no small portion of them mediately orimmediately from monastic or other ecclesiastical foundations. " Theleading part which these freshly-created peers took in the events whichfollowed Henry's death gave strength and vigour to the whole order. Butthe smaller gentry shared in the general enrichment of the landedproprietors, and the new energy of the Lords was soon followed by adisplay of political independence among the Commons themselves. 

[Sidenote: Results of the Religious Changes. ]

While the prodigality of Cromwell's system thus brought into being a newcheck upon the Crown by enriching the nobles and the lesser gentry, thereligious changes it brought about gave fire and vigour to the elementsof opposition which were slowly gathering. What did most to ruin theking-worship that Cromwell set up was Cromwell's ecclesiastical policy. In reducing the Church to mere slavery beneath the royal power hebelieved himself to be trampling down the last constitutional forcewhich could hold the Monarchy in check. What he really did was to givelife and energy to new forces which were bound from their very nature tobattle with the Monarchy for even more than the old English freedom. When Cromwell seized on the Church he held himself to be seizing for theCrown the mastery which the Church had wielded till now over theconsciences and reverence of men. But the very humiliation of the greatreligious body broke the spell beneath which Englishmen had bowed. Inform nothing had been changed. The outer constitution of the Churchremained utterly unaltered. The English bishop, freed from the papalcontrol, freed from the check of monastic independence, seemed greaterand more imposing than ever. The priest still clung to rectory andchurch. If images were taken out of churches, if here and there arood-loft was pulled down or a saint's shrine demolished, no change wasmade in form of ritual or mode of worship. The mass was untouched. Everyhymn, every prayer, was still in Latin; confession, penance, fastingsand feastings, extreme unction, went on as before. There was little toshow that any change had taken place; and yet every ploughman felt thatall was changed. The bishop, gorgeous as he might be in mitre and cope, was a mere tool of the king. The priest was trembling before heretics heused to burn. Farmer or shopkeeper might enter their church any Sundaymorning to find mass or service utterly transformed. The spell oftradition, of unbroken continuance, was over; and with it the powerwhich the Church had wielded over the souls of men was in great partdone away. 

It was not that the new Protestantism was as yet formidable, for, violent and daring as they were, the adherents of Luther were few innumber, and drawn mostly from the poorer classes among whom Wyclifiteheresy had lingered or from the class of scholars whose theologicalstudies drew their sympathy to the movement over sea. It was that thelump was now ready to be leavened by this petty leaven, that men's holdon the firm ground of custom was broken and their minds set drifting andquestioning, that little as was the actual religious change, the thoughtof religious change had become familiar to the people as a whole. Andwith religious change was certain to come religious revolt. The humanconscience was hardly likely to move everywhere in strict time to theslow advance of Henry's reforms. Men who had been roused from implicitobedience to the Papacy as a revelation of the Divine will by hearingthe Pope denounced in royal proclamations as a usurper and an impostorwere hardly inclined to take up submissively the new official doctrinewhich substituted implicit belief in the King for implicit belief in the"Bishop of Rome. " But bound as Church and King now were together, it wasimpossible to deny a tenet of the one without entering on a course ofopposition to the other. Cromwell had raised against the Monarchy themost fatal of all enemies, the force of the individual conscience, theenthusiasm of religious belief, the fire of religious fanaticism. Slowlyas the area of the new Protestantism extended, every man that it gainedwas a possible opponent of the Crown. And should the time come, as thetime was soon to come, when the Crown moved to the side ofProtestantism, then in turn every soul that the older faith retainedwas pledged to a lifelong combat with the Monarchy. 

[Sidenote: The Imperial Alliance. ]

How irresistible was the national drift was seen on Cromwell's fall. Itsfirst result indeed promised to be a reversal of all that Cromwell haddone. Norfolk returned to power, and his influence over Henry seemedsecured by the king's repudiation of Anne of Cleves and his marriage inthe summer of 1540 to a niece of the Duke, Catharine Howard. ButNorfolk's temper had now become wholly hostile to the movement abouthim. "I never read the Scripture nor never will!" the Duke replied hotlyto a Protestant arguer. "It was merry in England afore the new learningcame up; yea, I would all things were as hath been in times past. " Inhis preference of an Imperial alliance to an alliance with Francis andthe Lutherans Henry went warmly with his minister. Parted as he had beenfrom Charles by the question of the divorce, the King's sympathies hadremained true to the Emperor; and at this moment he was embitteredagainst France by the difficulties it threw in the way of his projectsfor gaining a hold upon Scotland. Above all the king still clung to thehope of a purification of the Church by a Council, as well as of areconciliation of England with the general body of this purifiedChristendom, and it was only by the Emperor that such a Council could beconvened or such a reconciliation brought about. An alliance with himwas far from indicating any retreat from Henry's position ofindependence or any submission to the Papacy. To the men of his own dayCharles seemed no Catholic bigot. On the contrary the stricterrepresentatives of Catholicism such as Paul the Fourth denounced him asa patron of heretics, and attributed the upgrowth of Lutheranism to hissteady protection and encouragement. Nor was the charge without seemingjustification. The old jealousy between Pope and Emperor, the morerecent hostility between them as rival Italian powers, had from thebeginning proved Luther's security. At the first appearance of thereformer Maximilian had recommended the Elector of Saxony to suffer noharm to be done to him; "there might come a time, " said the old Emperor, "when he would be needed. " Charles had looked on the matter mainly inthe same political way. In his earliest years he bought Leo's aid in hisrecovery of Milan from the French king by issuing the ban of the Empireagainst Luther in the Diet of Worms; but every Italian held that insuffering the reformer to withdraw unharmed Charles had shown not somuch regard to his own safe-conduct as a purpose still "to keep the Popein check with that rein. " And as Charles dealt with Luther so he dealtwith Lutheranism. The new faith profited by the Emperor's struggle withClement the Seventh for the lordship over Italy. It was in the midst ofthis struggle that his brother and representative, Ferdinand, signed inthe Diet of Spires an Imperial decree by which the German States wereleft free to arrange their religious affairs "as each should best answerto God and the Emperor. " The decree gave a legal existence to theProtestant body in the Empire which it never afterwards lost. 

[Sidenote: Charles and the Council. ]

Such a step might well encourage the belief that Charles was himselfinclining to Lutheranism; and the belief gathered strength as he sentLutheran armies over the Alps to sack Rome and to hold the Pope aprisoner. The belief was a false one, for Charles remained utterlyuntouched by the religious movement about him; but even when his strifewith the Papacy was to a great extent lulled by Clement's submission, hestill turned a deaf ear to the Papal appeals for dealing withLutheranism by fire and sword. His political interests and theconception which he held of his duty as Emperor alike swayed him tomilder counsels. He purposed indeed to restore religious unity. Hispolitical aim was to bring Germany to his feet as he had brought Italy;and he saw that the religious schism was the great obstacle in the wayof his realizing this design. As the temporal head of the Catholic worldhe was still more strongly bent to heal the breaches of Catholicism. Buthe had no wish to insist on an unconditional submission to the Papacy. He believed that there were evils to be cured on the one side as on theother; and Charles saw the high position which awaited him if as Emperorhe could bring about a reformation of the Church and a reunion ofChristendom. Violent as Luther's words had been, the Lutheran princesand the bulk of Lutheran theologians had not yet come to look onCatholicism as an irreconcileable foe. Even on the papal side there wasa learned and active party, a party headed by Contarini and Pole, whosetheological sympathies went in many points with the Lutherans, and wholooked to the winning back of the Lutherans as the needful prelude toany reform in the doctrine and practice of the Church; while Melancthonwas as hopeful as Contarini that such a reform might be wrought and theChurch again become universal. In his proposal of a Council to carry onthe double work of purification and reunion therefore Charles stood outas the representative of the larger part both of the Catholic and theProtestant world. Against such a proposal however Rome struggled hard. All her tradition was against Councils, where the assembled bishops hadin earlier days asserted their superiority to the Pope, and where theEmperor who convened the assembly and carried out its decrees rose intodangerous rivalry with the Papacy. Crushed as he was, Clement theSeventh throughout his lifetime held the proposal of a Councilstubbornly at bay. But under his successor, Paul the Third, theinfluence of Contarini and the moderate Catholics secured a morefavourable reception of plans of reconciliation. In April, 1541, conferences for this purpose were in fact opened at Augsburg in whichContarini, as Papal legate, accepted a definition of the moot questionof justifications by faith which satisfied Bucer and Melancthon. On theother side, the Landgrave of Hesse and the Elector of Brandenburgpublicly declared that they believed it possible to come to terms on theyet more vexed questions of the Mass and the Papal supremacy. 

[Sidenote: Charles and Henry. ]

Never had the reunion of the world seemed so near; and the hopes thatwere stirring found an echo in England as well as in Germany. We canhardly doubt indeed that it was the revival of these hopes which hadbrought about the fall of Cromwell and the recall of Norfolk to power. Norfolk, like his master, looked to a purification of the Church by aCouncil as the prelude to a reconciliation of England with the generalbody of Catholicism; and both saw that it was by the influence of theEmperor alone that such a Council could be brought about. Charles on theother hand was ready to welcome Henry's advances. The quarrel overCatharine had ended with her death; and the wrong done her had been inpart atoned for by the fall of Anne Boleyn. The aid of Henry too wasneeded to hold in check the opposition of France. The chief means whichFrance still possessed of holding the Emperor at bay lay in the disunionof the Empire, and it was resolute to preserve this weapon against himat whatever cost to Christendom. While Francis remonstrated at Romeagainst the concessions made to the Lutherans by the Legates, he urgedthe Lutheran princes to make no terms with the Papacy. To theProtestants he held out hopes of his own conversion, while he promisedPope Paul that he would defend him with his life against Emperor andheretics. His intrigues were aided by the suspicions of both thereligious parties. Luther refused to believe in the sincerity of theconcessions made by the Legates; Paul the Third held aloof from them insullen silence. Meanwhile Francis was preparing to raise more materialobstacles to the Emperor's designs. Charles had bought his lastreconciliation with the king by a promise of restoring the Milanese, buthe had no serious purpose of ever fulfilling his pledge, and hisretention of the Duchy gave the French king a fair pretext forthreatening a renewal of the war. 

[Sidenote: James the Fifth. ]

England, as Francis hoped, he could hold in check through his alliancewith the Scots. After the final expulsion of Albany in 1524 Scottishhistory became little more than a strife between Margaret Tudor and herhusband, the Earl of Angus, for power; but the growth of James theFifth to manhood at last secured rest for the land. James had all thevaried ability of his race, and he carried out with vigour itstraditional policy. The Highland chieftains, the great lords of theLowlands, were brought more under the royal sway; the Church wasstrengthened to serve as a check on the feudal baronage; the alliancewith France was strictly preserved, as the one security against Englishaggression. Nephew as he was indeed of the English king, James from theoutset of his reign took up an attitude hostile to England. He wasjealous of the influence which the two Henries had established in hisrealm by the marriage of Margaret and by the building up of an Englishparty under the Douglases; the great Churchmen who formed his mosttrusted advisers dreaded the influence of the religious changes acrossthe border; while the people clung to their old hatred of England andtheir old dependence on France. It was only by two inroads of the borderlords that Henry checked the hostile intrigues of James in 1532; hisefforts to influence his nephew by an interview and alliance were met bythe king's marriage with two French wives in succession, Magdalen ofValois, a daughter of Francis, and Mary, a daughter of the Duke ofGuise. In 1539 when the projected coalition between France and theEmpire threatened England, it had been needful to send Norfolk with anarmy to the Scotch frontier, and now that France was again hostileNorfolk had to move anew to the border in the autumn of 1541. 

[Sidenote: Defeat at the Solway. ]

While the Duke was fruitlessly endeavouring to bring James to freshfriendship a sudden blow at home weakened his power. At the close of theyear Catharine Howard was arrested on a charge of adultery; a Parliamentwhich assembled in January 1542 passed a Bill of Attainder; and inFebruary the Queen was sent to the block. She was replaced by the widowof Lord Latimer, Catharine Parr; and the influence of Norfolk in theking's counsels gradually gave way to that of Bishop Gardiner ofWinchester. But Henry clung to the policy which the Duke favoured. Atthe end of 1541 two great calamities, the loss of Hungary after avictory of the Turks and a crushing defeat at Algiers, so weakenedCharles that in the summer of the following year Francis ventured toattack him. The attack served only to draw closer the negotiationsbetween England and the Emperor; and Francis was forced, as he hadthreatened, to give Henry work to occupy him at home. The busiestcounsellor of the Scotch king, Cardinal Beaton, crossed the seas tonegotiate a joint attack, and the attitude of Scotland became somenacing that in the autumn of 1542 Norfolk was again sent to the borderwith twenty thousand men. But terrible as were his ravages, he could notbring the Scotch army to an engagement, and want of supplies soon forcedhim to fall back over the border. It was in vain that James urged hisnobles to follow him in a counter-invasion. They were ready to defendtheir country; but the memory of Flodden was still fresh, and success inEngland would only give dangerous strength to a king in whom they saw anenemy. But James was as stubborn in his purpose as the lords. Anxiousonly to free himself from their presence, he waited till the two armieshad alike withdrawn, and then suddenly summoned his subjects to meet himin arms on the western border. A disorderly host gathered at Lochmabenand passed into Cumberland; but the English borderers followed on themfast, and were preparing to attack when at nightfall on the twenty-fifthof November a panic seized the whole Scotch force. Lost in the darknessand cut off from retreat by the Solway Firth, thousands of men with allthe baggage and guns fell into the hands of the pursuers. The news ofthis rout fell on the young king like a sentence of death. For a whilehe wandered desperately from palace to palace till at the opening ofDecember the tidings met him at Falkland that his queen, Mary of Guise, had given birth to a child. His two boys had both died in youth, and hewas longing passionately for an heir to the crown which was slippingfrom his grasp. But the child was a daughter, the Mary Stuart of laterhistory. "The deil go with it, " muttered the dying king, as his mindfell back to the close of the line of Bruce and the marriage withRobert's daughter which brought the Stuarts to the Scottish throne, "Thedeil go with it! It will end as it began. It came with a lass, and itwill go with a lass. " A few days later he died. 

[Sidenote: The Marriage Treaty. ]

The death of James did more than remove a formidable foe. It opened upfor the first time a prospect of that union of the two kingdoms whichwas at last to close their long hostility. Scotland, torn by factionsand with a babe for queen, seemed to lie at Henry's feet: and the kingseized the opportunity of completing his father's work by a union of therealms. At the opening of 1543 he proposed to the Scotch regent, theEarl of Arran, the marriage of the infant Mary Stuart with his sonEdward. To ensure this bridal he demanded that Mary should at once besent to England, the four great fortresses of Scotland be placed inEnglish hands, and a voice given to Henry himself in the administrationof the Scotch Council of Regency. Arran and the Queen-mother, rivals asthey were, vied with each other in apparent goodwill to the marriage;but there was a steady refusal to break the league with France, and the"English lords, " as the Douglas faction were called, owned themselveshelpless in the face of the national jealousy of English ambition. Thetemper of the nation itself was seen in the answer made by the ScotchParliament which gathered in the spring. If they consented to the youngQueen's betrothal, they not only rejected the demands which accompaniedthe proposal, but insisted that in case of such a union Scotland shouldhave a perpetual regent of its own, and that this office should behereditary in the House of Arran. Warned by his very partizans that thedelivery of Mary was impossible, that if such a demand were pressed"there was not so little a boy but he would hurl stones against it, thewives would handle their distaffs, and the commons would universally diein it, " Henry's proposals dropped in July to a treaty of alliance, offensive and defensive, he suffered France to be included among theallies of Scotland named in it, he consented that the young Queen shouldremain with her mother till the age of ten, and offered guarantees forthe maintenance of Scotch independence. 

[Sidenote: Scotland and France. ]

But modify it as he might, Henry knew that such a project of union couldonly be carried out by a war with Francis. His negotiations for a treatywith Charles had long been delayed through Henry's wish to drag theEmperor into an open breach with the Papacy, but at the moment of theKing's first proposals for the marriage of Mary Stuart with his son theneed of finding a check upon France forced on a formal alliance with theEmperor in February 1543. The two allies agreed that the war should becontinued till the Duchy of Burgundy had been restored to the Emperorand till England had recovered Normandy and Guienne; while the jointfleets of Henry and Charles held the Channel and sheltered England fromany danger of French attack. The main end of this treaty was doubtlessto give Francis work at home which might prevent the despatch of aFrench force into Scotland and the overthrow of Henry's hopes of aScotch marriage. These hopes were strengthened as the summer went on bythe acceptance of his later proposals in a Parliament which was packedby the Regent, and by the actual conclusion of a marriage-treaty. But ifFrancis could spare neither horse nor man for action in Scotland hisinfluence in the northern kingdom was strong enough to foil Henry'splans. The Churchmen were as bitterly opposed to such a marriage as thepartizans of France; and their head, Cardinal Beaton, who had held alooffrom the Regent's Parliament, suddenly seized the Queen-mother and herbabe, crowned the infant Mary, called a Parliament in December whichannulled the marriage-treaty, and set Henry at defiance. 

[Sidenote: War with France. ]

The king's wrath at this overthrow of his hopes showed itself in abrutal and impolitic act of vengeance. He was a skilful shipbuilder; andamong the many enterprises which the restless genius of Cromwellundertook there was probably none in which Henry took so keen aninterest as in his creation of an English fleet. Hitherto merchant shipshad been impressed when a fleet was needed; but the progress of navalwarfare had made the maintenance of an armed force at sea a conditionof maritime power, and the resources furnished by the dissolution of theabbeys had been devoted in part to the building of ships of war, thelargest of which, the _Mary Rose_, carried a crew of seven hundred men. The new strength which England was to wield in its navy was first seenin 1544. An army was gathered under Lord Hertford; and while Scotlandwas looking for the usual advance over the border the Earl's forces werequietly put on board and the English fleet appeared on the third of Mayin the Firth of Forth. The surprise made resistance impossible. Leithwas seized and sacked, Edinburgh, then a town of wooden houses, wasgiven to the flames, and burned for three days and three nights. Thecountry for seven miles round was harried into a desert. The blow was ahard one, but it was little likely to bring Scotchmen round to Henry'sprojects of union. A brutal raid of the English borderers on Melrose andthe destruction of his ancestors' tombs estranged the Earl of Angus, andwas quickly avenged by his overthrow of the marauders at Ancrum Moor. Henry had yet to learn the uselessness of mere force to compass hisends. "I shall be glad to serve the king of England, with my honour, "said the Lord of Buccleugh to an English envoy, "but I will not beconstrained thereto if all Teviotdale be burned to the bottom of hell. "

Hertford's force returned in good time to join the army which Henry inperson was gathering at Calais to co-operate with the forces assembledby Charles on the north-eastern frontier of France. Each sovereign foundhimself at the head of forty thousand men, and the Emperor's militaryability was seen in his proposal for an advance of both armies uponParis. But though Henry found no French force in his front, his cautioustemper shrank from the risk of leaving fortresses in his rear; and whiletheir allies pushed boldly past Châlons on the capital, the Englishtroops were detained till September in the capture of Boulogne, and onlyleft Boulogne to form the siege of Montreuil. The French were thusenabled to throw their whole force on the Emperor, and Charles foundhimself in a position from which negotiation alone could extricate him. 

[Sidenote: Growth of Lutheranism. ]

His ends were in fact gained by the humiliation of France, and he had aslittle desire to give England a strong foothold in the neighbourhood ofhis own Netherlands as in Wolsey's days. The widening of Englishterritory there could hardly fail to encourage that upgrowth of heresywhich the Emperor justly looked upon as the greatest danger to the holdof Spain upon the Low Countries, while it would bring Henry a stepnearer to the chain of Protestant states which began on the Lower Rhine. The plans which Charles had formed for uniting the Catholics andLutherans in the conferences of Augsburg had broken down before theopposition both of Luther and the Pope. On both sides indeed thereligious contest was gathering new violence. A revival had begun in theChurch itself, but it was the revival of a militant and uncompromisingorthodoxy. In 1542 the fanaticism of Cardinal Caraffa forced on theestablishment of a supreme Tribunal of the Inquisition at Rome. The nextyear saw the establishment of the Jesuits. Meanwhile Lutheranism took anew energy. The whole north of Germany became Protestant. In 1539 theyounger branches of the house of Saxony joined the elder in a commonadherence to Lutheranism; and their conversion had been followed by thatof the Elector of Brandenburg. Southern Germany seemed bent on followingthe example of the north. The hereditary possessions of Charles himselffell away from Catholicism. The Austrian duchies were overrun withheresy. Bohemia promised soon to become Hussite again. Persecutionfailed to check the triumph of the new opinions in the Low Countries. The Empire itself threatened to become Protestant. In 1540 the accessionof the Elector Palatine robbed Catholicism of Central Germany and theUpper Rhine; and three years later, at the opening of the war withFrance, that of the Archbishop of Koln gave the Protestants not only theCentral Rhineland but a majority in the College of Electors. It seemedimpossible for Charles to prevent the Empire from repudiatingCatholicism in his lifetime, or to hinder the Imperial Crown fromfalling to a Protestant at his death. 

[Sidenote: England and France. ]

The great fabric of power which had been built up by the policy ofFerdinand of Aragon was thus threatened with utter ruin, and Charles sawhimself forced into the struggle he had so long avoided, if not for theinterests of religion, at any rate for the interests of the House ofAustria. He still hoped for a reunion from the Council which wasassembling at Trent, and from which a purified Catholicism was to come. But he no longer hoped that the Lutherans would yield to the mere voiceof the Council. They would yield only to force, and the first step insuch a process of compulsion must be the breaking up of their League ofSchmalkald. Only France could save them; and it was to isolate them fromFrance that Charles availed himself of the terror his march on Paris hadcaused, and concluded a treaty with that power in September 1544. Theprogress of Protestantism had startled even France itself; and her oldpolicy seemed to be abandoned in her promises of co-operation in thetask of repressing heresy in the Empire. But a stronger security againstFrench intervention lay in the unscrupulous dexterity with which, whilewithdrawing from the struggle, Charles left Henry and Francis still atstrife. Henry would not cede Boulogne, and Francis saw no means offorcing him to a peace save by a threat of invasion. While an armyclosed round Boulogne, and a squadron carried troops to Scotland, ahundred and fifty French ships were gathered in the Channel and crossedin the summer of 1545 to the Isle of Wight. But their attacks werefeebly conducted and the fleet at last returned to its harbours withoutstriking any serious blow, while the siege of Boulogne dragged idly onthrough the year. Both kings however drew to peace. In spite of thetreaty of Crépy it was impossible for France to abandon the Lutherans, and Francis was eager to free his hands for action across the Rhine. Henry on the other hand, deserted by his ally and with a treasury ruinedby the cost of the war, was ready at last to surrender his gains in it. In June 1546 a peace was concluded by which England engaged to surrenderBoulogne on payment of a heavy ransom, and France to restore the annualsubsidy which had been promised in 1525. 

[Sidenote: The Peace. ]

What aided in the close of the war was a new aspect of affairs inScotland. Since the death of James the Fifth the great foe of England inthe north had been the Archbishop of St. Andrews, Cardinal Beaton. Indespair of shaking his power his rivals had proposed schemes for hisassassination to Henry, and these schemes had been expressly approved. But plot after plot broke down; and it was not till May 1546 that agroup of Scotch nobles who favoured the Reformation surprised his castleat St. Andrews. Shrieking miserably, "I am a priest! I am a priest! Fie!Fie! All is gone!" the Cardinal was brutally murdered, and his body hungover the castle-walls. His death made it easy to include Scotland in thepeace with France which was concluded in the summer. But in Englanditself peace was a necessity. The Crown was penniless. In spite of theconfiscation of the abbey lands in 1539 the treasury was found empty atthe very opening of the war: the large subsidies granted by theParliament were expended; and conscious that a fresh grant could hardlybe expected even from the servile Houses the government in 1545 fellback on its old resource of benevolences. Of two London merchants whoresisted this demand as illegal one was sent to the Fleet, the secondordered to join the army on the Scotch border; but it was significantthat resistance had been offered, and the failure of the war-taxes whichwere voted at the close of the year to supply the royal needs drove theCouncil to fresh acts of confiscation. A vast mass of Church propertystill remained for the spoiler, and by a bill of 1545 more than twothousand chauntries and chapels, with a hundred and ten hospitals, weresuppressed to the profit of the Crown. Enormous as this booty was, itcould only be slowly realized; and the immediate pressure forced theCouncil to take refuge in the last and worst measure any government canadopt, a debasement of the currency. The evils of such a course werefelt till the reign of Elizabeth. But it was a course that could not berepeated; and financial exhaustion played its part in bringing the warto an end. 

[Sidenote: Charles and the League of Schmalkald. ]

A still greater part was played by the aspect of affairs in the Empire. Once freed from the check of the war Charles had moved fast to his aim. In 1545 he had adjusted all minor differences with Paul the Third, andPope and Emperor had resolved on the immediate convocation of theCouncil, and on the enforcement of its decisions by weight of arms. Should the Emperor be driven to war with the Lutheran princes, the Popeengaged to support him with all his power. "Were it needful" Paulpromised "he would sell his very crown in his service. " In December theCouncil was actually opened at Trent, and its proceedings soon showedthat no concessions to the Lutherans could be looked for. The Emperor'sdemand that the reform of the Church should first be taken in hand wasevaded; and on the two great questions of the authority of the Bible asa ground of faith, and of justification, the sentence of the Councildirectly condemned the Protestant opinions. The Lutherans showed theirresolve to make no submission by refusing to send representatives toTrent; and Charles carried out his pledges to the Papacy by taking thefield in the spring of 1546 to break up the League of Schmalkald. Butthe army gathered under the Elector of Saxony and the Landgrave of Hesseso far outnumbered the Imperial forces that the Emperor could notventure on a battle. Henry watched the course of Charles with a growinganxiety. The hopes of a purified and united Christendom which had drawnhim a few years back to the Emperor's side faded before the sternrealities of the Council. The highest pretensions of the Papacy had beensanctioned by the bishops gathered at Trent; and to the pretensions ofthe Papacy Henry was resolved not to bow. He was driven, whether hewould or no, on the policy of Cromwell; and in the last months of hislife he offered aid to the League of Schmalkald. His offers wererejected; for the Lutheran princes had no faith in his sincerity, andbelieved themselves strong enough to deal with the Emperor withoutforeign help. 

[Sidenote: Effect on English Religion. ]

But his attitude without told on his policy at home. To the hotterCatholics as to the hotter Protestants the years since Cromwell's fallhad seemed years of a gradual return to Catholicism. There had been aslight sharpening of persecution for the Protestants, and restrictionshad been put on the reading of the English Bible. The alliance withCharles and the hope of reconciling England anew with a pacifiedChristendom gave fresh cause for suppressing heresy. Neither Norfolk norhis master indeed desired any rigorous measure of reaction, for Henryremained proud of the work he had done. His bitterness against thePapacy only grew as the years went by; and at the very moment thatheretics were suffering for a denial of the mass, others were sufferingby their side for a denial of the supremacy. But strange and anomalousas its system seemed, the drift of Henry's religious government had asyet been in one direction, that of a return to and reconciliation withthe body of the Catholic Church. With the decision of the Council andthe new attitude of the Emperor this drift was suddenly arrested. It wasnot that Henry realized the revolution that was opening before him orthe vast importance of the steps which his policy now led him to take. His tendency, like that of his people, was religious rather thantheological, practical rather than speculative. Of the immense problemswhich were opening in the world neither he nor England saw anything. Thereligious strife which was to break Europe asunder was to the king as tothe bulk of Englishmen a quarrel of words and hot temper; the truthwhich Christendom was to rend itself to pieces in striving to discoverwas a thing that could easily be found with the aid of God. There issomething humorous as there is something pathetic in the warnings whichHenry addressed to the Parliament at the close of 1545. The shadow ofdeath as it fell over him gave the king's words a new gentleness andtenderness. "The special foundation of our religion being charitybetween man and man, it is so refrigerate as there never was moredissension and lack of love between man and man, the occasions whereofare opinions only and names devised for the continuance of the same. Some are called Papists, some Lutherans, and some Anabaptists; namesdevised of the devil, and yet not fully without ground, for the severingof one man's heart by conceit of opinion from the other. " But the remedywas a simple one. Every man was "to travail first for his ownamendment. " Then the bishops and clergy were to agree in their teaching, "which, seeing there is but one truth and verity, they may easily do, calling therein for the grace of God. " Then the nobles and laity were tobe pious and humble, to read their new Bibles "reverently and humbly . .. And in any doubt to resort to the learned or at best the higher powers. ""I am very sorry to know and hear how unreverendly that precious jewel, the Word of God, is disputed, rimed, sung, and jangled in every alehouseand tavern. This kind of man is depraved and that kind of man, thisceremony and that ceremony. " All this controversy might be done away bysimple charity. "Therefore be in charity one with another like brotherand brother. Have respect to the pleasing of God; and then I doubt notthat love I spoke of shall never be dissolved between us. "

[Sidenote: The Religious Truce. ]

There is something wonderful in the English coolness and narrowness, inthe speculative blindness and practical good sense which could look outover such a world at such a moment, and could see nothing in it save aquarrel of "opinions, and of names devised for the continuance of thesame. " But Henry only expressed the general feeling of his people. England indeed was being slowly leavened with a new spirit. Thehumiliation of the clergy, the Lutheran tendencies of half the bishops, the crash of the abbeys, the destruction of chauntries and mass-chapels, a measure which told closely on the actual worship of the day, the newarticles of faith, the diffusion of Bibles, the "jangling" anddiscussion which followed on every step in the king's course, were alltelling on the thoughts of men. But the temper of the nation as a wholeremained religiously conservative. It drifted rather to the moderatereforms of the New Learning than to any radical reconstruction of theChurch. There was a general disinclination indeed to push matters toeither extreme, a general shrinking from the persecution which theCatholic called for as from the destruction which the Protestant wasdesiring. It was significant that a new heresy bill which passed throughthe Lords in 1545 quietly disappeared when it reached the Commons. Butthis shrinking rested rather on national than on theological grounds, on a craving for national union which Henry expressed in his cry for"brotherly love, " and on an imperfect appreciation of the real nature orconsequence of the points at issue which made men shrink from burningtheir neighbours for "opinions and names devised for the continuance ofthe same. " What Henry and what the bulk of Englishmen wanted was, notindeed wholly to rest in what had been done, but to do little more savethe remedying of obvious abuses or the carrying on of obviousimprovements. One such improvement was the supplying men with the meansof private devotion in their own tongue, a measure from which none butthe fanatics of either side dissented. This process went slowly on inthe issuing of two primers in 1535 and 1539, the rendering into Englishof the Creed, the Lord's Prayer, and the Ten Commandments, thepublication of an English Litany for outdoor processions in 1544, andthe adding to this of a collection of English prayers in 1545. 

[Sidenote: The Court Factions. ]

But the very tone of Henry shows his consciousness that this religioustruce rested on his will alone. Around him as he lay dying stood men whowere girding themselves to a fierce struggle for power, a struggle thatcould not fail to wake the elements of religious discord which he hadstriven to lull asleep. Adherents of the Papacy, advocates of a newsubmission to a foreign spiritual jurisdiction there were few or none;for the most conservative of English Churchmen or nobles had as yet nowish to restore the older Roman supremacy. But Norfolk and Gardiner werecontent with this assertion of national and ecclesiastical independence;in all matters of faith they were earnest to conserve, to keep things asthey were, and in front of them stood a group of nobles who were bent onradical change. The marriages, the reforms, the profusion of Henry hadaided him in his policy of weakening the nobles by building up a newnobility which sprang from the Court and was wholly dependent on theCrown. Such were the Russells, the Cavendishes, the Wriothesleys, theFitzwilliams. Such was John Dudley, a son of the Dudley who had been putto death for his financial oppression in Henry the Seventh's days, butwho had been restored in blood, attached to the court, raised to thepeerage as Lord Lisle, and who, whether as adviser or general, had beenactively employed in high stations at the close of this reign. Suchabove all were the two brothers of Jane Seymour. The elder of the two, Edward Seymour, had been raised to the earldom of Hertford, andentrusted with the command of the English army in its operations againstScotland. As uncle of Henry's boy Edward, he could not fail to play aleading part in the coming reign; and the nobles of the "new blood, " astheir opponents called them in disdain, drew round him as their head. Without any historical hold on the country, raised by the royal caprice, and enriched by the spoil of the monasteries, these nobles were pledgedto the changes from which they had sprung and to the party of change. Over the mass of the nation their influence was small; and in the strifefor power with the older nobles which they were anticipating they wereforced to look to the small but resolute body of men who, whether fromreligious enthusiasm or from greed of wealth or power, were bent onbringing the English Church nearer to conformity with the reformedChurches of the Continent. As Henry drew to his grave the two factionsfaced each other with gathering dread and gathering hate. Hot wordsbetrayed their hopes. "If God should call the king to his mercy, " saidNorfolk's son, Lord Surrey, "who were so meet to govern the Prince as mylord my father?" "Rather than it should come to pass, " retorted apartizan of Hertford's, "that the Prince should be under the governanceof your father or you, I would abide the adventure to thrust a dagger inyou!"

[Sidenote: Lord Surrey. ]

In the history of English poetry the name of Lord Surrey takes anillustrious place. An Elizabethan writer tells us how at this time"sprang up a new company of courtly makers, of whom Sir Thomas Wyatt theelder and Henry, Earl of Surrey, were the two chieftains; who havingtravelled to Italy, and there tasted the sweet and stately measures andstyle of the Italian poesy, as novices newly crept out of the schools ofDante, Ariosto, and Petrarch, they greatly polished our rude and homelymanner of vulgar poesy from what it had been before, and for that causemay justly be said to be the first reformers of our English metre andstyle. " The dull moralizings of the rimers who followed Chaucer, therough but vivacious doggrel of Skelton, made way in the hands of Wyattand Surrey for delicate imitations of the songs, sonnets, and rondels ofItaly and France. With the Italian conceits came an Italian refinementwhether of words or of thought; and the force and versatility ofSurrey's youth showed itself in whimsical satires, in classicaltranslations, in love-sonnets, and in paraphrases of the Psalms. In hisversion of two books of the Æneid he was the first to introduce intoEngland the Italian blank verse which was to play so great a part in ourliterature. But with the poetic taste of the Renascence Surrey inheritedits wild and reckless energy. Once he was sent to the Fleet forchallenging a gentleman to fight. Release enabled him to join his fatherin an expedition against Scotland, but he was no sooner back than theLondoners complained how at Candlemas the young lord and his comrades"went out with stone bows at midnight, " and how next day "there wasgreat clamour of the breaking of many glass windows both of houses andchurches, and shooting at men that might be in the streets. " In spite ofhis humorous excuse that the jest only purposed to bring home to menthat "from justice' rod no fault is free, but that all such as workunright in most quiet are next unrest, " Surrey paid for this outbreakwith a fresh arrest which drove him to find solace in paraphrases ofEcclesiastes and the Psalms. Soon he was over sea with the Englishtroops in Flanders, and in 1544 serving as marshal of the camp toconduct the retreat after the siege of Montreuil. Sent to relieveBoulogne, he remained in charge of the town till the spring of 1546, when he returned to England to rime sonnets to a fair Geraldine, thedaughter of the Earl of Kildare, and to plunge into the strife offactions around the dying king. 

[Sidenote: Fall of the Howards. ]

All moral bounds had been loosened by the spirit of the Renascence, and, if we accept the charge of his rivals, Surrey now aimed at gaining ahold on Henry by offering him his sister as a mistress. It is aspossible that the young Earl was aiming simply at the displacement ofCatharine Parr, and at the renewal by his sister's elevation to thethrone of that matrimonial hold upon Henry which the Howards had alreadysucceeded in gaining through the unions with Anne Boleyn and CatharineHoward. But a temper such as Surrey's was ill matched against the subtleand unscrupulous schemers who saw their enemy in a pride that scornedthe "new men" about him and vowed that when once the king was dead "theyshould smart for it. " The turn of foreign affairs gave a fresh strengthto the party which sympathized with the Protestants and denounced thatalliance with the Emperor which had been throughout the policy of theHowards. Henry's offer of aid to the Lutheran princes marked the triumphof this party in the royal councils; and the new steps which Cranmer wassuffered to make towards an English Liturgy showed that the religioustruce of Henry's later years was at last abandoned. Hertford, the headof the "new men, " came more to the front as the waning health of theking brought Jane Seymour's boy, Edward, nearer to the throne. In thenew reign Hertford, as the boy's uncle, was sure to play a great part;and he used his new influence to remove the only effective obstacle tohis future greatness. Surrey's talk of his royal blood, the Duke'squartering of the royal arms to mark his Plantagenet descent, and somesecret interviews with the French ambassador, were adroitly used to wakeHenry's jealousy of the dangers which might beset the throne of hischild. Norfolk and his son were alike committed to the Tower at theclose of 1546. A month later Surrey was condemned and sent to the block, and his father was only saved by the sudden death of Henry the Eighth inJanuary, 1547. 

[Sidenote: Hertford made Protector. ]

By an Act passed in the Parliament of 1544 it had been provided that thecrown should pass to Henry's son Edward, and on Edward's death withoutissue to his sister Mary. Should Mary prove childless it was to go toElizabeth, the child of Anne Boleyn. Beyond this point the Houses wouldmake no provision, but power was given to the king to make furtherdispositions by will. At his death it was found that Henry had passedover the line of his sister Margaret of Scotland, and named as next inthe succession to Elizabeth the daughters of his younger sister Mary byher marriage with Charles Brandon, Duke of Suffolk. As Edward was butnine years old Henry had appointed a carefully-balanced Council ofRegency; but the will fell into Hertford's keeping, and when the list ofregents was at last disclosed Gardiner, who had till now been theleading minister, was declared to have been excluded from the number ofexecutors. Whether the exclusion was Henry's act or the act of the menwho used his name, the absence of the bishop with the imprisonment ofNorfolk threw the balance of power on the side of the "new men" who wererepresented by Hertford and Lisle. Their chief opponent, the ChancellorWriothesley, struggled in vain against their next step towardssupremacy, the modification of Henry's will by the nomination ofHertford as Protector of the realm and governor of Edward's person. Alleged directions from the dying king served as pretexts for theelevation of the whole party to higher rank in the state. It was torepair "the decay of the old English nobility" that Hertford raisedhimself to the dukedom of Somerset and his brother to the barony ofSeymour, the queen's brother Lord Parr to the marquisate of Northampton, Lisle to the earldom of Warwick, Russell to that of Bedford, Wriothesleyto that of Southampton. Ten of their partizans became barons, and as thenumber of peers in spite of recent creations still stood at about fiftysuch a group constituted a power in the Upper House. Alleged directionsof the king were conveniently remembered to endow the new peers withpublic money, though the treasury was beggared and the debt pressing. The expulsion of Wriothesley from the Chancellorship and Council soonleft the "new men" without a check; but they were hardly masters of theroyal power when a bold stroke of Somerset laid all at his feet. A newpatent of Protectorate, drawn out in the boy-king's name, empowered hisuncle to act with or without the consent of his fellow-executors, andleft him supreme in the realm. 

[Sidenote: Somerset and the Protestants. ]

Boldly and adroitly as the whole revolution had been managed, it wasnone the less a revolution. To crush their opponents the Council hadfirst used, and then set aside, Henry's will. Hertford in turn by theuse of his nephew's name set aside both the will and the Council. Acountry gentleman, who had risen by the accident of his sister'squeenship to high rank at the Court, had thus by sheer intrigue andself-assertion made himself ruler of the realm. But daring andself-confident as he was, Somerset was forced by his very elevation toseek support for the power he had won by this surprise in measures whichmarked the retreat of the Monarchy from that position of pure absolutismwhich it had reached at the close of Henry's reign. The Statute that hadgiven to royal proclamations the force of law was repealed, and severalof the new felonies and treasons which Cromwell had created and usedwith so terrible an effect were erased from the Statute Book. Thepopularity however which such measures won was too vague a force toserve in the strife of the moment. Against the pressure of theconservative party who had so suddenly found themselves jockeyed out ofpower Somerset and the "new men" could look for no help but from theProtestants. The hope of their support united with the new Protector'spersonal predilections in his patronage of the innovations against whichHenry had battled to the last. Cranmer had now drifted into a purelyProtestant position; and his open break with the older system followedquickly on Seymour's rise to power. "This year, " says a contemporary, "the Archbishop of Canterbury did eat meat openly in Lent in the Hall ofLambeth, the like of which was never seen since England was a Christiancountry. " This notable act was followed by a rapid succession ofsweeping changes. The legal prohibitions of Lollardry were rescinded;the Six Articles were repealed; a royal injunction removed all picturesand images from the churches. A formal Statute gave priests the rightto marry. A resolution of Convocation which was confirmed by Parliamentbrought about the significant change which first definitely marked theseverance of the English Church in doctrine from the Roman, by orderingthat the sacrament of the altar should be administered in both kinds. 

[Sidenote: The Common Prayer. ]

A yet more significant change followed. The old tongue of the Church wasnow to be disused in public worship. The universal use of Latin hadmarked the Catholic and European character of the older religion: theuse of English marked the strictly national and local character of thenew system. In the spring of 1548 a common Communion Service in Englishwas added to the solitary Mass of the priest; an English book of CommonPrayer, the Liturgy which with slight alterations is still used in theChurch of England, soon replaced the Missal and Breviary from which itscontents are mainly drawn. The name "Common Prayer, " which was given tothe new Liturgy, marked its real import. The theory of worship whichprevailed through Mediæval Christendom, the belief that the worshipperassisted only at rites wrought for him by priestly hands, at a sacrificewrought through priestly intervention, at the offering of prayer andpraise by priestly lips, was now set at naught. "The laity, " it has beenpicturesquely said, "were called up into the Chancel. " The act ofdevotion became a "common prayer" of the whole body of worshippers. TheMass became a "communion" of the whole Christian fellowship. The priestwas no longer the offerer of a mysterious sacrifice, the mediatorbetween God and the worshipper; he was set on a level with the rest ofthe Church, and brought down to be the simple mouthpiece of thecongregation. 

[Sidenote: The Triumph of the Emperor. ]

What gave a wider importance to these measures was their bearing on thegeneral politics of Christendom. The adhesion of England to theProtestant cause came at a moment when Protestantism seemed on the vergeof ruin. The confidence of the Lutheran princes in their ability toresist the Emperor had been seen in their refusal of succour from Henrythe Eighth. But in the winter of Henry's death the secession of DukeMaurice of Saxony with many of his colleagues from the League ofSchmalkald so weakened the Protestant body that Charles was able to putits leaders to the ban of the Empire. Hertford was hardly Protector whenthe German princes called loudly for aid; but the fifty thousand crownswhich were secretly sent by the English Council could scarcely havereached them when in April 1547 Charles surprised their camp at Muhlbergand routed their whole army. The Elector of Saxony was taken prisoner;the Landgrave of Hesse surrendered in despair. His victory left Charlesmaster of the Empire. The jealousy of the Pope indeed at once revivedwith the Emperor's success, and his recall of the bishops from Trentforced Charles to defer his wider plans for enforcing religious unity;while in Germany itself he was forced to reckon with Duke Maurice andthe Protestant princes who had deserted the League of Schmalkald, butwhose one object in joining the Emperor had been to provide a check onhis after movements. For the moment therefore he was driven to prolongthe religious truce by an arrangement called the "Interim. " But theEmperor's purpose was now clear. Wherever his power was actually feltthe religious reaction began; and the Imperial towns which held firmlyto the Lutheran creed were reduced by force of arms. It was of thehighest moment that in this hour of despair the Protestants saw theirrule suddenly established in a new quarter, and the Lutheranism whichwas being trampled under foot in its own home triumphant in England. England became the common refuge of the panic-struck Protestants. Bucerand Fagius were sent to lecture at Cambridge, Peter Martyr advocated theanti-sacramentarian views of Calvin at Oxford. Cranmer welcomed refugeesfrom every country, Germans, Italians, French, Poles, and Swiss, to hispalace at Lambeth. When persecution broke out in the Low Countries thefugitive Walloons were received at London and Canterbury, and allowed toset up in both places their own churches. 

[Sidenote: Pinkie Cleugh. ]

But Somerset dreamed of a wider triumph for "the religion. " On hisdeath-bed Henry was said to have enforced on the Council the need ofcarrying out his policy of a union of Scotland with England through themarriage of its Queen with his boy. A wise statesmanship would havesuffered the Protestant movement which had been growing stronger in thenorthern kingdom since Beaton's death to run quietly its course; and hiscolleagues warned Somerset to leave Scotch affairs untouched till Edwardwas old enough to undertake them in person. But these counsels were setaside; and a renewal of the border warfare enforced the Protector'sdemands for a closer union of the kingdoms. The jealousy of France wasroused at once, and a French fleet appeared off the Scottish coast toreduce the castle of St. Andrews, which had been held since Beaton'sdeath by the English partizans who murdered him. The challenge calledSomerset himself to the field; and crossing the Tweed with a fine armyof eighteen thousand men in the summer of 1547 the Protector pushedalong the coast till he found the Scots encamped behind the Esk on theslopes of Musselburgh, six miles eastward of Edinburgh. The Englishinvasion had drawn all the factions of the kingdom together against thestranger, and a body of "Gospellers" under Lord Angus formed theadvance-guard of the Scotch army as it moved by its right on the tenthof September to turn the English position and drive Somerset into thesea. The English horse charged the Scottish front only to be flung offby its pikemen; but their triumph threw the Lowlanders into disorder, and as they pushed forward in pursuit their advance was roughly checkedby the fire of a body of Italian musketeers whom Somerset had broughtwith him. The check was turned into a defeat by a general charge of theEnglish line, a fatal panic broke the Scottish host, and ten thousandmen fell in its headlong flight beneath the English lances. 

[Sidenote: Somerset's Policy. ]

Victor as he was at Pinkie Cleugh, Somerset was soon forced by famine tofall back from the wasted country. His victory indeed had been morefatal to the interests of England than a defeat. The Scots in despairturned as of old to France, and bought its protection by consenting tothe child-queen's marriage with the son of Henry the Second, who hadfollowed Francis on the throne. In the summer of 1548 Mary Stuart sailedunder the escort of a French fleet and landed safely at Brest. Not onlywas the Tudor policy of union foiled, as it seemed, for ever, butScotland was henceforth to be a part of the French realm. To north as tosouth England would feel the pressure of the French king. Nor wasSomerset's policy more successful at home. The religious changes he wasforcing on the land were carried through with the despotism, if not withthe vigour, of Cromwell. In his acceptance of the personal supremacy ofthe sovereign, Gardiner was ready to bow to every change which Henry hadordered, or which his son, when of age to be fully king, might order inthe days to come. But he denounced all ecclesiastical changes madeduring the king's minority as illegal and invalid. Untenable as it was, this protest probably represented the general mind of Englishmen; butthe bishop was committed by the Council to prison in the Fleet, andthough soon released was sent by the Protector to the Tower. The powerof preaching was restricted by the issue of licences only to the friendsof the Primate. While all counter-arguments were rigidly suppressed, acrowd of Protestant pamphleteers flooded the country with vehementinvectives against the Mass and its superstitious accompaniments. Thesuppression of chauntries and religious gilds which was now beingcarried out enabled Somerset to buy the assent of noble and landowner tohis measures by glutting their greed with the last spoils of the Church. 

[Sidenote: The Revolts. ]

But it was impossible to buy off the general aversion of the people tothe Protector's measures; and German and Italian mercenaries had to beintroduced to stamp out the popular discontent which broke out in theeast, in the west, and in the midland counties. Everywhere men protestedagainst the new changes and called for the maintenance of the system ofHenry the Eighth. The Cornishmen refused to receive the new service"because it is like a Christmas game. " In 1549 Devonshire demanded byopen revolt the restoration of the Mass and the Six Articles as well asa partial re-establishment of the suppressed abbeys. The agrariandiscontent woke again in the general disorder. Enclosures and evictionswere going steadily on, and the bitterness of the change was beingheightened by the results of the dissolution of the abbeys. Church landshad always been underlet, the monks were easy landlords, and on noestates had the peasantry been as yet so much exempt from the generalrevolution in culture. But the new lay masters to whom the abbey landsfell were quick to reap their full value by a rise of rents and by thesame processes of eviction and enclosure as went on elsewhere. Thedistress was deepened by the change in the value of money which was nowbeginning to be felt from the mass of gold and silver which the NewWorld was yielding to the Old, and still more by a general rise ofprices that followed on the debasement of the coinage which had begunwith Henry and went on yet more unscrupulously under Somerset. Thetrouble came at last to a head in the manufacturing districts of theeastern counties. Twenty thousand men gathered round an "oak ofReformation" near Norwich, and repulsing the royal troops in a desperateengagement renewed the old cries for a removal of evil counsellors, aprohibition of enclosures, and redress for the grievances of the poor. 

[Sidenote: Somerset's Fall. ]

The revolt of the Norfolk men was stamped out in blood by the energy ofLord Warwick, as the revolt in the west had been put down by LordRussell, but the risings had given a fatal blow to Somerset's power. Ithad already been weakened by strife within his own family. His brotherThomas had been created Lord Seymour and raised to the post of Lord HighAdmiral; but, glutted as he was with lands and honours, his envy atSomerset's fortunes broke out in a secret marriage with theQueen-dowager, Catharine Parr, in an attempt on her death to marryElizabeth, and in intrigues to win the confidence of the young king anddetach him from his brother. Seymour's discontent was mounting into openrevolt when in the January of 1549 he was arrested, refused a trial, attainted, and sent to the block. The stain of a brother's blood, however justly shed, rested from that hour on Somerset, while the nobleswere estranged from him by his resolve to enforce the laws againstenclosures and evictions, as well as by the weakness he had shown in thepresence of the revolt. Able indeed as Somerset was, his temper was notthat of a ruler of men; and his miserable administration had all butbrought government to a standstill. While he was dreaming of a freshinvasion of Scotland the treasury was empty, not a servant of the statewas paid, and the soldiers he had engaged on the Continent refused tocross the Channel in despair of receiving their hire. It was only byloans raised at ruinous interest that the Protector escaped sheerbankruptcy when the revolts in east and west came to swell the royalexpenses. His weakness in tampering with the popular demands completedhis ruin. The nobles dreaded a communistic outbreak like that of theSuabian peasantry, and their dread was justified by prophecies thatmonarchy and nobility were alike to be destroyed and a new rule set upunder governors elected by the people. They dreaded yet more the beingforced to disgorge their spoil to appease the discontent. At the closeof 1549 therefore the Council withdrew openly from Somerset, and forcedthe Protector to resign. 

[Sidenote: Warwick's Protectorate]

His office passed to the Earl of Warwick, to whose ruthless severity thesuppression of the revolt was mainly due. The change of governorshowever brought about no change of system. Peace indeed was won fromFrance by the immediate surrender of Boulogne; but the misgovernmentremained as great as ever, the currency was yet further debased, and awild attempt made to remedy the effects of this measure by a royalfixing of prices. It was in vain that Latimer denounced the prevailinggreed, and bade the Protestant lords choose "either restitution or elsedamnation. " Their sole aim seemed to be that of building up their ownfortunes at the cost of the State. All pretence of winning popularsympathy was gone, and the rule of the upstart nobles who formed theCouncil of Regency became simply a rule of terror. "The greater part ofthe people, " one of their creatures, Cecil, avowed, "is not in favour ofdefending this cause, but of aiding its adversaries; on that side arethe greater part of the nobles, who absent themselves from Court, allthe bishops save three or four, almost all the judges and lawyers, almost all the justices of the peace, the priests who can move theirflocks any way, for the whole of the commonalty is in such a state ofirritation that it will easily follow any stir towards change. " Butunited as it was in its opposition the nation was helpless. The systemof despotism which Cromwell built up had been seized by a knot ofadventurers, and with German and Italian mercenaries at their disposalthey rode roughshod over the land. 

[Sidenote: The Reformation]

At such a moment it seemed madness to provoke foes abroad as well as athome, but the fanaticism of the young king was resolved to force on hissister Mary a compliance with the new changes, and her resistance wassoon backed by the remonstrances of her cousin, the Emperor. Charles wasnow at the height of his power, master of Germany, preparing to make theEmpire hereditary in the person of his son, Philip, and preluding awider effort to suppress heresy throughout the world by theestablishment of the Inquisition in the Netherlands and a fierypersecution which drove thousands of Walloon heretics to find a refugein England. But heedless of dangers from without or of dangers fromwithin Cranmer and his colleagues advanced more boldly than ever in thecareer of innovation. Four prelates who adhered to the older system weredeprived of their sees and committed on frivolous pretexts to the Tower. A new Catechism embodied the doctrines of the reformers, and a book ofHomilies which enforced the chief Protestant tenets was ordered to beread in churches. A crowning defiance was given to the doctrine of theMass by an order to demolish the stone altars and replace them by woodentables, which were stationed for the most part in the middle of thechurch. In 1552 a revised Prayer Book was issued, and every change madein it leaned directly towards the extreme Protestantism which was atthis time finding a home at Geneva. On the cardinal point of difference, the question of the sacrament, the new formularies broke away not onlyfrom the doctrine of Rome but from that of Luther, and embodied theanti-sacramentarian tenets of Zwingli and Calvin. Forty-two Articles ofReligion were introduced; and though since reduced by omissions tothirty-nine these have remained to this day the formal standard ofdoctrine in the English Church. Like the Prayer Book, they were mainlythe work of Cranmer; and belonging as they did to the class ofConfessions which were now being framed in Germany to be presented tothe Council of Christendom which Charles was still resolute toreassemble, they marked the adhesion of England to the Protestantmovement on the Continent. Even the episcopal mode of government whichstill connected the English Church with the old Catholic Communion wasreduced to a form; in Cranmer's mind the spiritual powers of the bishopswere drawn simply from the king's commission as their temporaljurisdiction was exercised in the king's name. They were reducedtherefore to the position of royal officers, and called to hold theiroffices simply at the royal pleasure. The sufferings of the Protestantshad failed to teach them the worth of religious liberty; and a new codeof ecclesiastical laws, which was ordered to be drawn up by a board ofCommissioners as a substitute for the Canon Law of the Catholic Church, although it shrank from the penalty of death, attached that of perpetualimprisonment or exile to the crimes of heresy, blasphemy, and adultery, and declared excommunication to involve a severance of the offender fromthe mercy of God and his deliverance into the tyranny of the devil. Delays in the completion of this Code prevented its legal establishmentduring Edward's reign; but the use of the new Liturgy and attendance atthe new service were enforced by imprisonment, and subscription to theArticles of Faith was demanded by royal authority from all clergymen, churchwardens, and schoolmasters. 

[Sidenote: The Religious Disorder. ]

The distaste for changes so hurried and so rigorously enforced wasincreased by the daring speculations of the more extreme Protestants. The real value of the religious revolution of the sixteenth century tomankind lay, not in its substitution of one creed for another, but inthe new spirit of enquiry, the new freedom of thought and of discussion, which was awakened during the process of change. But however familiarsuch a truth may be to us, it was absolutely hidden from the England ofthe time. Men heard with horror that the foundations of faith andmorality were questioned, polygamy advocated, oaths denounced asunlawful, community of goods raised into a sacred obligation, the veryGodhead of the Founder of Christianity denied. The repeal of the Statuteof Heresy left indeed the powers of the Common Law intact, and Cranmeravailed himself of these to send heretics of the last class withoutmercy to the stake. But within the Church itself the Primate's desirefor uniformity was roughly resisted by the more ardent members of hisown party. Hooper, who had been named Bishop of Gloucester, refused towear the episcopal habits, and denounced them as the livery of the"harlot of Babylon, " a name for the Papacy which was supposed to havebeen discovered in the Apocalypse. Ecclesiastical order came almost toan end. Priests flung aside the surplice as superstitious. Patrons oflivings presented their huntsmen or gamekeepers to the benefices intheir gift, and kept the stipend. All teaching of divinity ceased at theUniversities: the students indeed had fallen off in numbers, thelibraries were in part scattered or burned, the intellectual impulse ofthe New Learning died away. One noble measure indeed, the foundation ofeighteen Grammar Schools, was destined to throw a lustre over the nameof Edward, but it had no time to bear fruit in his reign. 

[Sidenote: Ireland and the Reformation]

While the reckless energy of the reformers brought England to the vergeof chaos, it brought Ireland to the brink of rebellion. The fall ofCromwell had been followed by a long respite in the religious changeswhich he was forcing on the conquered dependency; but with the accessionof Edward the Sixth the system of change was renewed with all the energyof Protestant zeal. In 1551 the bishops were summoned before the deputy, Sir Anthony St. Leger, to receive the new English Liturgy which, thoughwritten in a tongue as strange to the native Irish as Latin itself, wasnow to supersede the Latin service-book in every diocese. The order wasthe signal for an open strife. "Now shall every illiterate fellow readmass, " burst forth Dowdall, the Archbishop of Armagh, as he flung out ofthe chamber with all but one of his suffragans at his heels. ArchbishopBrowne of Dublin on the other hand was followed in his profession ofobedience by the Bishops of Meath, Limerick, and Kildare. Thegovernment however was far from quailing before the division of theepiscopate. Dowdall was driven from the country; and the vacant seeswere filled with Protestants, like Bale, of the most advanced type. Butno change could be wrought by measures such as these in the opinions ofthe people themselves. The new episcopal reformers spoke no Irish, andof their English sermons not a word was understood by the rude kernesaround the pulpit. The native priests remained silent. "As for preachingwe have none, " reports a zealous Protestant, "without which the ignorantcan have no knowledge. " The prelates who used the new Prayer Book weresimply regarded as heretics. The Bishop of Meath was assured by one ofhis flock that, "if the country wist how, they would eat you. "Protestantism had failed to wrest a single Irishman from his olderconvictions, but it succeeded in uniting all Ireland against the Crown. The old political distinctions which had been produced by the conquestof Strongbow faded before the new struggle for a common faith. Thepopulation within the Pale and without it became one, "not as the Irishnation, " it has been acutely said, "but as Catholics. " A new sense ofnational identity was found in the identity of religion. "Both Englishand Irish begin to oppose your Lordship's orders, " Browne had written toCromwell at the very outset of these changes, "and to lay aside theirnational old quarrels. "

[Sidenote: The Peace of Passau. ]

Oversea indeed the perils of the new government passed suddenly away. Charles had backed Mary's resistance with threats, and as he movedforward to that mastery of the world to which he confidently looked histhreats might any day become serious dangers. But the peace with Englandhad set the French government free to act in Germany, and it foundallies in the great middle party of princes whose secession from theLeague of Schmalkald had seemed to bring ruin to the Protestant cause. The aim of Duke Maurice in bringing them to desert the League had beento tie the Emperor's hands by the very fact of their joining him, andfor a while this policy had been successful. But the death of Paul theThird, whose jealousy had till now foiled the Emperor's plans, and theaccession of an Imperial nominee to the Papal throne, enabled Charles tomove more boldly to his ends, and at the close of 1551 a fresh assemblyof the Council at Trent, and an Imperial summons of the Lutheran powersto send divines to its sessions and to submit to its decisions, broughtmatters to an issue. Maurice was forced to accept the aid of thestranger and to conclude a secret treaty with France. He was engaged asa general of Charles in the siege of Magdeburg; but in the spring of1552 the army he had then at command was suddenly marched to the south, and through the passes of the Tyrol the Duke moved straight on theImperial camp at Innspruck. Charles was forced to flee for very lifewhile the Council at Trent broke hastily up, and in a few months thewhole Imperial design was in ruin. Henry the Second was already movingon the Rhine; to meet the French king Charles was forced to come toterms with the Lutheran princes; and his signature in the summer of aTreaty at Passau secured to their states the free exercise of thereformed religion and gave the Protestant princes their due weight inthe tribunals of the empire. 

[Sidenote: The Protestant Misrule. ]

The humiliation of the Emperor, the fierce warfare which now engagedboth his forces and those of France, removed from England the danger ofouter interference. But within the misrule went recklessly on. All thatmen saw was a religious and political chaos, in which ecclesiasticalorder had perished and in which politics were dying down into thesquabbles of a knot of nobles over the spoils of the Church and theCrown. Not content with Somerset's degradation, the Council charged himin 1551 with treason, and sent him to the block. Honours and lands werelavished as ever on themselves and their adherents. Warwick became Dukeof Northumberland, Lord Dorset was made Duke of Suffolk, Paulet rose tothe Marquisate of Winchester, Sir William Herbert was created Earl ofPembroke. The plunder of the chauntries and the gilds failed to glutthe appetite of this crew of spoilers. Half the lands of every see wereflung to them in vain; an attempt was made to satisfy their greed by asuppression of the wealthy see of Durham; and the whole endowments ofthe Church were threatened with confiscation. But while the courtiersgorged themselves with manors, the Treasury grew poorer. The coinage wasagain debased. Crown lands to the value of five millions of our modernmoney had been granted away to the friends of Somerset and Warwick. Theroyal expenditure mounted in seventeen years to more than four times itsprevious total. In spite of the brutality and bloodshed with whichrevolt had been suppressed, and of the foreign soldiery on whom theCouncil relied, there were signs of resistance which would have madeless reckless statesmen pause. The temper of the Parliament had driftedfar from the slavish subservience which it showed at the close ofHenry's reign. The House of Commons met Northumberland's project for thepillage of the bishoprick of Durham with opposition, and rejected a newtreason bill. In 1552 the Duke was compelled to force nominees of hisown on the constituencies by writs from the Council before he couldcount on a House to his mind. Such writs had been often issued since thedays of Henry the Seventh; but the ministers of Edward were driven toan expedient which shows how rapidly the temper of independence wasgrowing. The summons of new members from places hitherto unrepresentedwas among the prerogatives of the Crown, and the Protectorate used thispower to issue writs to small villages in the west which could betrusted to return members to its mind. 

[Sidenote: Edward the Sixth. ]

This "packing of Parliament" was to be largely extended in the followingreigns; but it passed as yet with little comment. What really keptEngland quiet was a trust that the young king, who would be of age intwo or three years, would then set all things right again. "When hecomes of age, " said a Hampshire squire, "he will see another rule, andhang up a hundred heretic knaves. " Edward's temper was as lordly as thatof his father, and had he once really reigned he would probably havedealt as roughly with the plunderers who had used his name as Englandhoped. But he was a fanatical Protestant, and his rule would almostcertainly have forced on a religious strife as bitter and disastrous asthe strife which broke the strength of Germany and France. From thiscalamity the country was saved by his waning health. Edward was nowfifteen, but in the opening of 1553 the signs of coming death became tooclear for Northumberland and his fellows to mistake them. By the Statuteof the Succession the death of the young king would bring Mary to thethrone; and as Mary was known to have refused acceptance of all changesin her father's system, and was looked on as anxious only to restore it, her accession became a subject of national hope. But to Northumberlandand his fellows her succession was fatal. They had personally outragedMary by their attempts to force her into compliance with their system. Her first act would be to free Norfolk and the bishops whom they heldprisoners in the Tower, and to set these bitter enemies in power. Withruin before them the Protestant lords were ready for a fresh revolution;and the bigotry of the young king fell in with their plans. 

[Sidenote: Edward's Will. ]

In his zeal for "the religion, " and in his absolute faith in his royalautocracy, Edward was ready to override will and statute and to setMary's rights aside. In such a case the crown fell legally to Elizabeth, the daughter of Anne Boleyn, who had been placed by the Act next insuccession to Mary, and whose training under Catharine Parr and theSeymours gave good hopes of her Protestant sympathies. The cause ofElizabeth would have united the whole of the "new men" in its defence, and might have proved a formidable difficulty in Mary's way. But for themaintenance of his personal power Northumberland could as little counton Elizabeth as on Mary; and in Edward's death the Duke saw a chance ofraising, if not himself, at any rate his own blood to the throne. Hepersuaded the young king that he possessed as great a right as hisfather to settle the succession of the Crown by will. Henry had passedby the children of his sister Margaret of Scotland, and had placed nextto Elizabeth in the succession the children of his younger sister Mary, the wife of Charles Brandon, the Duke of Suffolk. Frances, Mary's childby this marriage, was still living, the mother of three daughters by hermarriage with Grey, Lord Dorset, a hot partizan of the religiouschanges, who had been raised under the Protectorate to the Dukedom ofSuffolk. Frances was a woman of thirty-seven; but her accession to theCrown squared as little with Northumberland's plans as that of Mary orElizabeth. In the will therefore which the young king drew up Edward wasbrought to pass over Frances, and to name as his successor her eldestdaughter, the Lady Jane Grey. The marriage of Jane Grey with GuildfordDudley, the fourth son of Northumberland, was all that was needed tocomplete the unscrupulous plot. It was the celebration of this marriagein May which first woke a public suspicion of the existence of suchdesigns, and the general murmur which followed on the suspicion mighthave warned the Duke of his danger. But the secret was closely kept, andit was only in June that Edward's "plan" was laid in the same strictsecrecy before Northumberland's colleagues. A project which raised theDuke into a virtual sovereignty over the realm could hardly fail to stirresistance in the Council. The king however was resolute, and his willwas used to set aside all scruples. The judges who represented thatletters patent could not override a positive statute were forced intosigning their assent by Edward's express command. To their signatureswere added those of the whole Council with Cranmer at its head. Theprimate indeed remonstrated, but his remonstrances proved as fruitlessas those of his fellow-councillors. 

[Sidenote: Fall of Northumberland. ]

The deed was hardly done when on the sixth of July the young king passedaway. Northumberland felt little anxiety about the success of hisdesign. He had won over Lord Hastings to his support by giving him hisdaughter in marriage, and had secured the help of Lord Pembroke bywedding Jane's sister, Catharine, to his son. The army, the fortresses, the foreign soldiers, were at his command; the hotter Protestants werewith him; France, in dread of Mary's kinship with the Emperor, offeredsupport to his plans. Jane therefore was at once proclaimed Queen onEdward's death, and accepted as their sovereign by the Lords of theCouncil. But the temper of the whole people rebelled against so lawlessa usurpation. The eastern counties rose as one man to support Mary; andwhen Northumberland marched from London with ten thousand at his backto crush the rising, the Londoners, Protestant as they were, showedtheir ill-will by a stubborn silence. "The people crowd to look uponus, " the Duke noted gloomily, "but not one calls 'God speed ye. '" Whilehe halted for reinforcements his own colleagues struck him down. Eagerto throw from their necks the yoke of a rival who had made himself amaster, the Council no sooner saw the popular reaction than theyproclaimed Mary Queen; and this step was at once followed by adeclaration of the fleet in her favour, and by the announcement of thelevies in every shire that they would only fight in her cause. As thetidings reached him the Duke's courage suddenly gave way. His retreat toCambridge was the signal for a general defection. Northumberland himselfthrew his cap into the air and shouted with his men for Queen Mary. Buthis submission failed to avert his doom; and the death of the Duke drewwith it the imprisonment in the Tower of the hapless girl whom he hadmade the tool of his ambition. 

CHAPTER II

THE CATHOLIC REACTION

1553-1558

[Sidenote: Mary and the Monarchy. ]

The triumph of Mary was a fatal blow at the system of despotism whichHenry the Eighth had established. It was a system that rested not somuch on the actual strength possessed by the Crown as on the absence ofany effective forces of resistance. At Henry's death the one force ofopposition which had developed itself was that of the Protestants, butwhether in numbers or political weight the Protestants were as yet ofsmall consequence, and their resistance did little to break the generaldrift of both nation and king. For great as were the changes which Henryhad wrought in the severance of England from the Papacy and theestablishment of the ecclesiastical supremacy of the Crown, they werewrought with fair assent from the people at large; and when once thediscontent roused by Cromwell's violence had been appeased by his fallEngland as a whole acquiesced in the conservative system of the king. This national union however was broken by the Protectorate. At themoment when it had reached its height the royal authority was seized bya knot of nobles and recklessly used to further the revolutionaryprojects of a small minority of the people. From the hour of thisrevolution a new impulse was given to resistance. The older nobility, the bulk of the gentry, the wealthier merchants, the great mass of thepeople, found themselves thrown by the very instinct of conservatisminto opposition to the Crown. It was only by foreign hirelings thatrevolt was suppressed; it was only by a reckless abuse of the system ofpacking the Houses that Parliament could be held in check. At last theGovernment ventured on an open defiance of law; and a statute of therealm was set aside at the imperious bidding of a boy of fifteen. Masterof the royal forces, wielding at his will the royal authority, Northumberland used the voice of the dying Edward to set aside rights ofsuccession as sacred as his own. But the attempt proved an utterfailure. The very forces on which the Duke relied turned against him. The whole nation fronted him in arms. The sovereign whom the voice ofthe young king named as his successor passed from the throne to theTower, and a sovereign whose title rested on parliamentary statute tookher place. 

[Sidenote: The religious reaction. ]

At the opening of August Mary entered London in triumph. Short and thinin figure, with a face drawn and colourless that told of constantill-health, there was little in the outer seeming of the new queen torecall her father; but her hard, bright eyes, her manlike voice, herfearlessness and self-will, told of her Tudor blood, as her skill inmusic, her knowledge of languages, her love of learning, spoke of theculture and refinement of Henry's Court. Though Mary was thirty-sevenyears old, the strict retirement in which she had lived had left her asignorant of the actual temper of England as England was ignorant of herown. She had founded her resistance to the changes of the Protectorateon a resolve to adhere to her father's system till her brother came ofage to rule, and England believed her to be longing like itself simplyfor a restoration of what Henry had left. The belief was confirmed byher earlier actions. The changes of the Protectorate were treated asnull and void. Gardiner, Henry's minister, was drawn from the Tower totake the lead as Chancellor at the Queen's Council-board. Bonner and thedeposed bishops were restored to their sees. Ridley with the others whohad displaced them was again expelled. Latimer, as a representative ofthe extreme Protestants, was sent to the Tower; and the foreignrefugees, as anti-sacramentarians, were ordered to leave England. On anindignant protest from Cranmer against reports that he was ready toabandon the new reforms the Archbishop was sent for his seditiousdemeanour to the Tower, and soon put on his trial for treason with LadyJane Grey, her husband, and two of his brothers. Each pleaded guilty;but no attempt was made to carry out the sentence of death. In all thisEngland went with the Queen. The popular enthusiasm hardly waited infact for the orders of the Government. The whole system which had beenpursued during Edward's reign fell with a sudden crash. London indeedretained much of its Protestant sympathy, but over the rest of thecountry the tide of reaction swept without a check. The married priestswere driven from their churches, the images were replaced. In manyparishes the new Prayer Book was set aside and the mass restored. TheParliament which met in October annulled the laws made respectingreligion during the past reign, and re-established the form of serviceas used in the last year of Henry the Eighth. 

[Sidenote: Mary's aim. ]

Up to this point the temper of England went fairly with that of theQueen. But there were from the first signs of a radical differencebetween the aim of Mary and that of her people. With the restoration ofher father's system the nation as a whole was satisfied. Mary on theother hand looked on such a restoration simply as a step towards acomplete revival of the system which Henry had done away. Through longyears of suffering and peril her fanaticism had been patiently broodingover the hope of restoring to England its older religion. She believed, as she said at a later time to the Parliament, that "she had beenpredestined and preserved by God to the succession of the Crown for noother end save that He might make use of her above all else in thebringing back of the realm to the Catholic faith. " Her zeal however waschecked by the fact that she stood almost alone in her aim, as well asby cautious advice from her cousin, the Emperor; and she assured theLondoners that "albeit her own conscience was stayed in matters ofreligion, yet she meant not to compel or strain men's consciencesotherwise than God should, as she trusted, put in their hearts apersuasion of the truth that she was in, through the opening of his wordunto them by godly, and virtuous, and learned preachers. " She had infact not ventured as yet to refuse the title of "Head of the Church nextunder God" or to disclaim the powers which the Act of Supremacy gaveher; on the contrary she used these powers in the regulation ofpreaching as her father had used them. The strenuous resistance withwhich her proposal to set aside the new Prayer Book was met inParliament warned her of the difficulties that awaited any projects ofradical change. The proposal was carried, but only after a hot conflictwhich lasted over six days and which left a third of the Lower Housestill opposed to it. Their opposition by no means implied approval ofthe whole series of religious changes of which the Prayer Book formed apart, for the more moderate Catholics were pleading at this time forprayers in the vulgar tongue, and on this question followers of More andColet might have voted with the followers of Cranmer. But it showed howfar men's minds were from any spirit of blind reaction or blindcompliance with the royal will. 

[Sidenote: The Spanish Marriage. ]

The temper of the Parliament indeed was very different from that of theHouses which had knelt before Henry the Eighth. If it consented torepeal the enactment which rendered her mother's marriage invalid and todeclare Mary "born in lawful matrimony, " it secured the abolition of allthe new treasons and felonies created in the two last reigns. The demandfor their abolition showed that jealousy of the growth of civil tyrannyhad now spread from the minds of philosophers like More to the minds ofcommon Englishmen. Still keener was the jealousy of any markedrevolution in the religious system which Henry had established. The wishto return to the obedience of Rome lingered indeed among some of theclergy and in the northern shires. But elsewhere the system of anational Church was popular, and it was backed by the existence of alarge and influential class who had been enriched by the abbey lands. Forty thousand families had profited by the spoil, and watched anxiouslyany approach of danger to their new possessions, such as submission tothe Papacy was likely to bring about. On such a submission however Marywas resolved: and it was to gain strength for such a step that shedetermined to seek a husband from her mother's house. The policy ofFerdinand of Aragon, so long held at bay by adverse fortune, was now tofind its complete fulfilment. To one line of the house of Austria, thatof Charles the Fifth, had fallen not only the Imperial Crown but thegreat heritage of Burgundy, Aragon, Naples, Castille, and the Castilliandependencies in the New World. To a second, that of the Emperor'sbrother Ferdinand, had fallen the Austrian duchies, Bohemia and Hungary. The marriage of Catharine was now, as it seemed, to bear its fruits bythe union of Mary with a son of Charles, and the placing a thirdAustrian line upon the throne of England. The gigantic scheme ofbringing all western Europe together under the rule of a single familyseemed at last to draw to its realization. 

[Sidenote: Its political grounds. ]

It was no doubt from political as well as religious motives that Maryset her heart on this union. Her rejection of Gardiner's proposal thatshe should marry the young Courtenay, Earl of Devon, a son of theMarquis of Exeter whom Henry had beheaded, the resolve which sheexpressed to wed "no subject, no Englishman, " was founded in part onthe danger to her throne from the pretensions of Mary Stuart, whoseadherents cared little for the exclusion of the Scotch line from thesuccession by Henry's will and already alleged the illegitimate birthsof both Mary Tudor and Elizabeth through the annulling of their mothers'marriages as a ground for denying their right to the throne. Such claimsbecame doubly formidable through the marriage of Mary Stuart with theheir of the French Crown, and the virtual union of both Scotland andFrance in this claimant's hands. It was only to Charles that the Queencould look for aid against such a pressure as this, and Charles wasforced to give her aid. His old dreams of a mastery of the world hadfaded away before the stern realities of the Peace of Passau and hisrepulse from the walls of Metz. His hold over the Empire was broken. France was more formidable than ever. To crown his difficulties thegrowth of heresy and of the spirit of independence in the Netherlandsthreatened to rob him of the finest part of the Burgundian heritage. With Mary Stuart once on the English throne, and the great island of thewest knit to the French monarchy, the balance of power would be utterlyoverthrown, the Low Countries lost, and the Imperial Crown, as it couldhardly be doubted, reft from the house of Austria. He was quicktherefore to welcome the Queen's advances, and to offer his son Philip, who though not yet twenty-six was already a widower, as a candidate forher hand. 

[Sidenote: Opposition of Parliament. ]

The offer came weighted with a heavy bribe. The keen foresight of theEmperor already saw the difficulty of holding the Netherlands in unionwith the Spanish monarchy; and while Spain, Naples, and Franche Comtédescended to Philip's eldest son, Charles promised the heritage of theLow Countries with England to the issue of Philip and Mary. He acceptedtoo the demand of Gardiner and the Council that in the event of such aunion England should preserve complete independence both of policy andaction. In any case the marriage would save England from the grasp ofFrance, and restore it, as the Emperor hinted, to the obedience of theChurch. But the project was hardly declared when it was met by anoutburst of popular indignation. Gardiner himself was against a unionthat would annul the national independence which had till now been theaim of Tudor policy, and that would drag England helplessly in the wakeof the House of Austria. The mass of conservative Englishmen shrank fromthe religious aspects of the marriage. For the Emperor had now ceased tobe an object of hope or confidence as a mediator who would at oncepurify the Church from abuses, and restore the unity of Christendom; hehad ranged himself definitely on the side of the Papacy and of theCouncil of Trent; and the cruelties of the Inquisition which he hadintroduced into Flanders gave a terrible indication of the bigotrywhich he was to bequeath to his House. The marriage with Philip meant, it could hardly be doubted, a submission to the Papacy, and an undoingnot only of the religious changes of Edward but of the whole system ofHenry. Loyal and conservative as was the temper of the Parliament, itwas at one in its opposition to a Spanish marriage and in the requestwhich it made through a deputation of its members to the Queen that shewould marry an Englishman. The request was a new step forward on thepart of the Houses to the recovery of their older rights. Already calledby Cromwell's policy to more than their old power in ecclesiasticalmatters, their dread of revolutionary change pushed them to anintervention in matters of state. Mary noted the advance with all aTudor's jealousy. She interrupted the speaker; she rebuked theParliament for taking too much on itself; she declared she would takecounsel on such a matter "with God and with none other. " But theremonstrance had been made, the interference was to serve as a precedentin the reign to come, and a fresh proof had been given that Parliamentwas no longer the slavish tool of the Crown. 

[Sidenote: Wyatt's rising. ]

But while the nation grumbled and the Parliament remonstrated, one partyin the realm was filled with absolute panic by the news of the Spanishmatch. The Protestants saw in the marriage not only the final overthrowof their religious hopes, but a close of the religious truce, and anopening of persecution. The general opposition to the match, with thedread of the holders of Church lands that their possessions were indanger, encouraged the more violent to plan a rising; and France, naturally jealous of an increase of power by its great opponent, promised to support them by an incursion from Scotland and an attack onCalais. The real aim of the rebellion was, no doubt, the displacement ofMary, and the setting either of Jane Grey, or, as the bulk of theProtestants desired, of Elizabeth, on the throne. But these hopes werecautiously hidden; and the conspirators declared their aim to be that offreeing the Queen from evil counsellors, and of preventing her unionwith the Prince of Spain. The plan combined three simultaneous outbreaksof revolt. Sir Peter Carew engaged to raise the west, the Duke ofSuffolk to call the midland counties to arms, while Sir Thomas Wyatt ledthe Kentishmen on London. The rising was planned for the spring of 1554. But the vigilance of the Government drove it to a premature explosion inJanuary, and baffled it in the centre and the west. Carew fled toFrance; Suffolk, who appeared in arms at Leicester, found small responsefrom the people, and was soon sent prisoner to the Tower. The Kentishrising however proved a more formidable danger. A cry that the Spaniardswere coming "to conquer the realm" drew thousands to Wyatt's standard. The ships in the Thames submitted to be seized by the insurgents. Aparty of the train-bands of London, who marched with the royal guardunder the old Duke of Norfolk against them, deserted to the rebels in amass with shouts of "A Wyatt! a Wyatt! we are all Englishmen!"

[Sidenote: Its failure. ]

Had the Kentishmen moved quickly on the capital, its gates would havebeen flung open and success would have been assured. But at the criticalmoment Mary was saved by her queenly courage. Riding boldly to theGuildhall she appealed with "a man's voice" to the loyalty of thecitizens, and denounced the declaration of Wyatt's followers as "aSpanish cloak to cover their purpose against our religion. " She pledgedherself, "on the word of a Queen, that if it shall not probably appearto all the nobility and commons in the high court of Parliament thatthis marriage shall be for the high benefit and commodity of all thewhole realm, then will I abstain from marriage while I live. " The pledgewas a momentous one, for it owned the very claim of the two Houses whichthe Queen had till now haughtily rejected; and with the remonstrance ofthe Parliament still fresh in their ears the Londoners may well havebelieved that the marriage-project would come quietly to an end. Thedread too of any change in religion by the return of the violentProtestantism of Edward's day could hardly fail to win Mary supportamong the citizens. The mayor answered for their loyalty, and when Wyattappeared on the Southwark bank the bridge was secured against him. Butthe rebel leader knew that the issue of the revolt hung on the questionwhich side London would take, and that a large part of the Londonersfavoured his cause. Marching therefore up the Thames he seized a bridgeat Kingston, threw his force across the river, and turned rapidly backon the capital. But a night march along miry roads wearied anddisorganized his men; the bulk of them were cut off from their leader bya royal force which had gathered in the fields at what is now Hyde ParkCorner, and only Wyatt himself with a handful of followers pusheddesperately on past the palace of St. James, whence the Queen refused tofly even while the rebels were marching beneath its walls, along theStrand to Ludgate. "I have kept touch, " he cried as he sank exhausted atthe gate. But it was closed: his adherents within were powerless toeffect their promised diversion in his favour; and as he fell back thedaring leader was surrounded at Temple Bar and sent to the Tower. 

[Sidenote: The marriage. ]

The failure of the revolt was fatal to the girl whom part at least ofthe rebels would have placed on the throne. Lady Jane Grey, who had tillnow been spared and treated with great leniency, was sent to the block;and her father, her husband, and her uncle, atoned for the ambition ofthe House of Suffolk by the death of traitors. Wyatt and his chiefadherents followed them to execution, while the bodies of the poorerinsurgents were dangling on gibbets round London. Elizabeth, who hadwith some reason been suspected of complicity in the insurrection, wassent to the Tower; and only saved from death by the interposition of theCouncil. The leading Protestants fled in terror over sea. But thefailure of the revolt did more than crush the Protestant party; itenabled the Queen to lay aside the mask of moderation which had beenforced on her by the earlier difficulties of her reign. An order for theexpulsion of all married clergy from their cures, with the deprivationof nine bishops who had been appointed during the Protectorate and whorepresented its religious tendencies, proved the Queen's resolve toenter boldly on a course of reaction. Her victory secured the Spanishmarriage. It was to prevent Philip's union with Mary that Wyatt hadrisen, and with his overthrow the Queen's policy stood triumphant. Thewhole strength of the conservative opposition was lost when oppositioncould be branded as disloyalty. Mary too was true to the pledge she hadgiven that the match should only be brought about with the assent ofParliament. But pressure was unscrupulously used to secure compliantmembers in the new elections, and a reluctant assent to the marriage waswrung from the Houses when they assembled in the spring. Philip wascreated king of Naples by his father to give dignity to his union; andin the following July Mary met him at Winchester and became his wife. 

[Sidenote: Philip. ]

As he entered London with the Queen, men noted curiously the look of theyoung king whose fortunes were to be so closely linked with those ofEngland for fifty years to come. Far younger than his bride, for he wasbut twenty-six, there was little of youth in the small and fragileframe, the sickly face, the sedentary habits, the Spanish silence andreserve, which estranged Englishmen from Philip as they had alreadyestranged his subjects in Italy and his future subjects in theNetherlands. Here however he sought by an unusual pleasantness ofdemeanour as well as by profuse distributions of gifts to win thenational goodwill, for it was only by winning it that he couldaccomplish the work he came to do. His first aim was to reconcileEngland with the Church. The new Spanish marriage was to repair the harmwhich the earlier Spanish marriage had brought about by securing thatsubmission to Rome on which Mary was resolved. Even before Philip'slanding in England the great obstacle to reunion had been removed by theconsent of Julius the Third under pressure from the Emperor to waive therestoration of the Church lands in the event of England's return toobedience. Other and almost as great obstacles indeed seemed to remain. The temper of the nation had gone with Henry in his rejection of thePapal jurisdiction. Mary's counsellors had been foremost among the menwho advocated the change. Her minister, Bishop Gardiner, seemed pledgedto oppose any submission to Rome. As secretary of state after Wolsey'sfall he had taken a prominent part in the measures which brought about aseverance between England and the Papacy; as Bishop of Winchester he hadwritten a famous tract "On True Obedience" in which the Papal supremacyhad been expressly repudiated; and to the end of Henry's days he hadbeen looked upon as the leading advocate of the system of a national andindependent Church. Nor had his attitude changed in Edward's reign. Inthe process for his deprivation he avowed himself ready as ever tomaintain as well "the supremacy and supreme authority of the king'smajesty that now is as the abolishing of the usurped power of the Bishopof Rome. "

[Sidenote: The submission to Rome. ]

But with the later changes of the Protectorate Gardiner had seen hisdream of a national yet orthodox Church vanish away. He had seen howinevitably severance from Rome drew with it a connexion with theProtestant Churches and a repudiation of Catholic belief. In the hoursof imprisonment his mind fell back on the old ecclesiastical order withwhich the old spiritual order seemed inextricably entwined, and he wasready now to submit to the Papacy as the one means of preserving thefaith to which he clung. His attitude was of the highest significance, for Gardiner more than any one was a representative of the dominantEnglish opinion of his day. As the moderate party which had supportedthe policy of Henry the Eighth saw its hopes disappear, it rangeditself, like the Bishop, on the side of a unity which could now only bebrought about by reconciliation with Rome. The effort of the Protestantsin Wyatt's insurrection to regain their power and revive the system ofthe Protectorate served only to give a fresh impulse to this drift ofconservative opinion. Mary therefore found little opposition to herplans. The peers were won over by Philip through the pensions helavished among them, while pressure was unscrupulously used by theCouncil to secure a compliant House of Commons. When the Parliament metin November these measures were found to have been successful. Theattainder of Reginald Pole, who had been appointed by the Pope toreceive the submission of the realm, was reversed; and the Legateentered London by the river with his cross gleaming from the prow of hisbarge. He was solemnly welcomed in full Parliament. The two Housesdecided by a formal vote to return to the obedience of the Papal See; onthe assurance of Pole in the Pope's name that holders of Church landsshould not be disturbed in their possession the statutes abolishingPapal jurisdiction in England were repealed; and Lords and Commonsreceived on their knees an absolution which freed the realm from theguilt incurred by its schism and heresy. 

[Sidenote: Mary's difficulties. ]

But, even in the hour of her triumph, the temper both of Parliament andthe nation warned the Queen of the failure of her hope to bind Englandto a purely Catholic policy. The growing independence of the two Houseswas seen in the impossibility of procuring from them any change in theorder of succession. The victory of Rome was incomplete so long as itsright of dispensation was implicitly denied by a recognition ofElizabeth's legitimacy, and Mary longed to avenge her mother by humblingthe child of Anne Boleyn. But in spite of Pole's efforts and the Queen'ssupport a proposal to oust her sister from the line of succession couldnot even be submitted to the Houses, nor could their assent be won tothe postponing the succession of Elizabeth to that of Philip. The temperof the nation at large was equally decided. In the first Parliament ofMary a proposal to renew the laws against heresy had been thrown out bythe Lords, even after the failure of Wyatt's insurrection. Philip'sinfluence secured the re-enactment of the statute of Henry the Fourth inthe Parliament which followed his arrival; but the sullen discontent ofLondon compelled its Bishop, Bonner, to withdraw a series of articles ofenquiry, by which he hoped to purge his diocese of heresy, and even theCouncil was divided on the question of persecution. In the veryinterests of Catholicism the Emperor himself counselled prudence anddelay. Philip gave the same counsel. From the moment of his arrival theyoung king exercised a powerful influence over the Government, and hewas gradually drawing into his hands the whole direction of affairs. But, bigot as he was in matters of faith, Philip's temper was that of astatesman, not of a fanatic. If he came to England resolute to win thecountry to union with the Church, his conciliatory policy was alreadyseen in the concessions he wrested from the Papacy in the matter of theChurch lands, and his aim was rather to hold England together and togive time for a reaction of opinion than to revive the old discord byany measures of severity. It was indeed only from a united and contentedEngland that he could hope for effective aid in the struggle of hishouse with France, and in spite of his pledges Philip's one aim inmarrying Mary was to secure that aid. 

[Sidenote: The persecution. ]

But whether from without or from within warning was wasted on the fiercebigotry of the Queen. It was, as Gardiner asserted, not at the counselof her ministers but by her own personal will that the laws againstheresy had been laid before Parliament; and now that they were enactedMary pressed for their execution. Her resolve was probably quickened bythe action of the Protestant zealots. The failure of Wyatt's revolt wasfar from taming the enthusiasm of the wilder reformers. The restorationof the old worship was followed by outbreaks of bold defiance. A tailorof St. Giles in the Fields shaved a dog with the priestly tonsure. A catwas found hanging in the Cheap "with her head shorn, and the likeness ofa vestment cast over her, with her forefeet tied together and a roundpiece of paper like a singing cake between them. " Yet more galling werethe ballads which were circulated in mockery of the mass, the pamphletswhich came from the exiles over sea, the seditious broadsides dropped inthe streets, the interludes in which the most sacred acts of the oldreligion were flouted with ribald mockery. All this defiance only servedto quicken afresh the purpose of the Queen. But it was not till theopening of 1555, when she had already been a year and a half on thethrone, that the opposition of her councillors was at last mastered andthe persecution began. In February the deprived bishop of Gloucester, Hooper, was burned in his cathedral city, a London vicar, LawrenceSaunders, at Coventry, and Rogers, a prebendary of St. Paul's, atLondon. Ferrar, the deprived bishop of St. David's, who was burned atCaermarthen, was one of eight victims who suffered in March. Fourfollowed in April and May, six in June, eleven in July, eighteen inAugust, eleven in September. In October Ridley, the deprived bishop ofLondon, was drawn with Latimer from their prison at Oxford. "Play theman, Master Ridley!" cried the old preacher of the Reformation as theflames shot up around him; "we shall this day light up such a candle byGod's grace in England as I trust shall never be put out. "

[Sidenote: Rowland Taylor. ]

If the Protestants had not known how to govern, indeed, they knew how todie; and the cause which prosperity had ruined revived in the dark hourof persecution. The memory of their violence and greed faded away asthey passed unwavering to their doom. Such a story as that of RowlandTaylor, the Vicar of Hadleigh, tells us more of the work which was nowbegun, and of the effect it was likely to produce, than pages ofhistoric dissertation. Taylor, who as a man of mark had been one of thefirst victims chosen for execution, was arrested in London, andcondemned to suffer in his own parish. His wife, "suspecting that herhusband should that night be carried away, " had waited through thedarkness with her children in the porch of St. Botolph's beside Aldgate. "Now when the sheriff his company came against St. Botolph's ChurchElizabeth cried, saying, 'O my dear father! Mother! mother! here is myfather led away!' Then cried his wife, 'Rowland, Rowland, where artthou?'--for it was a very dark morning, that the one could not see theother. Dr. Taylor answered, 'I am here, dear wife, ' and stayed. Thesheriff's men would have led him forth, but the sheriff said, 'Stay alittle, masters, I pray you, and let him speak to his wife. ' Then cameshe to him, and he took his daughter Mary in his arms, and he and hiswife and Elizabeth knelt down and said the Lord's prayer. At which sightthe sheriff wept apace, and so did divers others of the company. Afterthey had prayed he rose up and kissed his wife and shook her by thehand, and said, 'Farewell, my dear wife, be of good comfort, for I amquiet in my conscience! God shall still be a father to my children. '. .. Then said his wife, 'God be with thee, dear Rowland! I will, with God'sgrace, meet thee at Hadleigh. '

"All the way Dr. Taylor was merry and cheerful as one that accountedhimself going to a most pleasant banquet or bridal. .. . Coming within twomiles of Hadleigh he desired to light off his horse, which done heleaped and set a frisk or twain as men commonly do for dancing. 'Why, master Doctor, ' quoth the Sheriff, 'how do you now?' He answered, 'Well, God be praised, Master Sheriff, never better; for now I know I am almostat home. I lack not past two stiles to go over, and I am even at myFather's house!'. .. The streets of Hadleigh were beset on both sideswith men and women of the town and country who waited to see him; whomwhen they beheld so led to death, with weeping eyes and lamentablevoices, they cried, 'Ah, good Lord! there goeth our good shepherd fromus!'" The journey was at last over. "'What place is this, ' he asked, 'and what meaneth it that so much people are gathered together?' It wasanswered, 'It is Oldham Common, the place where you must suffer, and thepeople are come to look upon you. ' Then said he, 'Thanked be God, I ameven at home!'. .. But when the people saw his reverend and ancientface, with a long white beard, they burst out with weeping tears andcried, saying, 'God save thee, good Dr. Taylor; God strengthen thee andhelp thee; the Holy Ghost comfort thee!' He wished, but was notsuffered, to speak. When he had prayed, he went to the stake and kissedit, and set himself into a pitch-barrel which they had set for him tostand on, and so stood with his back upright against the stake, with hishands folded together and his eyes towards heaven, and so let himself beburned. " One of the executioners "cruelly cast a fagot at him, which hitupon his head and brake his face that the blood ran down his visage. Then said Dr. Taylor, 'O friend, I have harm enough--what needed that?'"One more act of brutality brought his sufferings to an end. "So stood hestill without either crying or moving, with his hands folded together, till Soyce with a halberd struck him on the head that the brains fellout, and the dead corpse fell down into the fire. "

[Sidenote: The area of the Martyrdoms. ]

The terror of death was powerless against men like these. Bonner, theBishop of London, to whom, as bishop of the diocese in which the Councilsate, its victims were generally delivered for execution, but who, inspite of the nickname and hatred which his official prominence in thework of death earned him, seems to have been naturally a good-humouredand merciful man, asked a youth who was brought before him whether hethought he could bear the fire. The boy at once held his hand withoutflinching in the flame of a candle that stood by. Rogers, afellow-worker with Tyndale in the translation of the Bible, and one ofthe foremost among the Protestant preachers, died bathing his hands inthe flame "as if it had been in cold water. " Even the commonest livesgleamed for a moment into poetry at the stake. "Pray for me, " a boy, William Brown, who had been brought home to Brentwood to suffer, askedof the bystanders. "I will pray no more for thee, " one of them replied, "than I will pray for a dog. " "'Then, ' said William, 'Son of God, shineupon me'; and immediately the sun in the elements shone out of a darkcloud so full in his face that he was constrained to look another way;whereat the people mused because it was so dark a little time before. "Brentwood lay within a district on which the hand of the Queen fellheavier than elsewhere. The persecution was mainly confined to the moreactive and populous parts of the country, to London, Kent, Sussex, andthe Eastern Counties. Of the two hundred and eighty whom we know to havesuffered during the last three years and a half of Mary's reign morethan forty were burned in London, seventeen in the neighbouring villageof Stratford-le-Bow, four in Islington, two in Southwark, and one eachat Barnet, St. Albans, and Ware. Kent, at that time a home of mining andmanufacturing industry, suffered as heavily as London. Of its sixtymartyrs more than forty were furnished by Canterbury, which was then buta city of some few thousand inhabitants, and seven by Maidstone. Theremaining eight suffered at Rochester, Ashford, and Dartford. Of thetwenty-five who died in Sussex the little town of Lewes sent seventeento the fire. Seventy were contributed by the Eastern Counties, the seatof the woollen manufacture. Beyond these districts executions were rare. Westward of Sussex we find the record of but a dozen martyrdoms, six ofwhich were at Bristol, and four at Salisbury. Chester and Walescontributed but four sufferers to the list. In the Midland Countiesbetween Thames and the Humber only twenty-four suffered martyrdom. Northof the Humber we find the names of but two Yorkshiremen burned atBedale. 

[Sidenote: Failure of the persecution. ]

But heavily as the martyrdoms fell on the district within which theywere practically confined, and where as we may conclude Protestantismwas more dominant than elsewhere, the work of terror failed in the veryends for which it was wrought. The old spirit of insolent defiance, ofoutrageous violence, rose into fresh life at the challenge ofpersecution. A Protestant hung a string of puddings round a priest'sneck in derision of his beads. The restored images were grosslyinsulted. The old scurrilous ballads against the mass and relics wereheard in the streets. Men were goaded to sheer madness by the bloodshedand violence about them. One miserable wretch, driven to frenzy, stabbedthe priest of St. Margaret's as he stood with the chalice in his hand. It was a more formidable sign of the times that acts of violence such asthese no longer stirred the people at large to their former resentment. The horror of the persecution swept away all other feelings. Every deathat the stake won hundreds to the cause for which the victims died. "Youhave lost the hearts of twenty thousands that were rank Papists withinthese twelve months, " a Protestant wrote triumphantly to Bonner. Bonnerindeed, who had never been a very zealous persecutor, was sick of hiswork; and the energy of the bishops soon relaxed. But Mary had nothought of hesitation in the course she had entered on, and though theImperial ambassador noted the rapid growth of public discontent"rattling letters" from the council pressed the lagging prelates tofresh activity. Yet the persecution had hardly begun beforedifficulties were thickening round the Queen. In her passionate longingfor an heir who would carry on her religious work Mary had believedherself to be with child; but in the summer of 1555 all hopes of anychildbirth passed away, and the overthrow of his projects for thepermanent acquisition of England to the House of Austria at oncedisenchanted Philip with his stay in the realm. But even had all gonewell it was impossible for the king to remain longer in England. He wasneeded in the Netherlands to play his part in the memorable act whichwas to close the Emperor's political life. Already King of Naples andLord of Milan, Philip received by his father's solemn resignation on thetwenty-fifth of October the Burgundian heritage; and a month laterCharles ceded to him the crowns of Castille and Aragon with theirdependencies in the New World and in the Old. The Empire indeed passedto his uncle Ferdinand of Austria; but with this exception the whole ofhis father's vast dominions lay now in the grasp of Philip. Of therealms which he ruled, England was but one and far from the greatestone, and even had he wished to return his continued stay there becameimpossible. 

[Sidenote: The Catholic revival. ]

He was forced to leave the direction of affairs to Cardinal Pole, who onthe death of Gardiner in November 1555 took the chief place in Council. At once Papal Legate and chief minister of the Crown, Pole carried onthat union of the civil and ecclesiastical authority which had beenfirst seen in Wolsey and had formed the groundwork of the system ofCromwell. But he found himself hampered by difficulties which even theability of Cromwell or Wolsey could hardly have met. The embassy whichcarried to Rome the submission of the realm found a fresh Pope, Paul theFourth, on the throne. His accession marked the opening of a new era inthe history of the Papacy. Till now the fortunes of Catholicism had beensteadily sinking to a lower ebb. With the Peace of Passau the Empireseemed lost to it. The new Protestant faith stood triumphant in thenorth of Germany, and it was already advancing to the conquest of thesouth. The nobles of Austria were forsaking the older religion. AVenetian ambassador estimated the German Catholics at little more than atenth of the whole population of Germany. Eastward the nobles of Hungaryand Poland became Protestants in a mass. In the west France was yieldingmore and more to heresy, and England had hardly been rescued from it byMary's accession. Only where the dead hand of Spain lay heavy, inCastille, in Aragon, or in Italy, was the Reformation thoroughly crushedout; and even the dead hand of Spain failed to crush heresy in the LowCountries. But at the moment when ruin seemed certain the older faithrallied to a new resistance. While Protestantism was degraded andweakened by the prostitution of the Reformation to political ends, bythe greed and worthlessness of the German princes who espoused itscause, by the factious lawlessness of the nobles in Poland and theHuguenots in France, while it wasted its strength in theologicalcontroversies and persecutions, in the bitter and venomous discussionsbetween the Churches which followed Luther and the Churches whichfollowed Zwingli or Calvin, the great communion which it assailed feltat last the uses of adversity. The Catholic world rallied round theCouncil of Trent. In the very face of heresy the Catholic faith was anewsettled and defined. The Papacy was owned afresh as the centre ofCatholic union. The enthusiasm of the Protestants was met by acounter-enthusiasm among their opponents. New religious orders rose tomeet the wants of the day; the Capuchins became the preachers ofCatholicism, the Jesuits became not only its preachers but itsdirectors, its schoolmasters, its missionaries, its diplomatists. Theirorganization, their blind obedience, their real ability, their fanaticalzeal, galvanized the pulpit, the school, the confessional, into a newlife. 

[Sidenote: Paul the Fourth. ]

It was this movement, this rally of Catholicism, which now placed itsrepresentative on the Papal throne. At the moment when Luther was firstopening his attack on the Papacy Giovanni Caraffa had laid down hissees of Chieti and Brindisi to found the order of Theatines in a littlehouse on the Pincian Hill. His aim was the reformation of the clergy, but the impulse which he gave told on the growing fervour of theCatholic world, and its issue was seen in the institution of theCapuchins and the Jesuits. Created Cardinal by Paul the Third, he foundhimself face to face with the more liberal theologians who were longingfor a reconciliation between Lutheranism and the Papacy, such asContarini and Pole, but his violent orthodoxy foiled their efforts inthe conference at Ratisbon, and prevailed on the Pope to trust to thesterner methods of the Inquisition. As Caraffa wielded its powers, theInquisition spread terror throughout Italy. At due intervals groups ofheretics were burned before the Dominican Church at Rome; scholars likePeter Martyr were driven over sea; and the publication of an index ofprohibited books gave a death-blow to Italian literature. On the vergeof eighty the stern Inquisitor became Pope as Paul the Fourth. Hisconception of the Papal power was as high as that of Hildebrand orInnocent the Third, and he flung contemptuously aside the system ofcompromise which his predecessor had been brought to adopt by thecaution of the Emperor. "Charles, " he said, was a "favourer ofheretics, " and he laid to his charge the prosperity of Lutheranism inthe Empire. That England should make terms for its return to obediencegalled his pride, while his fanaticism would hear of no surrender of theproperty of the Church. Philip, who had wrested the concession fromJulius the Third, had no influence over a Pope who hoped to drive theSpaniards from Italy, and Pole was suspected by Paul of a leaning toheresy. 

[Sidenote: England and the Papacy. ]

The English ambassadors found therefore a rough greeting when the termsof the submission were laid before the Pope. Paul utterly repudiated theagreement which had been entered into between the Legate and theParliament; he demanded the restoration of every acre of Churchproperty; and he annulled all alienation of it by a general bull. Hisattitude undid all that Mary had done. In spite of the pompousreconciliation in which the Houses had knelt at the feet of Pole, England was still unreconciled to the Papacy, for the country and thePope were at issue on a matter where concession was now impossible oneither side. The Queen's own heart went with the Pope's demand. But thefirst step on which she ventured towards a compliance with it showed thedifficulties she would have to meet. The grant of the first-fruits toHenry the Eighth had undoubtedly rested on his claim of supremacy overthe Church; and now that this was at an end Mary had grounds forproposing their restoration to church purposes. But the proposal waslooked on as a step towards the resumption of the monastic lands, andafter a hot and prolonged debate at the close of 1555 the Commons onlyassented to it by a small majority. It was plain that no hearing wouldbe given to the Pope's demand for a restoration of all Church property;great lords were heard to threaten that they would keep their lands solong as they had a sword by their side; and England was thus left athopeless variance with the Papacy. 

[Sidenote: Cranmer. ]

But, difficult as Mary's task became, she clung as tenaciously as everto her work of blood. The martyrdoms went steadily on, and at theopening of 1556 the sanction of Rome enabled the Queen to deal with avictim whose death woke all England to the reality of the persecution. Far as he stood in character beneath many who had gone before him to thestake, Cranmer stood high above all in his ecclesiastical position. Toburn the Primate of the English Church for heresy was to shut out meanervictims from all hope of escape. And on the position of Cranmer nonecast a doubt. The other prelates who had suffered had been placed intheir sees after the separation from Rome, and were hardly regarded asbishops by their opponents. But, whatever had been his part in theschism, Cranmer had received his Pallium from the Pope. He was, in theeyes of all, Archbishop of Canterbury, the successor of St. Augustineand of St. Thomas in the second see of Western Christendom. Revengehowever and religious zeal alike urged the Queen to bring Cranmer tothe stake. First among the many decisions in which the Archbishop hadprostituted justice to Henry's will stood that by which he had annulledthe king's marriage with Catharine and declared Mary a bastard. The lastof his political acts had been to join, whether reluctantly or no, inthe shameless plot to exclude Mary from the throne. His great positiontoo made Cranmer more than any man a representative of the religiousrevolution which had passed over the land. His figure stood with thoseof Henry and of Cromwell on the frontispiece of the English Bible. Thedecisive change which had been given to the character of the Reformationunder Edward was due wholly to Cranmer. It was his voice that men heardand still hear in the accents of the English Liturgy. 

[Sidenote: His death. ]

As an Archbishop, Cranmer's judgment rested with no meaner tribunal thanthat of Rome, and his execution had been necessarily delayed till itssentence could be given. It was not till the opening of 1556 that thePapal see convicted him of heresy. As a heretic he was now condemned tosuffer at the stake. But the courage which Cranmer had shown since theaccession of Mary gave way the moment his final doom was announced. Themoral cowardice which had displayed itself in his miserable compliancewith the lust and despotism of Henry displayed itself again in sixsuccessive recantations by which he hoped to purchase pardon. Butpardon was impossible; and Cranmer's strangely mingled nature found apower in its very weakness when he was brought into the church of St. Mary at Oxford on the twenty-first of March to repeat his recantation onthe way to the stake. "Now, " ended his address to the hushedcongregation before him, "now I come to the great thing that troublethmy conscience more than any other thing that ever I said or did in mylife, and that is the setting abroad of writings contrary to the truth;which here I now renounce and refuse as things written by my handcontrary to the truth which I thought in my heart, and written for fearof death to save my life, if it might be. And, forasmuch as my handoffended in writing contrary to my heart, my hand therefore shall be thefirst punished; for if I come to the fire, it shall be the firstburned. " "This was the hand that wrote it, " he again exclaimed at thestake, "therefore it shall suffer first punishment"; and holding itsteadily in the flame "he never stirred nor cried" till life was gone. 

[Sidenote: War with France. ]

It was with the unerring instinct of a popular movement that, among acrowd of far more heroic sufferers, the Protestants fixed, in spite ofhis recantations, on the martyrdom of Cranmer as the death-blow toCatholicism in England. For one man who felt within him the joy ofRowland Taylor at the prospect of the stake, there were thousands whofelt the shuddering dread of Cranmer. The triumphant cry of Latimercould reach only hearts as bold as his own, while the sad pathos of thePrimate's humiliation and repentance struck chords of sympathy and pityin the hearts of all. It is from that moment that we may trace thebitter remembrance of the blood shed in the cause of Rome; which, however partial and unjust it must seem to an historic observer, stilllies graven deep in the temper of the English people. But the Queenstruggled desperately on. She did what was possible to satisfy theunyielding Pope. In the face of the Parliament's significant reluctanceeven to restore the first-fruits to the Church, she refounded all shecould of the abbeys which had been suppressed. One of the greatest ofthese, the Abbey of Westminster, was re-established before the close of1556, and John Feckenham installed as its abbot. Such a step couldhardly fail to wake the old jealousy of any attempt to reclaim theChurch lands, and thus to alienate the nobles and gentry from the Queen. They were soon to be alienated yet more by her breach of the solemncovenant on which her marriage was based. Even the most reckless of hercounsellors felt the unwisdom of aiding Philip in his strife withFrance. The accession of England to the vast dominion which the Emperorhad ceded to his son in 1555 all but realized the plans of Ferdinand theCatholic for making the house of Austria master of Western Christendom. France was its one effective foe; and the overthrow of France in the warwhich was going on between the two powers would leave Philip without acheck. How keenly this was felt at the English council-board was seen inthe resistance which was made to Philip's effort to drag his new realminto the war. Such an effort was in itself a crowning breach of faith, for the king's marriage had been accompanied by a solemn pledge thatEngland should not be drawn into the strifes of Spain. But Philip knewlittle of good faith when his interest was at stake. The English fleetwould give him the mastery of the seas, English soldiers would turn thescale in Flanders, and at the opening of 1557 the king again crossed theChannel and spent three months in pressing his cause on Mary and heradvisers. 

[Sidenote: Loss of Calais. ]

"He did more, " says a Spanish writer of the time, "than any one wouldhave believed possible with that proud and indomitable nation. " What hewas most aided by was provocation from France. A body of refugees whohad found shelter there landed in Yorkshire in the spring; and theirleader, Thomas Stafford, a grandson of the late Duke of Buckingham, called the people to rise against the tyranny of foreigners and "thesatanic designs of an unlawful Queen. " The French king hoped that arising would give the Queen work at home; but the revolt was easilycrushed, and the insult enabled Mary to override her counsellors'reluctance and to declare war against France. The war opened withtriumphs both on land and at sea. The junction of the English fleet madePhilip master of the Channel. Eight thousand men, "all clad in theirgreen, " were sent to Flanders under Lord Pembroke, and joined Philip'sforces in August in time to take part in the great victory of St. Quentin. In October the little army returned home in triumph, but thegleam of success vanished suddenly away. In the autumn of 1557 theEnglish ships were defeated in an attack on the Orkneys. In January 1558the Duke of Guise flung himself with characteristic secrecy and energyupon Calais and compelled it to surrender before succour could arrive. "The chief jewel of the realm, " as Mary herself called it, was suddenlyreft away; and the surrender of Guisnes, which soon followed, leftEngland without a foot of land on the Continent. 

[Sidenote: Mary and Ireland. ]

Bitterly as the blow was felt, the Council, though passionately pressedby the Queen, could find neither money nor men for any attempt torecover the town. The war indeed went steadily for Spain and her allies;and Philip owed his victory at Gravelines in the summer of 1558 mainlyto the opportune arrival of ten English ships of war which opened fireon the flank of the French army that lay open to the sea. But Englandcould not be brought to take further part in the contest. The levieswhich were being raised mutinied and dispersed. The forced loan towhich Mary was driven to resort came in slowly. The treasury was drainednot only by the opening of the war with France but by the opening of afresh strife in Ireland. To the struggle of religion which had begunthere under the Protectorate the accession of Mary had put an end. Theshadowy form of the earlier Irish Protestantism melted quietly away. There were in fact no Protestants in Ireland save the new bishops; andwhen Bale had fled over sea from his diocese of Ossory and hisfellow-prelates had been deprived the Irish Church resumed its oldappearance. No attempt indeed was made to restore the monasteries; andMary exercised her supremacy, deposed or appointed bishops, andrepudiated Papal interference with her ecclesiastical acts as vigorouslyas her father. But the Mass was restored, the old modes of religiousworship were again held in honour, and religious dissension between theGovernment and its Irish subjects came for the time to an end. With theclose however of one danger came the rise of another. England wasgrowing tired of the policy of conciliation which had been steadilypursued by Henry the Eighth and his successor. As yet it had beenrewarded with precisely the sort of success which Wolsey and Cromwellanticipated. The chiefs had come quietly in to the plan, and their septshad followed them in submission to the new order. "The winning of theEarl of Desmond was the winning of the rest of Munster with smallcharges. The making O'Brien an Earl made all that country obedient. " TheMacwilliam became Lord Clanrickard, and the Fitzpatricks Barons of UpperOssory. A visit of the great northern chief who had accepted the titleof Earl of Tyrone to the English Court was regarded as a marked step inthe process of civilization. 

[Sidenote: The Irish War. ]

In the south, where the system of English law was slowly spreading, thechieftains sate on the bench side by side with the English justices ofthe peace; and something had been done to check the feuds and disorderof the wild tribes between Limerick and Tipperary. "Men may pass quietlythroughout these countries without danger of robbery or otherdispleasure. " In the Clanrickard county, once wasted with war, "ploughing increaseth daily. " In Tyrone and the north however the olddisorder reigned without a check; and everywhere the process ofimprovement tried the temper of the English Deputies by the slowness ofits advance. The only hope of any real progress lay in patience; andthere were signs that the Government at Dublin found it hard to wait. The "rough handling" of the chiefs by Sir Edward Bellingham, a LordDeputy under the Protector Somerset, roused a spirit of revolt that onlysubsided when the poverty of the Exchequer forced him to withdraw thegarrisons he had planted in the heart of the country. His successor inMary's reign, Lord Sussex, made raid after raid to no purpose on theobstinate tribes of the north, burning in one the Cathedral of Armaghand three other churches. A far more serious breach in the system ofconciliation was made when the project of English colonization whichHenry had steadily rejected was adopted by the same Lord Deputy, andwhen the country of the O'Connors was assigned to English settlers andmade shire-land under the names of King's and Queen's Counties in honourof Philip and Mary. A savage warfare began at once between the plantersand the dispossessed septs, a warfare which only ended in the followingreign in the extermination of the Irishmen, and commissioners wereappointed to survey waste lands with the aim of carrying the work ofcolonization into other districts. The pressure of the war againstFrance put an end to these wider projects, but the strife in Meath wentsavagely on and proved a sore drain to the Exchequer. 

[Sidenote: Scotland and Protestantism. ]

Nor was Mary without difficulties in the North. Religiously as well aspolitically her reign told in a marked way on the fortunes of Scotland. If the Queen's policy failed to crush Protestantism in England, it gavea new impulse to it in the northern realm. In Scotland the wealth andworldliness of the great churchmen had long ago spread a taste forheresy among the people; and Lollardry survived as a power north of theborder long after it had almost died out to the south of it. The impulseof the Lutheran movement was seen in the diffusion of the new opinionsby a few scholars, such as Wishart and Hamilton; but though Henry theEighth pressed his nephew James the Fifth to follow him in the work hewas doing in England, it was plain that the Scotch reformers could lookfor little favour from the Crown. The policy of the Scottish kingsregarded the Church as their ally against the turbulent nobles, andJames steadily held its enemies at bay. The Regent, Mary of Guise, clungto the same policy. But stoutly as the whole nation withstood theEnglish efforts to acquire a political supremacy, the religiousrevolution in England told more and more on the Scotch nobles. Nonobility was so poor as that of Scotland, and nowhere in Europe was thecontrast between their poverty and the riches of the Church so great. Each step of the vast spoliation that went on south of the border, theconfiscation of the lesser abbeys, the suppression of the greater, thesecularization of chauntries and hospitals, woke a fresh greed in thebaronage of the north. The new opinions soon found disciples among them. It was a group of Protestant nobles who surprised the Castle of St. Andrews and murdered Cardinal Beaton. The "Gospellers" from the Lowlandsalready formed a marked body in the army that fought at Pinkie Cleugh. As yet however the growth of the new opinions had been slow, and therehad been till now little public show of resistance to the religion ofthe State. 

[Sidenote: Knox. ]

With the accession of Mary however all was changed. Under Henry andEdward the Catholicism of Scotland had profited by the nationalopposition to a Protestant England; but now that Catholicism was againtriumphant in England Protestantism became far less odious to the Scotchstatesmen. A still greater change was wrought by the marriage withPhilip. Such a match, securing as it did to England the aid of Spain inany future aggression upon Scotland, became a danger to the northernrealm which not only drew her closer to France but forced her to giveshelter and support to the sectaries who promised to prove a check uponMary. Many of the exiles therefore who left England for the sake ofreligion found a refuge in Scotland. Amongst these was John Knox. Knoxhad been one of the followers of Wishart; he had acted as pastor to theProtestants who after Beaton's murder held the Castle of St. Andrews, and had been captured with them by a French force in the summer of 1547. The Frenchmen sent the heretics to the galleys; and it was as a galleyslave in one of their vessels that Knox next saw his native shores. Asthe vessel lay tossing in the bay of St. Andrews, a comrade bade himlook to the land, and asked him if he knew it. "I know it well" was theanswer; "for I see the steeple of that place where God first in publicopened my mouth to His glory; and I am fully persuaded, how weak thatever I now appear, I shall not depart this life till my tongue glorifyHis holy name in the same place!" It was long however before he couldreturn. Released at the opening of 1549, Knox found shelter in England, where he became one of the most stirring among the preachers of the day, and was offered a bishoprick by Northumberland. Mary's accession drovehim again to France. But the new policy of the Regent now openedScotland to the English refugees, and it was as one of these that Knoxreturned in 1555 to his own country. Although he soon withdrew to takecharge of the English congregation at Frankfort and Geneva his energyhad already given a decisive impulse to the new movement. In a gatheringat the house of Lord Erskine he persuaded the assembly to "refuse allsociety with idolatry, and bind themselves to the uttermost of theirpower to maintain the true preaching of the Evangile, as God shouldoffer to their preachers an opportunity. " The confederacy woke anew thejealousy of the government, and persecution revived. But some of thegreatest nobles now joined the reforming cause. The Earl of Morton, thehead of the house of Douglas, the Earl of Argyle, the greatest chieftainof the west, and above all a bastard son of the late king, Lord JamesStuart, who bore as yet the title of prior of St. Andrews, but who wasto be better known afterwards as the Earl of Murray, placed themselvesat the head of the movement. The remonstrances of Knox from his exile atGeneva stirred them to interfere in behalf of the persecutedProtestants; and at the close of 1557 these nobles united with the restof the Protestant leaders in an engagement which became memorable as thefirst among those Covenants which were to give shape and colour toScotch religion. 

[Sidenote: The First Covenant. ]

"We, " ran this solemn bond, "perceiving how Satan in his members, theAntichrists of our time, cruelly doth rage, seeking to overthrow and todestroy the Evangel of Christ, and His Congregation, ought according toour bounden duty to strive in our Master's cause even unto the death, being certain of our victory in Him. The which our duty being wellconsidered, we do promise before the Majesty of God and His Congregationthat we, by His grace, shall with all diligence continually apply ourwhole power, substance, and our very lives to maintain, set forward, andestablish the most blessed Word of God and His Congregation, and shalllabour at our possibility to have faithful ministers, purely and trulyto minister Christ's Evangel and sacraments to His people. We shallmaintain them, nourish them, and defend them, the whole Congregation ofChrist and every member thereof, at our whole power and wearing of ourlives, against Satan and all wicked power that does intend tyranny ortrouble against the foresaid Congregation. Unto the which Holy Word andCongregation we do join us, and also do forsake and renounce thecongregation of Satan with all the superstitious abomination andidolatry thereof: and moreover shall declare ourselves manifestlyenemies thereto by this our faithful promise before God, testified toHis Congregation by our subscription at these presents. "

[Sidenote: Scotland and Protestantism. ]

The Covenant of the Scotch nobles marked a new epoch in the strife ofreligions. Till now the reformers had opposed the doctrine ofnationality to the doctrine of Catholicism. In the teeth of thepretensions which the Church advanced to a uniformity of religion inevery land, whatever might be its differences of race or government, thefirst Protestants had advanced the principle that each prince or peoplehad alone the right to determine its form of faith and worship. "Cujusregio" ran the famous phrase which embodied their theory, "ejusreligio. " It was the acknowledgement of this principle that the Lutheranprinces obtained at the Diet of Spires; it was on this principle thatHenry based his Act of Supremacy. Its strength lay in the correspondenceof such a doctrine with the political circumstances of the time. It wasthe growing feeling of nationality which combined with the growingdevelopement of monarchical power to establish the theory that thepolitical and religious life of each nation should be one, and that thereligion of the people should follow the faith of the prince. HadProtestantism, as seemed at one time possible, secured the adhesion ofall the European princes, such a theory might well have led everywhereas it led in England to the establishment of the worst of tyrannies, atyranny that claims to lord alike over both body and soul. The world wassaved from this danger by the tenacity with which the old religion stillheld its power. In half the countries of Europe the disciples of the newopinions had soon to choose between submission to their conscience andsubmission to their prince; and a movement which began in contending forthe religious supremacy of kings ended in those wars of religion whicharrayed nation after nation against their sovereigns. In this religiousrevolution Scotland led the way. Her Protestantism was the first to drawthe sword against earthly rulers. The solemn "Covenant" which boundtogether her "Congregation" in the face of the regency, which pledgedits members to withdraw from all submission to the religion of the Stateand to maintain in the face of the State their liberty of conscience, opened that vast series of struggles which ended in Germany with thePeace of Westphalia and in England with the Toleration Act of Williamthe Third. 

[Sidenote: The Exiles. ]

The "Covenant" of the lords sounded a bold defiance to the Catholicreaction across the border. While Mary replaced the Prayer-Book by theMass, the Scotch lords resolved that wherever their power extended theCommon Prayer should be read in all churches. While hundreds were goingto the stake in England the Scotch nobles boldly met the burning oftheir preachers by a threat of war. "They trouble our preachers, " rantheir bold remonstrance against the bishops in the Queen-mother'spresence; "they would murder them and us! shall we suffer this anylonger? No, madam, it shall not be!" and therewith every man put on hissteel bonnet. The Regent was helpless for the moment and could findrefuge only in fair words, words so fair that for a while the sternestof the reformers believed her to be drifting to their faith. She was intruth fettered by the need of avoiding civil strife at a time when thewar of England against France made a Scotch war against Englandinevitable. The nobles refused indeed to cross the border, but thethreat of a Scotch invasion was one of the dangers against which MaryTudor now found herself forced to provide. Nor was the uprise ofProtestantism in Scotland the only result of her policy in giving fireand strength to the new religion. Each step in the persecution had beenmarked by a fresh flight of preachers, merchants, and gentry across theseas. "Some fled into France, some into Flanders, and some into the highcountries of the Empire. " As early as 1554 we find groups of suchrefugees at Frankfort, Emden, Zürich, and Strassburg. Calvin welcomedsome of them at Geneva; the "lords of Berne" suffered a group to settleat Aarau; a hundred gathered round the Duchess of Suffolk at Wesel. Amongst the exiles we find many who were to be bishops and statesmen inthe coming reign. Sir Francis Knollys was at Frankfort, Sir FrancisWalsingham travelled in France; among the divines were the laterarchbishops Grindal and Sandys, and the later bishops Horne, Parkhurst, Aylmer, Jewel, and Cox. Mingled with these were men who had alreadyplayed their part in Edward's reign, such as Poinet, the deprived Bishopof Winchester, Bale, the deprived Bishop of Ossory, and the preachersLever and Knox. 

[Sidenote: The Extreme Protestants. ]

Gardiner had threatened that the fugitives should gnaw their fingersfrom hunger, but ample supplies reached them from London merchants andother partizans in England, and they seem to have lived in fair comfortwhile their brethren at home were "going to the fire. " Their chieftroubles sprang from strife among themselves. The hotter spirits amongthe English Protestants had seen with discontent the retention of muchthat they looked on as superstitious and Popish in even the last liturgyof Edward's reign. That ministers should still wear white surplices, that litanies should be sung, that the congregation should respond tothe priest, that babes should be signed in baptism with the sign of thecross, that rings should be given in marriage, filled them with horror. Hooper, the leader of this party, refused when made bishop to don hisrochet; and had only been driven by imprisonment to vest himself in "therags of Popery. " Trivial indeed as such questions seemed in themselves, an issue lay behind them which was enough to make men face worse evilsthan a prison. The royal supremacy, the headship of the Church, whichHenry the Eighth claimed for himself and his successors, was, as we haveseen, simply an application of the principle which the states of NorthGermany had found so effective in meeting the pretensions of the Emperoror the Pope. The same sentiment of national life took a new form in thepreservation of whatever the change of religious thought left itpossible to preserve in the national tradition of faith and worship. Inthe Lutheran churches, though the Mass was gone, reredos and crucifixremained untouched. In England the whole ecclesiastical machinery wasjealously preserved. Its Church was still governed by bishops who tracedtheir succession to the Apostles. The words of its new Prayer-Bookadhered as closely as they might to the words of Missal and Breviary. What made such an arrangement possible was the weakness of the purelyreligious impulse in the earlier stages of the Reformation. In Germanyindeed or in England, the pressure for theological change was small; thereligious impulse told on but a small part, and that not an influentialpart, of the population; it did in fact little more than quicken andbring into action the older and widely-felt passion for ecclesiasticalindependence. 

[Sidenote: Protestantism and the Supremacy. ]

But the establishment of this independence at once gave fresh force tothe religious movement. From denouncing the Pope as a usurper ofnational rights men passed easily to denounce the Papal system as initself Antichristian. In setting aside the voice of the Papacy as aground of faith the new churches had been forced to find a ground offaith in the Bible. But the reading and discussion of the Bible openedup a thousand questions of belief and ritual, and the hatred of Romedrew men more and more to find answers to such questions which wereantagonistic to the creed and usages of a past that was identified intheir eyes with the Papacy. Such questions could hardly fail to find anecho in the people at large. To the bulk of men ecclesiasticalinstitutions are things dim and remote; and the establishment ofecclesiastical independence, though it gratified the national pride, could have raised little personal enthusiasm. But the direct andpersonal interest of every man seemed to lie in the right holding ofreligious truth, and thus the theological aspect of the Reformationtended more and more to supersede its political one. All that isgenerous and chivalrous in human feeling told in the same direction. Tostatesmen like Gardiner or Paget the acceptance of one form of faith orworship after another as one sovereign after another occupied the throneseemed, no doubt, a logical and inevitable result of their acceptance ofthe royal supremacy. But to the people at large there must have beensomething false and ignoble in the sight of a statesman or a priest whohad cast off the Mass under Edward to embrace it again under Mary, andwho was ready again to cast it off at the will of Mary's successor. Ifworship and belief were indeed spiritual things, if they had anysemblance of connexion with divine realities, men must have felt that itwas impossible to put them on and off at a king's caprice. It was this, even more than the natural pity which they raised, that gave theirweight to the Protestant martyrdoms under Mary. They stood out inemphatic protest against the doctrine of local religion, of a beliefdictated by the will of kings. From the Primate of the Church to the"blind girl" who perished at Colchester, three hundred were found inEngland who chose rather to go to the fire than to take up again at theQueen's will what their individual conscience had renounced as a lieagainst God. 

[Sidenote: Calvin. ]

But from the actual assertion of such a right of the individualconscience to find and hold what was true, even those who witnessed forit by their death would have shrunk. Driven by sheer force of fact fromthe theory of a national and royal faith, men still shuddered to standalone. The old doctrine of a Catholic Christianity flung over them itsspell. Rome indeed they looked on as Antichrist, but the doctrine whichRome had held so long and so firmly, the doctrine that truth should becoextensive with the world and not limited by national boundaries, thatthe Church was one in all countries and among all peoples, that therewas a Christendom which embraced all kingdoms and a Christian law thatruled peoples and kings, became more and more the doctrine of Rome'sbitterest opponents. It was this doctrine which found its embodiment inJohn Calvin, a young French scholar, driven in early manhood from hisown country by the persecution of Francis the First. Calvin establishedhimself at Basle, and produced there in 1535 at the age of twenty-six abook which was to form the theology of the Huguenot churches, his"Institutes of the Christian Religion. " What was really original in thiswork was Calvin's doctrine of the organization of the Church and of itsrelation to the State. The base of the Christian republic was with himthe Christian man, elected and called of God, preserved by His gracefrom the power of sin, predestinate to eternal life. Every suchChristian man is in himself a priest, and every group of such men is aChurch, self-governing, independent of all save God, supreme in itsauthority over all matters ecclesiastical and spiritual. Theconstitution of such a church, where each member as a Christian wasequal before God, necessarily took a democratic form. In Calvin's theoryof Church government it is the Church which itself elects its lay eldersand lay deacons for purposes of administration; it is with the approvaland consent of the Church that elders and deacons with the existing bodyof pastors elect new ministers. It is through these officers that theChurch exercises its power of the keys, the power of diffusing the truthand the power of correcting error. To the minister belong the preachingof the word and the direction of all religious instruction; to the bodyof ministers belong the interpretation of scripture and the decision ofdoctrine. On the other hand the administration of discipline, thesupervision of the moral conduct of each professing Christian, theadmonition of the erring, the excommunication and exclusion from thebody of the Church of the unbelieving and the utterly unworthy, belongto the Consistory, the joint assembly of ministers and elders. To thisdiscipline princes as well as common men are alike subject; princes aswell as common men must take their doctrine from the ministers of theChurch. 

[Sidenote: Calvinism. ]

The claims of the older faith to spiritual and ecclesiastical supremacyover the powers of earth reappeared in this theory. Calvin like thePapacy ignored all national independence, all pretensions of peoples assuch to create their own system of church doctrine or church government. Doctrine and government he held to be already laid down in the words ofthe Bible, and all questions that rose out of those words came under thedecision of the ecclesiastical body of ministers. Wherever a reformedreligion appeared, there was provided for it a simple but orderlyorganization which in its range and effectiveness rivalled that of theolder Catholicism. On the other hand this organization rested on awholly new basis; spiritual and ecclesiastical power came from below notfrom above; the true sovereign in this Christian state was not Pope orBishop but the Christian man. Despotic as the authority of pastor andelders seemed, pastor and elders were alike the creation of the wholecongregation, and their judgement could in the last resort be adopted orset aside by it. Such a system stood out in bold defiance against thetendencies of the day. On its religious side it came into conflict withthat principle of nationality, of ecclesiastical as well as civilsubjection to the prince, on which the reformed Churches and above allthe Church of England had till now been built up. As a vast andconsecrated democracy it stood in contrast with the whole social andpolitical framework of the European nations. Grave as we may count thefaults of Calvinism, alien as its temper may in many ways be from thetemper of the modern world, it is in Calvinism that the modern worldstrikes its roots, for it was Calvinism that first revealed the worthand dignity of Man. Called of God, and heir of heaven, the trader at hiscounter and the digger in his field suddenly rose into equality with thenoble and the king. 

[Sidenote: Calvin and the Exiles. ]

It was this system that Calvin by a singular fortune was able to putinto actual working in the little city of Geneva, where the party of theReformation had become master and called him in 1536 to be theirspiritual head. Driven out but again recalled, his influence made Genevafrom 1541 the centre of the Protestant world. The refugees who crowdedto the little town from persecution in France, in the Netherlands, inEngland, found there an exact and formal doctrine, a rigid discipline ofmanners and faith, a system of church government, a form of churchworship, stripped, as they held, of the last remnant of thesuperstitions of the past. Calvin himself with his austere and frugallife, his enormous industry, his power of government, his quickdecision, his undoubting self-confidence, his unswerving will, remainedfor three-and-twenty years till his death in 1564 supreme overProtestant opinion. His influence told heavily on England. From the hourof Cromwell's fall the sympathies of the English reformers had drawnthem, not to the Lutheran Churches of North Germany, but to the moreprogressive Churches of the Rhineland and the Netherlands: and on thecritical question of the Lord's Supper which mainly divided the twogreat branches of the Reformation Cranmer and his partizans became moredefinitely anti-sacramentarian as the years went by. At Edward's deaththe exiles showed their tendencies by seeking refuge not with theLutheran Churches of North Germany but with the Calvinistic Churches ofSwitzerland or the Rhine; and contact with such leaders as Bullinger atZürich or Calvin at Geneva could hardly fail to give fresh vigour to theparty which longed for a closer union with the foreign churches and amore open breach with the past. 

[Sidenote: The troubles at Frankfort. ]

The results of this contact first showed themselves at Frankfort. At theinstigation of Whittingham, who in Elizabeth's days became Dean ofDurham, a body of English exiles that had found shelter there resolvedto reform both worship and discipline. The obnoxious usages wereexpunged from the Prayer-Book, omissions were made in the communionservice, a minister and deacons chosen, and rules drawn up for churchgovernment after the Genevan model. Free at last "from all dregs ofsuperstitious ceremonies" the Frankfort refugees thanked God "that hadgiven them such a church in a strange land wherein they might hear God'sholy word preached, the sacraments rightly ministered, and disciplineused, which in their own country could never be obtained. " But theirinvitation to the other English exiles to join them in the enjoyment ofthese blessings met with a steady repulse. Lever and the exiles atZürich refused to come unless they might "altogether serve and praiseGod as freely and uprightly as the order last taken in the Church ofEngland permitteth and presenteth, for we are fully determined to admitand use no other. " The main body of the exiles who were then gathered atStrassburg echoed the refusal. Knox however, who had been chosenminister by the Frankfort congregation, moved rapidly forward, rejectingthe communion service altogether as superstitious, and drawing up a new"order" of worship after the Genevan model. But in the spring of 1555these efforts were foiled by the arrival of fresh exiles from England ofa more conservative turn: the reformers were outvoted; Knox was drivenfrom the town by the magistrates "in fear of the Emperor" whom he hadoutraged in an "Admonition" to the English people which he had latelyissued; and the English service was restored. Whittingham and hisadherents, still resolute, as Bale wrote, "to erect a Church of thePurity" (we may perhaps trace in the sneer the origin of their latername of Puritans), found a fresh refuge at Basle and Geneva, where theleaders of the party occupied themselves in a metrical translation ofthe Psalms which left its traces on English psalmody and in theproduction of what was afterwards known as the Geneva Bible. 

[Sidenote: The seditious books. ]

Petty as this strife at Frankfort may seem, it marks the first openappearance of English Puritanism, and the beginning of a struggle whichwidened through the reign of Elizabeth till under the Stuarts it brokeEngland in pieces. But busy as they were in strife among themselves, theexiles were still more busy in fanning the discontent at home. Books, pamphlets, broadsides, were written and sent for distribution toEngland. The violence of their language was incredible. No sooner hadBonner issued his injunctions than Bale denounced him in a fierce replyas "a beastly belly-god and damnable dung-hill. " With a spirit worthy ofthe "bloody bitesheeps" whom he attacked, the ex-Bishop of Ossoryregretted that when Henry plucked down Becket's shrine he had not burnedthe idolatrous priests upon it. It probably mattered little to Bale thatat the moment when he wrote not a single Protestant had as yet been sentto the stake; but language such as this was hardly likely to stir Maryto a spirit of moderation. The Spanish marriage gave the refugees afairer opportunity of attack, and the Government was forced to makeenquiries of the wardens of city gilds "whether they had seen or heardof any of these books which had come from beyond seas. " The violence ofthe exiles was doubled by the suppression of Wyatt's revolt. Poinet, thelate Bishop of Winchester, who had taken part in it, fled over sea towrite a "Sharp Tractate of political power" in which he discussed thequestion "whether it be lawful to depose an evil governor and kill atyrant. "

[Sidenote: Knox and Goodman. ]

But with the actual outbreak of persecution and the death of Cranmer allrestraint was thrown aside. In his "First Blast of the Trumpet againstthe Monstrous Regiment of Women" Knox denounced Mary as a Jezebel, atraitress, and a bastard. He declared the rule of women to be againstthe law of Nature and of God. The duty, whether of the estates or peopleof the realm, was "first to remove from honour and authority thatmonster in nature; secondarily, if any presume to defend that impiety, they ought not to fear first to pronounce, then after to execute againstthem the sentence of death. " To keep the oath of allegiance was "nothingbut plain rebellion against God. " "The day of vengeance, " burst out thewriter, "which shall apprehend that horrible monster, Jezebel ofEngland, and such as maintain her monstrous cruelty is already appointedin the counsel of the Eternal; and I verily believe that it is so nighthat she shall not reign so long in tyranny as hitherto she hath done, when God shall declare himself her enemy. " Another exile, Goodman, enquired "how superior powers ought to be obeyed of their subjects; andwherein they may lawfully by God's word be disobeyed and resisted. " Hisbook was a direct summons to rebellion. "By giving authority to anidolatrous woman" Goodman wrote to his English fellow-subjects, "yehave banished Christ and his Gospel. Then in taking the same authorityfrom her you shall restore Christ and his word, and shall do well. Inobeying her you have disobeyed God; then in disobeying her you shallplease God. " "Though it should appear at the first sight, " he urged, "agreat disorder that the people should take unto them the punishment oftransgressions, yet when the magistrates and other officers cease to dotheir duties they are as it were without officers, yea, worse than ifthey had none at all, and then God giveth the sword into the people'shand. " And what the people were to do with the sword Poinet had alreadyput very clearly. It was the "ungodly serpent Mary" who was "the chiefinstrument of all this present misery in England. " "Now both by God'slaws and man's, " concluded the bishop, "she ought to be punished withdeath, as an open idolatress in the sight of God, and a cruel murdererof His saints before men, and merciless traitress to her own nativecountry. "

Behind the wild rhetoric of words like these lay the new sense of aprophetic power, the sense of a divine commission given to the preachersof the Word to rebuke nobles and kings. At the moment when the policy ofCromwell crushed the Church as a political power and freed the growingMonarchy from the constitutional check which its independence furnished, a new check offered itself in the very enthusiasm which sprang out ofthe wreck of the great religious body. Men stirred with a new sense ofrighteousness and of a divine government of the world, men too whosenatural boldness was quickened and fired by daily contact with the olderseers who rebuked David or Jezebel, could not hold their peace in thepresence of wrong. While nobles and statesmen were cowering in silencebefore the dreaded power of the kingship the preachers spoke bluntlyout. Not only Latimer, but Knox, Grindal, and Lever had uttered fieryremonstrances against the plunderers of Edward's reign. Bradford hadthreatened them with the divine judgement which at last overtook them. "'The judgement of the Lord! The judgement of the Lord!' cried he, witha lamentable voice and weeping tears. " Wise or unwise, the pamphlets ofthe exiles only carried on this theory to its full developement. Thegreat conception of the mediæval Church, that of the responsibility ofkings to a spiritual power, was revived at an hour when kingship wastrampling all responsibility to God or man beneath its feet. Such arevival was to have large and beneficial issues in our later history. Gathering strength under Elizabeth, it created at the close of her reignthat moral force of public opinion which under the name of Puritanismbrought the acts and policy of our kings to the tests of reason and theGospel. However ill directed that force might be, however erroneouslysuch tests were often applied, it is to this new force that we owe therestoration of liberty and the establishment of religious freedom. Asthe voice of the first Christian preachers had broken the despotism ofthe Roman Empire, so the voice of the preachers of Puritanism broke thedespotism of the English Monarchy. 

[Sidenote: Elizabeth. ]

But great as their issues were to be, for the moment these protests onlyquickened the persecution at home. We can hardly wonder that the arrivalof Goodman's book in England in the summer of 1558 was followed by sternmeasures to prevent the circulation of such incentives to revolt. "Whereas divers books" ran a royal proclamation, "filled with heresy, sedition, and treason, have of late and be daily brought into the realmout of foreign countries and places beyond seas, and some also covertlyprinted within this realm and cast abroad in sundry parts thereof, whereby not only God is dishonoured but also encouragement is given todisobey lawful princes and governors, " any person possessing such books"shall be reported and taken for a rebel, and shall without delay beexecuted for that offence according to the order of martial law. " Butwhat really robbed these pamphlets of all force for harm was theprudence and foresight of the people itself. Never indeed did the nationshow its patient good sense more clearly than in the later years ofMary's reign. While fires blazed in Smithfield and news of defeat camefrom over sea, while the hot voices of Protestant zealots hounded men onto assassination and revolt, the bulk of Englishmen looked quietly fromthe dying Queen to the girl who in a little while must wear her crown. What nerved men to endure the shame and bloodshed about them was thecertainty of the speedy succession of the daughter of Anne Boleyn. Elizabeth was now in her twenty-fifth year. Personally she had much ofher mother's charm with more than her mother's beauty. Her figure wascommanding, her face long but queenly and intelligent, her eyes quickand fine. She had grown up amidst the liberal culture of Henry's court abold horsewoman, a good shot, a graceful dancer, a skilled musician, andan accomplished scholar. Even among the highly-trained women who caughtthe impulse of the New Learning she stood in the extent of heracquirements without a peer. Ascham, who succeeded Grindal and Cheke inthe direction of her studies, tells us how keen and resolute wasElizabeth's love of learning, even in her girlhood. At sixteen shealready showed "a man's power of application" to her books. She had readalmost the whole of Cicero and a great part of Livy. She began the daywith the study of the New Testament in Greek, and followed this up byreading selected orations of Isocrates and the tragedies of Sophocles. She could speak Latin with fluency and Greek moderately well. Her loveof classical culture lasted through her life. Amidst the press and caresof her later reign we find Ascham recording how "after dinner I went upto read with the Queen's majesty that noble oration of Demosthenesagainst Æschines. " At a later time her Latin served her to rebuke theinsolence of a Polish ambassador, and she could "rub up her rusty Greek"at need to bandy pedantry with a Vice-Chancellor. But Elizabeth was faras yet from being a mere pedant. She could already speak French andItalian as fluently as her mother-tongue. In later days we find herfamiliar with Ariosto and Tasso. The purity of her literary taste, thelove for a chaste and simple style, which Ascham noted with praise inher girlhood, had not yet perished under the influence of euphuism. Buteven amidst the affectation and love of anagrams and puerilities whichsullied her later years Elizabeth remained a lover of letters and of allthat was greatest and purest in letters. She listened with delight tothe "Faery Queen, " and found a smile for "Master Spenser" when heappeared in her presence. 

[Sidenote: Elizabeth and Mary. ]

From the bodily and mental energy of her girlhood, the close of Edward'sreign drew Elizabeth at nineteen to face the sterner problems ofreligion and politics. In the daring attempt of Northumberland to placeJane Grey on the throne Elizabeth's rights were equally set aside withthose of Mary; and the first public act of the girl was to call thegentry to her standard and to join her sister with five hundredfollowers in her train. But the momentary union was soon dissolved. Thedaughter of Catharine could look with little but hate on the daughter ofAnne Boleyn. Elizabeth's tendency to the "new religion" jarred with theQueen's bigotry; and the warnings of the imperial ambassador were hardlyneedful to spur Mary to watch jealously a possible pretender to herthrone. The girl bent to the Queen's will in hearing mass, but hermanner showed that the compromise was merely a matter of obedience, andfed the hopes of the Protestant zealots who saw in the Spanish marriagea chance of driving Mary from the throne. The resolve which the Queenshowed to cancel her sister's right of succession only quickened theproject for setting Elizabeth in her place; and it was to make Elizabeththeir sovereign that Suffolk rose in Leicestershire and Wyatt and hisKentishmen marched against London Bridge. The failure of the risingseemed to ensure her doom. The Emperor pressed for her death as asecurity for Philip on his arrival; and the detection of acorrespondence with the French king served as a pretext for hercommittal to the Tower. The fierce Tudor temper broke throughElizabeth's self-control as she landed at Traitor's Gate. "Are allthese harnessed men there for me?" she cried as she saw the guard; "itneeded not for me, being but a weak woman!" and passionately calling onthe soldiers to "bear witness that I come as no traitor!" she flungherself down on a stone in the rain and refused to enter her prison. "Better sitting here than in a worse place, " she cried; "I know notwhither you will bring me. " But Elizabeth's danger was less than itseemed. Wyatt denied to the last her complicity in the revolt, and inspite of Gardiner's will to "go roundly to work" with her the Lords ofthe Council forced Mary to set her free. The Queen's terrors howeverrevived with her hopes of a child in the summer of 1555. To Mary hersister seemed the one danger which threatened the succession of hercoming babe and the vast issues which hung on it, and Elizabeth wassummoned to her sister's side and kept a close prisoner at HamptonCourt. Philip joined in this precaution, for "holding her in his powerhe could depart safely and without peril" in the event of the Queen'sdeath in childbirth; and other plans were perhaps already stirring hisbreast. Should Mary die, a fresh match might renew his hold on England;"he might hope, " writes the Venetian ambassador, "with the help of manyof the nobility, won over by his presents and favours, to marry her(Elizabeth) again, and thus succeed anew to the crown. "

[Sidenote: Elizabeth and Philip. ]

But whatever may have been Philip's designs, the time had not as yetcome for their realization; the final disappointment of the Queen'shopes of childbirth set Elizabeth free, and in July she returned to herhouse at Ashridge. From this moment her position was utterly changed. With the disappearance of all chance of offspring from the Queen and thecertainty of Mary's coming death her sister's danger passed away. Elizabeth alone stood between England and the succession of Mary Stuart;and, whatever might be the wishes of the Queen, the policy of the Houseof Austria forced it to support even the daughter of Anne Boleyn againsta claimant who would bind England to the French monarchy. From thismoment therefore Philip watched jealously over Elizabeth's safety. Onhis departure for the Continent he gave written instructions to theQueen to show favour to her sister, and the charge was repeated to thoseof his followers whom he left behind him. What guarded her even moreeffectually was the love of the people. When Philip at a later timeclaimed Elizabeth's gratitude for his protection she told him bluntlythat her gratitude was really due neither to him nor her nobles, thoughshe owned her obligations to both, but to the English people. It wasthey who had saved her from death and hindered all projects for barringher right to the throne. "It is the people, " she said, "who have placedme where I am now. " It was indeed their faith in Elizabeth's speedysuccession that enabled Englishmen to bear the bloodshed and shame ofMary's later years, and to wait patiently for the end. 

Nor were these years of waiting without value for Elizabeth herself. Thesteady purpose, the clear perception of a just policy which ran throughher wonderful reign, were formed as the girl looked coolly on at thechaos of bigotry and misrule which spread before her. More and more sherealized what was to be the aim of her after life, the aim of reunitingthe England which Edward and Mary alike had rent into two warringnations, of restoring again that English independence which Mary wastrailing at the feet of Spain. With such an aim she could draw to herthe men who, indifferent like herself to purely spiritualconsiderations, and estranged from Mary's system rather by its politicalthan its religious consequences, were anxious for the restoration ofEnglish independence and English order. It was among these "Politicals, "as they were soon to be called, that Elizabeth found at this moment acounsellor who was to stand by her side through the long years of herafter reign. William Cecil sprang from the smaller gentry whom thechanges of the time were bringing to the front. He was the son of aYeoman of the Wardrobe at Henry's court; but his abilities had alreadyraised him at the age of twenty-seven to the post of secretary to theDuke of Somerset, and through Somerset's Protectorate he remained highin his confidence. He was seized by the Lords on the Duke's arrest, andeven sent to the Tower; but he was set at liberty with his master, andhis ability was now so well known that a few months later saw himSecretary of State under Northumberland. The post and the knighthoodwhich accompanied it hardly compensated for the yoke whichNorthumberland's pride laid upon all who served him, or for the risks inwhich his ambition involved them. Cecil saw with a fatal clearness thesilent opposition of the whole realm to the system of the Protectorate, and the knowledge of this convinced him that the Duke's schemes for achange in the succession were destined to failure. On the disclosure ofthe plot to set Mary aside he withdrew for some days from the court, andeven meditated flight from the country, till fear of the young king'swrath drew him back to share in the submission of his fellow-counsellorsand to pledge himself with them to carry the new settlement into effect. But Northumberland had no sooner quitted London than Cecil became thesoul of the intrigues by which the royal Council declared themselves inMary's favour. His desertion of the Duke secured him pardon from theQueen, and though he was known to be in heart "a heretic" he continuedat court, conformed like Elizabeth to the established religion, confessed and attended mass. Cecil was employed in bringing Pole toEngland and in attending him in embassies abroad. But his caution heldhim aloof from any close connexion with public affairs. He busiedhimself in building at Burghley and in the culture of the Church landshe had won from Edward the Sixth, while he drew closer to the girl whoalone could rescue England from the misgovernment of Mary's rule. Evenbefore the Queen's death it was known that Cecil would be the chiefcounsellor of the coming reign. "I am told for certain, " the Spanishambassador wrote to Philip after a visit to Elizabeth during the lasthours of Mary's life, "that Cecil who was secretary to King Edward willbe her secretary also. He has the character of a prudent and virtuousman, although a heretic. " But it was only from a belief that Cecilretained at heart the convictions of his earlier days that men couldcall him a heretic. In all outer matters of faith or worship heconformed to the religion of the state. 

[Sidenote: The Politicals. ]

It is idle to charge Cecil, or the mass of Englishmen who conformed withhim in turn to the religion of Henry, of Edward, of Mary, and ofElizabeth, with baseness or hypocrisy. They followed the accepteddoctrine of the time--that every realm, through its rulers, had the soleright of determining what should be the form of religion within itsbounds. What the Marian persecution was gradually pressing on such menwas a conviction, not of the falsehood of such a doctrine, but of theneed of limiting it. Under Henry, under Edward, under Mary, nodistinction had been drawn between inner belief and outer conformity. Every English subject was called upon to adjust his conscience as wellas his conduct to the varying policy of the state. But the fires ofSmithfield had proved that obedience such as this could not be exactedsave by a persecution which filled all England with horror. Such apersecution indeed failed in the very end for which it was wrought. Instead of strengthening religious unity, it gave a new force toreligious separation; it enlisted the conscience of the zealot in thecause of resistance; it secured the sympathy of the great mass ofwaverers to those who withstood the civil power. To Cecil, as to thepurely political statesmen of whom he was the type, such a persecutionseemed as needless as it was mischievous. Conformity indeed wasnecessary, for men could as yet conceive of no state without a religionor of civil obedience apart from compliance with the religious order ofthe state. But only outer conformity was needed. That no man should setup a worship other than that of the nation at large, that every subjectshould duly attend at the national worship, Cecil believed to beessential to public order. But he saw no need for prying into the actualbeliefs of those who conformed to the religious laws of the realm, nordid he think that such beliefs could be changed by the fear ofpunishment. While refusing freedom of worship therefore, Cecil, likeElizabeth, was ready to concede freedom of conscience. And in thisconcession we can hardly doubt that the bulk of Englishmen went withhim. Catholics shared with Protestants the horror of Mary's persecution. To Protestantism indeed the horror of the persecution had done much togive a force such as it had never had before. The number of Protestantsgrew with every murder done in the cause of Catholicism. But they stillremained a small part of the realm. What the bulk of Englishmen had beendriven to by the martyrdoms was not a change of creed, but a longing forreligious peace and for such a system of government as, withoutdestroying the spiritual oneness of the nation, would render a religiouspeace possible. And such a system of government Cecil and Elizabeth wereprepared to give. 

[Sidenote: Mary's death. ]

We may ascribe to Cecil's counsels somewhat of the wise patience withwhich Elizabeth waited for the coming crown. Her succession was assured, and the throng of visitors to her presence showed a general sense thatthe Queen's end was near. Mary stood lonely and desolate in her realm. "I will not be buried while I am living, as my sister was, " Elizabethsaid in later years. "Do I not know how during her life every onehastened to me at Hatfield?" The bloodshed indeed went on more busilythan ever. It had spread now from bishops and priests to the peopleitself, and the sufferers were sent in batches to the flames. In asingle day thirteen victims, two of them women, were burned atStratford-le-Bow. Seventy-three Protestants of Colchester were draggedthrough the streets of London tied to a single rope. A new commissionfor the suppression of heresy was exempted by royal authority from allrestrictions of law which fettered its activity. But the work of terrorbroke down before the silent revolt of the whole nation. The persecutionfailed even to put an end to heretical worship. Not only do we findministers moving about in London and Kent to hold "secret meetings ofthe Gospellers, " but up to the middle of 1555 four parishes in Essexstill persisted in using the English-Prayer Book. Open marks of sympathyat last began to be offered to the victims at the stake. "There wereseven men burned in Smithfield the twenty-eighth day of July, " aLondoner writes in 1558, "a fearful and a cruel proclamation being madethat under pain of present death no man should either approach nigh untothem, touch them, neither speak to them nor comfort them. Yet were theyso comfortably taken by the hand and so goodly comforted, notwithstanding that fearful proclamation and the present threateningsof the sheriffs and serjeants, that the adversaries themselves wereastonished. " The crowd round the fire shouted "Amen" to the martyrs'prayers, and prayed with them that God would strengthen them. Whatgalled Mary yet more was the ill will of the Pope. Paul the Fourth stilladhered to his demand for full restoration of the Church lands, and heldEngland as only partly reconciled to the Holy See. He was hostile toPhilip; he was yet more hostile to Pole. At this moment he dealt a lastblow at the Queen by depriving Pole of his legatine power, and wasbelieved to be on the point of calling him to answer a charge of heresy. Even when she was freed from part of her troubles in the autumn of 1558by the opening of conferences for peace at Cambray a fresh dangerdisclosed itself. The demands of the queen's envoys for the restorationof Calais met with so stubborn a refusal from France that it seemed asif England would be left alone to bear the brunt of a future struggle, for Mary's fierce pride, had she lived, could hardly have bowed to thesurrender of the town. But the Queen was dying. Her health had long beenweak, and the miseries and failure of her reign hastened the progress ofdisease. Already enfeebled, she was attacked as winter drew near by afever which was at this time ravaging the country, and on theseventeenth of November, 1558, she breathed her last. 

CHAPTER III

THE ENGLAND OF ELIZABETH

1558-1561

[Sidenote: Elizabeth's accession. ]

Tradition still points out the tree in Hatfield Park beneath whichElizabeth was sitting when she received the news of her peacefulaccession to the throne. She fell on her knees, and drawing a longbreath, exclaimed at last, "It is the Lord's doing, and it is marvellousin our eyes. " To the last these words remained stamped on the goldencoinage of the Queen. The sense never left her that her preservation andher reign were the issues of a direct interposition of God. Daring andself-confident indeed as was her temper, it was awed into seriousness bythe weight of responsibility which fell on her with her sister's death. Never had the fortunes of England sunk to a lower ebb. Dragged at theheels of Philip into a useless and ruinous war, the country was leftwithout an ally save Spain. The loss of Calais gave France the masteryof the Channel, and seemed to English eyes "to introduce the FrenchKing within the threshold of our house. " "If God start not forth to thehelm, " wrote the Council in an appeal to the country, "we be at thepoint of greatest misery that can happen to any people, which is tobecome thrall to a foreign nation. " The French king in fact "bestrodethe realm, having one foot in Calais and the other in Scotland. " Irelandtoo was torn with civil war, while Scotland, always a danger in thenorth, had become formidable through the French marriage of its queen. In presence of enemies such as these, the country lay helpless, withoutarmy or fleet, or the means of manning one, for the treasury, alreadydrained by the waste of Edward's reign, had been utterly exhausted bythe restoration of the Church lands in possession of the Crown and bythe cost of the war with France. But formidable as was the danger fromwithout, it was little to the danger from within. The country washumiliated by defeat and brought to the verge of rebellion by thebloodshed and misgovernment of Mary's reign. The social discontent whichhad been trampled down for a while by the horsemen of Somerset remaineda menace to further order. Above all, the religious strife had passedbeyond hope of reconciliation now that the reformers were parted fromtheir opponents by the fires of Smithfield and the party of the NewLearning all but dissolved. The more earnest Catholics were boundhelplessly to Rome. The temper of the Protestants, burned at home ordriven into exile abroad, had become a fiercer thing, and theCalvinistic refugees were pouring back from Geneva with dreams ofrevolutionary changes in Church and State. 

[Sidenote: Her religious policy. ]

It was with the religious difficulty that Elizabeth was called first todeal; and the way in which she dealt with it showed at once the peculiarbent of her mind. The young Queen was not without a sense of religion;at moments of peril or deliverance throughout her reign heracknowledgements of a divine protection took a strange depth andearnestness. But she was almost wholly destitute of spiritual emotion, or of any consciousness of the vast questions with which theology stroveto deal. While the world around her was being swayed more and more bytheological beliefs and controversies, Elizabeth was absolutelyuntouched by them. She was a child of the Italian Renascence rather thanof the New Learning of Colet or Erasmus, and her attitude towards theenthusiasm of her time was that of Lorenzo de' Medici towardsSavonarola. Her mind was untroubled by the spiritual problems which werevexing the minds around her; to Elizabeth indeed they were not onlyunintelligible, they were a little ridiculous. She had been brought upunder Henry amidst the ritual of the older Church; under Edward she hadsubmitted to the English Prayer-Book, and drunk in much of theProtestant theology; under Mary she was ready after a slight resistanceto conform again to the mass. Her temper remained unchanged through thewhole course of her reign. She showed the same intellectual contempt forthe superstition of the Romanist as for the bigotry of the Protestant. While she ordered Catholic images to be flung into the fire, she quizzedthe Puritans as "brethren in Christ. " But she had no sort of religiousaversion from either Puritan or Papist. The Protestants grumbled at theCatholic nobles whom she admitted to the presence. The Catholicsgrumbled at the Protestant statesmen whom she called to hercouncil-board. To Elizabeth on the other hand the arrangement was themost natural thing in the world. She looked at theological differencesin a purely political light. She agreed with Henry the Fourth that akingdom was well worth a mass. It seemed an obvious thing to her to holdout hopes of conversion as a means of deceiving Philip, or to gain apoint in negotiation by restoring the crucifix to her chapel. The firstinterest in her own mind was the interest of public order, and she nevercould understand how it could fail to be the first in every one's mind. 

[Sidenote: Elizabeth's toleration. ]

One memorable change marked the nobler side of the policy she broughtwith her to the throne. Elizabeth's accession was at once followed by aclose of the religious persecution. Whatever might be the changes thatawaited the country, conformity was no longer to be enforced by thepenalty of death. At a moment when Philip was presiding at _autos-de-fé_and Henry of France plotting a massacre of his Huguenot subjects, such aresolve was a gain for humanity as well as a step towards religioustoleration. And from this resolve Elizabeth never wavered. Through allher long reign, save a few Anabaptists whom the whole nation loathed asblasphemers of God and dreaded as enemies of social order, no hereticwas "sent to the fire. " It was a far greater gain for humanity when theQueen declared her will to meddle in no way with the consciences of hersubjects. She would hear of no inquisition into a man's private thoughtson religious matters or into his personal religion. Cecil could boldlyassert in her name at a later time the right of every Englishman toperfect liberty of religious opinion. Such a liberty of opinion by nomeans implied liberty of public worship. On the incompatibility offreedom of worship with public order Catholic and Protestant were as yetat one. The most advanced reformers did not dream of contending for aright to stand apart from the national religion. What they sought was tomake the national religion their own. The tendency of the reformationhad been to press for the religious as well as the political unity ofevery state. Even Calvin looked forward to the winning of the nationsto a purer faith without a suspicion that the religious movement whichhe headed would end in establishing the right even of the children of"antichrist" to worship as they would in a Protestant commonwealth. Ifthe Protestant lords in Scotland had been driven to assert a right ofnonconformity, if the Huguenots of France were following their example, it was with no thought of asserting the right of every man to worshipGod as he would. From the claim of such a right Knox or Coligni wouldhave shrunk with even greater horror than Elizabeth. What they aimed atwas simply the establishment of a truce till by force or persuasion theycould win the realms that tolerated them for their own. In this mattertherefore Elizabeth was at one with every statesman of her day. Whilegranting freedom of conscience to her subjects, she was resolute toexact an outward conformity to the established religion. 

[Sidenote: Religion unchanged. ]

But men watched curiously to see what religion the Queen wouldestablish. Even before her accession the keen eye of the Spanishambassador had noted her "great admiration for the king her father'smode of carrying on matters, " as a matter of ill omen for the interestsof Catholicism. He had marked that the ladies about her and thecounsellors on whom she seemed about to rely were, like Cecil, "held tobe heretics. " "I fear much, " he wrote, "that in religion she will not goright. " As keen an instinct warned the Protestants that the tide hadturned. The cessation of the burnings, and the release of all personsimprisoned for religion, seemed to receive their interpretation whenElizabeth on her entry into London kissed an English Bible which thecitizens presented to her and promised "diligently to read therein. " Theexiles at Strassburg or Geneva flocked home with wild dreams of areligious revolution and of vengeance upon their foes. But hopes andfears alike met a startling check. For months there was little change ineither government or religion. If Elizabeth introduced Cecil and hiskinsman, Sir Nicholas Bacon, to her council-board, she retained as yetmost of her sister's advisers. The Mass went on as before, and the Queenwas regular in her attendance at it. As soon as the revival ofProtestantism showed itself in controversial sermons and insults to thepriesthood it was bridled by a proclamation which forbade unlicensedpreaching and enforced silence on the religious controversy. Elizabethshowed indeed a distaste for the elevation of the Host, and allowed theLord's Prayer, Creed, and Ten Commandments to be used in English. Butmonths passed after her accession before she would go further than this. A royal proclamation which ordered the existing form of worship to beobserved "till consultation might be had in Parliament by the Queen andthe Three Estates" startled the prelates; and only one bishop could befound to assist at the coronation of Elizabeth. But no change was madein the ceremonies of the coronation; the Queen took the customary oathto observe the liberties of the Church, and conformed to the Catholicritual. There was little in fact to excite any reasonable alarm amongthe adherents of the older faith, or any reasonable hope among theadherents of the new. "I will do, " the Queen said, "as my father did. "Instead of the reforms of Edward and the Protectorate, the Protestantssaw themselves thrown back on the reforms of Henry the Eighth. EvenHenry's system indeed seemed too extreme for Elizabeth. Her father hadat any rate broken boldly from the Papacy. But the first work of theQueen was to open negotiations for her recognition with the Papal Court. 

[Sidenote: Elizabeth and Philip. ]

What shaped Elizabeth's course in fact was hard necessity. She foundherself at war with France and Scotland, and her throne threatened bythe claim of the girl who linked the two countries, the claim of MaryStuart, at once Queen of Scotland and wife of the Dauphin Francis. OnElizabeth's accession Mary and Francis assumed by the French king'sorder the arms and style of English sovereigns: and if war continued itwas clear that their pretensions would be backed by Henry's forces aswell as by the efforts of the Scots. Against such a danger Philip ofSpain was Elizabeth's only ally. Philip's policy was at this time apurely conservative one. The vast schemes of ambition which had so oftenknit both Pope and Protestants, Germany and France, against his fatherwere set aside by the young king. His position indeed was very differentfrom that of Charles the Fifth. He was not Emperor. He had little weightin Germany. Even in Italy his influence was less than his father's. Hehad lost with Mary's death the crown of England. His most valuablepossessions outside Spain, the provinces of the Netherlands, weredisaffected to a foreign rule. All the king therefore aimed at was tokeep his own. But the Netherlands were hard to keep: and with Francemistress of England as of Scotland, and so mistress of the Channel, tokeep them would be impossible. Sheer necessity forbade Philip to sufferthe union of the three crowns of the west on the head of a French king;and the French marriage of Mary Stuart pledged him to oppose herpretensions and support Elizabeth's throne. For a moment he even dreamedof meeting the union of France with Scotland by that union of Englandwith Spain which had been seen under Mary. He offered Elizabeth hishand. The match was a more natural one than Philip's union with hersister, for the young king's age was not far from her own. The offerhowever was courteously put aside, for Elizabeth had no purpose oflending England to the ambition of Spain, nor was it possible for her torepeat her sister's unpopular experiment. But Philip remained firm inhis support of her throne. He secured for her the allegiance of theCatholics within her realm, who looked to him as their friend while theydistrusted France as an ally of heretics. His envoys supported her causein the negotiations at Cateau-Cambrésis; he suffered her to borrow moneyand provide herself with arms in his provinces of the Netherlands. Atsuch a crisis Elizabeth could not afford to alienate Philip by changeswhich would roughly dispel his hopes of retaining her within the boundsof Catholicism. 

[Sidenote: Elizabeth and the Papacy. ]

Nor is there any sign that Elizabeth had resolved on a defiance of thePapacy. She was firm indeed to assert her father's claim of supremacyover the clergy and her own title to the throne. But the difficulties inthe way of an accommodation on these points were such as could besettled by negotiation; and, acting on Cecil's counsel, Elizabethannounced her accession to the Pope. The announcement showed her purposeof making no violent break in the relations of England with the PapalSee. But between Elizabeth and the Papacy lay the fatal question of theDivorce. To acknowledge the young Queen was not only to own her mother'smarriage, but to cancel the solemn judgement of the Holy See inCatharine's favour and its solemn assertion of her own bastardy. Thetemper of Paul the Fourth took fire at the news. He reproached Elizabethwith her presumption in ascending the throne, recalled the Papaljudgement which pronounced her illegitimate, and summoned her to submither claims to his tribunal. Much of this indignation was no doubt merelydiplomatic. If the Pope listened to the claims of Mary Stuart, whichwere urged on him by the French Court, it was probably only with thepurpose of using them to bring pressure to bear on Elizabeth and on thestubborn country which still refused to restore its lands to the Churchand to make the complete submission which Paul demanded. But Cecil andthe Queen knew that, even had they been willing to pay such a price forthe crown, it was beyond their power to bring England to pay it. Theform too in which Paul had couched his answer admitted of no compromise. The summons to submit the Queen's claim of succession to the judgementof Rome produced its old effect. Elizabeth was driven, as Henry had beendriven, to assert the right of the nation to decide on questions whichaffected its very life. A Parliament which met in January, 1559, acknowledged the legitimacy of Elizabeth and her title to the crown. 

[Sidenote: The Supremacy re-established. ]

Such an acknowledgement in the teeth of the Papal repudiation of AnneBoleyn's marriage carried with it a repudiation of the supremacy of thePapacy. It was in vain that the clergy in convocation unanimouslyadopted five articles which affirmed their faith in transubstantiation, their acceptance of the supreme authority of the Popes as "Christ'svicars and supreme rulers of the Church, " and their resolve "that theauthority in all matters of faith and discipline belongs and ought tobelong only to the pastors of the Church, and not to laymen. " It was invain that the bishops unanimously opposed the Bill for restoring theroyal supremacy when it was brought before the Lords. The "ancientjurisdiction of the Crown over the Estate ecclesiastical and spiritual"was restored; the Acts which under Mary re-established the independentjurisdiction and legislation of the Church were repealed; and the clergywere called on to swear to the supremacy of the Crown and to abjure allforeign authority and jurisdiction. Further Elizabeth had no personalwish to go. A third of the Council and at least two-thirds of the peoplewere as opposed to any radical changes in religion as the Queen. Amongthe gentry the older and wealthier were on the conservative side, andonly the younger and meaner on the other. In the Parliament itself SirThomas White protested that "it was unjust that a religion begun in sucha miraculous way and established by such grave men should be abolishedby a set of beardless boys. " Yet even this "beardless" Parliament hadshown a strong conservatism. The Bill which re-established the royalsupremacy met with violent opposition in the Commons, and only passedthrough Cecil's adroit manoeuvring. 

[Sidenote: Prayer-Book restored. ]

But the steps which Elizabeth had taken made it necessary to go further. If the Protestants were the less numerous, they were the abler and themore vigorous party, and the break with Rome threw Elizabeth, whethershe would or no, on their support. It was a support that could only bebought by theological concessions, and above all by the surrender of theMass; for to every Protestant the Mass was identified with the fires ofSmithfield, while the Prayer-Book which it had displaced was hallowed bythe memories of the Martyrs. The pressure of the reforming party indeedwould have been fruitless had the Queen still been hampered by dangerfrom France. Fortunately for their cause the treaty of Cateau-Cambrésisat this juncture freed Elizabeth's hands. By this treaty, which waspractically concluded in March 1559, Calais was left in French holdingon the illusory pledge of its restoration to England eight years later;but peace was secured and the danger of a war of succession, in whichMary Stuart would be backed by the arms of France, for a while averted. Secure from without, Elizabeth could venture to buy the support of theProtestants within her realm by the restoration of the EnglishPrayer-Book. Such a measure was far indeed from being meant as an openbreak with Catholicism. The use of the vulgar tongue in public worshipwas still popular with a large part of the Catholic world; and the Queendid her best by the alterations she made in Edward's Prayer-Book tostrip it of its more Protestant tone. To the bulk of the people the bookmust have seemed merely a rendering of the old service in their owntongue. As the English Catholics afterwards represented at Rome whenexcusing their own use of it, the Prayer-Book "contained neither impietynor false doctrine; its prayers were those of the Catholic Church, altered only so far as to omit the merits and intercession of thesaints. " On such a concession as this the Queen felt it safe to venturein spite of the stubborn opposition of the spiritual estate. She ordereda disputation to be held in Westminster Abbey before the Houses on thequestion, and when the disputation ended in the refusal of the bishopsto proceed, an Act of Uniformity, which was passed in spite of theirstrenuous opposition, restored at the close of April the lastPrayer-Book of Edward, and enforced its use on the clergy on pain ofdeprivation. 

[Sidenote: Pius the Fourth. ]

At Rome the news of these changes stirred a fiercer wrath in Paul theFourth, and his threats of excommunication were only held in check bythe protests of Philip. The policy of the Spanish king still bound himto Elizabeth's cause, for the claims of Mary Stuart had been reserved inthe treaty of Cateau-Cambrésis and the refusal of France to abandon themheld Spain to its alliance with the Queen. Vexed as he was at the newsof the Acts which re-established the supremacy, Philip ordered hisambassador to assure Elizabeth he was as sure a friend as ever, and tosoothe the resentment of the English Catholics if it threatened to breakout into revolt. He showed the same temper in his protest against actionat Rome. Paul had however resolved to carry out his threats when hisdeath and the interregnum which followed gave Elizabeth a fresh respite. His successor, Pius the Fourth, was of milder temper and leaned ratherto a policy of conciliation. Decisive indeed as the Queen's action mayseem in modern eyes, it was far from being held as decisive at the time. The Act of Supremacy might be regarded as having been forced uponElizabeth by Paul's repudiation of her title to the crown. Thealterations which were made by the Queen's authority in the Prayer-Bookshowed a wish to conciliate those who clung to the older faith. It wasclear that Elizabeth had no mind merely to restore the system of theProtectorate. She set up again the royal supremacy, but she dropped thewords "Head of the Church" from the royal title. The forty-two Articlesof Protestant doctrine which Cranmer had drawn up were left in abeyance. If the Queen had had her will, she would have retained the celibacy ofthe clergy and restored the use of crucifixes in the churches. 

[Sidenote: The Clergy and the oath. ]

The caution and hesitation with which she enforced on the clergy theoath required by the Act of Supremacy showed Elizabeth's wish to avoidthe opening of a religious strife. The higher dignitaries indeed wereunsparingly dealt with. The bishops, who with a single exception refusedto take the oath, were imprisoned and deprived. The same measure wasdealt out to most of the archdeacons and deans. But with the mass of theparish priests a very different course was taken. The Commissionersappointed in May 1559 were found to be too zealous in October, andseveral of the clerical members were replaced by cooler laymen. Thegreat bulk of the clergy seem neither to have refused nor to haveconsented to the oath, but to have left the Commissioners' summonsunheeded and to have stayed quietly at home. Of the nine thousand fourhundred beneficed clergy only a tenth presented themselves before theCommissioners. Of those who attended and refused the oath a hundred andeighty-nine were deprived, but many of the most prominent went unharmed. At Winchester, though the dean and canons of the cathedral, the wardenand fellows of the college, and the master of St. Cross, refused theoath, only four of these appear in the list of deprivations. Even thefew who suffered proved too many for the purpose of the Queen. In themore remote parts of the kingdom the proceedings of the visitorsthreatened to wake the religious strife which she was endeavouring tolull to sleep. On the northern border, where the great nobles, LordDacres and the Earls of Cumberland and Westmoreland, were zealousCatholics, and refused to let the bishop "meddle with them, " the clergyheld stubbornly aloof. At Durham a parson was able to protest withoutdanger that the Pope alone had power in spiritual matters. In Herefordthe town turned out to receive in triumph a party of priests from thewest who had refused the oath. The University of Oxford took refuge insullen opposition. In spite of pressure from the Protestant prelates, who occupied the sees vacated by the deprived bishops, Elizabeth wasfirm in her policy of patience, and in December she ordered theCommissioners in both provinces to suspend their proceedings. 

[Sidenote: The Religious Chaos. ]

In part indeed of her effort she was foiled by the bitterness of thereformers. The London mob tore down the crosses in the streets. Herattempt to retain the crucifix, or to enforce the celibacy of thepriesthood, fell dead before the opposition of the Protestant clergy. But to the mass of the nation the compromise of Elizabeth seems to havebeen fairly acceptable. They saw but little change. Their old vicar orrector in almost every case remained in his parsonage and ministered inhis church. The new Prayer-Book was for the most part an Englishrendering of the old service. Even the more zealous adherents ofCatholicism held as yet that in complying with the order for attendanceat public worship "there could be nothing positively unlawful. " Whereparty feeling ran high indeed the matter was sometimes settled by acompromise. A priest would celebrate mass at his parsonage for the morerigid Catholics, and administer the new communion in church to the morerigid Protestants. Sometimes both parties knelt together at the samealtar-rails, the one to receive hosts consecrated by the priest at homeafter the old usage, the other wafers consecrated in church after thenew. In many parishes of the north no change of service was made at all. Even where priest and people conformed it was often with a secret beliefthat better times were soon to bring back the older observances. As lateas 1569 some of the chief parishes in Sussex were still merely bendingto the storm of heresy. "In the church of Arundel certain altars dostand yet, to the offence of the godly, which murmur and speak muchagainst the same. In the town of Battle when a preacher doth come andspeak anything against the Pope's doctrine they will not abide but getthem out of the church. They have yet in the diocese in many placesthereof images hidden and other popish ornaments ready to set up themass again within twenty-four hours warning. In many places they keepyet their chalices, looking to have mass again. " Nor was there much newteaching as yet to stir up strife in those who clung to the olderfaith. Elizabeth had no mind for controversies which would set herpeople by the ears. "In many churches they have no sermons, not one inseven years, and some not one in twelve. " The older priests of Mary'sdays held their peace. The Protestant preachers were few and hampered bythe exaction of licences. In many cases churches had "neither parson, vicar, nor curate, but a sorry reader. " Even where the new clergy wereof higher intellectual stamp they were often unpopular. Many of thosewho were set in the place of the displaced clergy roused disgust bytheir violence and greed. Chapters plundered their own estates by leasesand fines and by felling timber. The marriages of the clergy became ascandal, which was increased when the gorgeous vestments of the oldworship were cut up into gowns and bodices for the priests' wives. Thenew services sometimes turned into scenes of utter disorder where theministers wore what dress they pleased and the communicant stood or satas he liked; while the old altars were broken down and thecommunion-table was often a bare board upon trestles. Only in the fewplaces where the more zealous of the reformers had settled was there anyreligious instruction. "In many places, " it was reported after ten yearsof the Queen's rule, "the people cannot yet say their commandments, andin some not the articles of their belief. " Naturally enough, the bulkof Englishmen were found to be "utterly devoid of religion, " and came tochurch "as to a May game. "

[Sidenote: Parker. ]

To modern eyes the Church under Elizabeth would seem little better thana religious chaos. But England was fairly used to religious confusion, for the whole machinery of English religion had been thrown out of gearby the rapid and radical changes of the last two reigns. And to theQueen's mind a religious chaos was a far less difficulty than theparting of the nation into two warring Churches which would have beenbrought about by a more rigorous policy. She trusted to time to bringabout greater order; and she found in Matthew Parker, whom Pole's deathat the moment of her accession enabled her to raise to the See ofCanterbury, an agent in the reorganization of the Church whose patienceand moderation were akin to her own. To the difficulties which Parkerfound indeed in the temper of the reformers and their opponents newdifficulties were sometimes added by the freaks of the Queen herself. Ifshe had no convictions, she had tastes; and her taste revolted from thebareness of Protestant ritual and above all from the marriage ofpriests. "Leave that alone, " she shouted to Dean Nowell from the royalcloset as he denounced the use of images--"stick to your text, MasterDean, leave that alone!" When Parker was firm in resisting theintroduction of the crucifix or of celibacy, Elizabeth showed herresentment by an insult to his wife. Married ladies were addressed atthis time as "Madam, " unmarried ladies as "Mistress"; but the marriageof the clergy was still unsanctioned by law, for Elizabeth had refusedto revive the statute of Edward by which it was allowed, and theposition of a priest's wife was legally a very doubtful one. When Mrs. Parker therefore advanced at the close of a sumptuous entertainment atLambeth to take leave of the Queen, Elizabeth feigned a momentaryhesitation. "Madam, " she said at last, "I may not call you, and MistressI am loath to call you; however, I thank you for your good cheer. " Butfreaks of this sort had little real weight beside the steady supportwhich the Queen gave to the Primate in his work of order. The vacantsees were filled with men from among the exiles, for the most partlearned and able, though far more Protestant than the bulk of theirflocks; the plunder of the Church by the nobles was checked; and at theclose of 1559 England seemed to settle quietly down in a religiouspeace. 

[Sidenote: England Protestant. ]

But cautious as had been Elizabeth's movements and skilfully as she hadhidden the real drift of her measures from the bulk of the people, thereligion of England was changed. The old service was gone. The oldbishops were gone. The royal supremacy was again restored. All connexionwith Rome was again broken. The repudiation of the Papacy and therestoration of the Prayer-Book in the teeth of the unanimous oppositionof the priesthood had established the great principle of theReformation, that the form of a nation's faith should be determined notby the clergy but by the nation itself. Different therefore as was thetemper of the government, the religious attitude of England was oncemore what it had been under the Protectorate. At the most criticalmoment of the strife between the new religion and the old England hadranged itself on the side of Protestantism. It was only the laterhistory of Elizabeth's reign which was to reveal of what mighty importthis Protestantism of England was to prove. Had England remainedCatholic the freedom of the Dutch Republic would have been impossible. No Henry the Fourth would have reigned in France to save FrenchProtestantism by the Edict of Nantes. No struggle over far-off seaswould have broken the power of Spain and baffled the hopes which theHouse of Austria cherished of winning a mastery over the western world. Nor could Calvinism have found a home across the northern border. Thefirst result of the religious change in England was to give a newimpulse to the religious revolution in Scotland. 

[Sidenote: Scotch Calvinism. ]

In the midst of anxieties at home Elizabeth had been keenly watching thefortunes of the north. We have seen how the policy of Mary of Guise hadgiven life and force to the Scottish Reformation. Not only had theRegent given shelter to the exiled Protestants and looked on at thediffusion of the new doctrines, but her "fair words" had raised hopesthat the government itself would join the ranks of the reformers. Maryof Guise had regarded the religious movement in a purely politicallight. It was as enemies of Mary Tudor that she gave shelter to theexiles, and it was to avoid a national strife which would have leftScotland open to English attack in the war which closed Mary's reignthat the Regent gave "fair words" to the preachers. But with the firstCovenant, with the appearance of the Lords of the Congregation in anavowed league in the heart of the land, with their rejection of thestate worship and their resolve to enforce a change of religion, herattitude suddenly altered. To the Regent the new religion was henceforthbut a garb under which the old quarrel of the nobles was breaking outanew against the Crown. Smooth as were her words, men knew that Mary ofGuise was resolute to withstand religious change. But Elizabeth'selevation to the throne gave a new fire to the reformers. Conservativeas her earlier policy seemed, the instinct of the Protestants told themthat the new Queen's accession was a triumph for Protestantism. TheLords at once demanded that all bishops should be chosen by the noblesand gentry, each priest by his parish, and that divine service shouldbe henceforth in the vulgar tongue. These demands were rejected by thebishops, while the royal court in May 1559 summoned the preachers to itsbar and on their refusal to appear condemned them to banishment asrebels. The sentence was a signal for open strife. The Protestants, whose strength as yet lay mainly in Fife, had gathered in great numbersat Perth, and the news stirred them to an outbreak of fury. The imageswere torn down from the churches, the monasteries of the town weresacked and demolished. The riot at Perth was followed by a generalrising. The work of destruction went on along the east coast and throughthe Lowlands, while the "Congregation" sprang up everywhere in itstrain. The Mass came to an end. The Prayer-Book of Edward was heard inthe churches. The Lords occupied the capital and found its burghers aszealous in the cause of reformation as themselves. Throughout all thesemovements the Lords had been in communication with England, for the oldjealousy of English annexation was now lost in a jealousy of Frenchconquest. Their jealousy had solid grounds. The marriage of Mary Stuartwith the Dauphin of France had been celebrated in April 1558 and threedays before the wedding the girl-queen had been brought to convey herkingdom away by deed to the House of Valois. The deed was kept secret;but Mary's demand of the crown matrimonial for her husband rousedsuspicions. It was known that the government of Scotland was discussedat the French council-board, and whispers came of a suggestion that thekingdom should be turned into an appanage for a younger son of theFrench king. Meanwhile French money was sent to the Regent, a body ofFrench troops served as her bodyguard, and on the advance of the Lordsin arms the French Court promised her the support of a larger army. 

[Sidenote: Scotland and Elizabeth. ]

Against these schemes of the French Court the Scotch Lords saw no aidsave in Elizabeth. Their aim was to drive the Frenchmen out of Scotland;and this could only be done by help both in money and men from England. Nor was the English Council slow to promise help. To Elizabeth indeedthe need of supporting rebels against their sovereign was a bitter one. The need of establishing a Calvinistic Church on her frontier was yetbitterer. It was not a material force which upheld the fabric of themonarchy, as it had been built up by the Houses of York and of Tudor, but a moral force. England held that safety against anarchy within andagainst attacks on the national independence from without was to befound in the Crown alone, and that obedience to the Crown was the firstelement of national order and national greatness. In their religiousreforms the Tudor sovereigns had aimed at giving a religious sanctionto the power which sprang from this general conviction, and at hallowingtheir secular supremacy by blending with it their supremacy over theChurch. Against such a theory, either of Church or State, Calvinism wasan emphatic protest, and in aiding Calvinism to establish itself inScotland the Queen felt that she was dealing a heavy blow to herpolitical and religious system at home. But, struggle as she mightagainst the necessity, she had no choice but to submit. The assumptionby Francis and Mary of the style of king and queen of England, theexpress reservation of this claim, even in the treaty ofCateau-Cambrésis, made a French occupation of Scotland a matter of lifeand death to the kingdom over the border. The English Council believed"that the French mean, after their forces are brought into Scotland, first to conquer it, --which will be neither hard nor long--and next thatthey and the Scots will invade this realm. " They were soon pressed todecide on their course. The Regent used her money to good purpose, andat the approach of her forces the Lords withdrew from Edinburgh to thewest. At the end of August two thousand French soldiers landed at Leith, as the advance guard of the promised forces, and entrenched themselvesstrongly. It was in vain that the Lords again appeared in the field, demanded the withdrawal of the foreigners, and threatened Mary of Guisethat as she would no longer hold them for her counsellors "we also willno longer acknowledge you as our Regent. " They were ordered to disperseas traitors, beaten off from the fortifications of Leith, and attackedby the French troops in Fife itself. 

[Sidenote: Elizabeth's action. ]

The Lords called loudly for aid from the English Queen. To give suchassistance would have seemed impossible but twelve months back. But theappeal of the Scots found a different England from that which had metElizabeth on her accession. The Queen's diplomacy had gained her a year, and her matchless activity had used the year to good purpose. Order wasrestored throughout England, the Church was reorganized, the debts ofthe Crown were in part paid off, the treasury was recruited, a navycreated, and a force made ready for action in the north. Neitherreligiously nor politically indeed had Elizabeth any sympathy with theScotch Lords. Knox was to her simply a firebrand of rebellion; herpolitical instinct shrank from the Scotch Calvinism with its protestagainst the whole English system of government, whether in Church orState; and as a Queen she hated revolt. But the danger forced her hand. Elizabeth was ready to act, and to act even in the defiance of France. As yet she stood almost alone in her self-reliance. Spain believed herruin to be certain. Her challenge would bring war with France, and in awar with France the Spanish statesmen held that only their master'sintervention could save her. "For our own sake, " said one of Philip'sministers, "we must take as much care of England as of the LowCountries. " But that such a care would be needed Granvelle neverdoubted; and Philip's councillors solemnly debated whether it might notbe well to avoid the risk of a European struggle by landing the sixthousand men whom Philip was now withdrawing from the Netherlands on theEnglish shore, and coercing Elizabeth into quietness. France meanwhiledespised her chances. Her very Council was in despair. The one ministerin whom she dared to confide throughout these Scotch negotiations wasCecil, the youngest and boldest of her advisers, and even Cecil trembledfor her success. The Duke of Norfolk refused at first to take command ofthe force destined as he held for a desperate enterprise. Arundel, theleading peer among the Catholics, denounced the supporters of a Scottishwar as traitors. But lies and hesitation were no sooner put aside thanthe Queen's vigour and tenacity came fairly into play. In January 1560, at a moment when D'Oysel, the French commander, was on the point ofcrushing the Lords of the Congregation, an English fleet appearedsuddenly in the Forth and forced the Regent's army to fall back uponLeith. 

[Sidenote: The Huguenot rising. ]

Here however it again made an easy stand against the Protestant attacks, and at the close of February the Queen was driven to make a formaltreaty with the Lords by which she promised to assist them in theexpulsion of the strangers. The treaty was a bold defiance of the powerfrom whom Elizabeth had been glad to buy peace only a year before, evenby the sacrifice of Calais. But the Queen had little fear of acounter-blow from France. The Reformation was fighting for her on theone side of the sea as on the other. From the outset of her reign therapid growth of the Huguenots in France had been threatening a strifebetween the old religion and the new. It was to gird himself for such astruggle that Henry the Second concluded the treaty of Cateau-Cambrésis;and though Henry's projects were foiled by his death, the Duke of Guise, who ruled his successor, Francis the Second, pressed on yet morebitterly the work of persecution. It was believed that he had sworn toexterminate "those of the religion. " But the Huguenots were in no moodto bear extermination. Their Protestantism, like that of the Scots, wasthe Protestantism of Calvin. As they grew in numbers, their churchesformed themselves on the model of Geneva, and furnished in their synodsand assemblies a political as well as a religious organization; whilethe doctrine of resistance even to kings, if kings showed themselvesenemies to God, found ready hearers, whether among the turbulent French_noblesse_, or among the traders of the towns who were stirred to newdreams of constitutional freedom. Theories of liberty or of resistanceto the crown were as abhorrent to Elizabeth as to the Guises, but againnecessity swept her into the current of Calvinism. She was forced toseize on the religious disaffection of France as a check on the dreamsof aggression which Francis and Mary had shown in assuming the style ofEnglish Sovereigns. The English ambassador, Throckmorton, fed the alarmsof the Huguenots and pressed them to take up arms. It is probable thatthe Huguenot plot which broke out in the March of 1560 in an attempt tosurprise the French Court at Amboise was known beforehand by Cecil; and, though the conspiracy was ruthlessly suppressed, the Queen drew freshcourage from a sense that the Guises had henceforth work for theirtroops at home. 

[Sidenote: Treaty of Edinburgh. ]

At the end of March therefore Lord Grey pushed over the border with 8000men to join the Lords of the Congregation in the siege of Leith. TheScots gave little aid; and an assault on the town signally failed. Philip too in a sudden jealousy of Elizabeth's growing strength demandedthe abandonment of the enterprise, and offered to warrant Englandagainst any attack from the north if its forces were withdrawn. Buteager as Elizabeth was to preserve Philip's alliance, she preferred tobe her own security. She knew that the Spanish king could not abandonher while Mary Stuart was queen of France, and that at the moment of hisremonstrances Philip was menacing the Guises with war if they carriedout their project of bringing about a Catholic rising by a descent onthe English coast. Nor were the threats of the French Court moreformidable. The bloody repression of the conspiracy of Amboise had onlyfired the temper of the Huguenots; southern and western France were onthe verge of revolt; the House of Bourbon had adopted the reformedfaith, and put itself at the head of the Protestant movement. In theface of dangers such as these the Guises could send to Leith neithermoney nor men. Elizabeth therefore remained immoveable while famine didits work on the town. At the crisis of the siege the death of Mary ofGuise threw the direct rule over Scotland into the hands of Francis andMary Stuart; and the exhaustion of the garrison forced the twosovereigns to purchase its liberation by two treaties which their envoysconcluded at Edinburgh in June 1560. That with the Scotch pledged themto withdraw for ever the French from the realm, and left the governmentof Scotland to a Council of the Lords. The treaty with England was amore difficult matter. Francis and Mary had forbidden their envoys tosign any engagement with Elizabeth as to the Scottish realm, or toconsent to any abandonment of their claims on the royal style ofEngland. It was only after long debate that Cecil wrested from them theacknowledgement that the realms of England and Ireland of rightappertained to Elizabeth, and a vague clause by which the Frenchsovereigns promised the English Queen that they would fulfil theirpledges to the Scots. 

[Sidenote: Elizabeth's character. ]

Stubborn however as was the resistance of the French envoys thesignature of the treaty proclaimed Elizabeth's success. The issue of theScotch war revealed suddenly to Europe the vigour of the Queen and thestrength of her throne. What her ability really was no one, save Cecil, had as yet suspected. There was little indeed in her outward demeanourto give any indication of her greatness. To the world about her thetemper of Elizabeth recalled in its strange contrasts the mixed bloodwithin her veins. She was at once a daughter of Henry and of AnneBoleyn. From her father she inherited her frank and hearty address, herlove of popularity and of free intercourse with the people, herdauntless courage and her amazing self-confidence. Her harsh, manlikevoice, her impetuous will, her pride, her furious outbursts of angercame to her with her Tudor blood. She rated great nobles as if they wereschoolboys; she met the insolence of Lord Essex with a box on the ear;she broke now and then into the gravest deliberations to swear at herministers like a fishwife. Strangely in contrast with these violentoutlines of her father's temper stood the sensuous, self-indulgentnature she drew from Anne Boleyn. Splendour and pleasure were withElizabeth the very air she breathed. Her delight was to move inperpetual progresses from castle to castle through a series of gorgeouspageants, fanciful and extravagant as a caliph's dream. She loved gaietyand laughter and wit. A happy retort or a finished compliment neverfailed to win her favour. She hoarded jewels. Her dresses wereinnumerable. Her vanity remained, even to old age, the vanity of acoquette in her teens. No adulation was too fulsome for her, no flatteryof her beauty too gross. She would play with her rings that hercourtiers might note the delicacy of her hands; or dance a coranto thatan ambassador, hidden dexterously behind a curtain, might report hersprightliness to his master. Her levity, her frivolous laughter, herunwomanly jests gave colour to a thousand scandals. Her character infact, like her portraits, was utterly without shade. Of womanly reserveor self-restraint she knew nothing. No instinct of delicacy veiled thevoluptuous temper which broke out in the romps of her girlhood andshowed itself almost ostentatiously through her later life. Personalbeauty in a man was a sure passport to her liking. She patted handsomeyoung squires on the neck when they knelt to kiss her hand, and fondledher "sweet Robin, " Lord Leicester, in the face of the Court. 

It was no wonder that the statesmen whom she outwitted held Elizabeth tobe little more than a frivolous woman, or that Philip of Spain wonderedhow "a wanton" could hold in check the policy of the Escurial. But theElizabeth whom they saw was far from being all of Elizabeth. Wilfulnessand triviality played over the surface of a nature hard as steel, atemper purely intellectual, the very type of reason untouched byimagination or passion. Luxurious and pleasure-loving as she seemed, theyoung Queen lived simply and frugally, and she worked hard. Her vanityand caprice had no weight whatever with her in state affairs. Thecoquette of the presence-chamber became the coolest and hardest ofpoliticians at the council-board. Fresh from the flattery of hercourtiers, she would tolerate no flattery in the closet; she was herselfplain and downright of speech with her counsellors, and she looked for acorresponding plainness of speech in return. The very choice of heradvisers indeed showed Elizabeth's ability. She had a quick eye formerit of any sort, and a wonderful power of enlisting its whole energyin her service. The sagacity which chose Cecil and Walsingham was justas unerring in its choice of the meanest of her agents. Her successindeed in securing from the beginning of her reign to its end, with thesingle exception of Leicester, precisely the right men for the work sheset them to do sprang in great measure from the noblest characteristicof her intellect. If in loftiness of aim the Queen's temper fell belowmany of the tempers of her time, in the breadth of its range, in theuniversality of its sympathy it stood far above them all. Elizabethcould talk poetry with Spenser and philosophy with Bruno; she coulddiscuss Euphuism with Lilly, and enjoy the chivalry of Essex; she couldturn from talk of the last fashions to pore with Cecil over despatchesand treasury books; she could pass from tracking traitors withWalsingham to settle points of doctrine with Parker, or to calculatewith Frobisher the chances of a north-west passage to the Indies. Theversatility and many-sidedness of her mind enabled her to understandevery phase of the intellectual movement about her, and to fix by a sortof instinct on its higher representatives. 

It was only on its intellectual side indeed that Elizabeth touched theEngland of her day. All its moral aspects were simply dead to her. Itwas a time when men were being lifted into nobleness by the new moralenergy which seemed suddenly to pulse through the whole people, whenhonour and enthusiasm took colours of poetic beauty, and religion becamea chivalry. But the finer sentiments of the men about her touchedElizabeth simply as the fair tints of a picture would have touched her. She made her market with equal indifference out of the heroism ofWilliam of Orange or the bigotry of Philip. The noblest aims and liveswere only counters on her board. She was the one soul in her realm whomthe news of St. Bartholomew stirred to no thirst for vengeance; andwhile England was thrilling with the triumph over the Armada, its Queenwas coolly grumbling over the cost, and making her profit out of thespoiled provisions she had ordered for the fleet that saved her. Nowomanly sympathy bound her even to those who stood closest to her life. She loved Leicester indeed; she was grateful to Cecil. But for the mostpart she was deaf to the voices either of love or gratitude. Sheaccepted such services as were never rendered to any other Englishsovereign without a thought of return. Walsingham spent his fortune insaving her life and her throne, and she left him to die a beggar. But, as if by a strange irony, it was to this very lack of womanly sympathythat she owed some of the grandest features of her character. If she waswithout love she was without hate. She cherished no petty resentments;she never stooped to envy or suspicion of the men who served her. Shewas indifferent to abuse. Her good humour was never ruffled by thecharges of wantonness and cruelty with which the Jesuits filled everyCourt in Europe. She was insensible to fear. Her life became at last amark for assassin after assassin, but the thought of peril was thethought hardest to bring home to her. Even when Catholic plots broke outin her very household she would listen to no proposals for the removalof Catholics from her court. 

If any trace of her sex lingered in the Queen's actual statesmanship, it was seen in the simplicity and tenacity of purpose that oftenunderlies a woman's fluctuations of feeling. It was the directness andsteadiness of her aims which gave her her marked superiority over thestatesmen of her time. No nobler group of ministers ever gathered rounda council-board than those who gathered round the council-board ofElizabeth. But she was the instrument of none. She listened, sheweighed, she used or put by the counsels of each in turn, but her policyas a whole was her own. It was a policy, not of genius, but of goodsense. Her aims were simple and obvious: to preserve her throne, to keepEngland out of war, to restore civil and religious order. Something ofwomanly caution and timidity perhaps backed the passionless indifferencewith which she set aside the larger schemes of ambition which were everopening before her eyes. In later days she was resolute in her refusalof the Low Countries. She rejected with a laugh the offers of theProtestants to make her "head of the religion" and "mistress of theseas. " But her amazing success in the end sprang mainly from this wiselimitation of her aims. She had a finer sense than any of hercounsellors of her real resources; she knew instinctively how far shecould go and what she could do. Her cold, critical intellect was neverswayed by enthusiasm or by panic either to exaggerate or tounderestimate her risks or her power. Of political wisdom indeed in itslarger and more generous sense Elizabeth had little or none; but herpolitical tact was unerring. She seldom saw her course at a glance, butshe played with a hundred courses, fitfully and discursively, as amusician runs his fingers over the keyboard, till she hit suddenly uponthe right one. Her nature was essentially practical and of the present. She distrusted a plan in fact just in proportion to its speculativerange or its outlook into the future. Her notion of statesmanship lay inwatching how things turned out around her, and in seizing the moment formaking the best of them. 

Such a policy as this, limited, practical, tentative as it always was, had little of grandeur and originality about it; it was apt indeed todegenerate into mere trickery and finesse. But it was a policy suited tothe England of her day, to its small resources and the transitionalcharacter of its religious and political belief, and it was eminentlysuited to Elizabeth's peculiar powers. It was a policy of detail, and indetails her wonderful readiness and ingenuity found scope for theirexercise. "No War, my Lords, " the Queen used to cry imperiously at thecouncil-board, "No War!" but her hatred of war sprang not so much fromaversion to blood or to expense, real as was her aversion to both, asfrom the fact that peace left the field open to the diplomaticmanoeuvres and intrigues in which she excelled. Her delight in theconsciousness of her ingenuity broke out in a thousand puckish freaks, freaks in which one can hardly see any purpose beyond the purpose ofsheer mystification. She revelled in "bye-ways" and "crooked ways. " Sheplayed with grave cabinets as a cat plays with a mouse, and with much ofthe same feline delight in the mere embarrassment of her victims. Whenshe was weary of mystifying foreign statesmen she turned to find freshsport in mystifying her own ministers. Had Elizabeth written the storyof her reign she would have prided herself, not on the triumph ofEngland or the ruin of Spain, but on the skill with which she hadhoodwinked and outwitted every statesman in Europe during fifty years. Nothing is more revolting, but nothing is more characteristic of theQueen, than her shameless mendacity. It was an age of political lying, but in the profusion and recklessness of her lies Elizabeth stoodwithout a peer in Christendom. A falsehood was to her simply anintellectual means of meeting a difficulty; and the ease with which sheasserted or denied whatever suited her purpose was only equalled by thecynical indifference with which she met the exposure of her lies as soonas their purpose was answered. Her trickery in fact had its politicalvalue. Ignoble and wearisome as the Queen's diplomacy seems to us now, tracking it as we do through a thousand despatches, it succeeded in itsmain end, for it gained time, and every year that was gained doubledElizabeth's strength. She made as dexterous a use of the foibles of hertemper. Her levity carried her gaily over moments of detection andembarrassment where better women would have died of shame. She screenedher tentative and hesitating statesmanship under the natural timidityand vacillation of her sex. She turned her very luxury and sports togood account. There were moments of grave danger in her reign when thecountry remained indifferent to its perils, as it saw the Queen give herdays to hawking and hunting, and her nights to dancing and plays. Hervanity and affectation, her womanly fickleness and caprice, all hadtheir part in the diplomatic comedies she played with the successivecandidates for her hand. If political necessities made her life a lonelyone, she had at any rate the satisfaction of averting war andconspiracies by love sonnets and romantic interviews, or of gaining ayear of tranquillity by the dexterous spinning out of a flirtation. 

As we track Elizabeth through her tortuous mazes of lying and intrigue, the sense of her greatness is almost lost in a sense of contempt. But, wrapped as they were in a cloud of mystery, the aims of her policy werethroughout temperate and simple, and they were pursued with a raretenacity. The sudden acts of energy which from time to time broke herhabitual hesitation proved that it was no hesitation of weakness. Elizabeth could wait and finesse; but when the hour was come she couldstrike, and strike hard. Her natural temper indeed tended to a rashself-confidence rather than to self-distrust. "I have the heart of aKing, " she cried at a moment of utter peril, and it was with a kinglyunconsciousness of the dangers about her that she fronted them for fiftyyears. She had, as strong natures always have, an unbounded confidencein her luck. "Her Majesty counts much on Fortune, " Walsingham wrotebitterly; "I wish she would trust more in Almighty God. " Thediplomatists who censured at one moment her irresolution, her delay, herchanges of front, censure at the next her "obstinacy, " her iron will, her defiance of what seemed to them inevitable ruin. "This woman, "Philip's envoy wrote after a wasted remonstrance, "this woman ispossessed by a hundred thousand devils. " To her own subjects, who knewnothing of her manoeuvres and flirtations, of her "bye-ways" and"crooked ways, " she seemed the embodiment of dauntless resolution. Braveas they were, the men who swept the Spanish Main or glided between theicebergs of Baffin's Bay never doubted that the palm of bravery lay withtheir Queen. 

[Sidenote: Catharine of Medicis. ]

It was this dauntless courage which backed Elizabeth's good luck in theScottish war. The issue of the war wholly changed her position at homeand abroad. Not only had she liberated herself from the control ofPhilip and successfully defied the threats of the Guises, but at asingle blow she had freed England from what had been its sorest dangerfor two hundred years. She had broken the dependence of Scotland uponFrance. That perpetual peace between England and the Scots which thepolicy of the Tudors had steadily aimed at was at last sworn in theTreaty of Edinburgh. If the Queen had not bound to her all Scotland, shehad bound to her the strongest and most vigorous party among the noblesof the north. The Lords of the Congregation promised to be obedient toElizabeth in all such matters as might not lead to the overthrow oftheir country's rights or of Scottish liberties. They were bound to hernot only by the war but by the events that followed the war. AParliament at Edinburgh accepted the Calvinistic confession of Geneva asthe religion of Scotland, abolished the temporal jurisdiction of thebishops, and prohibited the celebration of the Mass. The Act and theTreaty were alike presented for confirmation to Francis and Mary. Theywere roughly put aside, for the French king would give no sanction to asuccessful revolt, and Mary had no mind to waive her claim to theEnglish throne. But from action the two sovereigns were held back by thetroubles in France. It was in vain that the Guises strove to restorepolitical and religious unity by an assembly of the French notables: thenotables met only to receive a demand for freedom of worship from theHuguenots of the west, and to force the Government to promise a nationalcouncil for the settlement of the religious disputes as well as agathering of the States-General. The counsellors of Francis resolved toanticipate this meeting by a sudden stroke at the heretics; and as apreliminary step the chiefs of the House of Bourbon were seized at thecourt and the Prince of Condé threatened with death. The success of thismeasure roused anew the wrath of the young king at the demands of theScots, and at the close of 1560 Francis was again nursing plans ofvengeance on the Lords of the Congregation. But Elizabeth's good fortunestill proved true to her. The projects of the Guises were suddenlyfoiled by the young king's death. The power of Mary Stuart and herkindred came to an end, for the childhood of Charles the Ninth gave theregency over France to the queen-mother, Catharine of Medicis, and thepolicy of Catharine secured England and Scotland alike from danger ofattack. Her temper, like that of Elizabeth, was a purely politicaltemper; her aim was to balance Catholics against Protestants to theprofit of the throne. She needed peace abroad to preserve this politicaland religious balance at home, and though she made some fruitlessefforts to renew the old friendship with Scotland, she had no mind tointrigue like the Guises with the English Catholics nor to back MaryStuart's pretensions to the English throne. 

[Sidenote: Philip's policy. ]

With Scotland as an ally and with France at peace Elizabeth's throne atlast seemed secure. The outbreak of the strife between the Old Faith andthe New indeed, if it gave the Queen safety abroad, somewhat weakenedher at home. The sense of a religious change which her caution had doneso much to disguise broke slowly on England as it saw the Queen allyingherself with Scotch Calvinists and French Huguenots; and the compromiseshe had hoped to establish in matters of worship became hourly lesspossible as the more earnest Catholics discerned the Protestant drift ofElizabeth's policy. But Philip still held them back from any openresistance. There was much indeed to move him from his old support ofthe Queen. The widowhood of Mary Stuart freed him from his dread of apermanent annexation of Scotland by France as well as of a Frenchannexation of England, while the need of holding England as a check onFrench hostility to the House of Austria grew weaker as the outbreak ofcivil war between the Guises and their opponents rendered Frenchhostility less possible. Elizabeth's support of the Huguenots drove theSpanish king to a burst of passion. A Protestant France not onlyoutraged his religious bigotry, but, as he justly feared, it would givean impulse to heresy throughout his possessions in the Netherlands whichwould make it hard to keep his hold upon them. Philip noted that thesuccess of the Scotch Calvinists had been followed by the revolt of theCalvinists in France. He could hardly doubt that the success of theFrench Huguenots would be followed by a rising of the Calvinists in theLow Countries. "Religion" he told Elizabeth angrily "was being made acloak for anarchy and revolution. " But, vexed as Philip was with hercourse both abroad and at home, he was still far from withdrawing hissupport from Elizabeth. Even now he could not look upon the Queen aslost to Catholicism. He knew how her course both at home and abroad hadbeen forced on her not by religious enthusiasm but by politicalnecessity, and he still "trusted that ere long God would give us eithera general council or a good Pope who would correct abuses and then allwould go well. That God would allow so noble and Christian a realm asEngland to break away from Christendom and run the risk of perdition hecould not believe. "

[Sidenote: Pius the Fourth. ]

What was needed, Philip thought, was a change of policy in the Papacy. The bigotry of Paul the Fourth had driven England from the obedience ofthe Roman See. The gentler policy of Pius the Fourth might yet restoreher to it. Pius was as averse from any break with Elizabeth as Philipwas. He censured bitterly the harshness of his predecessor. The loss ofScotland and the threatened loss of France he laid to the charge of thewars which Paul had stirred up against Philip and which had opened a wayfor the spread of Calvinism in both kingdoms. England, he held, couldhave been easily preserved for Catholicism but for Paul's rejection ofthe conciliatory efforts of Pole. When he ascended the Papal throne atthe end of 1559 indeed the accession of England to the Reformationseemed complete. The royal supremacy was re-established: the Massabolished: the English Liturgy restored. A new episcopate, drawn fromthe Calvinistic refugees, was being gathered round Matthew Parker. ButPius would not despair. He saw no reason why England should not again beCatholic. He knew that the bulk of its people clung to the olderreligion, if they clung also to independence of the Papal jurisdictionand to the secularization of the Abbey-lands. The Queen, as he believed, had been ready for a compromise at her accession, and he was ready tomake terms with her now. In the spring of 1560 therefore he despatchedParpaglia, a follower of Pole, to open negotiations with Elizabeth. Themoment which the Pope had chosen was a critical one for the Queen. Shewas in the midst of the Scotch war, and her forces had just beenrepulsed in an attempt to storm the walls of Leith. Such a repulse wokefears of conspiracy among the Catholic nobles of the northern border, and a refusal to receive the legate would have driven them to an openrising. On the other hand the reception of Parpaglia would havealienated the Protestants, shaken the trust of the Lords of theCongregation in the Queen's support, and driven them to make terms withFrancis and Mary. In either case Scotland fell again under the rule ofFrance, and the throne of Elizabeth was placed in greater peril thanever. So great was the Queen's embarrassment that she availed herself ofCecil's absence in the north to hold out hopes of the legate's admissionto the realm and her own reconciliation with the Papacy. But she wasfreed from these difficulties by the resolute intervention of Philip. Ifhe disapproved of her policy in Scotland he had no mind that Scotlandshould become wholly French or Elizabeth be really shaken on her throne. He ordered the legate therefore to be detained in Flanders till histhreats had obtained from the Pope an order for his recall. 

[Sidenote: The Council of Trent. ]

But Pius was far from abandoning his hopes. After ten years suspensionhe had again summoned the Council of Trent. The cry for Church reform, the threat of national synods in Spain and in France, forced thismeasure on the Pope; and Pius availed himself of the assembly of theCouncil to make a fresh attempt to turn the tide of the Reformation andto win back the Protestant Churches to Catholicism. He called thereforeon the Lutheran princes of Germany to send doctors to the Council, andin May 1561, eight months after Parpaglia's failure, despatched a freshnuncio, Martinengo, to invite Elizabeth to send ambassadors to Trent. Philip pressed for the nuncio's admission to the realm. His hopes of theQueen's return to the faith were now being fed by a newmarriage-negotiation; for on the withdrawal of the Archduke of Austriain sheer weariness of Elizabeth's treachery, she had encouraged her oldplayfellow, Lord Robert Dudley, to hope for her hand and to amuse Philipby pledges of bringing back "the religion, " should the help of theSpanish king enable him to win it. Philip gave his help, but Dudleyremained a suitor, and the hopes of a Catholic revolution became fainterthan ever. The Queen would suffer no landing of a legate in her realm. The invitation to the Council fared no better. The Lutheran states ofNorth Germany had already refused to attend. The Council, they held, wasno longer a council of reunion. In its earlier session it had formallycondemned the very doctrine on which Protestantism was based; and tojoin it now would simply be to undo all that Luther had done. Elizabethshowed as little hesitation. The hour of her triumph, when a CalvinisticScotland and a Calvinistic France proved the mainstays of her policy, was no hour of submission to the Papacy. In spite of Philip's entreatiesshe refused to send envoys to what was not "a free Christian Council. "The refusal was decisive in marking Elizabeth's position. The longperiod of hesitation, of drift, was over. All chance of submission tothe Papacy was at an end. In joining the Lutheran states in theirrejection of this Council, England had definitely ranged itself on theside of the Reformation. 

CHAPTER IV

ENGLAND AND MARY STUART

1561-1567

[Sidenote: The English Catholics. ]

What had hitherto kept the bulk of Elizabeth's subjects from oppositionto her religious system was a disbelief in its permanence. Englishmenhad seen English religion changed too often to believe that it wouldchange no more. When the Commissioners forced a Protestant ritual on St. John's College at Oxford, its founder, Sir Thomas White, simply tookaway its vestments and crucifixes, and hid them in his house for thebetter times that every zealous Catholic trusted would have their turn. They believed that a Catholic marriage would at once bring such a turnabout; and if Elizabeth dismissed the offer of Philip's hand she playedlong and assiduously with that of a son of the Emperor, an archduke ofthe same Austrian house. But the alliance with the Scotch hereticsproved a rough blow to this trust: and after the repulse at Leith therewere whispers that the two great Catholic nobles of the border, theEarls of Northumberland and Westmoreland, were only waiting for thefailure of the Scotch enterprise to rise on behalf of the older faith. Whatever their projects were, they were crushed by the Queen's success. With the Lords of the Congregation masters across the border thenorthern Earls lay helpless between the two Protestant realms. In themass of men loyalty was still too strong for any dream of revolt; butthere was a growing uneasiness lest they should find themselves hereticsafter all, which the failure of the Austrian match and the help given tothe Huguenots was fanning into active discontent. It was this which gavesuch weight to the Queen's rejection of the summons to Trent. Whatevercolour she might strive to put upon it, the bulk of her subjectsaccepted the refusal as a final break with Catholicism, as a final closeto all hope of their reunion with the Catholic Church. 

[Sidenote: Mary Stuart. ]

The Catholic disaffection which the Queen was henceforth to regard asher greatest danger was thus growing into life when in August 1561, buta few months after the Queen's refusal to acknowledge the Council, MaryStuart landed at Leith. Girl as she was, and she was only nineteen, Marywas hardly inferior in intellectual power to Elizabeth herself, while infire and grace and brilliancy of temper she stood high above her. Shebrought with her the voluptuous refinement of the French Renascence;she would lounge for days in bed, and rise only at night for dances andmusic. But her frame was of iron, and incapable of fatigue; she gallopedninety miles after her last defeat without a pause save to changehorses. She loved risk and adventure and the ring of arms; as she rodein a foray to the north the swordsmen beside her heard her wish she wasa man "to know what life it was to lie all night in the fields, or towalk on the cawsey with a jack and knapschalle, a Glasgow buckler and abroadsword. " But in the closet she was as cool and astute a politicianas Elizabeth herself; with plans as subtle, and of a far wider andbolder range than the Queen's. "Whatever policy is in all the chief andbest practised heads of France, " wrote an English envoy, "whatevercraft, falsehood, and deceit is in all the subtle brains of Scotland, iseither fresh in this woman's memory, or she can fetch it out with a wetfinger. " Her beauty, her exquisite grace of manner, her generosity oftemper and warmth of affection, her frankness of speech, hersensibility, her gaiety, her womanly tears, her manlike courage, theplay and freedom of her nature, the flashes of poetry that broke fromher at every intense moment of her life, flung a spell over friend orfoe which has only deepened with the lapse of years. Even to Knollys, the sternest Puritan of his day, she seemed in her later captivity to be"a notable woman. " "She seemeth to regard no ceremonious honour besidesthe acknowledgement of her estate royal. She showeth a disposition tospeak much, to be bold, to be pleasant, to be very familiar. She showetha great desire to be avenged on her enemies. She showeth a readiness toexpose herself to all perils in hope of victory. She desireth much tohear of hardiness and valiancy, commending by name all approved hardymen of her country though they be her enemies, and she concealeth nocowardice even in her friends. "

[Sidenote: Mary's plans. ]

Of the stern bigotry, the intensity of passion, which lay beneath thewinning surface of Mary's womanhood, men as yet knew nothing. But theyat once recognized her political ability. Till now she had proved in herown despite a powerful friend to the Reformation. It was her claim ofthe English crown which had seated Elizabeth on the throne, had thrownher on the support of the Protestants, and had secured to the Queen inthe midst of her religious changes the protection of Philip of Spain. Itwas the dread of Mary's ambition which had forced Elizabeth to back theLords of the Congregation, and the dread of her husband's ambition whichhad driven Scotland to throw aside its jealousy of England and allyitself with the Queen. But with the death of Francis Mary's position hadwholly changed. She had no longer the means of carrying out herhusband's threats of crushing the Lords of the Congregation by force ofarms. The forces of France were in the hands of Catharine of Medicis;and Catharine was parted from her both by her dread of the Guises and bya personal hate. Yet the attitude of the Lords became every day morethreatening. They were pressing Elizabeth to marry the Earl of Arran, achief of the house of Hamilton and near heir to the throne, a marriagewhich pointed to the complete exclusion of Mary from her realm. Evenwhen this project failed, they rejected with stern defiance the youngQueen's proposal of restoring the old religion as a condition of herreturn. If they invited her to Scotland, it was in the name of theParliament which had set up Calvinism as the law of the land. Bitter assuch terms must have been Mary had no choice but to submit to them. Toaccept the offer of the Catholic Lords of Northern Scotland with theEarl of Huntly at their head, who proposed to welcome her in arms as achampion of Catholicism, was to risk a desperate civil war, a war whichwould in any case defeat a project far dearer to her than her plans forwinning Scotland, the project she was nursing of winning the Englishrealm. In the first months of her widowhood therefore her whole attitudewas reversed. She received the leader of the Protestant Lords, herhalf-brother, Lord James Stuart, at her court. She showed her favour tohim by creating him Earl of Murray. She adopted his policy of acceptingthe religious changes in Scotland and of bringing Elizabeth by friendlypressure to acknowledge her right, not of reigning in her stead, but offollowing her on the throne. But while thus in form adopting Murray'spolicy, Mary at heart was resolute to carry out her own policy too. Ifshe must win the Scots by submitting to a Protestant system in Scotland, she would rally round her the English Catholics by remaining a Catholicherself. If she ceased to call herself Queen of England and only pressedfor her acknowledgement as rightful successor to Elizabeth, she wouldnot formally abandon her claim to reign as rightful Queen in Elizabeth'sstead. Above all she would give her compliance with Murray's counsels nolegal air. No pressure either from her brother or from Elizabeth couldbring the young Queen to give her royal confirmation to theParliamentary Acts which established the new religion in Scotland, orher signature to the Treaty of Edinburgh. In spite of her habitualcaution the bold words which broke from Mary Stuart on Elizabeth'srefusal of a safe conduct betrayed her hopes. "I came to France in spiteof her brother's opposition, " she said, "and I will return in spite ofher own. She has combined with rebel subjects of mine: but there arerebel subjects in England too who would gladly listen to a call from me. I am a queen as well as she, and not altogether friendless. And perhapsI have as great a soul too!"

[Sidenote: Her toleration. ]

She saw indeed the new strength which was given her by her husband'sdeath. Her cause was no longer hampered, either in Scotland or inEngland, by a national jealousy of French interference. It was with aresolve to break the league between Elizabeth and the ScotchProtestants, to unite her own realm around her, and thus to give a firmbase for her intrigues among the English Catholics, that Mary Stuartlanded at Leith. The effect of her presence was marvellous. Her personalfascination revived the national loyalty, and swept all Scotland to herfeet. Knox, the greatest and sternest of the Calvinistic preachers, alone withstood her spell. The rough Scotch nobles owned that there wasin Mary "some enchantment whereby men are bewitched. " It was clearindeed from the first that, loyal as Scotland might be, its loyaltywould be of little service to the Queen if she attacked the newreligion. At her entry into Edinburgh the children of the pageantpresented her with a Bible and "made some speech concerning the puttingaway of the Mass, and thereafter sang a psalm. " It was only withdifficulty that Murray won for her the right of celebrating Mass at hercourt. But for the religious difficulty Mary was prepared. Whilesteadily abstaining from any legal confirmation of the new faith, andclaiming for her French followers freedom of Catholic worship, shedenounced any attempt to meddle with the form of religion she foundexisting in the realm. Such a toleration was little likely to satisfythe more fanatical among the ministers; but even Knox was content withher promise "to hear the preaching, " and brought his brethren to aconclusion, as "she might be won, " "to suffer her for a time. " If thepreachers indeed maintained that the Queen's liberty of worship "shouldbe their thraldom, " the bulk of the nation was content with Mary'sacceptance of the religious state of the realm. Nor was it distastefulto the secular leaders of the reforming party. The Protestant Lordspreferred their imperfect work to the more complete reformation whichKnox and his fellows called for. They had no mind to adopt the wholeCalvinistic system. They had adopted the Genevan Confession of Faith;but they rejected a book of discipline which would have organized theChurch on the Huguenot model. All demands for restitution of the churchproperty which they were pillaging they set aside as a "fondimagination. " The new ministers remained poor and dependent, while nobleafter noble was hanging an abbot to seize his estates in forfeiture, orroasting a commendator to wring from him a grant of abbey-lands in fee. 

[Sidenote: Mary and Elizabeth. ]

The attitude of the Lords favoured the Queen's designs. She was ineffect bartering her toleration of their religion in exchange for herreception in Scotland and for their support of her claim to be namedElizabeth's successor. With Mary's landing at Leith the position of theEnglish Queen had suddenly changed. Her work seemed utterly undone. Thenational unity for which she was struggling was broken. The presence ofMary woke the party of the old faith to fresh hopes and a freshactivity, while it roused a fresh fear and fanaticism in the party ofthe new. Scotland, where Elizabeth's influence had seemed supreme, wasstruck from her hands. Not only was it no longer a support; it was againa danger; for loyalty, national pride, a just and statesmanlike longingfor union with England, united her northern subjects round the ScottishQueen in her claim to be recognized as Elizabeth's successor, and evenMurray counted on Elizabeth's consent to this claim to bring Mary intofull harmony with his policy, and to preserve the alliance betweenEngland and Scotland. But the question of the succession, like thequestion of her marriage, was with Elizabeth a question of life anddeath. Her wedding with a Catholic or a Protestant suitor would havebeen equally the end of her system of balance and national union, asignal for the revolt of the party which she disappointed and for thetriumphant dictation of the party which she satisfied. "If a Catholicprince come here, " wrote a Spanish ambassador while pressing hermarriage with an Austrian archduke, "the first Mass he attends will bethe signal for a revolt. " It was so with the question of the succession. To name a Protestant successor from the House of Suffolk would havedriven every Catholic to insurrection. To name Mary was to stirProtestantism to a rising of despair, and to leave Elizabeth at themercy of every fanatical assassin who wished to clear the way for aCatholic ruler. Yet to leave both unrecognized was to secure thehostility of both, as well as the discontent of the people at large, wholooked on the settlement of the succession as the primary need of theirnational life. From the moment of Mary's landing therefore Elizabethfound herself thrown again on an attitude of self-defence. Every courseof direct action was closed to her. She could satisfy neither Protestantnor Catholic, neither Scotland nor England. Her work could only be awork of patience; the one possible policy was to wait, to meet dangersas they rose, to watch for possible errors in her rival's course, aboveall by diplomacy, by finesse, by equivocation, by delay, to gain timetill the dark sky cleared. 

[Sidenote: Mary's succession. ]

Nothing better proves Elizabeth's political ability than the patience, the tenacity, with which for the six years that followed she played thiswaiting game. She played it utterly alone. Even Cecil at moments ofperil called for a policy of action. But his counsels never moved theQueen. Her restless ingenuity vibrated ceaselessly, like the needle of acompass, from one point to another, now stirring hopes in Catholic, nowin Protestant, now quivering towards Mary's friendship, then as suddenlytrembling off to incur her hate. But tremble and vibrate as it might, Elizabeth's purpose returned ever to the same unchanging point. It wasin vain that Mary made a show of friendship, and negotiated for ameeting at York, where the question of the succession might be settled. It was in vain that to prove her lack of Catholic fanaticism she evenbacked Murray in crushing the Earl of Huntly, the foremost of herCatholic nobles, or that she held out hopes to the English envoy of herconformity to the faith of the Church of England. It was to no purposethat, to meet the Queen's dread of her marriage with a Catholic princewhen her succession was once acknowledged, a marriage which would insuch a case have shaken Elizabeth on her throne, Mary listened even to aproposal for a match with Lord Leicester, and that Murray supported sucha step, if Elizabeth would recognize Mary as her heir. Elizabethpromised that she would do nothing to impair Mary's rights; but shewould do nothing to own them. "I am not so foolish, " she replied withbitter irony to Mary's entreaties, "I am not so foolish as to hang awinding-sheet before my eyes. " That such a refusal was wise time was toshow. But even then it is probable that Mary's intrigues were not whollyhidden from the English Queen. Elizabeth's lying paled indeed before thecool duplicity of this girl of nineteen. While she was befriendingProtestantism in her realm, and holding out hopes of her mounting theEnglish throne as a Protestant queen, Mary Stuart was pledging herselfto the Pope to restore Catholicism on either side the border, andpressing Philip to aid her in this holy work by giving her the hand ofhis son Don Carlos. It was with this design that she was fooling theScotch Lords and deceiving Murray: it was with this end that she strovein vain to fool Elizabeth and Knox. 

[Sidenote: France and the Reformation. ]

But pierce through the web of lying as she might, the pressure on theEnglish Queen became greater every day. What had given Elizabethsecurity was the adhesion of the Scotch Protestants and the growingstrength of the Huguenots in France. But the firm government of Murrayand her own steady abstinence from any meddling with the nationalreligion was giving Mary a hold upon Scotland which drew Protestantafter Protestant to her side; while the tide of French Calvinism wassuddenly rolled back by the rise of a Catholic party under theleadership of the Guises. Under Catharine of Medicis France had seemedto be slowly drifting to the side of Protestantism. While thequeen-mother strove to preserve a religious truce the attitude of theHuguenots was that of men sure of success. Their head, the king ofNavarre, boasted that before the year was out he would have the Gospelpreached throughout the realm, and his confidence seemed justified bythe rapid advance of the new opinions. They were popular among themerchant class. The _noblesse_ was fast becoming Huguenot. At the courtitself the nobles feasted ostentatiously on the fast days of the Churchand flocked to the Protestant preachings. The clergy themselves seemedshaken. Bishops openly abjured the older faith. Coligni's brother, theCardinal of Châtillon, celebrated the communion instead of mass in hisown episcopal church at Beauvais, and married a wife. So irresistiblewas the movement that Catharine saw no way of preserving France toCatholicism but by the largest concessions; and in the summer of 1561she called on the Pope to allow the removal of images, theadministration of the sacrament in both kinds, and the abolition ofprivate masses. Her demands were outstripped by those of an assembly ofdeputies from the states which met at Pontoise. These called for theconfiscation of Church property, for freedom of conscience and ofworship, and above all for a national Council in which every questionshould be decided by "the Word of God. " France seemed on the verge ofbecoming Protestant; and at a moment when Protestantism had won Englandand Scotland, and appeared to be fast winning southern as well asnorthern Germany, the accession of France would have determined thetriumph of the Reformation. The importance of its attitude was seen inits effect on the Papacy. It was the call of France for a nationalCouncil that drove Rome once more to summon the Council of Trent. It wasseen too in the policy of Mary Stuart. With France tending to Calvinismit was no time for meddling with the Calvinism of Scotland; and Maryrivalled Catharine herself in her pledges of toleration. It was seenabove all in the anxiety of Philip of Spain. To preserve the Netherlandswas still the main aim of Philip's policy, and with France as well asEngland Protestant, a revolt of the Netherlands against the cruelties ofthe Inquisition became inevitable. By appeals therefore to religiouspassion, by direct pledges of aid, the Spanish king strove to rally theparty of the Guises against the system of Catharine. 

[Sidenote: The Civil War. ]

But Philip's intrigues were hardly needed to rouse the French Catholicsto arms. If the Guises had withdrawn from court it was only to organizeresistance to the Huguenots. They were aided by the violence of theiropponents. The Huguenot lords believed themselves irresistible; theyboasted that the churches numbered more than three hundred thousand menfit to bear arms. But the mass of the nation was hardly touched by thenew Gospel; and the Guises stirred busily the fanaticism of the poor. The failure of a conference between the advocates of either faith wasthe signal for a civil war in the south. Catharine strove in vain toallay the strife at the opening of 1562 by an edict of pacification;Guise struck his counter-blow by massacring a Protestant congregation atVassy, by entering Paris with two thousand men, and by seizing theRegent and the King. Condé and Coligni at once took up arms; and thefanaticism of the Huguenots broke out in a terrible work of destructionwhich rivalled that of the Scots. All Western France, half SouthernFrance, the provinces along the Loire and the Rhone, rose for theGospel. Only Paris and the north of France held firmly to Catholicism. But the plans of the Guises had been ably laid. The Huguenots foundthemselves girt in by a ring of foes. Philip sent a body of Spaniardsinto Gascony, Italians and Piedmontese in the pay of the Pope and theDuke of Savoy marched upon the Rhone. Seven thousand German mercenariesappeared in the camp of the Guises. Panic ran through the Huguenotforces; they broke up as rapidly as they had gathered; and resistancewas soon only to be found in Normandy and in the mountains of theCévennes. 

[Sidenote: Elizabeth and the Huguenots. ]

Condé appealed for aid to the German princes and to England: and grudgeas she might the danger and cost of such a struggle, Elizabeth saw thather aid must be given. She knew that the battle with her opponent had tobe fought abroad rather than at home. The Guises were Mary's uncles; andtheir triumph meant trouble in Scotland and worse trouble in England. InSeptember therefore she concluded a treaty with the Huguenots at HamptonCourt, and promised to supply them with six thousand men and a hundredthousand crowns. The bargain she drove was a hard one. She knew that theFrench had no purpose of fulfilling their pledge to restore Calais, andshe exacted the surrender of Havre into her hands as a security for itsrestoration. Her aid came almost too late. The Guises saw the need ofsecuring Normandy if English intervention was to be hindered, and avigorous attack brought about the submission of the province. But theHuguenots were now reinforced by troops from the German princes; and atthe close of 1562 the two armies met on the field of Dreux. The strifehad already widened into a general war of religion. It was the fight, not of French factions, but of Protestantism and Catholicism, that wasto be fought out on the fields of France. The two warring elements ofProtestantism were represented in the Huguenot camp where GermanLutherans stood side by side with the French Calvinists. On the otherhand the French Catholics were backed by soldiers from the Catholiccantons of Switzerland, from the Catholic states of Germany, fromCatholic Italy, and from Catholic Spain. The encounter was a desperateone, but it ended in a virtual triumph for the Guises. While the Germantroops of Coligni clung to the Norman coast in the hope of subsidiesfrom Elizabeth, the Duke of Guise was able to march at the opening of1563 on the Loire, and form the siege of Orleans. 

[Sidenote: Mary and Protestantism. ]

In Scotland Mary Stuart was watching her uncle's progress withever-growing hope. The policy of Murray had failed in the end to whichshe mainly looked. Her acceptance of the new religion, her submission tothe Lords of the Congregation, had secured her a welcome in Scotland andgathered the Scotch people round her standard. But it had done nothingfor her on the other side of the border. Two years had gone by, and anyrecognition of her right of succession to the English crown seemed asfar off as ever. But Murray's policy was far from being Mary's onlyresource. She had never surrendered herself in more than outer show toher brother's schemes. In heart she had never ceased to be a bigotedCatholic, resolute for the suppression of Protestantism as soon as hertoleration of it had given her strength enough for the work. It was thisthat made the strife between the two Queens of such terrible moment forEnglish freedom. Elizabeth was fighting for more than personal ends. Shewas fighting for more than her own occupation of the English throne. Consciously or unconsciously she was struggling to avert from Englandthe rule of a Queen who would have undone the whole religious work ofthe past half-century, who would have swept England back into the tideof Catholicism, and who in doing this would have blighted and crippledits national energies at the very moment of their mightiestdevelopement. It was the presence of such a danger that sharpened theeyes of Protestants on both sides the border. However she might toleratethe reformed religion or hold out hopes of her compliance with areformed worship, no earnest Protestant either in England or in Scotlandcould bring himself to see other than an enemy in the Scottish Queen. Within a few months of her arrival the cool eye of Knox had piercedthrough the veil of Mary's dissimulation. "The Queen, " he wrote toCecil, "neither is nor shall be of our opinion. " Her steady refusal toratify the Treaty of Edinburgh or to confirm the statutes on which theProtestantism of Scotland rested was of far greater significance thanher support of Murray or her honeyed messages to Elizabeth. While theyoung Queen looked coolly on at the ruin of the Catholic house ofHuntly, at the persecution of Catholic recusants, at so strict anenforcement of the new worship that "none within the realm durst moreavow the hearing or saying of Mass than the thieves of Liddesdale durstavow their stealth in presence of an upright judge, " she was in secretcorrespondence with the Guises and the Pope. Her eye was fixed uponFrance. While Catharine of Medicis was all-powerful, while her edictsecured toleration for the Huguenots on one side of the sea, Mary knewthat it was impossible to refuse toleration on the other. But with thefirst movement of the Duke of Guise fiercer hopes revived. Knox was"assured that the Queen danced till after midnight because that she hadreceived letters that persecution was begun in France, and that heruncles were beginning to stir their tail, and to trouble the whole realmof France. " Whether she gave such open proof of her joy or no, Mary woketo a new energy at the news of Guise's success. She wrote to Pope Piusto express her regret that the heresy of her realm prevented her sendingenvoys to the Council of Trent. She assured the Cardinal of Lorrainethat she would restore Catholicism in her dominions, even at the perilof her life. She pressed on Philip of Spain a proposal for her marriagewith his son, Don Carlos, as a match which would make her strong enoughto restore Scotland to the Church. 

[Sidenote: The Papal Brief. ]

The echo of the French conflict was felt in England as in the north. TheEnglish Protestants saw in it the approach of a struggle for life anddeath at home. The English Queen saw in it a danger to her throne. Sogreat was Elizabeth's terror at the victory of Dreux that she resolvedto open her purse-strings and to hire fresh troops for the Huguenots inGermany. But her dangers grew at home as abroad. The victory of Guisedealt the first heavy blow at her system of religious conformity. Romehad abandoned its dreams of conciliation on her refusal to own theCouncil of Trent, and though Philip's entreaties brought Pius to suspendthe issue of a Bull of Deposition, the Papacy opened the struggle byissuing in August 1562 a brief which pronounced joining in the CommonPrayer schismatic and forbade the attendance of Catholics at church. Onno point was Elizabeth so sensitive, for on no point had her policyseemed so successful. Till now, whatever might be their fidelity to theolder faith, few Englishmen had carried their opposition to the Queen'schanges so far as to withdraw from religious communion with those whosubmitted to them. But with the issue of the brief this unbrokenconformity came to an end. A few of the hotter Catholics withdrew fromchurch. Heavy fines were laid on them as recusants; fines which, astheir numbers increased, became a valuable source of supply for theroyal exchequer. But no fines could compensate for the moral blow whichtheir withdrawal dealt. It was the beginning of a struggle whichElizabeth had averted through three memorable years. Protestantfanaticism met Catholic fanaticism, and as news of the massacre at Vassyspread through England the Protestant preachers called for the death of"Papists. " The tidings of Dreux spread panic through the realm. TheParliament which met again in January 1563 showed its terror bymeasures of a new severity. There had been enough of words, cried oneof the Queen's ministers, Sir Francis Knollys, "it was time to draw thesword. "

[Sidenote: The Test Act. ]

The sword was drawn in the first of a series of penal statutes whichweighed upon English Catholics for two hundred years. By this statute anoath of allegiance to the Queen and of abjuration of the temporalauthority of the Pope was exacted from all holders of office, lay orspiritual, within the realm, with the exception of peers. Its effect wasto place the whole power of the realm in the hands either of Protestantsor of Catholics who accepted Elizabeth's legitimacy and herecclesiastical jurisdiction in the teeth of the Papacy. The oath ofsupremacy was already exacted from every clergyman and every member ofthe universities. But the obligation of taking it was now widelyextended. Every member of the House of Commons, every officer in thearmy or the fleet, every schoolmaster and private tutor, every justiceof the peace, every municipal magistrate, to whom the oath was tendered, was pledged from this moment to resist the blows which Rome wasthreatening to deal. Extreme caution indeed was used in applying thistest to the laity, but pressure was more roughly put on the clergy. Agreat part of the parish priests, though they had submitted to the useof the Prayer-Book, had absented themselves when called on to take theoath prescribed by the Act of Uniformity, and were known to be Catholicsin heart. As yet Elizabeth had cautiously refused to allow any strictenquiry into their opinions. But a commission was now opened by herorder at Lambeth, to enforce the Act of Uniformity in public worship;while thirty-nine of the Articles of Faith drawn up under Edward theSixth, which had till now been left in suspense by her Government, wereadopted in Convocation as a standard of faith, and acceptance of themdemanded from all the clergy. 

[Sidenote: Mary and Knox. ]

With the Test Act and the establishment of the High Commission thesystem which the Queen had till now pursued in great measure ceased. Elizabeth had "drawn the sword. " It is possible she might still haveclung to her older policy had she foreseen how suddenly the danger whichappalled her was to pass away. At this crisis, as ever, she was able to"count on Fortune. " The Test Act was hardly passed when in February 1563the Duke of Guise was assassinated by a Protestant zealot, and with hismurder the whole face of affairs was changed. The Catholic army wasparalyzed by its leader's loss, while Coligni, who was now strengthenedwith money and forces from England, became master of Normandy. The warhowever came quietly to an end; for Catharine of Medicis regained herpower on the Duke's death, and her aim was still an aim of peace. Atreaty with the Huguenots was concluded in March, and a new edict ofAmboise restored the truce of religion. Elizabeth's luck indeed waschequered by a merited humiliation. Now that peace was restored Huguenotand Catholic united to demand the surrender of Havre; and an outbreak ofplague among its garrison compelled the town to capitulate. The newstrife in which England thus found itself involved with the whole realmof France moved fresh hopes in Mary Stuart. Mary had anxiously watchedher uncle's progress, for his success would have given her the aid of aCatholic France in her projects on either side of the border. But evenhis defeat failed utterly to dishearten her. The war between the twoQueens which followed it might well force Catharine of Medicis to seekScottish aid against England, and the Scottish Queen would thus havesecured that alliance with a great power which the English Catholicsdemanded before they would rise at her call. At home troubles weregathering fast around her. Veil her hopes as she might, the anxiety withwhich she had followed the struggle of her kindred had not been lost onthe Protestant leaders, and it is probable that Knox at any rate hadlearned something of her secret correspondence with the Pope and theGuises. The Scotch Calvinists were stirred by the peril of theirbrethren in France, and the zeal of the preachers was roused by arevival of the old worship in Clydesdale and by the neglect of theGovernment to suppress it. In the opening of 1563 they resolved "to putto their own hands, " and without further plaint to Queen or Council tocarry out "the punishment that God had appointed to idolaters in hislaw. " In Mary's eyes such a resolve was rebellion. But her remonstrancesonly drew a more formal doctrine of resistance from Knox. "The sword ofjustice, madam, is God's, " said the stern preacher, "and is given toprinces and rulers for an end; which, if they transgress, they that inthe fear of God execute judgements when God has commanded offend notGod. Neither yet sin they that bridle kings who strike innocent men intheir rage. " The Queen was forced to look on while nearly fiftyCatholics, some of them high ecclesiastics, were indicted and sent toprison for celebrating mass in Paisley and Ayrshire. 

[Sidenote: Peace with France. ]

The zeal of the preachers was only heightened by the coolness of theLords. A Scotch Parliament which assembled in the summer of 1563contented itself with securing the spoilers in their possession of theChurch lands, but left the Acts passed in 1560 for the establishment ofProtestantism unconfirmed as before. Such a silence Knox regarded astreason to the faith. He ceased to have any further intercourse withMurray, and addressed a burning appeal to the Lords, "Will ye betrayGod's cause when ye have it in your hands to establish it as ye please?The Queen, ye say, will not agree with you. Ask ye of her that which byGod's word ye may justly require, and if she will not agree with ye inGod, ye are not bound to agree with her in the devil!" The inaction ofthe nobles proved the strength which Mary drew from the attitude ofFrance. So long as France and England were at war, so long as a Frenchforce might at any moment be despatched to Mary's aid, it was impossiblefor them to put pressure on the Queen; and bold as was the action of thepreachers the Queen only waited her opportunity for dealing them a fatalblow. But whatever hopes Mary may have founded on the strife, they weresoon brought to an end. Catharine used her triumph only to carry out hersystem of balance, and to resist the joint remonstrance of the Pope, theEmperor, and the King of Spain against her edict of toleration. Thepolicy of Elizabeth, on the other hand, was too much identified withCatharine's success to leave room for further hostilities; and a treatyof peace between the two countries was concluded in the spring of 1564. 

[Sidenote: Darnley. ]

The peace with France marked a crisis in the struggle between the rivalQueens. It left Elizabeth secure against a Catholic rising and free tomeet the pressure from the north. But it dashed the last hopes of MaryStuart to the ground. The policy which she had pursued from her landingin Scotland had proved a failure in the end at which it aimed. Herreligious toleration, her patience, her fair speeches, had failed to winfrom Elizabeth a promise of the succession. And meanwhile the Calvinismshe hated was growing bolder and bolder about her. The strife ofreligion in France had woke a fiercer bigotry in the Scotch preachers. Knox had discovered her plans of reaction, had publicly denounced herdesigns of a Catholic marriage, and had met her angry tears, her threatsof vengeance, with a cool defiance. All that Murray's policy seemed tohave really done was to estrange from her the English Catholics. Alreadyalienated from Mary by her connexion with France, which they stillregarded as a half-heretic power, and by the hostility of Philip, inwhom they trusted as a pure Catholic, the adherents of the older faithcould hardly believe in the Queen's fidelity to their religion when theysaw her abandoning Scotland to heresy and holding out hopes of heracceptance of the Anglican creed. Her presence had roused them to a newenergy, and they were drifting more and more as the strife waxed warmerabroad to dreams of forcing on Elizabeth a Catholic successor. But asyet their hopes turned not so much to Mary Stuart as to the youth whostood next to the Scottish Queen in the line of blood. Henry Stuart, Lord Darnley, was a son of the Countess of Lennox, Margaret Douglas, adaughter of Margaret Tudor by her second marriage with the Earl ofAngus. Lady Lennox was the successor whom Mary Tudor would willinglyhave chosen in her sister's stead, had Philip and the Parliamentsuffered her; and from the moment of Elizabeth's accession the Countesshad schemed to drive her from the throne. She offered Philip to fly withher boy to the Low Countries and to serve as a pretender in his hands. She intrigued with the partizans of the old religion. Though the houseof Lennox conformed to the new system of English worship, its sympathieswere known to be Catholic, and the hopes of the Catholics wrappedthemselves round its heir. "Should any disaster befall the Queen, " wrotea Spanish ambassador in 1560, "the Catholics would choose Lord Darnleyfor King. " "Not only, " he adds in a later letter, "would all sides agreeto choose him were the Queen to die, but the Catholic Lords, ifopportunity offer, may declare for him at once. "

[Sidenote: Mary and Darnley. ]

His strongest rival was Mary Stuart, and before Mary landed in ScotlandLady Lennox planned the union of both their claims by the marriage ofher son with the Scottish Queen. A few days after her landing Maryreceived a formal offer of his hand. Hopes of yet greater matches, of amarriage with Philip's son, Don Carlos, or with the young French king, Charles the Ninth, had long held the scheme at bay; but as these and herpolicy of conciliation proved alike fruitless Mary turned to theLennoxes. The marriage was probably planned by David Rizzio, a youngPiedmontese who had won the Scotch Queen's favour, and through whom sheconducted the intrigues, both in England and abroad, by which shepurposed to free herself from Murray's power and to threaten Elizabeth. Her diplomacy was winning Philip to her cause. The Spanish king had asyet looked upon Mary's system of toleration and on her hopes from Francewith equal suspicion. But he now drew slowly to her side. Pressed hardin the Mediterranean by the Turks, he was harassed more than ever by thegrowing discontent of the Netherlands, where the triumph ofProtestantism in England and Scotland and the power of the Huguenots inFrance gave fresh vigour to the growth of Calvinism, and where thenobles were stirred to new outbreaks against the foreign rule of Spainby the success of the Scottish Lords in their rising and by the terms ofsemi-independence which the French nobles wrested from the Queen. It wasto hold the Netherlands in check that Philip longed for Mary's success. Her triumph over Murray and his confederates would vindicate the causeof monarchy; her triumph over Calvinism would vindicate that ofCatholicism both in her own realm and in the realm which she hoped towin. He sent her therefore assurances of his support, and assurances asstrong reached her from the Vatican. The dispensation which wassecretly obtained for her marriage with Darnley was granted on thepledge of both to do their utmost for the restoration of the oldreligion. 

[Sidenote: The Darnley Marriage. ]

Secret as was the pledge, the mere whisper of the match revealed theirdanger to the Scotch Protestants. The Lords of the Congregation wokewith a start from their confidence in the Queen. Murray saw that thepolicy to which he had held his sister since her arrival in the realmwas now to be abandoned. Mary was no longer to be the Catholic ruler ofa Protestant country, seeking peaceful acknowledgement of her right ofsuccession to Elizabeth's throne; she had placed herself at the head ofthe English Catholics, and such a position at once threatened the safetyof Protestantism in Scotland itself. If once Elizabeth were overthrownby a Catholic rising, and a Catholic policy established in England, Scotch Protestantism was at an end. At the first rumour of the matchtherefore Murray drew Argyle and the Hamiltons round him in a band ofself-defence, and refused his signature to a paper recommending Darnleyas husband to the Queen. But Mary's diplomacy detached from him lordafter lord, till his only hope lay in the opposition of Elizabeth. Themarriage with Darnley was undoubtedly a danger even more formidable toEngland than to Scotland. It put an end to the dissensions which hadtill now broken the strength of the English Catholics. It rallied themround Mary and Darnley as successors to the throne. It gathered to theircause the far greater mass of cautious conservatives who had beendetached from Mary by her foreign blood and by dread of her kinship withthe Guises. Darnley was reckoned an Englishman, and with an Englishhusband to sway her policy Mary herself seemed to become anEnglishwoman. But it was in vain that the Council pronounced themarriage a danger to the realm, that Elizabeth threatened Mary with war, or that she plotted with Murray for the seizure of Mary and the drivingDarnley back over the border. Threat and plot were too late to avert theunion, and at the close of July 1565, Darnley was married to Mary Stuartand proclaimed king of Scotland. Murray at once called the Lords of theCongregation to arms. But the most powerful and active stood aloof. Asheir of the line of Angus, Darnley was by blood the head of the house ofDouglas, and, Protestants as they were, the Douglases rallied to theirkinsman. Their actual chieftain, the Earl of Morton, stood next toMurray himself in his power over the Congregation; he was chancellor ofthe realm; and his strength as a great noble was backed by a dark andunscrupulous ability. By waiving their claim to the earldom of Angus andthe lands which he held, the Lennoxes won Morton to his kinsman's cause, and the Earl was followed in his course by two of the sternest and mostactive among the Protestant Lords, Darnley's uncle, Lord Ruthven, andLord Lindesay, who had married a Douglas. Their desertion broke Murray'sstrength; and his rising was hardly declared when Mary marched on hislittle force with pistols in her belt, and drove its leaders over theborder. 

[Sidenote: Mary and Catholicism. ]

The work which Elizabeth had done in Scotland had been undone in anhour. Murray was a fugitive. The Lords of the Congregation were brokenor dispersed. The English party was ruined. And while Scotland was lostit seemed as if the triumph of Mary was a signal for the general revivalof Catholicism. The influence of the Guises had again become strong inFrance, and though Catharine of Medicis held firmly to her policy oftoleration, an interview which she held with Alva at Bayonne led everyProtestant to believe in the conclusion of a league between France andSpain for a common war on Protestantism. To this league the Englishstatesmen held that Mary Stuart had become a party, and her pressureupon Elizabeth was backed by the suspicion that the two great monarchieshad pledged her their support. No such league existed, nor had such apledge been given, but the dread served Mary's purpose as well as thereality could have done. Girt in, as she believed, with foes, Elizabethtook refuge in the meanest dissimulation, while Mary Stuart imperiouslydemanded a recognition of her succession as the price of peace. But heraims went far beyond this demand. She found herself greeted at Rome asthe champion of the Faith. Pius the Fifth, who mounted the Papal throneat the moment of her success, seized on the young Queen to strike thefirst blow in the crusade against Protestantism on which he was set. Hepromised her troops and money. He would support her, he said, so long ashe had a single chalice to sell. "With the help of God and yourHoliness, " Mary wrote back, "I will leap over the wall. " In Englanditself the marriage and her new attitude rallied every Catholic toMary's standard; and the announcement of her pregnancy which followedgave her a strength that swept aside Philip's counsels of caution anddelay. The daring advice of Rizzio fell in with her natural temper. Sheresolved to restore Catholicism in Scotland. Yield as she might toMurray's pressure, she had dexterously refrained from giving legalconfirmation to the resolutions of the Parliament by which Calvinism hadbeen set up in Scotland; and in the Parliament which she summoned forthe coming spring she trusted to do "some good anent restoring the oldreligion. " The appearance of the Catholic lords, the Earls of Huntly, Athol, and Bothwell, at Mary's court showed her purpose to attempt thisreligious revolution. Nor were her political schemes less resolute. Shewas determined to wring from the coming Parliament a confirmation ofthe banishment of the lords who had fled with Murray which would freeher for ever from the pressure of the Protestant nobles. Mistress of herkingdom, politically as well as religiously, Mary could put a pressureon Elizabeth which might win for her more than an acknowledgement of herright to the succession. She still clung to her hopes of the crown; andshe knew that the Catholics of Northumberland and Yorkshire were readyto revolt as soon as she was ready to aid them. 

[Sidenote: The murder of Rizzio. ]

No such danger had ever threatened Elizabeth as this. But again shecould "trust to fortune. " Mary had staked all on her union with Darnley, and yet only a few months had passed since her wedding-day when men sawthat she "hated the King. " The boy turned out a dissolute, insolenthusband; and Mary's scornful refusal of his claim of the "crownmatrimonial, " which would have given him an equal share of the royalpower with herself, widened the breach between them. Darnley attributedthis refusal to Rizzio's counsels; and his father, Lord Lennox, joinedwith him in plotting vengeance against the secretary. They sought aidfrom the very party whom Darnley's marriage had been planned to crush. Though the strength of the Protestant nobles had been broken by theflight of Murray, the Douglases remained at the court. Morton had nopurpose of lending himself to the ruin of the religion he professed, and Ruthven and Lindesay were roused to action when they saw themselvesthreatened with a restoration of Catholicism, and with a legalbanishment of Murray and his companions in the coming Parliament, whichcould only serve as a prelude to their own ruin. Rizzio was the authorof this policy; and when Darnley called on his kinsmen to aid him inattacking Rizzio, the Douglases grasped at his proposal. Their aid andtheir promise of the crown matrimonial were bought by Darnley's consentto the recall of the fugitive lords and of Murray. The plot of theDouglases was so jealously hidden that no whisper of it reached theQueen. Her plans were on the brink of success. The Catholic nobles wereready for action at her court. Huntly and Bothwell were called into thePrivy Council. At the opening of March 1566 the Parliament which was tocarry out her projects was to assemble; and the Queen prepared for herdecisive stroke by naming men whom she could trust as Lords of theArticles--a body with whom lay the proposal of measures to theHouses--and by restoring the bishops to their old places among thepeers. But at the moment when Mary revealed the extent of her schemes byher dismissal of the English ambassador, the young king, followed byLord Ruthven, burst into her chamber, dragged Rizzio from her presence, and stabbed him in an outer chamber, while Morton and Lord Lindesay withtheir followers seized the palace gate. Mary found herself a prisonerin the hands of her husband and his confederates. Her plans were wreckedin an hour. A proclamation of the king dissolved the Parliament whichshe had called for the ruin of her foes; and Murray, who was on his wayback from England when the deed was done, was received at Court andrestored to his old post at the Council-board. 

[Sidenote: Mary's revenge. ]

Terrible as the blow had been, it roused the more terrible energieswhich lay hid beneath the graceful bearing of the Queen. The darkerfeatures of her character were now to develope themselves. With aninflexible will she turned to build up again the policy which seemedshattered in Rizzio's murder. Her passionate resentment bent to thedemands of her ambition. "No more tears, " she said when they brought hernews of Rizzio's murder; "I will think upon revenge. " But even revengewas not suffered to interfere with her political schemes. Keen as wasMary's thirst for vengeance on him, Darnley was needful to the triumphof her aims, and her first effort was to win him back. He was alreadygrudging at the supremacy of the nobles and his virtual exclusion frompower, when Mary masking her hatred beneath a show of affectionsucceeded in severing the wretched boy from his fellow-conspirators, andin gaining his help in an escape to Dunbar. Once free, a force of eightthousand men under the Earl of Bothwell quickly gathered round her, andwith these troops she marched in triumph on Edinburgh. An offer ofpardon to all save those concerned in Rizzio's murder broke up the forceof the Lords; Glencairn and Argyle joined the Queen, while Morton, Ruthven, and Lindesay fled in terror over the border. But Mary hadlearned by a terrible lesson the need of dissimulation. She made no showof renewing her Catholic policy. On the contrary, she affected to resumethe system which she had pursued from the opening of her reign, andsuffered Murray to remain at the court. Rizzio's death, had in factstrengthened her position. With him passed away the dread of a Catholicreaction. Mary's toleration, her pledges of extending an equalindulgence to Protestantism in England, should she mount its throne, hermarriage to one who was looked upon as an English noble, above all thehope of realizing through her succession the dream of a union of therealms, again told on the wavering body of more Conservative statesmen, like Norfolk, and even drew to her side some of the steadier Protestantswho despaired of a Protestant succession. Even Elizabeth at last seemedwavering towards a recognition of her as her successor. But Mary aimedat more than the succession. Her intrigues with the English Catholicswere never interrupted. Her seeming reconciliation with the young kingpreserved that union of the whole Catholic body which her marriage hadbrought about and which the strife over Rizzio threatened with ruin. Her court was full of refugees from the northern counties. "Youractions, " Elizabeth wrote in a sudden break of fierce candour, "are asfull of venom as your words are of honey. " Fierce words however didnothing to break the clouds that gathered thicker and thicker roundEngland: and in June the birth of a boy, the future James the Sixth ofScotland and First of England, doubled Mary's strength. Elizabeth feltbitterly the blow. "The Queen of Scots, " she cried, "has a fair son, andI am but a barren stock. " The birth of James in fact seemed to settlethe long struggle in Mary's favour. The moderate Conservatives joinedthe ranks of her adherents. The Catholics were wild with hope. "Yourfriends are so increased, " her ambassador, Melville, wrote to her fromEngland, "that many whole shires are ready to rebel, and their captainsnamed by election of the nobility. " On the other hand, the Protestantswere filled with despair. It seemed as if no effort could avert the ruleof England by a Catholic Queen. 

[Sidenote: The developement of England. ]

It was at this moment of peril that the English Parliament was againcalled together. Its action showed more than the natural anxiety of thetime; it showed the growth of those national forces which far more thanthe schemes of Mary or the counter-schemes of Elizabeth were todetermine the future of England. While the two Queens were heapingintrigue on intrigue, while abroad and at home every statesman heldfirmly that national welfare or national misery hung on the fortune ofthe one or the success of the other, the English people itself wassteadily moving forward to a new spiritual enlightenment and a newpolitical liberty. The intellectual and religious impulses of the agewere already combining with the influence of its growing wealth torevive a spirit of independence in the nation at large. It wasimpossible for Elizabeth to understand this spirit, but her wonderfultact enabled her from the first to feel the strength of it. Long beforeany open conflict arose between the people and the Crown we see herinstinctive perception of the changes which were going on around her inthe modifications, conscious or unconscious, which she introduced intothe system of the monarchy. Of its usurpations upon English liberty sheabandoned none. But she curtailed and softened down almost all. Shetampered, as her predecessors had tampered, with personal freedom; therewas the same straining of statutes and coercion of juries in politicaltrials as before, and an arbitrary power of imprisonment was stillexercised by the Council. The duties she imposed on cloth and sweetwines were an assertion of her right of arbitrary taxation. Proclamations in Council constantly assumed the force of law. But, boldly as it was asserted, the royal power was practically wielded witha caution and moderation that showed the sense of a growing difficultyin the full exercise of it. The ordinary course of justice was leftundisturbed. The jurisdiction of the Council was asserted almostexclusively over the Catholics; and defended in their case as aprecaution against pressing dangers. The proclamations issued weretemporary in character and of small importance. The two duties imposedwere so slight as to pass almost unnoticed in the general satisfactionat Elizabeth's abstinence from internal taxation. She abandoned thebenevolences and forced loans which had brought home the sense oftyranny to the subjects of her predecessors. She treated the PrivySeals, which on emergencies she issued for advances to her Exchequer, simply as anticipations of her revenue (like our own Exchequer Bills), and punctually repaid them. The monopolies with which she fettered tradeproved a more serious grievance; but during her earlier reign they werelooked on as a part of the system of Merchant Associations, which wereat that time regarded as necessary for the regulation and protection ofthe growing commerce. 

[Sidenote: The advance of the Parliament. ]

The political developement of the nation is seen still more in theadvance of the Parliament during Elizabeth's reign. The Queen's thriftenabled her in ordinary times of peace to defray the current expenses ofthe Crown from its ordinary revenues. But her thrift was dictated not somuch by economy as by a desire to avoid summoning fresh Parliaments. Wehave seen how boldly the genius of Thomas Cromwell set aside on thispoint the tradition of the New Monarchy. His confidence in the power ofthe Crown revived the Parliament as an easy and manageable instrument oftyranny. The old forms of constitutional freedom were turned to theprofit of the royal despotism, and a revolution which for the momentleft England absolutely at Henry's feet was wrought out by a series ofparliamentary statutes. Throughout Henry's reign Cromwell's confidencewas justified by the spirit of slavish submission which pervaded theHouses. But the effect of the religious change for which his measuresmade room began to be felt during the minority of Edward the Sixth; andthe debates and divisions on the religious reaction which Mary pressedon the Parliament were many and violent. A great step forward was markedby the effort of the Crown to neutralize by "management" an oppositionwhich it could no longer overawe. Not only was the Parliament packedwith nominees of the Crown but new constituencies were created whosemembers would follow implicitly its will. For this purpose twenty-twonew boroughs were created under Edward, fourteen under Mary; some, indeed, places entitled to representation by their wealth andpopulation, but the bulk of them small towns or hamlets which lay whollyat the disposal of the Royal Council. 

[Sidenote: Elizabeth and the Houses. ]

Elizabeth adopted the system of her two predecessors both in thecreation of boroughs and the recommendation of candidates; but her keenpolitical instinct soon perceived the inutility of both expedients. Shesaw that the "management" of the Houses, so easy under Cromwell, wasbecoming harder every day. The very number of the members she called upinto the Commons from nomination boroughs, sixty-two in all, showed theincreasing difficulty which the government found in securing a workingmajority. The rise of a new nobility enriched by the spoils of theChurch and trained to political life by the stress of events around themwas giving fresh vigour to the House of Lords. The increased wealth ofthe country gentry as well as the growing desire to obtain a seat amongthe Commons brought about the cessation at this time of the old paymentof members by their constituencies. A change too in the boroughrepresentation, which had long been in progress but was now for thefirst time legally recognized, tended greatly to increase the vigour andindependence of the Lower House. By the terms of the older writs boroughmembers were required to be chosen from the body of the burgesses; andan act of Henry the Fifth gave this custom the force of law. But thepassing of such an act shows that the custom was already widelyinfringed, and by Elizabeth's day act and custom alike had ceased tohave force. Most seats were now filled by representatives who werestrange to the borough itself, and who were often nominees of the greatlandowners round. But they were commonly men of wealth and blood whoseaim in entering Parliament was a purely political one, and whoseattitude towards the Crown was far bolder and more independent than thatof the quiet tradesmen who preceded them. Elizabeth saw that"management" was of little avail with a house of members such as these;and she fell back as far as she could on Wolsey's policy of practicalabolition. She summoned Parliaments at longer and longer intervals. Byrigid economy, by a policy of balance and peace, she strove, and for along time successfully strove, to avoid the necessity of assembling themat all. But Mary of Scotland and Philip of Spain proved friends toEnglish liberty in its sorest need. The struggle with Catholicism forcedElizabeth to have more frequent recourse to her Parliaments, and as shewas driven to appeal for increasing supplies the tone of the Houses rosehigher and higher. 

[Sidenote: The struggle with the Parliament. ]

What made this revival of Parliamentary independence more important wasthe range which Cromwell's policy had given to Parliamentary action. Intheory the Tudor statesman regarded three cardinal subjects, matters oftrade, matters of religion, and matters of State, as lying exclusivelywithin the competence of the Crown. But in actual fact such subjectshad been treated by Parliament after Parliament. The whole religiousfabric of the realm rested on Parliamentary enactments. The very titleof Elizabeth rested in a Parliamentary statute. When the Housespetitioned at the outset of her reign for the declaration of a successorand for the Queen's marriage it was impossible for her to deny theirright to intermeddle with these "matters of State, " though she rebukedthe demand and evaded an answer. But the question of the succession wasa question too vital for English freedom and English religion to remainprisoned within Elizabeth's council-chamber. It came again to the frontin the Parliament which the pressure from Mary Stuart forced Elizabethto assemble after six prorogations and an interval of four years inSeptember 1566. The Lower House at once resolved that the business ofsupply should go hand in hand with that of the succession. Such a stepput a stress on the monarchy which it had never known since the War ofthe Roses. The Commons no longer confined themselves to limiting orresisting the policy of the Crown; they dared to dictate it. Elizabeth'swrath showed her sense of the importance of their action. "They hadacted like rebels!" she said, "they had dealt with her as they dared nothave dealt with her father. " "I cannot tell, " she broke out angrily tothe Spanish ambassador, "what these devils want!" "They want liberty, madam, " replied the Spaniard, "and if princes do not look to themselvesand work together to put such people down they will find before longwhat all this is coming to!" But Elizabeth had to front more than herPuritan Commons. The Lords joined with the Lower House in demanding theQueen's marriage and a settlement of the succession, and after a furiousburst of anger Elizabeth gave a promise of marriage, which she was nodoubt resolved to evade as she had evaded it before. But the subject ofthe succession was one which could not be evaded. Yet any decision on itmeant civil war. It was notorious that if the Commons were resolute toname the Lady Catharine Grey, the heiress of the House of Suffolk, successor to the throne, the Lords were as resolute to assert the rightof Mary Stuart. To settle such a matter was at once to draw the sword. The Queen therefore peremptorily forbade the subject to be approached. But the royal message was no sooner delivered than Wentworth, a memberof the House of Commons, rose to ask whether such a prohibition was not"against the liberties of Parliament. " The question was followed by ahot debate, and a fresh message from the Queen commanding "that thereshould be no further argument" was met by a request for freedom ofdeliberation while the subsidy bill lay significantly unnoticed on thetable. A new strife broke out when another member of the Commons, Mr. Dalton, denounced the claims put forward by the Scottish Queen. Elizabeth at once ordered him into arrest. But the Commons prayed forleave "to confer upon their liberties, " and the Queen's prudence taughther that it was necessary to give way. She released Dalton; sheprotested to the Commons that "she did not mean to prejudice any part ofthe liberties heretofore granted them"; she softened the order ofsilence into a request. Won by the graceful concession, the Lower Housegranted the subsidy and assented loyally to her wish. But the victorywas none the less a real one. No such struggle had taken place betweenthe Crown and the Commons since the beginning of the New Monarchy; andthe struggle had ended in the virtual defeat of the Crown. 

[Sidenote: Shane O'Neill. ]

The strife with the Parliament hit Elizabeth hard. It was "secret foesat home, " she told the House as the quarrel passed away in a warmreconciliation, "who thought to work me that mischief which neverforeign enemies could bring to pass, which is the hatred of my Commons. Do you think that either I am so unmindful of your surety by succession, wherein is all my care, or that I went about to break your liberties?No! it never was my meaning; but to stay you before you fell into theditch. " But it was impossible for her to explain the real reasons forher course, and the dissolution of the Parliament in January 1567 lefther face to face with a national discontent added to the ever-deepeningperil from without. To the danger from the north and from the east wasadded a danger from the west. The north of Ireland was in full revolt. From the moment of her accession Elizabeth had realized the risks of thepolicy of confiscation and colonization which had been pursued in theisland by her predecessor: and the prudence of Cecil fell back on thesafer though more tedious policy of Henry the Eighth. But the alarm atEnglish aggression had already spread among the natives; and its resultwas seen in a revolt of the north, and in the rise of a leader morevigorous and able than any with whom the Government had had as yet tocontend. An acceptance of the Earldom of Tyrone by the chief of theO'Neills brought about the inevitable conflict between the system ofsuccession recognized by English and that recognized by Irish law. Onthe death of the Earl of Tyrone England acknowledged his eldest son asthe heir of his Earldom; while the sept of which he was the headmaintained their older right of choosing a chief from among the membersof the family, and preferred Shane O'Neill, a younger son of lessdoubtful legitimacy. The Lord Deputy, the Earl of Sussex, marchednorthward to settle the question by force of arms; but ere he couldreach Ulster the activity of Shane had quelled the disaffection of hisrivals, the O'Donnells of Donegal, and won over the Scots of Antrim. "Never before, " wrote Sussex, "durst Scot or Irishman look Englishmanin the face in plain or wood since I came here"; but Shane fired his menwith a new courage, and charging the Deputy's army with a force hardlyhalf its number drove it back in rout on Armagh. A promise of pardoninduced the Irish chieftain to visit London, and make an illusorysubmission, but he was no sooner safe home again than its terms were setaside; and after a wearisome struggle, in which Shane foiled the effortsof the Lord Deputy to entrap or to poison him, he remained virtuallymaster of the north. His success stirred larger dreams of ambition. Heinvaded Connaught, and pressed Clanrickard hard; while he replied to theremonstrances of the Council at Dublin with a bold defiance. "By thesword I have won these lands, " he answered, "and by the sword will Ikeep them. " But defiance broke idly against the skill and vigour of SirHenry Sidney, who succeeded Sussex as Lord Deputy. The rival septs ofthe north were drawn into a rising against O'Neill, while the Englisharmy advanced from the Pale; and in 1567 Shane, defeated by theO'Donnells, took refuge in Antrim, and was hewn to pieces in a drunkensquabble by his Scottish entertainers. 

[Sidenote: Bothwell. ]

The victory of Sidney marked the turn of the tide which had run so longagainst Elizabeth. The danger which England dreaded from Mary Stuart, the terror of a Catholic sovereign and a Catholic reaction, reached itsheight only to pass irretrievably away. At the moment when the Irishrevolt was being trampled under foot a terrible event suddenly strucklight through the gathering clouds in the north. Mary had used Darnleyas a tool to bring about the ruin of his confederates and to further herpolicy; but from the moment that she discovered his actual complicity inthe plot for Rizzio's murder she had loathed and avoided him. Ominouswords dropped from her lips. "Unless she were free of him some way, "Mary was heard to mutter, "she had no pleasure to live. " The lords whomhe had drawn into his plot only to desert and betray them hated him withas terrible a hatred, and in their longing for vengeance a newadventurer saw the road to power. Of all the border nobles JamesHepburn, the Earl of Bothwell, was the boldest and the mostunscrupulous. But, Protestant as he was, he had never swerved from theside of the Crown; he had supported the Regent, and crossed the seas topledge as firm a support to Mary; and his loyalty and daring alikeappealed to the young Queen's heart. Little as he was touched by Mary'spassion, it stirred in the Earl dreams of a union with the Queen; andgreat as were the obstacles to such a union which presented themselvesin Mary's marriage and his own, Bothwell was of too desperate a temperto recoil before obstacles such as these. Divorce would free him fromhis own wife. To free himself from Darnley he seized on the hatredwhich the lords whom Darnley had deserted and betrayed bore to the king. Bothwell joined Murray and the English ambassador in praying for therecall of Morton and the exiles. The pardon was granted; the noblesreturned to court, and the bulk of them joined readily in a conspiracyto strike down one whom they still looked on as their bitterest foe. 

[Sidenote: Darnley's murder. ]

Morton alone stood aloof. He demanded an assurance of the Queen'ssanction to the deed; and no such assurance was given him. On thecontrary Mary's mood seemed suddenly to change. Her hatred to Darnleypassed all at once into demonstration of the old affection. He hadfallen sick with vice and misery, and she visited him on his sick-bed, and persuaded him to follow her to Edinburgh. She visited him again in aruinous and lonely house near the palace in which he was lodged by herorder, on the ground that its purer air would further his recovery, kissed him as she bade him farewell, and rode gaily back to awedding-dance at Holyrood. If Mary's passion had drawn her to shareBothwell's guilt, these acts were but awful preludes to her husband'sdoom. If on the other hand her reconciliation was a real one, it onlydrove Bothwell to hurry on his deed of blood without waiting for the aidof the nobles who had sworn the king's death. The terrible secret isstill hid in a cloud of doubt and mystery which will probably never bewholly dispelled. But Mary had hardly returned to her palace when, twohours after midnight on the ninth of February 1567, an awful explosionshook the city. The burghers rushed out from the gates to find the houseof Kirk o' Field destroyed and Darnley's body dead beside the ruins. 

[Sidenote: Mary's fall. ]

The murder was undoubtedly the deed of Bothwell. It was soon known thathis servant had stored the powder beneath the king's bedchamber and thatthe Earl had watched without the walls till the deed was done. But, inspite of gathering suspicion and of a charge of murder made formallyagainst Bothwell by Lord Lennox, no serious steps were taken toinvestigate the crime; and a rumour that Mary purposed to marry themurderer drove her friends to despair. Her agent in England wrote to herthat "if she married that man she would lose the favour of God, her ownreputation, and the hearts of all England, Ireland, and Scotland. " Butwhatever may have been the ties of passion or guilt which united them, Mary was now powerless in Bothwell's hands. While Murray withdrew toFrance on pretext of travel, the young Earl used the plot againstDarnley into which he had drawn the lords to force from them adeclaration that he was guiltless of the murder and their consent to hismarriage with the Queen. He boasted that he would marry Mary, whethershe would or no. Every stronghold in the kingdom was placed in hishands, and this step was the prelude to a trial and acquittal which theoverwhelming force of his followers in Edinburgh turned into a bittermockery. The Protestants were bribed by the assembling of a Parliamentin which Mary for the first time gave her sanction to the laws whichestablished the reformation in Scotland. A shameless suit for hisdivorce removed the last obstacle to Bothwell's ambition; and a seizureof the Queen as she rode to Linlithgow, whether real or fictitious, wasfollowed three weeks later by their union on the fifteenth of May. Marymay have yielded to force; she may have yielded to passion; it ispossible that in Bothwell's vigour she saw the means of at lastmastering the kingdom and wreaking her vengeance on the Lords. Butwhatever were her hopes or fears, in a month more all was over. Thehorror at the Queen's marriage with a man fresh from her husband's blooddrove the whole nation to revolt. The Catholic party held aloof from aQueen who seemed to have forsaken them by a Protestant marriage and byher acknowledgement of the Protestant Church. The Protestant Lordsseized on the general horror to free themselves from a master whosesubtlety and bloodshed had placed them at his feet. Morton and Argylerallied the forces of the Congregation at Stirling, and were soon joinedby the bulk of the Scottish nobles of either religion. Their entranceinto Edinburgh roused the capital into insurrection. On the fifteenth ofJune Mary and her husband advanced with a fair force to Seton toencounter the Lords; but their men refused to fight, and Bothwellgalloped off into lifelong exile, while the Queen was brought back toEdinburgh in a frenzy of despair, tossing back wild words of defiance tothe curses of the crowd. 

CHAPTER V

ENGLAND AND THE PAPACY

1567-1582

[Sidenote: England and religious change. ]

The fall of Mary freed Elizabeth from the most terrible of her outerdangers. But it left her still struggling with ever-growing dangers athome. The religious peace for which she had fought so hard was drawingto an end. Sturdily as she might aver to her subjects that no change hadreally been made in English religion, that the old faith had only beenpurified, that the realm had only been freed from Papal usurpation, jealously as she might preserve the old episcopate, the old service, theold vestments and usages of public worship, her action abroad told tooplainly its tale. The world was slowly drifting to a gigantic conflictbetween the tradition of the past and a faith that rejected thetradition of the past; and in this conflict men saw that England wasranging itself not on the side of the old belief but of the new. Thereal meaning of Elizabeth's attitude was revealed in her refusal to ownthe Council of Trent. From that moment the hold which she had retainedon all who still clung strongly to Catholic doctrine was roughly shaken. Her system of conformity received a heavy blow from the decision of thePapacy that attendance at the common prayer was unlawful. Her religiouscompromise was almost destroyed by the victory of the Guises. In themoment of peril she was driven on Protestant support, and Protestantsupport had to be bought by a Test Act which excluded every zealousCatholic from all share in the government or administration of therealm, while the re-enactment of Edward's Articles by the Convocation ofthe clergy was an avowal of Protestantism which none could mistake. Whatever in fact might be Elizabeth's own predilections, even the mostcautious of Englishmen could hardly doubt of the drift of her policy. The hopes which the party of moderation had founded on a marriage withPhilip, or a marriage with the Austrian Archduke, or a marriage withDudley, had all passed away. The conciliatory efforts of Pope Pius hadbeen equally fruitless. The last hope of a quiet undoing of thereligious changes lay in the succession of Mary Stuart. But with thefall of Mary a peaceful return to the older faith became impossible; andthe consciousness of this could hardly fail to wake new dangers forElizabeth, whether at home or abroad. 

[Sidenote: Progress of the Reformation. ]

It was in fact at this moment of seeming triumph that the great struggleof her reign began. In 1565 a pontiff was chosen to fill the Papal chairwhose policy was that of open war between England and Rome. At no momentin its history had the fortunes of the Roman See sunk so low as at theaccession of Pius the Fifth. The Catholic revival had as yet donenothing to arrest the march of the Reformation. In less than half acentury the new doctrines had spread from Iceland to the Pyrenees andfrom Finland to the Alps. When Pius mounted the throne Lutheranism wasfirmly established in Scandinavia and in Northern Germany. Along theEastern border of the Empire it had conquered Livonia and Old Prussia;its adherents formed a majority of the nobles of Poland; Hungary seemeddrifting towards heresy; and in Transylvania the Diet had alreadyconfiscated all Church lands. In Central Germany the great prelateswhose princedoms covered so large a part of Franconia opposed in vainthe spread of Lutheran doctrine. It seemed as triumphant in SouthernGermany, for the Duchy of Austria was for the most part Lutheran, andmany of the Bavarian towns with a large part of the Bavarian nobles hadespoused the cause of the Reformation. In Western Europe the fiercerdoctrines of Calvinism took the place of the faith of Luther. At thedeath of Henry the Second Calvin's missionaries poured from Geneva overFrance, and in a few years every province of the realm was dotted withCalvinistic churches. The Huguenots rose into a great political andreligious party which struggled openly for the mastery of the realm andwrested from the Crown a legal recognition of its existence and offreedom of worship. The influence of France told quickly on the regionsabout it. The Rhineland was fast losing its hold on Catholicism. In theNetherlands, where the persecutions of Charles the Fifth had failed tocheck the upgrowth of heresy, his successor saw Calvinism win stateafter state, and gird itself to a desperate struggle at once forreligious and for civil independence. Still farther west a suddenrevolution had won Scotland for the faith of Geneva; and a revolutionhardly less sudden, though marked with consummate subtlety, had ineffect added England to the Churches of the Reformation. Christendom infact was almost lost to the Papacy; for only two European countriesowned its sway without dispute. "There remain firm to the Pope, " wrote aVenetian ambassador to his State, "only Spain and Italy with some fewislands, and those countries possessed by your Serenity in Dalmatia andGreece. "

[Sidenote: Pius the Fifth. ]

It was at this moment of defeat that Pius the Fifth mounted the Papalthrone. His earlier life had been that of an Inquisitor; and he combinedthe ruthlessness of a persecutor with the ascetic devotion of a saint. Pius had but one end, that of reconquering Christendom, of restoringthe rebel nations to the fold of the Church, and of stamping out heresyby fire and sword. To his fiery faith every means of warfare seemedhallowed by the sanctity of his cause. The despotism of the prince, thepassion of the populace, the sword of the mercenary, the very dagger ofthe assassin, were all seized without scruple as weapons in the warfareof God. The ruthlessness of the Inquisitor was turned into theworld-wide policy of the Papacy. When Philip doubted how to deal withthe troubles in the Netherlands, Pius bade him deal with them by forceof arms. When the Pope sent soldiers of his own to join the Catholics inFrance he bade their leader "slay instantly whatever heretic fell intohis hands. " The massacres of Alva were rewarded by a gift of theconsecrated hat and sword, as the massacre of St. Bartholomew was hailedby the successor of Pius with a solemn thanksgiving. The force of thePope's effort lay in its concentration of every energy on a single aim. Rome drew in fact a new power from the ruin of her schemes of secularaggrandizement. The narrower hopes and dreads which had sprung fromtheir position as Italian princes told no longer on the Popes. All hopeof the building up of a wider princedom passed away. The hope of drivingthe stranger from Italy came equally to an end. But on the other handRome was screened from the general conflicts of the secular powers. Itwas enabled to be the friend of every Catholic State, and that at amoment when every Catholic State saw in the rise of Calvinism a newcause for seeking its friendship. Calvinism drew with it a thirst forpolitical liberty, and religious revolution became the prelude topolitical revolution. From this moment therefore the cause of the Papacybecame the cause of kings, and a craving for self-preservation ralliedthe Catholic princes round the Papal throne. The same dread of utterruin rallied round it the Catholic Church. All strife, all controversywas hushed in the presence of the foe. With the close of the Council ofTrent came a unity of feeling and of action such as had never been seenbefore. Faith was defined. The Papal authority stood higher than ever. The bishops owned themselves to be delegates of the Roman See. Theclergy were drawn together into a disciplined body by the institution ofseminaries. The new religious orders carried everywhere the watchword ofimplicit obedience. As the heresy of Calvin pressed on to one victoryafter another, the Catholic world drew closer and closer round thestandard of Rome. 

[Sidenote: England and Rome. ]

What raised the warfare of Pius into grandeur was the scale upon whichhe warred. His hand was everywhere throughout Christendom. Under himRome became the political as well as the religious centre of WesternEurope. The history of the Papacy widened again, as in the Middle Ages, into the history of the world. Every scheme of the Catholic resistancewas devised or emboldened at Rome. While her Jesuit emissaries won a newhold in Bavaria and Southern Germany, rolled back the tide ofProtestantism in the Rhineland, and by school and pulpit laboured tore-Catholicize the Empire, Rome spurred Mary Stuart to the Darnleymarriage, urged Philip to march Alva on the Netherlands, broke up thereligious truce which Catharine had won for France, and celebrated withsolemn pomp the massacre of the Huguenots. England above all was theobject of Papal attack. The realm of Elizabeth was too important for thegeneral Papal scheme of reconquering Christendom to be lightly let go. England alone could furnish a centre to the reformed communions ofWestern Europe. The Lutheran states of North Germany were too small. TheScandinavian kingdoms were too remote. Scotland hardly ranked as yet asa European power. Even if France joined the new movement her influencewould long be neutralized by the strife of the religious parties withinher pale. But England was to outer seeming a united realm. Hergovernment held the country firmly in hand. Whether as an island or fromher neighbourhood to the chief centres of the religious strife, she wasso placed as to give an effective support to the new opinions. Protestant refugees found a safe shelter within her bounds. Her tradingships diffused heresy in every port they touched at. She could at littlerisk feed the Calvinistic revolution in France or the Netherlands. Inthe great battle of the old faith and the new England was thus the keyof the reformed position. With England Protestant the fight againstProtestantism could only be a slow and doubtful one. On the other hand aCatholic England would render religious revolution in the west all buthopeless. Hand in hand with Philip religiously, as she already waspolitically, the great island might turn the tide of the mighty conflictwhich had so long gone against the Papacy. 

[Sidenote: Philip and the Netherlands. ]

It was from this sense of the importance of England in the world-widestruggle which it was preparing that Rome had watched with such afeverish interest the effort of Mary Stuart. Her victory would havegiven to Catholicism the two westernmost realms of the Reformation, England and Scotland; it would have aided it in the reconquest of theNetherlands and of France. No formal bond indeed, such as the Calvinistsbelieved to exist, bound Mary and Pius and Philip and Catharine ofMedicis together in a vast league for the restoration of the Faith;their difference of political aim held France and Spain obstinatelyapart both from each other and from Mary Stuart, and it was only at theVatican that the great movement was conceived as a whole. Butpractically the policy of Mary and Philip worked forward to the sameend. While the Scottish Queen prepared her counter-reformation inEngland and Scotland, Philip was gathering a formidable host which wasto suppress Calvinism as well as liberty in the Netherlands. Of theseventeen provinces which Philip had inherited from his father, Charles, in this part of his dominions, each had its own constitution, its owncharter and privileges, its own right of taxation. All clung to theirlocal independence; and resistance to any projects of centralization wascommon to the great nobles and the burghers of the towns. Philip on theother hand was resolute to bring them by gradual steps to the same levelof absolute subjection and incorporation in the body of the monarchy asthe provinces of Castille. The Netherlands were the wealthiest part ofhis dominions. Flanders alone contributed more to his exchequer than allhis kingdoms in Spain. With a treasury drained by a thousand schemesPhilip longed to have this wealth at his unfettered disposal, while hisabsolutism recoiled from the independence of the States, and his bigotrydrove him to tread their heresy under foot. Policy backed the impulsesof greed and fanaticism. In the strangely-mingled mass of the Spanishmonarchy, the one bond which held together its various parts, divided asthey were by blood, by tradition, by tongue, was their common faith. Philip was in more than name the "Catholic King. " Catholicism aloneunited the burgher of the Netherlands to the nobles of Castille, orMilanese and Neapolitan to the Aztec of Mexico and Peru. With such anempire heresy meant to Philip political chaos, and the heresy of Calvin, with its ready organization and its doctrine of resistance, promised notonly chaos but active revolt. In spite therefore of the growingdiscontent in the Netherlands, in spite of the alienation of the noblesand the resistance of the Estates, he clung to a system of governmentwhich ignored the liberties of every province, and to a persecutionwhich drove thousands of skilled workmen to the shores of England. 

[Sidenote: Alva. ]

At last the general discontent took shape in open resistance. Thesuccess of the French Huguenots in wresting the free exercise of theirfaith from the monarchy told on the Calvinists of the Low Countries. Thenobles gathered in leagues. Riots broke out in the towns. The churcheswere sacked, and heretic preachers preached in the open fields tomultitudes who carried weapons to protect them. If Philip's system wasto continue it must be by force of arms, and the king seized thedisturbances as a pretext for dealing a blow he had long meditated atthe growing heresy of this portion of his dominions. Pius the Fifthpressed him to deal with heresy by the sword, and in 1567 an army of tenthousand men gathered in Italy under the Duke of Alva for a march onthe Low Countries. Had Alva reached the Netherlands while Mary was stillin the flush of her success, it is hard to see how England could havebeen saved. But again Fortune proved Elizabeth's friend. The passion ofMary shattered the hopes of Catholicism, and at the moment when Alva ledhis troops over the Alps Mary passed a prisoner within the walls ofLochleven. Alone however the Duke was a mighty danger: nor could anyevent have been more embarrassing to Elizabeth than his arrival in theNetherlands in the autumn of 1567. The terror he inspired hushed allthought of resistance. The towns were occupied. The heretics wereburned. The greatest nobles were sent to the block or driven, likeWilliam of Orange, from the country. The Netherlands lay at Philip'sfeet; and Alva's army lowered like a thundercloud over the ProtestantWest. 

[Sidenote: Mary's abdication. ]

The triumph of Catholicism and the presence of a Catholic army in acountry so closely connected with England at once revived the dreams ofa Catholic rising against Elizabeth's throne, while the news of Alva'smassacres stirred in every one of her Protestant subjects a thirst forrevenge which it was hard to hold in check. Yet to strike a blow at Alvawas impossible. Antwerp was the great mart of English trade, and astoppage of the trade with Flanders, such as war must bring about, wouldhave broken half the merchants in London. Elizabeth could only look onwhile the Duke trod resistance and heresy under foot, and prepared inthe Low Countries a securer starting-point for his attack onProtestantism in the West. With Elizabeth, indeed, or her cautious andmoderate Lutheranism Philip had as yet little will to meddle, howeverhotly Rome might urge him to attack her. He knew that the Calvinism ofthe Netherlands looked for support to the Calvinism of France; and assoon as Alva's work was done in the Low Countries the Duke had orders toaid the Guises in assailing the Huguenots. But the terror of theHuguenots precipitated the strife, and while Alva was still busy withattacks from the patriots under the princes of the house of Orange afresh rising in France woke the civil war at the close of 1567. Catharine lulled this strife for the moment by a new edict oftoleration; but the presence of Alva was stirring hopes and fears inother lands than France. Between Mary Stuart and the lords who hadimprisoned her in Lochleven reconciliation was impossible. Elizabeth, once lightened of her dread from Mary, would have been content with arestoration of Murray's actual supremacy. Already alarmed by Calvinisticrevolt against monarchy in France, she was still more alarmed by thesuccess of Calvinistic revolt against monarchy in Scotland; and thepresence of Alva in the Netherlands made her anxious above all to settlethe troubles in the north and to devise some terms of reconciliationbetween Mary and her subjects. But it was in vain that she demanded therelease of the Queen. The Scotch Protestants, with Knox at their head, called loudly for Mary's death, as a murderess. If the lords shrank fromsuch extremities, they had no mind to set her free and to risk theirheads for Elizabeth's pleasure. As the price of her life they forcedMary to resign her crown in favour of her child, and to name Murray, whowas now returning from France, as regent during his minority. In July1567 the babe was solemnly crowned as James the Sixth. 

[Sidenote: Langside. ]

But Mary had only consented to abdicate because she felt sure of escape. With an infant king the regency of Murray promised to be a virtualsovereignty; and the old factions of Scotland woke again into life. Thehouse of Hamilton, which stood next in succession to the throne, becamethe centre of a secret league which gathered to it the nobles andprelates who longed for the re-establishment of Catholicism, and who sawin Alva's triumph a pledge of their own. The regent's difficulties weredoubled by the policy of Elizabeth. Her wrath at the revolt of subjectsagainst their Queen, her anxiety that "by this example none of her ownbe encouraged, " only grew with the disregard of her protests andthreats. In spite of Cecil she refused to recognize Murray's government, renewed her demands for the Queen's release, and encouraged theHamiltons in their designs of freeing her. She was in fact stirred bymore fears than her dread of Calvinism and of Calvinistic liberty. Philip's triumph in the Netherlands and the presence of his army acrossthe sea was filling the Catholics of the northern counties with newhopes, and scaring Elizabeth from any joint action with the ScotchCalvinists which might call the Spanish forces over sea. She evenstooped to guard against any possible projects of Philip by freshnegotiations for a marriage with one of the Austrian archdukes. But thenegotiations proved as fruitless as before, while Scotland moved boldlyforward in its new career. A Parliament which assembled at the openingof 1568 confirmed the deposition of the Queen, and made Catholic worshippunishable with the pain of death. The triumph of Calvinistic bigotryonly hastened the outbreak which had long been preparing, and at thebeginning of May an escape of Mary from her prison was a signal forcivil war. Five days later six thousand men gathered round her atHamilton, and Argyle joined the Catholic lords who rallied to herbanner. The news found different welcomes at the English court. Elizabeth at once offered to arbitrate between Mary and her subjects. Cecil, on the other hand, pressed Murray to strike quick and hard. Butthe regent needed little pressing. Surprised as he was, Murray wasquickly in arms; and cutting off Mary's force as it moved on Dumbarton, he brought it to battle at Langside on the Clyde on the thirteenth ofMay, and broke it in a panic-stricken rout. Mary herself, after afruitless effort to reach Dumbarton, fled southwards to find a refuge inGalloway. A ride of ninety miles brought her to the Solway, but shefound her friends wavering in her support and ready to purchase pardonfrom Murray by surrendering her into the regent's hands. From thatmoment she abandoned all hope from Scotland. She believed that Elizabethwould in the interests of monarchy restore her to the throne; andchanging her designs with the rapidity of genius, she pushed in a lightboat across the Solway, and was safe before the evening fell in thecastle of Carlisle. 

[Sidenote: Mary in England. ]

The presence of Alva in Flanders was a far less peril than the presenceof Mary in Carlisle. To restore her, as she demanded, by force of armswas impossible. If Elizabeth was zealous for the cause of monarchy, shehad no mind to crush the nobles who had given her security against herrival simply to seat that rival triumphantly on the throne. On the otherhand to retain her in England was to furnish a centre for revolt. Maryherself indeed threatened that "if they kept her prisoner they shouldhave enough to do with her. " If the Queen would not aid in herrestoration to the throne, she demanded a free passage to France. Butcompliance with such a request would have given the Guises a terribleweapon against Elizabeth and have ensured French intervention inScotland. For a while Elizabeth hoped to bring Murray to receive Maryback peaceably as Queen. But the regent refused to sacrifice himself andthe realm to Elizabeth's policy. When the Duke of Norfolk with othercommissioners appeared at York to hold a formal enquiry into Mary'sconduct with a view to her restoration, Murray openly charged the Queenwith a share in the murder of her husband, and he produced letters fromher to Bothwell, which if genuine substantiated the charge. Till Marywas cleared of guilt, Murray would hear nothing of her return, and Maryrefused to submit to such a trial as would clear her. So eager howeverwas Elizabeth to get rid of the pressing peril of her presence inEngland that Mary's refusal to submit to any trial only drove her tofresh devices for her restoration. She urged upon Murray the suppressionof the graver charges, and upon Mary the leaving Murray in actualpossession of the royal power as the price of her return. Neitherhowever would listen to terms which sacrificed both to Elizabeth'sself-interest. The Regent persisted in charging the Queen with murderand adultery. Mary refused either to answer or to abdicate in favour ofher infant son. 

[Sidenote: Elizabeth's difficulties. ]

The triumph indeed of her bold policy was best advanced, as the Queen ofScots had no doubt foreseen, by simple inaction. Her misfortunes, herresolute denials, were gradually wiping away the stain of her guilt andwinning back the Catholics of England to her cause. Already there wereplans for her marriage with Norfolk, the head of the English nobles, asfor her marriage with the heir of the Hamiltons. The first match mightgive her the English crown, the second could hardly fail to restore herto the crown of Scotland. In any case her presence, rousing as it didfresh hopes of a Catholic reaction, put pressure on her sister Queen. Elizabeth "had the wolf by the ears, " while the fierce contest whichAlva's presence roused in France and in the Netherlands was firing thetemper of the two great parties in England. In the Court, as in thecountry, the forces of progress and of resistance stood at last in sharpand declared opposition to each other. Cecil at the head of theProtestants demanded a general alliance with the Protestant churchesthroughout Europe, a war in the Low Countries against Alva, and theunconditional surrender of Mary to her Scotch subjects for thepunishment she deserved. The Catholics on the other hand, backed by themass of the Conservative party with the Duke of Norfolk at its head, andsupported by the wealthier merchants who dreaded the ruin of the Flemishtrade, were as earnest in demanding the dismissal of Cecil and theProtestants from the council-board, a steady peace with Spain, and, though less openly, a recognition of Mary's succession. Elizabeth wasdriven to temporize as before. She refused Cecil's counsels; but shesent money and arms to Condé, and hampered Alva by seizing treasure onits way to him, and by pushing the quarrel even to a temporary embargoon shipping either side the sea. She refused the counsels of Norfolk;but she would hear nothing of a declaration of war, or give anyjudgement on the charges against the Scottish Queen, or recognize theaccession of James in her stead. 

[Sidenote: Norfolk. ]

But to the pressure of Alva and Mary was now added the pressure of Rome. With the triumph of Philip in the Netherlands and of the Guises inFrance Pius the Fifth held that the time had come for a decisive attackon Elizabeth. If Philip held back from playing the champion ofCatholicism, if even the insults to Alva failed to stir him to activehostility, Rome could still turn to its adherents within the realm. Piushad already sent two envoys in 1567 with powers to absolve the EnglishCatholics who had attended church from their schism, but to withdraw allhope of future absolution for those who continued to conform. The resultof their mission however had been so small that it was necessary to gofurther. The triumph of Alva in the Netherlands, the failure of thePrince of Orange in an attempt to rescue them from the Spanish army, theterror-struck rising of the French Huguenots, the growing embarrassmentsof Elizabeth both at home and abroad, seemed to offer Rome itsopportunity of delivering a final blow. In February 1569 the Queen wasdeclared a heretic by a Bull which asserted in their strongest form thePapal claims to a temporal supremacy over princes. As a heretic andexcommunicate, she was "deprived of her pretended right to the saidkingdom, " her subjects were absolved from allegiance to her, commanded"not to dare to obey her, " and anathematized if they did obey. The Bullwas not as yet promulgated, but Dr. Morton was sent into England todenounce the Queen as fallen from her usurped authority, and to promisethe speedy issue of the sentence of deposition. The religious pressurewas backed by political intrigue. Ridolfi, an Italian merchant settledin London, who had received full powers and money from Rome, knit thethreads of a Catholic revolt in the north, and drew the Duke of Norfolkinto correspondence with Mary Stuart. The Duke was the son of LordSurrey and grandson of the Norfolk who had headed the Conservative partythrough the reign of Henry the Eighth. Like the rest of the Englishpeers, he had acquiesced in the religious compromise of the Queen. Itwas as a Protestant that the more Conservative among his fellow-noblesnow supported a project for his union with the Scottish Queen. With anEnglish and Protestant husband it was thought that Murray and the lordsmight safely take back Mary to the Scottish throne, and England againaccept her as the successor to her crown. But Norfolk was not contentedwith a single game. From the Pope and Philip he sought aid in hismarriage-plot as a Catholic at heart, whose success would bring about arestoration of Catholicism throughout the realm. With the Catholic lordshe plotted the overthrow of Cecil and the renewal of friendship withSpain. To carry out schemes such as these however required a temper ofsubtler and bolder stamp than the Duke's: Cecil found it easy by playingon his greed to part him from his fellow-nobles; his marriage with Maryas a Protestant was set aside by Murray's refusal to accept her asQueen; and Norfolk promised to enter into no correspondence with MaryStuart but with Elizabeth's sanction. 

[Sidenote: The Catholic Earls. ]

The hope of a crown, whether in Scotland or at home, proved too greathowever for his good faith, and Norfolk was soon wrapped anew in the netof papal intrigue. But it was not so much on Norfolk that Rome countedas on the nobles of the North. The three great houses of the northernborder--the Cliffords of Cumberland, the Nevilles of Westmoreland, thePercies of Northumberland--had remained Catholics at heart; and from themoment of Mary's entrance into England they had been only waiting for asignal of revolt. They looked for foreign aid, and foreign aid nowseemed assured. In spite of Elizabeth's help the civil war in Francewent steadily against the Huguenots. In March 1569 their army wasrouted at Jarnac, and their leader, Condé, left dead on the field. Thejoy with which the victory was greeted by the English Catholics sprangfrom a consciousness that the victors looked on it as a prelude to theirattack on Protestantism across the sea. No sooner indeed was thistriumph won than Mary's uncle, the Cardinal of Lorraine, as the head ofthe house of Guise, proposed to Philip to complete the victory ofCatholicism by uniting the forces of France and Spain against Elizabeth. The moment was one of peril such as England had never known. Norfolk wasstill pressing forward to a marriage with Mary; he was backed by thesecond great Conservative peer, Lord Arundel, and supported by a largepart of the nobles. The Northern Earls with Lords Montague and Lumleyand the head of the great house of Dacres were ready to take up arms, and sure--as they believed--of the aid of the Earls of Derby andShrewsbury. Both parties of plotters sought Philip's sanction and placedthemselves at his disposal. A descent of French and Spanish troops wouldhave called both to the field. But much as Philip longed for a triumphof religion he had no mind for a triumph of France. France now meant theGuises, and to set their niece Mary Stuart on the English throne was toensure the close union of England and the France they ruled. Though hesuffered Alva therefore to plan the despatch of a force from theNetherlands should a Catholic revolt prove successful, he refused tojoin in a French attack. 

[Sidenote: The revolt of the Earls. ]

But the Papal exhortations and the victories of the Guises did theirwork without Philip's aid. The conspirators of the north only waited forNorfolk's word to rise in arms. But the Duke dissembled and delayed, while Elizabeth, roused at last to her danger, struck quick and hard. Mary Stuart was given in charge to the Puritan Lord Huntingdon. TheEarls of Arundel and Pembroke, with Lord Lumley, were secured. Norfolkhimself, summoned peremptorily to court, dared not disobey; and foundhimself at the opening of October a prisoner in the Tower. The moredangerous plot was foiled, for whatever were Norfolk's own designs, mostof his Conservative partizans were good Protestants, and their aim ofsecuring the succession by a Protestant marriage for Mary was one withwhich the bulk of the nation would have sympathized. But the Catholicplot remained; and in October the hopes of its leaders were stirredafresh by a new defeat of the Huguenots at Montcontour; while a Papalenvoy, Dr. Morton, goaded them to action by news that a Bull ofDeposition was ready at Rome. At last a summons to court tested theloyalty of the Earls, and on the tenth of November 1569 Northumberlandgave the signal for a rising. He was at once joined by the Earl ofWestmoreland, and in a few days the Earls entered Durham and called theNorth to arms. They shrank from an open revolt against the Queen, anddemanded only the dismissal of her ministers and the recognition ofMary's right of succession. But with these demands went a pledge tore-establish the Catholic religion. The Bible and Prayer-Book were tornto pieces, and Mass said once more at the altar of Durham Cathedral, before the Earls pushed on to Doncaster with an army which soon swelledto thousands of men. Their cry was "to reduce all causes of religion tothe old custom and usage"; and the Earl of Sussex, her general in theNorth, wrote frankly to Elizabeth that "there were not ten gentlemen inYorkshire that did allow [approve] her proceedings in the cause ofreligion. " But he was as loyal as he was frank, and held York stoutlywhile the Queen ordered Mary's hasty removal to a new prison atCoventry. The storm however broke as rapidly as it had gathered. LeonardDacres held aloof. Lord Derby proved loyal. The Catholic lords of thesouth refused to stir without help from Spain. The mass of the Catholicsthroughout the country made no sign; and the Earls no sooner haltedirresolute in presence of this unexpected inaction than their armycaught the panic and dispersed. Northumberland and Westmoreland fled inthe middle of December, and were followed in their flight by LeonardDacres of Naworth, while their miserable adherents paid for theirdisloyalty in bloodshed and ruin. 

[Sidenote: The Bull of Deposition. ]

The ruthless measures of repression which followed this revolt were thefirst breach in the clemency of Elizabeth's rule. But they were signs ofterror which were not lost on her opponents. It was the general inactionof the Catholics which had foiled the hopes of the northern Earls; andPope Pius resolved to stir them to activity by publishing in March 1570the Bull of Excommunication and Deposition which had been secretlyissued in the preceding year. In his Bull Pius declared that Elizabethhad forfeited all right to the throne, released her subjects from theiroath of allegiance to her, and forbade her nobles and people to obey heron pain of excommunication. In spite of the efforts of the Government toprevent the entry of any copies of this sentence into the realm the Bullwas found nailed in a spirit of ironical defiance on the Bishop ofLondon's door. Its effect was far from being what Rome desired. With theexception of one or two zealots the English Catholics treated the Bullas a dead letter. The duty of obeying the Queen seemed a certain thingto them, while that of obeying the Pope in temporal matters was deniedby most and doubted by all. Its spiritual effect indeed was greater. TheBull dealt a severe blow to the religious truce which Elizabeth hadsecured. In the North the Catholics withdrew stubbornly from thenational worship, and everywhere throughout the realm an increase in thenumber of recusants showed the obedience of a large body of Englishmento the Papal command. To the minds of English statesmen such anobedience to the Papal bidding in matters of religion only heralded anobedience to the Papal bidding in matters of state. In issuing the Bullof Deposition Pius had declared war upon the Queen. He had threatenedher throne. He had called on her subjects to revolt. If his secretpressure had stirred the rising of the Northern Earls, his opendeclaration of war might well rouse a general insurrection of Catholicsthroughout the realm, while the plots of his agents threatened theQueen's life. 

[Sidenote: The Ridolfi plot. ]

How real was the last danger was shown at this moment by the murder ofMurray. In January 1570 a Catholic partizan, James Hamilton, shot theRegent in the streets of Linlithgow; and Scotland plunged at once intowar between the adherents of Mary and those of her son. The blow brokeElizabeth's hold on Scotland at a moment when conspiracy threatened herhold on England itself. The defeat of the Earls had done little to checkthe hopes of the Roman court. Its intrigues were busier than ever. Atthe close of the rising Norfolk was released from the Tower, but he wasno sooner free than he renewed his correspondence with the ScottishQueen. Mary consented to wed him, and the Duke, who still professedhimself a Protestant, trusted to carry the bulk of the English nobleswith him in pressing a marriage which seemed to take Mary out of thehands of French and Catholic intriguers, to make her an Englishwoman, and to settle the vexed question of the succession to the throne. But itwas only to secure this general adhesion that Norfolk delayed to declarehimself a Catholic. He sought the Pope's approval of his plans, andappealed to Philip for the intervention of a Spanish army. At the headof this appeal stood the name of Mary; while Norfolk's name was followedby those of many lords of "the old blood, " as the prouder peers styledthemselves. The significance of the request was heightened by gatheringsof Catholic refugees at Antwerp in the heart of Philip's dominions inthe Low Countries round the fugitive leaders of the Northern Revolt. Theintervention of the Pope was brought to quicken Philip's slow designs. Ridolfi, as the agent of the conspirators, appeared at Rome and laidbefore Pius their plans for the marriage of Norfolk and Mary, the unionof both realms under the Duke and the Scottish Queen, and the seizure ofElizabeth and her counsellors at one of the royal country houses. Piusbacked the project with his warm approval, and Ridolfi hurried to securethe needful aid from Philip of Spain. 

[Sidenote: Norfolk's death. ]

Enough of these conspiracies was discovered to rouse a fresh ardour inthe menaced Protestants. While Ridolfi was negotiating at Rome andMadrid, the Parliament met to pass an act of attainder against theNorthern Earls, and to declare the introduction of Papal Bulls into thecountry an act of high treason. It was made treason to call the Queenheretic or schismatic, or to deny her right to the throne. The risingindignation against Mary, as "the daughter of Debate, who discord felldoth sow, " was shown in a statute, which declared any person who laidclaim to the Crown during the Queen's lifetime incapable of eversucceeding to it. The disaffection of the Catholics was met by imposingon all magistrates and public officers the obligation of subscribing tothe Articles of Faith, a measure which in fact transferred theadministration of justice and public order to their Protestantopponents, by forbidding conversions to Catholicism or the bringing intoEngland of Papal absolutions or objects consecrated by the Pope. Meanwhile Ridolfi was struggling in vain against Philip's caution. Theking made no objection to the seizure or assassination of Elizabeth. Thescheme secured his fullest sympathy; no such opportunity, he held, wouldever offer again; and he longed to finish the affair quickly beforeFrance should take part in it. But he could not be brought to sendtroops to England before Elizabeth was secured. If troops were oncesent, the failure of the plot would mean war with England; and withfresh troubles threatening Alva's hold on the Netherlands Philip had nomind to risk an English war. Norfolk on the other hand had no mind torisk a rising before Spanish troops were landed, and Ridolfi's effortsfailed to bring either Duke or king to action. But the clue to thesenegotiations had long been in Cecil's hands; and at the opening of 1571Norfolk's schemes of ambition were foiled by his arrest. He wasconvicted of treason, and after a few months' delay executed at theTower. 

[Sidenote: Elizabeth and England. ]

With the death of Norfolk and that of Northumberland, who followed himto the scaffold, the dread of revolt within the realm which had so longhung over England passed quietly away. The failure of the two attemptsnot only showed the weakness and disunion of the party of discontent andreaction, but it revealed the weakness of all party feeling before therise of a national temper which was springing naturally out of the peaceof Elizabeth's reign, and which a growing sense of danger to the orderand prosperity around it was fast turning into a passionate loyalty tothe Queen. It was not merely against Cecil's watchfulness or Elizabeth'scunning that Mary and Philip and the Percies dashed themselves in vain;it was against a new England. And this England owed its existence to theQueen. "I have desired, " Elizabeth said proudly to her Parliament, "tohave the obedience of my subjects by love, and not by compulsion. "Through the fourteen years which had passed since she mounted thethrone, her subjects' love had been fairly won by justice and goodgovernment. The current of political events had drawn men's eyes chieflyto the outer dangers of the country, to the policy of Philip and ofRome, to the revolutions of France, to the pressure from Mary Stuart. Noone had watched these outer dangers so closely as the Queen. But buriedas she seemed in foreign negotiations and intrigues, Elizabeth was aboveall an English sovereign. She devoted herself ably and energetically tothe task of civil administration. At the first moment of relief from thepressure of outer troubles, after the treaty of Edinburgh, she faced thetwo main causes of internal disorder. The debasement of the coinage wasbrought to an end in 1560. In 1561 a commission was issued to enquireinto the best means of facing the problem of social pauperism. 

[Sidenote: The Poor Laws. ]

Time, and the natural developement of new branches of industry, wereworking quietly for the relief of the glutted labour market; but a vastmass of disorder still existed in England, which found a constant groundof resentment in the enclosures and evictions which accompanied theprogress of agricultural change. It was on this host of "broken men"that every rebellion could count for support; their mere existence wasan encouragement to civil war; while in peace their presence was felt inthe insecurity of life and property, in bands of marauders which heldwhole counties in terror, and in "sturdy beggars" who strippedtravellers on the road. Under Elizabeth as under her predecessors theterrible measures of repression, whose uselessness More had in vainpointed out, went pitilessly on. We find the magistrates ofSomersetshire capturing a gang of a hundred at a stroke, hanging fiftyat once on the gallows, and complaining bitterly to the Council of thenecessity for waiting till the Assizes before they could enjoy thespectacle of the fifty others hanging beside them. But the Governmentwere dealing with the difficulty in a wiser and more effectual way. Theold powers to enforce labour on the idle and settlement on the vagrantclass which had been given by statutes of Henry the Eighth werecontinued; and each town and parish was held responsible for the reliefof its indigent and disabled poor, as well as for the employment ofable-bodied mendicants. But a more efficient machinery was graduallydevised for carrying out the relief and employment of the poor. Fundsfor this purpose had been provided by the collection of alms in church;but by an Act of 1562 the mayor of each town and the churchwardens ofeach country parish were directed to draw up lists of all inhabitantsable to contribute to such a fund, and on a persistent refusal thejustices in sessions were empowered to assess the offender at a fittingsum and to enforce its payment by imprisonment. 

The principles embodied in these measures, that of local responsibilityfor local distress, and that of a distinction between the pauper and thevagabond, were more clearly defined in a statute of 1572. By this Actthe justices in the country districts, and mayors and other officers intowns, were directed to register the impotent poor, to settle them infitting habitations and to assess all inhabitants for their support. Overseers were appointed to enforce and superintend their labour, forwhich wool, hemp, flax, or other stuff was to be provided at the expenseof the inhabitants; and houses of correction were established in everycounty for obstinate vagabonds or for paupers refusing to work at theoverseer's bidding. A subsequent Act transferred to these overseers thecollection of the poor rate, and powers were given to bind poor childrenas apprentices, to erect buildings for the improvident poor, and toforce the parents and children of such paupers to maintain them. Thewell-known Act which matured and finally established this system, the43rd of Elizabeth, remained the base of our system ofpauper-administration until a time within the recollection of livingmen. Whatever flaws a later experience has found in these measures, their wise and humane character formed a striking contrast to thelegislation which had degraded our statute-book from the date of theStatute of Labourers; and their efficacy at the time was proved by thecessation of the social danger against which they were intended toprovide. 

[Sidenote: Growth of wealth. ]

Its cessation however was owing, not merely to law, but to the naturalgrowth of wealth and industry throughout the country. A middle class ofwealthier landowners and merchants was fast rising into importance. "Thewealth of the meaner sort, " wrote one to Cecil, "is the very fount ofrebellion, the occasion of their indolence, of the contempt of thenobility, and of the hatred they have conceived against them. " But Ceciland his mistress could watch the upgrowth of national wealth with coolereyes. In the country its effect was to undo much of the evil which thediminution of small holdings had done. Whatever social embarrassment itmight bring about, the revolution in agriculture which Latimer deploredundoubtedly favoured production. Not only was a larger capital broughtto bear upon the land, but the mere change in the system of cultivationintroduced a taste for new and better modes of farming; the breed ofhorses and of cattle was improved, and a far greater use made of manureand dressings. One acre under the new system produced, it was said, asmuch as two under the old. As a more careful and constant cultivationwas introduced, a greater number of hands came to be required on everyfarm; and much of the surplus labour which had been flung off the landin the commencement of the new system was thus recalled to it. 

[Sidenote: Growth of manufactures. ]

A yet more efficient agency in absorbing the unemployed was found in thedevelopement of manufactures. The linen trade was as yet of small value, and that of silk-weaving was only just introduced. But the woollenmanufacture was fast becoming an important element in the nationalwealth. England no longer sent her fleeces to be woven in Flanders andto be dyed at Florence. The spinning of yarn, the weaving, fulling anddyeing of cloth, were spreading rapidly from the towns over thecountry-side. The worsted trade, of which Norwich was the centre, extended over the whole of the Eastern counties. Farmers' wives beganeverywhere to spin their wool from their own sheep's backs into a coarse"home-spun. " The South and the West however still remained the greatseats of industry and of wealth, for they were the homes of mining andmanufacturing activity. The iron manufactures were limited to Kent andSussex, though their prosperity in this quarter was already threatenedby the growing scarcity of the wood which fed their furnaces, and by theexhaustion of the forests of the Weald. Cornwall was then, as now, thesole exporter of tin; and the exportation of its copper was justbeginning. The broadcloths of the West claimed the palm among thewoollen stuffs of England. The Cinque Ports held almost a monopoly ofthe commerce of the Channel. Every little harbour from the Foreland tothe Land's End sent out its fleets of fishing boats, manned with boldseamen who were to furnish crews for Drake and the Buccaneers. NorthernEngland still lagged far behind the rest of the realm in its industrialactivity. But in the reign of Elizabeth the poverty and inaction towhich it had been doomed for so many centuries began at last to bebroken. We see the first sign of the revolution which has transferredEnglish manufactures and English wealth to the north of the Mersey andof the Humber in the mention which now meets us of the friezes ofManchester, the coverlets of York, the cutlery of Sheffield, and thecloth-trade of Halifax. 

[Sidenote: Growth of commerce. ]

The growth however of English commerce far outstripped as yet that ofits manufactures. We must not judge of it by any modern standard; forthe whole population of the country can hardly have exceeded five or sixmillions, and the burthen of all the vessels engaged in ordinarycommerce was estimated at little more than fifty thousand tons. The sizeof the vessels employed in it would nowadays seem insignificant; amodern collier brig is probably as large as the biggest merchant vesselwhich then sailed from the port of London. But it was under Elizabeththat English commerce began the rapid career of developement which hasmade us the carriers of the world. The foundation of the Royal Exchangeat London by Sir Thomas Gresham in 1566 was a mark of the commercialprogress of the time. By far the most important branch of our trade wasthe commerce with Flanders. Antwerp and Bruges were in fact the generalmarts of the world in the early part of the sixteenth century, and theannual export of English wool and drapery to their markets was estimatedat a sum of more than two millions in value. But the religious troublesof the Netherlands were already scaring capital and industry from theirolder seats. As early as 1560 Philip's envoy reported to his master that"ten thousand of your Majesty's servants in the Low Countries arealready in England with their preachers and ministers. " Alva'sseverities soon raised the number of refugees to fifty thousand; and theoutbreak of war which followed drove trade as well as traders from theLow Countries. It was with the ruin of Antwerp at the time of its siegeand capture by the Duke of Parma that the commercial supremacy of ourown capital was first established. A third of the merchants andmanufacturers of the ruined city are said to have found a refuge on thebanks of the Thames. The export trade to Flanders died away as Londondeveloped into the general mart of Europe, where the gold and sugar ofthe New World were found side by side with the cotton of India, thesilks of the East, and the woollen stuffs of England itself. 

[Sidenote: New trade routes. ]

Not only was much of the world's older trade transferred by this changeto English shores, but the burst of national vigour which characterizedthe time found new outlets for its activity. The fisheries grew more andmore valuable. Those of the Channel and the German Ocean gaveoccupation to the ports which lined the coast from Yarmouth to PlymouthHaven; while Bristol and Chester were rivals in the fisheries of Ulster. The merchant-navy of England was fast widening its sphere of commerce. The Venetian carrying fleet still touched at Southampton; but as farback as the reign of Henry the Seventh a commercial treaty had beenconcluded with Florence, and the trade with the Mediterranean whichbegan under Richard the Third constantly took a wider developement. Thetrade between England and the Baltic ports had hitherto been conductedby the Hanseatic merchants; but the extinction at this time of theirLondon depot, the Steel Yard, was a sign that this trade too had nowpassed into English hands. The growth of Boston and Hull marked anincrease of commercial intercourse with the Scandinavian states. Theprosperity of Bristol, which depended in great measure on the trade withIreland, was stimulated by the conquest and colonization of that islandat the close of the Queen's reign and the beginning of her successor's. The dream of a northern passage to India opened up a trade with a landas yet unknown. Of three ships which sailed in the reign of Mary underHugh Willoughby to discover this passage, two were found frozen withtheir crews and their hapless commander on the coast of Lapland; but thethird, under Richard Chancellor, made its way safely to the White Seaand by the discovery of Archangel created the trade with Russia. A morelucrative traffic had already begun with the coast of Guinea, to whosegold dust and ivory the merchants of Southampton owed their wealth. Theguilt of the Slave Trade which sprang out of it rests with John Hawkins. In 1562 he returned from the African coast with a cargo of negroes; andthe arms, whose grant rewarded this achievement (a demi-moor, proper, bound with a cord), commemorated his priority in the transport of slavesto the labour-fields of the New World. But the New World was alreadyfurnishing more honest sources of wealth. The voyage of Sebastian Cabotfrom Bristol to the mainland of North America had called English vesselsto the stormy ocean of the North. From the time of Henry the Eighth thenumber of English boats engaged on the cod-banks of Newfoundlandsteadily increased, and at the close of Elizabeth's reign the seamen ofBiscay found English rivals in the whale-fishery of the Polar seas. 

[Sidenote: General comfort. ]

Elizabeth lent a ready patronage to the new commerce, she shared in itsspeculations, she considered its extension and protection as a part ofpublic policy, and she sanctioned the formation of the great MerchantCompanies which could alone secure the trader against wrong or injusticein distant countries. The Merchant-Adventurers of London, a body whichhad existed long before, and had received a charter of incorporationunder Henry the Seventh, furnished a model for the Russia Company andthe Company which absorbed the new commerce to the Indies. But it wasnot wholly with satisfaction that either the Queen or her ministerswatched the social change which wealth was producing around them. Theyfeared the increased expenditure and comfort which necessarily followedit, as likely to impoverish the land and to eat out the hardihood of thepeople. "England spendeth more on wines in one year, " complained Cecil, "than it did in ancient times in four years. " In the upper classes thelavishness of a new wealth combined with a lavishness of life, a love ofbeauty, of colour, of display, to revolutionize English dress. Men "worea manor on their backs. " The Queen's three thousand robes were rivalledin their bravery by the slashed velvets, the ruffs, the jewelledpurpoints of the courtiers around her. But signs of the growing wealthwere as evident in the lower class as in the higher. The disuse ofsalt-fish and the greater consumption of meat marked the improvementwhich had taken place among the country folk. Their rough and wattledfarm-houses were being superseded by dwellings of brick and stone. Pewter was replacing the wooden trenchers of the early yeomanry, andthere were yeomen who could boast of a fair show of silver plate. It isfrom this period indeed that we can first date the rise of a conceptionwhich seems to us now a peculiarly English one, the conception ofdomestic comfort. The chimney-corner, so closely associated with familylife, came into existence with the general introduction of chimneys, afeature rare in ordinary houses at the beginning of this reign. Pillows, which had before been despised by the farmer and the trader as fit only"for women in childbed, " were now in general use. Carpets superseded thefilthy flooring of rushes. The loftier houses of the wealthiermerchants, their parapeted fronts and costly wainscoting, their cumbrousbut elaborate beds, their carved staircases, their quaintly-figuredgables, not only contrasted with the squalor which had till thencharacterized English towns, but marked the rise of a new middle classwhich was to play its part in later history. 

[Sidenote: Architectural change. ]

A transformation of an even more striking kind marked the extinction ofthe feudal character of the noblesse. Gloomy walls and serriedbattlements disappeared from the dwellings of the gentry. The strengthof the mediæval fortress gave way to the pomp and grace of theElizabethan Hall. Knole, Longleat, Burleigh and Hatfield, Hardwick andAudley End, are familiar instances of a social as well as anarchitectural change which covered England with buildings where thethought of defence was abandoned for that of domestic comfort andrefinement. We still gaze with pleasure on their picturesque line ofgables, their fretted fronts, their gilded turrets and fanciful vanes, their castellated gateways, the jutting oriels from which the greatnoble looked down on his new Italian garden, on its stately terraces andbroad flights of steps, its vases and fountains, its quaint mazes, itsformal walks, its lines of yews cut into grotesque shapes in hopelessrivalry of the cypress avenues of the South. Nor was the change lesswithin than without. The life of the Middle Ages concentrated itself inthe vast castle hall, where the baron looked from his upper dais on theretainers who gathered at his board. But the great households were fastbreaking up; and the whole feudal economy disappeared when the lord ofthe household withdrew with his family into his "parlour" or"withdrawing-room" and left the hall to his dependants. The Italianrefinement of life which told on pleasance and garden told on theremodelling of the house within, raised the principal apartments to anupper floor--a change to which we owe the grand staircases of thetime--surrounded the quiet courts by long "galleries of the presence, "crowned the rude hearth with huge chimney-pieces adorned with fauns andcupids, with quaintly-interlaced monograms and fantastic arabesques, hung tapestries on the walls, and crowded each chamber withquaintly-carved chairs and costly cabinets. The prodigal use of glassbecame a marked feature in the domestic architecture of the time, andone whose influence on the general health of the people can hardly beoverrated. Long lines of windows stretched over the fronts of the newmanor halls. Every merchant's house had its oriel. "You shall havesometimes, " Lord Bacon grumbled, "your houses so full of glass, that wecannot tell where to come to be out of the sun or the cold. "

[Sidenote: Elizabeth and English order. ]

What Elizabeth contributed to this upgrowth of national prosperity wasthe peace and social order from which it sprang. While autos-de-fé wereblazing at Rome and Madrid, while the Inquisition was driving the sobertraders of the Netherlands to madness, while Scotland was tossing withreligious strife, while the policy of Catharine secured for France but abrief respite from the horrors of civil war, England remained untroubledand at peace. Religious order was little disturbed. Recusants were few. There was little cry as yet for freedom of worship. Freedom ofconscience was the right of every man. Persecution had ceased. It wasonly as the tale of a darker past that men recalled how ten years backheretics had been sent to the fire. Civil order was even more profoundthan religious order. The failure of the northern revolt proved thepolitical tranquillity of the country. The social troubles from vagrancyand evictions were slowly passing away. Taxation was light. The countrywas firmly and steadily governed. The popular favour which had metElizabeth at her accession was growing into a passionate devotion. Ofher faults indeed England beyond the circle of her court knew little ornothing. The shiftings of her diplomacy were never seen outside theroyal closet. The nation at large could only judge her foreign policy byits main outlines, by its temperance and good sense, and above all byits success. But every Englishman was able to judge Elizabeth in herrule at home, in her love of peace, her instinct of order, the firmnessand moderation of her government, the judicious spirit of conciliationand compromise among warring factions which gave the country anunexampled tranquillity at a time when almost every other country inEurope was torn with civil war. Every sign of the growing prosperity, the sight of London as it became the mart of the world, of statelymansions as they rose on every manor, told, and justly told, in theQueen's favour. Her statue in the centre of the London Exchange was atribute on the part of the merchant class to the interest with which shewatched and shared personally in its enterprises. Her thrift won ageneral gratitude. The memories of the Terror and of the Martyrs threwinto bright relief the aversion from bloodshed which was conspicuous inher earlier reign, and never wholly wanting through its fiercer close. Above all there was a general confidence in her instinctive knowledgeof the national temper. Her finger was always on the public pulse. Sheknew exactly when she could resist the feeling of her people, and whenshe must give way before the new sentiment of freedom which her policyunconsciously fostered. But when she retreated, her defeat had all thegrace of victory; and the frankness and unreserve of her surrender wonback at once the love that her resistance lost. Her attitude at home infact was that of a woman whose pride in the well-being of her subjectsand whose longing for their favour was the one warm touch in thecoldness of her natural temper. If Elizabeth could be said to loveanything, she loved England. "Nothing, " she said to her first Parliamentin words of unwonted fire, "nothing, no worldly thing under the sun, isso dear to me as the love and goodwill of my subjects. " And the love andgoodwill which were so dear to her she fully won. 

[Sidenote: The religious truce. ]

It was this personal devotion that enabled Elizabeth to face thereligious difficulties of her reign. Formidable as these had been fromits outset, they were now growing into actual dangers. The attack of thePapacy from without had deepened the tide of religious fanaticismwithin. For the nation at large Elizabeth's system was no doubt a wiseand healthy one. Single-handed, unsupported by any of the statesmen ordivines about her, the Queen had forced on the warring religions a sortof armed truce. While the main principles of the Reformation wereaccepted the zeal of the ultra-reformers was held at bay. Outerconformity, attendance at the common prayer, was exacted from all, butchanges in ritual which would have drawn attention to the change inreligion were steadily resisted. The Bible was left open. Publicdiscussion was unrestrained. On the other hand the warfare of pulpitagainst pulpit was silenced by the licensing of preachers. In 1576Elizabeth gave the Protestant zealots a rough proof that she would notsuffer them to draw the Catholics into controversy and rouse theopposition to her system which controversy could not fail to bring withit. Parker's successor, Archbishop Grindal, who had been one of theMarian exiles and returned with much of the Calvinistic fanaticism, showed favour to a "liberty of prophesying" or preaching which wouldhave flooded the realm with Protestant disputants. Elizabeth at onceinterposed. The "liberty of prophesying" was brought to an end; even thenumber of licensed preachers was curtailed; and the Primate himself wassuspended from the exercise of his functions. 

[Sidenote: The religious change. ]

No stronger proof could have been given of the Queen's resolve to watchjealously over the religious peace of her realm. In her earlier yearssuch a resolve went fairly with the general temper of the people atlarge. The mass of Englishmen remained true in sentiment to the oldercreed. But they conformed to the new worship. They shrank from any opendefiance of the government. They shrank from reawakening the fiercestrife of religions, of calling back the horsemen of Somerset or thefires of Mary. They saw little doctrinal difference between the newprayer and the old. Above all they trusted to patience. They had seentoo many religious revolutions to believe that any revolution would belasting. They believed that the changes would be undone again as theyhad been undone before. They held that Elizabeth was only acting underpressure, and that her real inclination was towards the old religion. They trusted in Philip's influence, in an Austrian marriage, in theQueen's dread of a breach with the Papacy, in the pressure of MaryStuart. And meanwhile the years went by, and as the memories of the pastbecame dimmer, and custom laid a heavier and heavier hand on the mass ofmen, and a new generation grew up that had never known the spell ofCatholicism, the nation drifted from its older tradition and becameProtestant in its own despite. 

[Sidenote: The Puritan pressure. ]

It was no doubt a sense that the religious truce was doing their work, as well as a dread of alienating the Queen and throwing her into thehands of their opponents by a more violent pressure, which brought themore zealous reformers to acquiesce through Elizabeth's earlier years inthis system of compromise. But it was no sooner denounced by the Papacythan it was attacked by the Puritans. The rebellion of the NorthernEarls, the withdrawal from the public worship, the Bull of Deposition, roused a fanatical zeal among the Calvinistic party which predominatedin the Parliament of 1571. The movement in favour of a more pronouncedProtestantism, of a more utter break with the Catholic past, which hadslowly spread from the knot of exiles who returned to Geneva, nowgathered a new strength; and a bill was brought in for the reform of thebook of Common Prayer by the omission of the practices which displeasedthe Genevan party among the clergy. A yet closer approach to thetheocratic system of Calvin was seen when the Lower House refused itsassent to a statute that would have bound the clergy to subscribe tothose articles which recognised the royal supremacy, the power of theChurch to ordain rites and ceremonies, and the actual form of Churchgovernment. At such a crisis even the weightiest statesmen atElizabeth's council-board believed that in the contest with Rome theCrown would have to rely on Protestant zeal, and the influence of Ceciland Walsingham backed the pressure of the Parliament. But the Queen wasonly stirred to a burst of anger; she ordered Strickland, who hadintroduced the bill for liturgical reform, to appear no more inParliament, and though she withdrew the order as soon as she perceivedthe House was bent on his restoration, she would hear nothing of thechanges on which the Commons were set. 

[Sidenote: Elizabeth's resistance. ]

Her resistance showed the sagacity with which the Queen caught thegeneral temper of her people. The Catholic pressure had made it needfulto exclude Catholics from the Commons and from the council-board, but aProtestant Council and a Protestant Parliament were by no means fairrepresentatives of the general drift of English opinion. Her religiousindifference left Elizabeth a better judge of the timid and hesitatingadvance of religious sentiment, of the stubborn clinging to the past, ofthe fear of change, of the dread of revolution, which made the winningof the people as a whole to the Reformation a slow and tedious process. The Protestants were increasing in number, but they were still aminority of the nation. The zealous Catholics, who withdrew from churchat the Pope's bidding, were a still smaller minority. The bulk ofEnglishmen were striving to cling to their religious prejudice and toloyalty as well, to obey their conscience and their Queen at once, andin such a temper of men's minds any sudden and decisive change wouldhave fallen like a thunderbolt. Elizabeth had no will to follow in thetrack of Rome, and to help the Pope to drive every waverer into action. Weakened and broken as it was, she clung obstinately to her system ofcompromise; and the general opinion gave her a strength which enabledher to resist the pressure of her council and her Parliament. Sodifficult however was her position that a change might have been forcedon her had she not been aided at this moment by a group of clericalbigots who gathered under the banner of Presbyterianism. 

[Sidenote: Cartwright. ]

Of these Thomas Cartwright was the chief. He had studied at Geneva; hereturned with a fanatical faith in Calvinism, and in the system ofChurch government which Calvin had devised; and as Margaret Professor ofDivinity at Cambridge he used to the full the opportunities which hischair gave him of propagating his opinions. No leader of a religiousparty ever deserved less of after sympathy. Cartwright wasunquestionably learned and devout, but his bigotry was that of amediæval inquisitor. The relics of the old ritual, the cross in baptism, the surplice, the giving of a ring in marriage, were to him not merelydistasteful, as they were to the Puritans at large, they were idolatrousand the mark of the beast. His declamation against ceremonies andsuperstition however had little weight with Elizabeth or her Primates;what scared them was his reckless advocacy of a scheme of ecclesiasticalgovernment which placed the State beneath the feet of the Church. Theabsolute rule of bishops indeed Cartwright denounced as begotten of thedevil; but the absolute rule of Presbyters he held to be established bythe word of God. For the Church modelled after the fashion of Geneva heclaimed an authority which surpassed the wildest dreams of the mastersof the Vatican. All spiritual authority and jurisdiction, the decreeingof doctrine, the ordering of ceremonies, lay wholly in the hands of theministers of the Church. To them belonged the supervision of publicmorals. In an ordered arrangement of classes and synods, thesePresbyters were to govern their flocks, to regulate their own order, todecide in matters of faith, to administer "discipline. " Their weapon wasexcommunication, and they were responsible for its use to none butChrist. The province of the civil ruler in such a system of religion asthis was simply to carry out the decisions of the Presbyters, "to seetheir decrees executed and to punish the contemners of them. " Nor wasthis work of the civil power likely to be a light work. The spirit ofCalvinistic Presbyterianism excluded all toleration of practice orbelief. Not only was the rule of ministers to be established as the onelegal form of Church government, but all other forms, Episcopalian andSeparatist, were to be ruthlessly put down. For heresy there was thepunishment of death. Never had the doctrine of persecution been urgedwith such a blind and reckless ferocity. "I deny, " wrote Cartwright, "that upon repentance there ought to follow any pardon of death. .. . Heretics ought to be put to death now. If this be bloody and extreme, Iam content to be so counted with the Holy Ghost. " The violence oflanguage such as this was as unlikely as the dogmatism of histheological teaching to commend Cartwright's opinions to the mass ofEnglishmen. Popular as the Presbyterian system became in Scotland, itnever took any popular hold on England. It remained to the last aclerical rather than a national creed, and even in the moment of itsseeming triumph under the Commonwealth it was rejected by every part ofEngland save London and Lancashire. But the bold challenge whichCartwright's party delivered to the Government in 1572 in an "admonitionto the Parliament, " which denounced the government of bishops ascontrary to the word of God and demanded the establishment in its placeof government by Presbyters, raised a panic among English statesmen andprelates which cut off all hopes of a quiet treatment of the merelyceremonial questions which really troubled the consciences of the moreadvanced Protestants. The natural progress of opinion abruptly ceased, and the moderate thinkers who had pressed for a change in ritual whichwould have satisfied the zeal of the reformers withdrew from union witha party which revived the worst pretensions of the Papacy. 

[Sidenote: Revolt of the Netherlands. ]

But the eyes of Elizabeth as of her subjects were drawn fromdifficulties at home to the conflict which took fresh fire oversea. InEurope, as in England, the tide of religious passion which had so longbeen held in check was now breaking over the banks which restrained it;and with this outbreak of forces before which the diplomacy andintrigues of its statesmen fell powerless the political face of Europewas changed. In 1572 the power of the king of Spain had reached itsheight. The Netherlands were at his feet. In the East his trouble fromthe pressure of the Turks seemed brought to an end by a brilliantvictory at Lepanto in which his fleet with those of Venice and the Popeannihilated the fleet of the Sultan. He could throw his whole weightupon the Calvinism of the West, and above all upon France, where theGuises were fast sinking into mere partizans of Spain. The common dangerdrew France and England together; and Catharine of Medicis strove tobind the two countries in one political action by offering to Elizabeththe hand of her son Henry, the Duke of Anjou. But at this moment ofdanger the whole situation was changed by the rising of the Netherlands. Driven to despair by the greed and persecution of Alva, the LowCountries rose in a revolt which after strange alternations of fortunegave to the world the Republic of the United Provinces. Of theProtestants driven out by the Duke's cruelties, many had taken to theseas and cruised as pirates in the Channel, making war on Spanishvessels under the flag of the Prince of Orange. Like the Huguenotprivateers who had sailed under Condé's flag, these freebooters foundshelter in the English ports. But in the spring of 1572 Alva demandedtheir expulsion; and Elizabeth, unable to resist, sent them orders toput to sea. The Duke's success proved fatal to his master's cause. The"water-beggars, " a little band of some two hundred and fifty men, weredriven by stress of weather into the Meuse. There they seized the cityof Brill, and repulsed a Spanish force which strove to recapture it. Therepulse was the signal for a general rising. All the great cities ofHolland and Zealand drove out their garrisons. The northern Provinces ofGelderland, Overyssel, and Friesland, followed their example, and by thesummer half of the Low Countries were in revolt. 

[Sidenote: The massacre of St. Bartholomew. ]

A yet greater danger threatened Alva in the south, where Mons had beensurprised by Lewis of Nassau, and where the Calvinists were crying forsupport from the Huguenots of France. The opening which their risingafforded was seized by the Huguenot leaders as a political engine tobreak the power which Catharine of Medicis exercised over Charles theNinth, and to set aside her policy of religious balance by placingFrance at the head of Protestantism in the West. Weak and passionate intemper, jealous of the warlike fame which his brother, the Duke ofAnjou, had won at Montcontour, dreading above all the power of Spain andeager to grasp the opportunity of breaking it by a seizure of theNetherlands, Charles listened to the counsels of Coligni, who pressedfor war upon Philip and promised the support of the Huguenots in aninvasion of the Low Countries. Never had a fairer prospect opened toFrench ambition. But Catharine had no mind to be set aside. To her coolpolitical temper the supremacy of the Huguenots seemed as fatal to theCrown as the supremacy of the Catholics. A triumph of Calvinism in theNetherlands, wrought out by the swords of the French Calvinists, woulddecide not only the religious but the political destinies of France; andCatharine saw ruin for the monarchy in a France at once Protestant andfree. She suddenly united with the Guises and suffered them to rouse thefanatical mob of Paris, while she won back the king by picturing theroyal power as about to pass into the hands of Coligni. On thetwenty-fourth of August, St. Bartholomew's day, the plot broke out in anawful massacre. At Paris the populace murdered Coligni and almost allthe Huguenot leaders. A hundred thousand Protestants fell as the furyspread from town to town. In that awful hour Philip and Catholicism weresaved. The Spanish king laughed for joy. The new Pope, Gregory theThirteenth, ordered a _Te Deum_ to be sung. Instead of conquering theNetherlands France plunged madly back into a chaos of civil war, and theLow Countries were left to cope single-handed with the armies of Spain. 

[Sidenote: Elizabeth and the Netherlands. ]

They could look for no help from Elizabeth. Whatever enthusiasm theheroic struggle of the Prince of Orange for their liberties excitedamong her subjects, it failed to move Elizabeth even for an instant fromthe path of cold self-interest. To her the revolt of the Netherlands wassimply "a bridle of Spain, which kept war out of our own gate. " At thedarkest moment of the contest, when Alva had won back all but Hollandand Zealand and even William of Orange despaired, the Queen bent herenergies to prevent him from finding succour in France. That the LowCountries could in the end withstand Philip, neither she nor any Englishstatesmen believed. They held that the struggle must close either intheir subjection to him, or in their selling themselves for aid toFrance; and the accession of power which either result must give to oneof her two Catholic foes the Queen was eager to avert. Her plan foraverting it was by forcing the Provinces to accept the terms which werenow offered by Alva's successor, Requesens, a restoration of theirconstitutional privileges on condition of their submission to theChurch. Peace on such a footing would not only restore English commerce, which suffered from the war; it would leave the Netherlands stillformidable as a weapon against Philip. The freedom of the Provinceswould be saved; and the religious question involved in a freshsubmission to the yoke of Catholicism was one which Elizabeth wasincapable of appreciating. To her the steady refusal of William theSilent to sacrifice his faith was as unintelligible as the steadybigotry of Philip in demanding such a sacrifice. It was of moreimmediate consequence that Philip's anxiety to avoid provoking anintervention on the part of England left Elizabeth tranquil at home. Thepolicy of Requesens after Alva's departure at the close of 1573 was apolicy of pacification; and with the steady resistance of theNetherlands still foiling his efforts Philip saw that his one hope ofsuccess rested on the avoidance of intervention from without. The civilwar which followed the massacre of St. Bartholomew removed all danger ofsuch an intervention on the side of France. A weariness of religiousstrife enabled Catharine again to return to her policy of toleration inthe summer of 1573; but though the death of Charles the Ninth andaccession of his brother Henry the Third in the following year left thequeen-mother's power unbroken, the balance she preserved was toodelicate to leave room for any schemes without the realm. 

[Sidenote: England becomes Protestant. ]

English intervention it was yet more needful to avoid; and the hopes ofan attack upon England which Rome had drawn from Philip's fanaticismwere thus utterly blasted. To the fiery exhortations of Gregory theThirteenth the king only answered by counsels of delay. But Rome couldnot delay her efforts. All her hopes of recovering England lay in theCatholic sympathies of the mass of Englishmen, and every year that wentby weakened her chance of victory. The firm refusal of Elizabeth tosuffer the Puritans to break in with any violent changes on herecclesiastical policy was justified by its slow but steady success. Silently, almost unconsciously, England became Protestant as thetraditionary Catholicism which formed the religion of three-fourths ofthe people at the Queen's accession died quietly away. At the close ofher reign the only parts of England where the old faith retainedanything of its former vigour were the north and the extreme west, atthat time the poorest and least populated parts of the kingdom. One maincause of the change lay in the gradual dying out or removal of theCatholic priesthood and the growth of a new Protestant clergy whosupplied their place. The older parish priests, though they had almostto a man acquiesced in the changes of ritual and doctrine which thevarious phases of the Reformation imposed upon them, remained in heartutterly hostile to its spirit. As Mary had undone the changes of Edward, they hoped for a Catholic successor to undo the changes of Elizabeth;and in the meantime they were content to wear the surplice instead ofthe chasuble, and to use the Communion office instead of the Mass-book. But if they were forced to read the Homilies from the pulpit the spiritof their teaching remained unchanged; and it was easy for them to castcontempt on the new services, till they seemed to old-fashionedworshippers a mere "Christmas game. " But the lapse of years did its workin emptying parsonage after parsonage. In 1579 the Queen felt strongenough to enforce for the first time a general compliance with the Actof Uniformity; and the jealous supervision of Parker and the bishopsensured an inner as well as an outer conformity to the established faithin the clergy who took the place of the dying priesthood. The newparsons were for the most part not merely Protestant in belief andteaching, but ultra-Protestant. The old restrictions on the use of thepulpit were silently removed as the need for them passed away, and thezeal of the young ministers showed itself in an assiduous preachingwhich moulded in their own fashion the religious ideas of the newgeneration. But their character had even a greater influence than theirpreaching. Under Henry the priests had in large part been ignorant andsensual men; and the character of the clergy appointed by the greedyProtestants under Edward or at the opening of Elizabeth's reign was evenworse than that of their Catholic rivals. But the energy of thesuccessive Primates, seconded as it was by the general increase of zealand morality at the time, did its work; and by the close of the Queen'sreign the moral temper as well as the social character of the clergyhad greatly changed. Scholars like Hooker could now be found in theranks of the priesthood, and the grosser scandals which disgraced theclergy as a body for the most part disappeared. It was impossible for aPuritan libeller to bring against the ministers of Elizabeth's reign thecharges of drunkenness and immorality which Protestant libellers hadbeen able to bring against the priesthood of Henry's. 

[Sidenote: Patriotism and Protestantism. ]

But the influence of the new clergy was backed by a general revolutionin English thought. The grammar schools were diffusing a new knowledgeand mental energy through the middle classes and among the countrygentry. The tone of the Universities, no unfair test of the tone of thenation at large, changed wholly as the Queen's reign went on. At itsopening Oxford was "a nest of Papists" and sent its best scholars tofeed the Catholic seminaries. At its close the University was a hot-bedof Puritanism, where the fiercest tenets of Calvin reigned supreme. Themovement was no doubt hastened by the political circumstances of thetime. Under the rule of Elizabeth loyalty became more and more a passionamong Englishmen; and the Bull of Deposition placed Rome in theforefront of Elizabeth's foes. The conspiracies which festered aroundMary were laid to the Pope's charge; he was known to be pressing onFrance and on Spain the invasion and conquest of the heretic kingdom;he was soon to bless the Armada. Every day made it harder for a Catholicto reconcile Catholicism with loyalty to his Queen or devotion to hiscountry; and the mass of men, who are moved by sentiment rather than byreason, swung slowly round to the side which, whatever its religioussignificance might be, was the side of patriotism, of liberty againsttyranny, of England against Spain. A new impulse was given to thissilent drift of religious opinion by the atrocities which marked theCatholic triumph on the other side of the Channel. The horror of Alva'sbutcheries or of the massacre in Paris on St. Bartholomew's day revivedthe memories of the bloodshed under Mary. The tale of Protestantsufferings was told with a wonderful pathos and picturesqueness by JohnFoxe, an exile during the persecution; and his "Book of Martyrs, " whichwas set up by royal order in the churches for public reading, passedfrom the churches to the shelves of every English household. The tradingclasses of the towns had been the first to embrace the doctrines of theReformation, but their Protestantism became a passion as the refugees ofthe Continent brought to shop and market their tale of outrage andblood. Thousands of Flemish exiles found a refuge in the Cinque Ports, athird of the Antwerp merchants were seen pacing the new London Exchange, and a Church of French Huguenots found a home which it still retains inthe crypt of Canterbury Cathedral. 

[Sidenote: The Seminary Priests. ]

But the decay of Catholicism appealed strongly to the new spirit ofCatholic zeal which, in its despair of aid from Catholic princes, wasgirding itself for its own bitter struggle with heresy. Pius the Fifthhad now passed away, but the policy of the Papal court remainedunchanged. His successor, Gregory the Thirteenth, showed the samerestless zeal, the same world-wide energy in the work of winning backthe nations to the Catholic Church. Rome was still the centre of theCatholic crusade. It wielded material as well as spiritual arms. If thePapacy had ceased to be a military power, it remained a financial power. Taxes were multiplied, expenses reduced, estates confiscated, free townsreduced to servitude, with the one aim of enabling Gregory and hissuccessors to build up a vast system of loans which poured the wealth ofEurope into the treasury of Catholicism. It was the treasure of theVatican which financed the Catholic movement. Subsidies from the Papacyfitted out the fleet that faced the Turk at Lepanto, and gathered roundthe Guises their lance-knights from the Rhine. Papal supplies equippedexpeditions against Ireland, and helped Philip to bear the cost of theArmada. It was the Papal exchequer which supported the world-widediplomacy that was carrying on negotiations in Sweden and intrigues inPoland, goading the lukewarm Emperor to action or quickening thesluggish movements of Spain, plotting the ruin of Geneva or theassassination of Orange, stirring up revolt in England and civil war inFrance. It was the Papacy that bore the cost of the religious propagandathat was fighting its stubborn battle with Calvinist and Lutheran on theRhine and the Elbe, or sending its missionaries to win back the lostisle of the west. As early as 1568 Dr. Allen, a scholar who had beendriven from Oxford by the test prescribed in the Act of Uniformity, hadforeseen the results of the dying out of the Marian priests, and had setup a seminary at Douay to supply their place. The new college wasliberally supported by the Catholic peers, and supplied with pupils by astream of refugees from Oxford and the English grammar schools. Threeyears after its opening the college numbered a hundred and fiftymembers. It was in these "seminary priests" that Gregory the Thirteenthsaw the means of reviving Catholic zeal in England, and at the Pope'sbidding they began in 1576 to pass over to English shores. 

[Sidenote: The English Panic. ]

Few as the new-comers were at first, their presence was at once felt inthe check which it gave to the gradual reconciliation of the Catholicgentry to the English Church. No check could have been more galling toElizabeth, and her resentment was quickened by the sense of danger. Rome had set itself in the forefront of her foes. She had accepted theissue of the Bull of Deposition as a declaration of war on the part ofthe Papacy, and she viewed the Douay priests with some justice as itspolitical emissaries. The comparative security of the Catholics fromactive persecution during the early part of her reign had arisen, partlyfrom the sympathy and connivance of the gentry who acted as justices ofthe peace, and still more from her own religious indifference. But theTest Act placed the magistracy in Protestant hands; and as Elizabethpassed from indifference to suspicion and from suspicion to terror sheput less restraint on the bigotry around her. In quitting Euston Hallwhich she had visited in one of her pilgrimages the Queen gave itsmaster, young Rookwood, thanks for his entertainment and her hand tokiss. "But my Lord Chamberlain nobly and gravely understanding thatRookwood was excommunicate" for non-attendance at church "called himbefore him, demanded of him how he durst presume to attempt her royalpresence, he unfit to accompany any Christian person, forthwith saidthat he was fitter for a pair of stocks, commanded him out of Court, andyet to attend the Council's pleasure. " The Council's pleasure was seenin his committal to the town prison at Norwich, while "seven moregentlemen of worship" were fortunate enough to escape with a simplesentence of arrest at their own homes. The Queen's terror became apanic in the nation at large. The few priests who landed from Douay weremultiplied into an army of Papal emissaries despatched to sow treasonand revolt throughout the land. Parliament, which the working of theTest Act had made a wholly Protestant body, save for the presence of afew Catholics among the peers, was summoned to meet the new danger, anddeclared by formal statute the landing of these priests and theharbouring of them to be treason. The Act proved no idle menace; and theexecution of Cuthbert Mayne, a young priest who was arrested in Cornwallwith the Papal Bull of Deposition hidden about him, gave a terribleindication of the character of the struggle upon which Elizabeth wasabout to enter. 

[Sidenote: Don John of Austria. ]

The execution of Cuthbert Mayne was far from being purposed as theopening of a religious persecution. To modern eyes there is somethingeven more revolting than open persecution in a policy which brandedevery Catholic priest as a traitor and all Catholic worship asdisloyalty; but the first step towards toleration was won when the Queenrested her system of repression on purely political grounds. IfElizabeth was a persecutor, she was the first English ruler who felt thecharge of religious persecution to be a stigma on her rule. Nor can itbe denied that there was a real political danger in the newmissionaries. Allen was a restless conspirator, and the work of hisseminary priests was meant to aid a new plan of the Papacy for theconquest of England. In 1576, on the death of Requesens, the Spanishgovernor of the Low Countries, a successor was found for him in Don Johnof Austria, a natural brother of Philip, the victor of Lepanto, and themost famous general of his day. The temper of Don John was daring andambitious; his aim was a crown; and he sought in the Netherlands themeans of winning one. His ambition lent itself easily to the schemes ofMary Stuart and of Rome; and he resolved to bring about by quickconcessions a settlement in the Low Countries, to cross with the Spanishforces employed there to England, to raise the Catholics in revolt, tofree and marry Mary Stuart, and reign in her right as an English king. The plan was an able one; but it was foiled ere he reached his post. TheSpanish troops had mutinied on the death of Requesens; and their sack ofAntwerp drew the States of the Netherlands together in a "Pacificationof Ghent. " All differences of religion were set aside in a commonpurpose to drive out the stranger. Baffled as he was, the subtlety ofDon John turned even this league to account. Their demand for thewithdrawal of the Spanish troops, though fatal to Philip's interests inthe Low Countries, could be made to serve the interests of Don Johnacross the seas. In February 1577, therefore, he ratified thePacification of Ghent, consented to the maintenance of the liberties ofthe States, and engaged to withdraw the army. He stipulated only for itswithdrawal by sea, and for a delay of three months, which was needfulfor the arrangement of his descent on the English coast. Both demandshowever were refused; he was forced to withdraw his troops at once andby land, and the scheme of the Papacy found itself utterly foiled. 

[Sidenote: The Prince of Parma. ]

Secret as were the plans of Don John, Elizabeth had seen how near dangerhad drawn to her. Fortune once more proved her friend, for the effortsof Don John to bring about a reconciliation of the Netherlands provedfruitless, and negotiations soon passed again into the clash of arms. But the Queen was warned at last. On the new outbreak of war in 1577 sheallied herself with the States and sent them money and men. Such a step, though not in form an act of hostility against Philip, for the Provinceswith which she leagued herself still owned themselves as Philip'ssubjects, was a measure which proved the Queen's sense of her need ofthe Netherlands. Though she had little sympathy with their effort forfreedom, she saw in them "the one bridle to Spain to keep war out of ourown gate. " But she was to see the war drift nearer and nearer to hershores. Now that the Netherlands were all but lost Philip's slowstubborn temper strung itself to meet the greatness of the peril. TheSpanish army was reinforced; and in January 1578 it routed the army ofthe States on the field of Gemblours. The sickness and death of Don Johnarrested its progress for a few months; but his successor, Philip'snephew, Alexander Farnese, the Prince of Parma, soon proved hisgreatness whether as a statesman or a general. He seized on thedifference of faith between the Catholic and Protestant States as ameans of division. The Pacification of Ghent was broken at the openingof 1579 by the secession of the Walloon provinces of the southernborder. It was only by a new league of the seven northern provinces, where Protestantism was dominant, in the Union of Utrecht that Williamof Orange could meet Parma's stroke. But the general union of the LowCountries was fatally broken, and from this moment the ten Catholicstates passed one by one into the hands of Spain. 

[Sidenote: The Papal attack. ]

The new vigour of Philip in the West marked a change in the whole policyof Spain. Till now, in spite of endless provocations, Philip had clungto the English alliance. Fear of Elizabeth's union with France, dread ofher help to the Netherlands, had steeled him to bear patiently herdefiance of his counsels, her neglect of his threats, her seizure of histreasure, her persecution of the Catholic party which looked to him asits head. But patience had only been met by fresh attacks. The attemptof Don John had spurred Elizabeth to ally herself to France. She wasexpected every hour to marry the Duke of Anjou. She had given friendshipand aid to the revolted provinces. Above all her freebooters werecarrying war into the far Pacific, and challenging the right of Spain tothe New World of the West. Philip drifted whether he would or no into aposition of hostility. He had not forbidden the projects of Don John; heat last promised aid to the projects of Rome. In 1579 the Papacy plannedthe greatest and most comprehensive of its attacks upon Elizabeth. Ifthe Catholic powers still hesitated and delayed, Rome was resolute totry its own strength in the West. The spiritual reconciliation ofEngland was not enough. However successful the efforts of the seminarypriests might prove they would leave Elizabeth on the throne, and thereign of Elizabeth was a defeat to the Papacy. In issuing its Bull ofDeposition Rome had staked all on the ruin of the Queen, and even ifEngland became Catholic Gregory could not suffer his spiritual subjectsto obey a ruler whom his sentence had declared an unlawful possessor ofthe throne. And now that the temper of Spain promised more vigorousaction Rome could pave the way for a landing of Philip's troops bystirring up a threefold danger for Elizabeth. While fresh and morevigorous missionaries egged on the English Catholics to revolt, thePope hastened to bring about a Catholic revolution in Scotland and aCatholic insurrection in Ireland. 

[Sidenote: Ireland. ]

In Ireland Sidney's victory had been followed by ten years of peace. Hadthe land been left to itself there would have been nothing more than thecommon feuds and disturbances of the time. The policy of driving itspeople to despair by seizing their lands for English settlements hadbeen abandoned since Mary's day. The religious question had hardly anypractical existence. On the Queen's accession indeed the ecclesiasticalpolicy of the Protestants had been revived in name; Rome was againrenounced; the Act of Uniformity forced on the island the use of theEnglish Prayer-Book and compelled attendances at the services where itwas used. There was as before a general air of compliance with the law. Even in the districts without the Pale the bishops generally conformed;and the only exceptions of which we have any information were to befound in the extreme south and in the north, where resistance wasdistant enough to be safe. But the real cause of this apparentsubmission to the Act of Uniformity lay in the fact that it remained, and necessarily remained, a dead letter. It was impossible to find anyconsiderable number of English ministers, or of Irish priests acquaintedwith English. Meath was one of the most civilized dioceses of theisland, and out of a hundred curates in it hardly ten knew any tonguesave their own. The promise that the service-book should be translatedinto Irish was never carried out, and the final clause of the Act itselfauthorized the use of a Latin rendering of it till further order couldbe taken. But this, like its other provisions, was ignored; andthroughout Elizabeth's reign the gentry of the Pale went unquestioned toMass. There was in fact no religious persecution, and in the manycomplaints of Shane O'Neill we find no mention of a religious grievance. 

[Sidenote: Ireland and the Papacy. ]

But this was far from being the view of Rome or of Spain, of theCatholic missionaries, or of the Irish exiles abroad. They representedand perhaps believed the Irish people to be writhing under a religiousoppression which it was burning to shake off. They saw in the Irishloyalty to Catholicism a lever for overthrowing the heretic Queen. Stukely, an Irish refugee, had pressed on the Pope and Spain as early as1571 the policy of a descent on Ireland; and though a force gathered in1578 by the Pope for this purpose was diverted to a mad crusade againstthe Moors, his plans were carried out in 1579 by the landing of a fewsoldiers under the brother of the Earl of Desmond, James Fitzmaurice, onthe coast of Kerry. The Irish however held aloof, and Fitzmaurice fellin a skirmish; but the revolt of the Earl of Desmond gave fresh hope ofsuccess, and the rising was backed by the arrival in 1580 of twothousand Papal soldiers "in five great ships. " These mercenaries wereheaded by an Italian captain, San Giuseppe, and accompanied by a PapalLegate, the Jesuit Sanders, who brought plenary indulgence for all whojoined the sacred enterprise and threats of damnation for all whoresisted it. "What will you answer to the Pope's treatment, " ran hisletter to the Irish, "when he, bringing us the Pope's and other Catholicprinces' aid, shall charge you with the crime and pain of heretics formaintaining an heretical pretensed Queen against the public sentence ofChrist's vicar? Can she with her feigned supremacy absolve and acquityou from the Pope's excommunication and curse?" The news of the landingof this force stirred in England a Protestant frenzy that foiled thescheme for a Catholic marriage with the Duke of Anjou; while Elizabeth, panic-stricken, urged the French king to save her from Philip by aninvasion of the Netherlands. But the danger passed quickly away. ThePapal attempt ended in a miserable failure. The fort of Smerwick, inwhich the invaders entrenched themselves, was forced to surrender, andits garrison put ruthlessly to the sword. The Earl of Desmond, who afterlong indecision rose to support them, was defeated and hunted over hisown country, which the panic-born cruelty of his pursuers harried into awilderness. 

[Sidenote: The Jesuit landing. ]

Pitiless as it was, the work done in Munster spread a terror overIreland which served England in good stead when the struggle ofCatholicism culminated in the fight with the Armada; and not a chieftainstirred during that memorable year save to massacre the miserable menwho were shipwrecked along the coast of Bantry or Sligo. But the Irishrevolt did much to give fresh strength to the panic which the efforts ofthe seminary priests had roused in England. This was raised to frenzy bynews that to the efforts of the seminary priests were now added those ofJesuit missionaries. Pope Gregory had resolved to support his militaryeffort in Ireland by a fresh missionary effort in England itself. Philipwould only promise to invade England if the co-operation of itsCatholics was secured; and the aim of the new mission was to preparethem for revolt. While the force of San Giuseppe was being equipped forKerry a young convert, William Gilbert, was despatched to form aCatholic association in England; among whose members the chief wereafterwards found engaged in conspiracies for the death of Elizabeth orsharing in the Gunpowder Plot. As soon as this was organized, as many asfifty priests, if we may trust Allen's statement, were sent to landsecretly on the coast. They were headed by two men of remarkable talentsand energy. A large number of the Oxford refugees at Douay had joinedthe Order of Jesus, whose members were already famous for their blinddevotion to the will and judgements of Rome; and the two ablest and mosteloquent of these exiles, Campian, once a fellow of St. John's, andParsons, once a fellow of Balliol, were despatched in the spring of 1580as the heads of a Jesuit mission in England. Their special aim was towin the nobility and gentry to the Church, and for the moment theirsuccess seemed overwhelming. "It is supposed, " wrote Allen triumphantly, "that there are twenty thousand more Catholics this year than last. " Theeagerness shown to hear Campian was so great that in spite of therewards offered for his arrest by the Government he was able to preachwith hardly a show of concealment to a large audience at Smithfield. From London the Jesuits wandered in the disguise of captains orserving-men, sometimes even in the cassocks of the English clergy, through many of the counties; and wherever they went the zeal of theCatholic gentry revived. The list of nobles won back to the older faithby these wandering apostles was headed by the name of Lord Oxford, Cecil's own son-in-law, and the proudest among English peers. 

[Sidenote: The Protestant terror. ]

Their success in undoing the Queen's work of compromise was shown in amore public way by the growing withdrawal of the Catholics fromattendance at the worship of the English Church. It was plain that afierce religious struggle was at hand, and men felt that behind thislay a yet fiercer political struggle. Philip's hosts were looming oversea, and the horrors of foreign invasion seemed about to be added to thehorrors of civil war. The panic of the Protestants and of the Parliamentoutran even the real greatness of the danger. The little group ofmissionaries was magnified by popular fancy into a host of disguisedJesuits; and the invasion of this imaginary host was met by the seizureand torture of as many priests as the government could lay hands on, theimprisonment of recusants, the securing of the prominent Catholicsthroughout the country, and by the assembling of Parliament at theopening of 1581. An Act "to retain the Queen's Majesty's subjects in dueobedience" prohibited the saying of Mass even in private houses, increased the fine on recusants to twenty pounds a month, and enactedthat "all persons pretending to any power of absolving subjects fromtheir allegiance, or practising to withdraw them to the Romish religion, with all persons after the present session willingly so absolved orreconciled to the See of Rome, shall be guilty of High Treason. " The wayin which the vast powers conferred on the Crown by this statute wereused by Elizabeth was not only characteristic in itself, but importantas at once defining the policy to which, in theory at least, hersuccessors adhered for more than a hundred years. No layman was broughtto the bar or to the block under its provisions. The oppression of theCatholic gentry was limited to an exaction, more or less rigorous atdifferent times, of the fines for recusancy or non-attendance at publicworship. The work of bloodshed was reserved wholly for priests, andunder Elizabeth this work was done with a ruthless energy which for themoment crushed the Catholic reaction. The Jesuits were tracked bypursuivants and spies, dragged from their hiding-places, and sent inbatches to the Tower. So hot was the pursuit that Parsons was forced tofly across the Channel; while Campian was arrested in July 1581, broughta prisoner through the streets of London amidst the howling of the mob, and placed at the bar on the charge of treason. "Our religion only isour crime, " was a plea which galled his judges; but the political dangerof the Jesuit preaching was disclosed in his evasion of any direct replywhen questioned as to his belief in the validity of the excommunicationor deposition of the Queen by the Papal See, and after much hesitationhe was executed as a traitor. 

[Sidenote: The Catholic resistance. ]

Rome was now at open war with England. Even the more conservativeEnglishmen looked on the Papacy as the first among England's foes. Instriving to enforce the claims of its temporal supremacy, Rome hadroused against it that national pride which had battled with it even inthe middle ages. From that hour therefore the cause of Catholicism waslost. England became Protestant in heart and soul when Protestantismbecame identified with patriotism. But it was not to Protestantism onlythat this attitude of Rome and the policy it forced on the Governmentgave a new impulse. The death of Campian was the prelude to a steady, pitiless effort at the extermination of his class. If we adopt theCatholic estimate of the time, the twenty years which followed saw theexecution of two hundred priests, while a yet greater number perished inthe filthy and fever-stricken gaols into which they were plunged. Thework of reconciliation to Rome was arrested by this ruthless energy;but, on the other hand, the work which the priests had effected couldnot be undone. The system of quiet compulsion and conciliation to whichElizabeth had trusted for the religious reunion of her subjects wasfoiled; and the English Catholics, fined, imprisoned at every crisis ofnational danger, and deprived of their teachers by the prison and thegibbet, were severed more hopelessly than ever from the national Church. A fresh impulse was thus given to the growing current of opinion whichwas to bring England at last to recognize the right of every man tofreedom both of conscience and of worship. "In Henry's days, the fatherof this Elizabeth, " wrote a Catholic priest at this time, "the wholekingdom with all its bishops and learned men abjured their faith at oneword of the tyrant. But now in his daughter's days boys and womenboldly profess the faith before the judge, and refuse to make theslightest concession even at the threat of death. " What Protestantismhad first done under Mary, Catholicism was doing under Elizabeth. It wasdeepening the sense of personal religion. It was revealing in men whohad till now cowered before the might of kingship a power greater thanthe might of kings. It was breaking the spell which the monarchy hadlaid on the imagination of the people. The Crown ceased to seemirresistible when "boys and women" dared to resist it: it lost itsmysterious sacredness when half the nation looked on their sovereign asa heretic. The "divinity that doth hedge a king" was rudely broken inupon when Jesuit libellers were able to brand the wearer of the crownnot only as a usurper but as a profligate and abandoned woman. Themighty impulse of patriotism, of national pride, which rallied the wholepeople round Elizabeth as the Armada threatened England or Drakethreatened Spain, shielded indeed Elizabeth from much of the naturalresults of this drift of opinion. But with her death the new sentimentstarted suddenly to the front. The divine right of kings, the divineright of bishops, found themselves face to face with a passion forreligious and political liberty which had gained vigour from the dungeonof the Catholic priest as from that of the Protestant zealot. 

CHAPTER VI

ENGLAND AND SPAIN

1582-1593

[Sidenote: The popular passion. ]

The work of the Jesuits, the withdrawal of the Catholics from thechurches, the panic of the Protestants, were signs that the control ofevents was passing from the hands of statesmen and diplomatists, andthat the long period of suspense which Elizabeth's policy had won wasending in the clash of national and political passions. The risingfanaticism of the Catholic world was breaking down the caution andhesitation of Philip; while England was setting aside the balancedneutrality of her Queen and pushing boldly forward to a contest which itfelt to be inevitable. The public opinion, to which Elizabeth was sosensitive, took every day a bolder and more decided tone. Her coldindifference to the heroic struggle in Flanders was more thancompensated by the enthusiasm it roused among the nation at large. Theearlier Flemish refugees found a home in the Cinque Ports. The exiledmerchants of Antwerp were welcomed by the merchants of London. WhileElizabeth dribbled out her secret aid to the Prince of Orange, theLondon traders sent him half-a-million from their own purses, a sumequal to a year's revenue of the Crown. Volunteers stole across theChannel in increasing numbers to the aid of the Dutch, till the fivehundred Englishmen who fought in the beginning of the struggle rose to abrigade of five thousand, whose bravery turned one of the most criticalbattles of the war. Dutch privateers found shelter in English ports, andEnglish vessels hoisted the flag of the States for a dash at the Spanishtraders. Protestant fervour rose steadily among Englishmen as "the bestcaptains and soldiers" returned from the campaigns in the Low Countriesto tell of Alva's atrocities, or as privateers brought back tales ofEnglish seamen who had been seized in Spain and the New World, to lingeramidst the tortures of the Inquisition, or to die in its fires. In thepresence of this steady drift of popular passion the diplomacy ofElizabeth became of little moment. If the Queen was resolute for peace, England was resolute for war. A new daring had arisen since thebeginning of her reign, when Cecil and Elizabeth stood alone in theirbelief in England's strength, and when the diplomatists of Europeregarded her obstinate defiance of Philip's counsels as "madness. " Thewhole English people had caught the self-confidence and daring of theirQueen. 

[Sidenote: Spain. ]

It was the instinct of liberty as well as of Protestantism that droveEngland forward to a conflict with Philip of Spain. Spain was at thismoment the mightiest of European powers. The discoveries of Columbus hadgiven it the New World of the West; the conquests of Cortes and Pizarropoured into its treasury the plunder of Mexico and Peru; its galleonsbrought the rich produce of the Indies, their gold, their jewels, theiringots of silver, to the harbour of Cadiz. To the New World the Spanishking added the fairest and wealthiest portions of the Old; he was masterof Naples and Milan, the richest and most fertile districts of Italy; inspite of revolt he was still lord of the busy provinces of the LowCountries, of Flanders, the great manufacturing district of the time, and of Antwerp, which had become the central mart for the commerce ofthe world. His native kingdom, poor as it was, supplied him with thesteadiest and the most daring soldiers that Europe had seen since thefall of the Roman Empire. The renown of the Spanish infantry had beengrowing from the day when it flung off the onset of the French chivalryon the field of Ravenna; and the Spanish generals stood without rivalsin their military skill, as they stood without rivals in their ruthlesscruelty. 

[Sidenote: Philip. ]

The whole too of this enormous power was massed in the hands of asingle man. Served as he was by able statesmen and subtle diplomatists, Philip of Spain was his own sole minister; labouring day after day, likea clerk, through the long years of his reign, amidst the papers whichcrowded his closet; but resolute to let nothing pass without hissupervision, and to suffer nothing to be done save by his expresscommand. His scheme of rule differed widely from that of his father. Charles had held the vast mass of his dominions by a purely personalbond. He chose no capital, but moved ceaselessly from land to land; hewas a German in the Empire, a Spaniard in Castille, a Netherlander inthe Netherlands. But in the hands of Philip his father's heritage becamea Spanish realm. His capital was fixed at Madrid. The rest of hisdominions sank into provinces of Spain, to be governed by Spanishviceroys, and subordinated to the policy and interests of a Spanishminister. All local liberties, all varieties of administration, allnational differences were set aside for a monotonous despotism which waswielded by Philip himself. It was his boast that everywhere in the vastcompass of his dominions he was "an absolute king. " It was to realizethis idea of unshackled power that he crushed the liberties of Aragon, as his father had crushed the liberties of Castille, and sent Alva totread under foot the constitutional freedom of the Low Countries. Hisbigotry went hand in hand with his thirst for rule. Catholicism was theone common bond that knit his realms together, and policy as well asreligious faith made Philip the champion of Catholicism. Italy and Spainlay hushed beneath the terror of the Inquisition, while Flanders wasbeing purged of heresy by the stake and the sword. 

[Sidenote: Philip and Elizabeth. ]

The shadow of this gigantic power fell like a deadly blight over Europe. The new Protestantism, like the new spirit of political liberty, saw itsreal foe in Philip. It was Spain, rather than the Guises, against whichColigni and the Huguenots struggled in vain; it was Spain with whichWilliam of Orange was wrestling for religious and civil freedom; it wasSpain which was soon to plunge Germany into the chaos of the ThirtyYears War, and to which the Catholic world had for twenty years beenlooking, and looking in vain, for a victory over heresy in England. Vastin fact as Philip's resources were, they were drained by the yet vasterschemes of ambition into which his religion and his greed of power, aswell as the wide distribution of his dominions, perpetually drew him. Tocoerce the weaker States of Italy, to command the Mediterranean, to keepa hold on the African coast, to preserve his influence in Germany, tosupport Catholicism in France, to crush heresy in Flanders, to despatchone Armada against the Turk and another against England, were aimsmighty enough to exhaust even the power of the Spanish monarchy. But itwas rather on the character of Philip than on the exhaustion of histreasury that Elizabeth counted for success in the struggle which had solong been going on between them. The king's temper was slow, cautiouseven to timidity, losing itself continually in delays, in hesitations, in anticipating remote perils, in waiting for distant chances; and onthe slowness and hesitation of his temper his rival had been playingever since she mounted the throne. The agility, the sudden changes ofElizabeth, her lies, her mystifications, though they failed to deceivePhilip, puzzled and impeded his mind. The diplomatic contest between thetwo was like the fight which England was soon to see between theponderous Spanish galleon and the light pinnace of the buccaneers. 

[Sidenote: Philip's policy. ]

But amidst all the cloud of intrigue which disguised their policy, theactual course of their relations had been clear and simple. In theearlier years of Elizabeth Philip had been driven to her alliance by hisfear of France and his dread of the establishment of a French supremacyover England and Scotland through the accession of Mary Stuart. As timewent on, the discontent and rising of the Netherlands made it of hardlyless import to avoid a strife with the Queen. Had revolt in Englandprospered, or Mary Stuart succeeded in her countless plots, or Elizabethfallen beneath an assassin's knife, Philip was ready to have struck inand reaped the fruits of other men's labours. But his stake was toovast to risk an attack while the Queen sat firmly on her throne; and thecry of the English Catholics, or the pressure of the Pope, failed todrive the Spanish king into strife with Elizabeth. But as the tide ofreligious passion which had so long been held in check broke over itsbanks the political face of Europe changed. Philip had less to dreadfrom France or from an English alliance with France. The abstinence ofElizabeth from intervention in the Netherlands was neutralized by theintervention of the English people. Above all, the English hostilitythreatened Philip in a quarter where he was more sensitive thanelsewhere, his dominion in the West. 

[Sidenote: Spain and the New World. ]

Foiled as the ambition of Charles the Fifth had been in the Old World, his empire had widened with every year in the New. At his accession tothe throne the Spanish rule had hardly spread beyond the Island of St. Domingo, which Columbus had discovered twenty years before. But greedand enterprise drew Cortes to the mainland, and in 1521 his conquest ofMexico added a realm of gold to the dominions of the Emperor. Ten yearslater the great empire of Peru yielded to the arms of Pizarro. With theconquest of Chili the whole western coast of South America passed intothe hands of Spain; and successive expeditions planted the Spanish flagat point upon point along the coast of the Atlantic from Florida to theriver Plate. A Papal grant had conveyed the whole of America to theSpanish crown, and fortune seemed for long years to ratify the judgementof the Vatican. No European nation save Portugal disputed the possessionof the New World, and Portugal was too busy with its discoveries inAfrica and India to claim more than the territory of Brazil. ThoughFrancis the First sent seamen to explore the American coast, hisambition found other work at home; and a Huguenot colony which settledin Florida was cut to pieces by the Spaniards. Only in the far north dida few French settlers find rest beside the waters of the St. Lawrence. England had reached the mainland even earlier than Spain, for beforeColumbus touched its shores Sebastian Cabot, a seaman of Genoese bloodbut born and bred in England, sailed with an English crew from Bristolin 1497, and pushed along the coast of America to the south as far asFlorida, and northward as high as Hudson's Bay. But no Englishmanfollowed on the track of this bold adventurer; and while Spain built upher empire in the New World, the English seamen reaped a humbler harvestin the fisheries of Newfoundland. 

[Sidenote: The Sea-dogs. ]

There was little therefore in the circumstances which attended the firstdiscovery of the western continent that promised well for freedom. Itsone result as yet was to give an enormous impulse to the most bigotedand tyrannical among the powers of Europe, and to pour the gold ofMexico and Peru into the treasury of Spain. But as the reign ofElizabeth went on the thoughts of Englishmen turned again to the NewWorld. A happy instinct drew them from the first not to the southernshores that Spain was conquering, but to the ruder and more barrendistricts of the north. In 1576 the dream of finding a passage to Asiaby a voyage round the northern coast of the American continent drew awest-country seaman, Martin Frobisher, to the coast of Labrador; and, foiled as he was in his quest, the news he brought back of the existenceof gold mines there set adventurers cruising among the icebergs ofBaffin's Bay. Elizabeth herself joined in the venture; but thesettlement proved a failure, the ore which the ships brought back turnedout to be worthless, and England was saved from that greed of gold whichwas to be fatal to the energies of Spain. But, failure as it was, Frobisher's venture had shown the readiness of Englishmen to defy theclaims of Spain to the exclusive possession of America or the Americanseas. They were already defying these claims in a yet more galling way. The seamen of the southern and south-western coasts had long beencarrying on a half-piratical war on their own account. Four years afterElizabeth's accession the Channel swarmed with "sea-dogs, " as they werecalled, who sailed under letters of marque from Condé and the Huguenotleaders, and took heed neither of the complaints of the French Courtnor of their own Queen's efforts at repression. Her efforts brokeagainst the connivance of every man along the coast, of the very portofficers of the Crown, who made profit out of the spoil which theplunderers brought home, and of the gentry of the west, whose love ofventure made them go hand in hand with the sea-dogs. They broke aboveall against the national craving for open fight with Spain, and theProtestant craving for open fight with Catholicism. If the Queen heldback from any formal part in the great war of religions across theChannel, her subjects were keen to take their part in it. YoungEnglishmen crossed the sea to serve under Condé or Henry of Navarre. Thewar in the Netherlands drew hundreds of Protestants to the field. Theirpassionate longing for a religious war found a wider sphere on the sea. When the suspension of the French contest forced the sea-dogs to hauldown the Huguenot flag, they joined in the cruises of the Dutch"sea-beggars. " From plundering the vessels of Havre and Rochelle theyturned to plunder the galleons of Spain. 

[Sidenote: Drake. ]

Their outrages tried Philip's patience; but his slow resentment onlyquickened into angry alarm when the sea-dogs sailed westward to seek aricher spoil. The Papal decree which gave the New World to Spain, thethreats of the Spanish king against any Protestant who should visit itsseas, fell idly on the ears of English seamen. Philip's care to save hisnew dominions from the touch of heresy was only equalled by his resolveto suffer no trade between them and other lands than Spain. But thesea-dogs were as ready to traffic as to fight. It was in vain that theirvessels were seized, and the sailors flung into the dungeons of theInquisition, "laden with irons, without sight of sun or moon. " Theprofits of the trade were large enough to counteract its perils; and thebigotry of Philip was met by a bigotry as merciless as his own. ThePuritanism of the sea-dogs went hand in hand with their love ofadventure. To break through the Catholic monopoly of the New World, tokill Spaniards, to sell negroes, to sack gold-ships, were in these men'sminds a seemly work for "the elect of God. " The name of Francis Drakebecame the terror of the Spanish Indies. In Drake a Protestantfanaticism went hand in hand with a splendid daring. He conceived thedesign of penetrating into the Pacific, whose waters had till then neverseen an English flag; and backed by a little company of adventurers, heset sail in 1577 for the southern seas in a vessel hardly as big as aChannel schooner, with a few yet smaller companions who fell away beforethe storms and perils of the voyage. But Drake with his one ship andeighty men held boldly on; and passing the Straits of Magellan, untraversed as yet by any Englishman, swept the unguarded coast ofChili and Peru, loaded his bark with the gold dust and silver ingots ofPotosi, as well as with the pearls, emeralds, and diamonds which formedthe cargo of the great galleon that sailed once a year from Lima toCadiz. With spoils of above half-a-million in value the daringadventurer steered undauntedly for the Moluccas, rounded the Cape ofGood Hope, and in 1580, after completing the circuit of the globe, dropped anchor again in Plymouth harbour. 

[Sidenote: Conquest of Portugal. ]

The romantic daring of Drake's voyage as well as the vastness of hisspoil roused a general enthusiasm throughout England. But the welcomewhich he received from Elizabeth on his return was accepted by Philip asan outrage which could only be expiated by war. Sluggish as it was, theblood of the Spanish king was fired at last by the defiance with whichthe Queen listened to all demands for redress. She met a request forDrake's surrender by knighting the freebooter and by wearing in hercrown the jewels he offered her as a present. When the Spanishambassador threatened that "matters would come to the cannon, " shereplied "quietly, in her most natural voice, as if she were telling acommon story, " wrote Mendoza, "that if I used threats of that kind shewould fling me into a dungeon. " Outraged indeed as Philip was, shebelieved that with the Netherlands still in revolt and France longingfor her alliance to enable it to seize them, the king could not affordto quarrel with her. But the victories and diplomacy of Parma werealready reassuring Philip in the Netherlands; while the alliance ofElizabeth with the revolted Provinces convinced him at last that theirreduction could best be brought about by an invasion of England and theestablishment of Mary Stuart on its throne. With this conviction he lenthimself to the plans of Rome, and waited only for the rising in Irelandand the revolt of the English Catholics which Pope Gregory promised himto despatch forces from both Flanders and Spain. But the Irish risingwas over before Philip could act; and before the Jesuits could rouseEngland to rebellion the Spanish king himself was drawn to a new schemeof ambition by the death of King Sebastian of Portugal in 1580. Philipclaimed the Portuguese crown; and in less than two months Alva laid thekingdom at his feet. The conquest of Portugal was fatal to the Papalprojects against England, for while the armies of Spain marched onLisbon Elizabeth was able to throw the leaders of the expected revoltinto prison and to send Campian to the scaffold. On the other hand itraised Philip into a far more formidable foe. The conquest almostdoubled his power. His gain was far more than that of Portugal itself. While Spain had been winning the New World her sister-kingdom had beenwinning a wide though scattered dominion on the African coast, thecoast of India, and the islands of the Pacific. Less in extent, thePortuguese settlements were at the moment of even greater value to themother country than the colonies of Spain. The gold of Guinea, the silksof Goa, the spices of the Philippines made Lisbon one of the marts ofEurope. The sword of Alva had given Philip a hold on the richest tradeof the world. It had given him the one navy that as yet rivalled hisown. His flag claimed mastery in the Indian and the Pacific seas, as itclaimed mastery in the Atlantic and Mediterranean. 

[Sidenote: The marriage with Anjou. ]

The conquest of Portugal therefore wholly changed Philip's position. Itnot only doubled his power and resources, but it did this at a time whenfortune seemed everywhere wavering to his side. The provinces of theNetherlands, which still maintained a struggle for their liberties, drewcourage from despair; and met Philip's fresh hopes of their subjectionby a solemn repudiation of his sovereignty in the summer of 1581. Butthey did not dream that they could stand alone, and they sought the aidof France by choosing as their new sovereign the Duke of Alençon, who onhis brother Henry's accession to the throne had become Duke of Anjou. The choice was only part of a political scheme which was to bind thewhole of Western Europe together against Spain. The conquest of Portugalhad at once drawn France and England into close relations, andCatharine of Medicis strove to league the two countries by a marriage ofElizabeth with the Duke of Anjou. Such a match would have been a purelypolitical one, for Elizabeth was now forty-eight, and Francis of Anjouhad no qualities either of mind or body to recommend him to the Queen. But the English ministers pressed for it, Elizabeth amidst all hercoquetries seemed at last ready to marry, and the States seized themoment to lend themselves to the alliance of the two powers by choosingthe Duke as their lord. Anjou accepted their offer, and crossing to theNetherlands, drove Parma from Cambray; then sailing again to England, hespent the winter in a fresh wooing. 

[Sidenote: Its failure. ]

But the Duke's wooing still proved fruitless. The schemes of diplomacyfound themselves shattered against the religious enthusiasm of the time. While Orange and Catharine and Elizabeth saw only the political weightof the marriage as a check upon Philip, the sterner Protestants inEngland saw in it a victory for Catholicism at home. Of the differencebetween the bigoted Catholicism of Spain and the more tolerantCatholicism of the court of France such men recked nothing. The memoryof St. Bartholomew's day hung around Catharine of Medicis; and thesuccess of the Jesuits at this moment roused the dread of a generalconspiracy against Protestantism. A Puritan lawyer named Stubbs onlyexpressed the alarm of his fellows in his "Discovery of a Gaping Gulf"in which England was to plunge through the match with Anjou. When thehand of the pamphleteer was cut off as a penalty for his daring, Stubbswaved his hat with the hand that was left, and cried "God save QueenElizabeth. " But the Queen knew how stern a fanaticism went with thisunflinching loyalty, and her dread of a religious conflict within herrealm must have quickened the fears which the worthless temper of herwooer cannot but have inspired. She gave however no formal refusal ofher hand. So long as coquetry sufficed to hold France and Englandtogether, she was ready to play the coquette; and it was as the futurehusband of the Queen that Anjou again appeared in 1582 in theNetherlands and received the formal submission of the revolted States, save Holland and Zealand. But the subtle schemes which centred in himbroke down before the selfish perfidy of the Duke. Resolved to be rulerin more than name, he planned the seizure of the greater cities of theNetherlands, and at the opening of 1583 made a fruitless effort to takeAntwerp by surprise. It was in vain that Orange strove by patientnegotiation to break the blow. The Duke fled homewards, the match andsovereignty were at an end, the alliance of the three powers vanishedlike a dream. The last Catholic provinces passed over to Parma's side;the weakened Netherlands found themselves parted from France; and atthe close of 1583 Elizabeth saw herself left face to face with Philip ofSpain. 

[Sidenote: The Puritans and the Crown. ]

Nor was this all. At home as well as abroad troubles were thickeningaround the Queen. The fanaticism of the Catholic world without wasstirring a Protestant fanaticism within the realm. As Rome became moreand more the centre of hostility to England, patriotism itself stirredmen to a hatred of Rome; and their hatred of Rome passed easily into alove for the fiercer and sterner Calvinism which looked on allcompromise with Rome, or all acceptance of religious traditions orusages which had been associated with Rome, as treason against God. Puritanism, as this religious temper was called, was becoming the creedof every earnest Protestant throughout the realm; and the demand for afurther advance towards the Calvinistic system and a more open breachwith Catholicism which was embodied in the suppression of the"superstitious usages" became stronger than ever. But Elizabeth was firmas of old to make no advance. Greatly as the Protestants had grown, sheknew they were still a minority in the realm. If the hotter Catholicswere fast decreasing, they remained a large and important body. But themass of the nation was neither Catholic nor Protestant. It had lostfaith in the Papacy. It was slowly drifting to a new faith in the Bible. But it still clung obstinately to the past; it still recoiled fromviolent change; its temper was religious rather than theological, andit shrank from the fanaticism of Geneva as it shrank from the fanaticismof Rome. It was a proof of Elizabeth's genius that alone among hercounsellors she understood this drift of opinion, and withstood measureswhich would have startled the mass of Englishmen into a new resistance. 

[Sidenote: The High Commission. ]

But her policy was wider than her acts. The growing Puritanism of theclergy stirred her wrath above measure, and she met the growth of"nonconforming" ministers by conferring new powers in 1583 on theEcclesiastical Commission. From being a temporary board whichrepresented the Royal Supremacy in matters ecclesiastical, theCommission was now turned into a permanent body wielding the almostunlimited powers of the Crown. All opinions or acts contrary to theStatutes of Supremacy and Uniformity fell within its cognizance. A rightof deprivation placed the clergy at its mercy. It had power to alter oramend the statutes of colleges or schools. Not only heresy and schismand nonconformity, but incest or aggravated adultery were held to fallwithin its scope; its means of enquiry were left without limit, and itmight fine or imprison at its will. By the mere establishment of such acourt half the work of the Reformation was undone. The large number ofcivilians on the board indeed seemed to furnish some security againstthe excess of ecclesiastical tyranny. Of its forty-four commissioners, however, few actually took any part in its proceedings; and the powersof the Commission were practically left in the hands of the successivePrimates. No Archbishop of Canterbury since the days of Augustine hadwielded an authority so vast, so utterly despotic, as that of Whitgiftand Bancroft and Abbot and Laud. The most terrible feature of theirspiritual tyranny was its wholly personal character. The old symbols ofdoctrine were gone, and the lawyers had not yet stepped in to protectthe clergy by defining the exact limits of the new. The result was thatat the commission-board at Lambeth the Primates created their own testsof doctrine with an utter indifference to those created by law. In oneinstance Parker deprived a vicar of his benefice for a denial of theverbal inspiration of the Bible. Nor did the successive Archbishops caregreatly if the test was a varying or a conflicting one. Whitgift stroveto force on the Church the Calvinistic supralapsarianism of his LambethArticles. Bancroft, who followed him, was as earnest in enforcing hisanti-Calvinistic dogma of the divine right of the episcopate. Abbot hadno mercy for Erastians. Laud had none for anti-Erastians. It is nowonder that the Ecclesiastical Commission, which these men represented, soon stank in the nostrils of the English clergy. Its establishmenthowever marked the adoption of a more resolute policy on the part of theCrown, and its efforts were backed by stern measures of repression. Allpreaching or reading in private houses was forbidden; and in spite ofthe refusal of Parliament to enforce the requirement of them by law, subscription to the Three Articles was exacted from every member of theclergy. For the moment these measures were crowned with success. Themovement which Cartwright still headed was checked; Cartwright himselfwas driven from his Professorship; and an outer uniformity of worshipwas more and more brought about by the steady pressure of theCommission. The old liberty which had been allowed in London and theother Protestant parts of the kingdom was no longer permitted to exist. The leading Puritan clergy, whose nonconformity had hitherto been winkedat, were called upon to submit to the surplice, and to make the sign ofthe cross in baptism. The remonstrances of the country gentry availed aslittle as the protest of Lord Burleigh himself to protect two hundred ofthe best ministers from being driven from their parsonages on a refusalto subscribe to the Three Articles. 

[Sidenote: Martin Marprelate. ]

But the political danger of the course on which the Crown had enteredwas seen in the rise of a spirit of vigorous opposition, such as had notmade its appearance since the accession of the Tudors. The growing powerof public opinion received a striking recognition in the struggle whichbears the name of the "Martin Marprelate controversy. " The Puritans hadfrom the first appealed by their pamphlets from the Crown to thepeople, and Archbishop Whitgift bore witness to their influence onopinion by his efforts to gag the Press. The regulations made by theStar-Chamber in 1585 for this purpose are memorable as the first step inthe long struggle of government after government to check the liberty ofprinting. The irregular censorship which had long existed was nowfinally organized. Printing was restricted to London and the twoUniversities, the number of printers was reduced, and all applicants forlicense to print were placed under the supervision of the Company ofStationers. Every publication too, great or small, had to receive theapprobation of the Primate or the Bishop of London. The first result ofthis system of repression was the appearance, in the very year of theArmada, of a series of anonymous pamphlets bearing the significant nameof "Martin Marprelate, " and issued from a secret press which foundrefuge from the Royal pursuivants in the country-houses of the gentry. The press was at last seized; and the suspected authors of thesescurrilous libels, Penry, a young Welshman, and a minister named Udall, died, the one in prison, the other on the scaffold. But the virulenceand boldness of their language produced a powerful effect, for it wasimpossible under the system of Elizabeth to "mar" the bishops withoutattacking the Crown; and a new age of political liberty was felt to beat hand when Martin Marprelate forced the political and ecclesiasticalmeasures of the Government into the arena of public discussion. 

[Sidenote: The gathering of the Armada. ]

The strife between Puritanism and the Crown was to grow into a fatalconflict, but at the moment the Queen's policy was in the main a wiseone. It was no time for scaring and disuniting the mass of the peoplewhen the united energies of England might soon hardly suffice towithstand the onset of Spain. On the other hand, strike as she might atthe Puritan party, it was bound to support Elizabeth in the comingstruggle with Philip. For the sense of personal wrong and the outcry ofthe Catholic world against his selfish reluctance to avenge the blood ofits martyrs had at last told on the Spanish king, and in 1584 the firstvessels of an armada which was destined for the conquest of Englandbegan to gather in the Tagus. Resentment and fanaticism indeed werebacked by a cool policy. The gain of the Portuguese dominions made itonly the more needful for Philip to assert his mastery of the seas. Hehad now to shut Englishman and heretic not only out of the New World ofthe West but out of the lucrative traffic with the East. And every dayshowed a firmer resolve in Englishmen to claim the New World for theirown. The plunder of Drake's memorable voyage had lured fresh freebootersto the "Spanish Main. " The failure of Frobisher's quest for gold onlydrew the nobler spirits engaged in it to plans of colonisation. NorthAmerica, vexed by long winters and thinly peopled by warlike tribes ofIndians, gave a rough welcome to the earlier colonists; and after afruitless attempt to form a settlement on its shores Sir HumphryGilbert, one of the noblest spirits of his time, turned homewards againto find his fate in the stormy seas. "We are as near to heaven by sea asby land, " were the famous words he was heard to utter ere the light ofhis little bark was lost for ever in the darkness of the night. But anexpedition sent by his brother-in-law, Sir Walter Raleigh, exploredPamlico Sound; and the country they discovered, a country where in theirpoetic fancy "men lived after the manner of the Golden Age, " receivedfrom Elizabeth, the Virgin Queen, the name of Virginia. 

[Sidenote: Scotland and Philip. ]

It was in England only that Philip could maintain his exclusive right tothe New World of the West; it was through England only that he couldstrike a last and fatal blow at the revolt of the Netherlands. Andfoiled as his plans had been as yet by the overthrow of the Papalschemes, even their ruin had left ground for hope in England itself. Thetortures and hangings of the Catholic priests, the fining andimprisonment of the Catholic gentry, had roused a resentment which itwas easy to mistake for disloyalty. The Jesuits with Parsons at theirhead pictured the English Catholics as only waiting to rise in rebellionat the call of Spain, and reported long lists of nobles and squires whowould muster their tenants to join Parma's legions on their landing. ASpanish victory would be backed by insurrection in Ireland and attackfrom Scotland. For in Scotland the last act of the Papal conspiracyagainst Elizabeth was still being played. Though as yet under age, theyoung king, James the Sixth, had taken on himself the government of therealm, and had submitted to the guidance of a cousin, Esme Stuart, whohad been brought up in France and returned to Scotland a Catholic and afellow-plotter with the Guises. He succeeded in bringing Morton to theblock; and the death of the great Protestant leader left him free toenlist Scotland in the league which Rome was forming for the ruin ofElizabeth. The revolt in Ireland had failed. The work of the Jesuits inEngland had just ended in the death of Campian and the arrest of hisfollowers. But with the help of the Guises Scotland might yet be broughtto rise in arms for the liberation of Mary Stuart, and James might reignas co-regent with his mother, if he were converted to the CatholicChurch. The young king, anxious to free his crown from the dictation ofthe nobles, lent himself to his cousin's schemes. For the moment theywere foiled. James was seized by the Protestant Lords, and the Duke ofLennox, as Esme Stuart was now called, driven from the realm. But Jameswas soon free again, and again in correspondence with the Guises andwith Philip. The young king was lured by promises of the hand of anarchduchess and the hope of the crowns of both England and Scotland. Thereal aim of the intriguers who guided him was to set him aside as soonas the victory was won and to restore his mother to the throne. Butwhether Mary were restored or no it seemed certain that in any attack onElizabeth Spain would find helpers from among the Scots. 

[Sidenote: The League. ]

Nor was the opportunity favourable in Scotland alone. In the Netherlandsand in France all seemed to go well for Philip's schemes. From themoment of his arrival in the Low Countries the Prince of Parma had beensteadily winning back what Alva had lost. The Union of Ghent had beenbroken. The ten Catholic provinces were being slowly brought anew underSpanish rule. Town after town was regained. From Brabant Parma hadpenetrated into Flanders; Ypres, Bruges, and Ghent had fallen into hishands. Philip dealt a more fatal blow at his rebellious subjects in themurder of the man who was the centre of their resistance. For years pastWilliam of Orange had been a mark for assassin after assassin inPhilip's pay, and in 1584 the deadly persistence of the Spanish king wasrewarded by his fall. Reft indeed as they were of their leader, theNetherlanders still held their ground. The union of Utrecht stoodintact; and Philip's work of reconquest might be checked at any momentby the intervention of England or of France. But at this moment allchance of French intervention passed away. Henry the Third waschildless, and the death of his one remaining brother, Francis of Anjou, in 1584 left the young chief of the house of Bourbon, King Henry ofNavarre, heir to the crown of France. Henry was the leader of theHuguenot party, and in January 1585 the French Catholics boundthemselves in a holy league to prevent such a triumph of heresy in therealm as the reign of a Protestant would bring about by securing thesuccession of Henry's uncle, the cardinal of Bourbon. The Leaguerslooked to Philip for support; they owned his cause for their own; andpledged themselves not only to root out Protestantism in France, but tohelp the Spanish king in rooting it out throughout the Netherlands. TheLeague at once overshadowed the Crown; and Henry the Third could onlymeet the blow by affecting to put himself at its head, and by revokingthe edicts of toleration in favour of the Huguenots. But the Catholicsdisbelieved in his sincerity; they looked only to Philip; and as long asPhilip could supply the Leaguers with men and money, he felt secure onthe side of France. 

[Sidenote: Elizabeth attacks Philip. ]

The vanishing of all hope of French aid was the more momentous to theNetherlands that at this moment Parma won his crowning triumph in thecapture of Antwerp. Besieged in the winter of 1584, the city surrenderedafter a brave resistance in the August of 1585. But heavy as was theblow, it brought gain as well as loss to the Netherlanders. It forcedElizabeth into action. She refused indeed the title of Protector of theNetherlands which the States offered her, and compelled them to placeBrill and Flushing in her hands as pledges for the repayment of herexpenses. But she sent aid. Lord Leicester was hurried to the Flemishcoast with eight thousand men. In a yet bolder spirit of defianceFrancis Drake was suffered to set sail with a fleet of twenty-fivevessels for the Spanish Main. The two expeditions had very differentfortunes. Drake's voyage was a series of triumphs. The wrongs inflictedon English seamen by the Inquisition were requited by the burning of thecities of St. Domingo and Carthagena. The coasts of Cuba and Floridawere plundered, and though the gold fleet escaped him, Drake returned inthe summer of 1586 with a heavy booty. Leicester on the other hand wasparalyzed by his own intriguing temper, by strife with the Queen, and byhis military incapacity. Only one disastrous skirmish at Zutphen brokethe inaction of his forces, while Elizabeth strove vainly to use thepresence of his army to force Parma and the States alike to a peacewhich would restore Philip's sovereignty over the Netherlands, butleave them free enough to serve as a check on Philip's designs againstherself. 

[Sidenote: The Catholic Plots. ]

Foiled as she was in securing a check on Philip in the Low Countries, the Queen was more successful in robbing him of the aid of the Scots. The action of King James had been guided by his greed of the EnglishCrown, and a secret promise of the succession sufficed to lure him fromthe cause of Spain. In July 1586 he formed an alliance, defensive andoffensive, with Elizabeth, and pledged himself not only to give no aidto revolt in Ireland, but to suppress any Catholic rising in thenorthern counties. The pledge was the more important that the Catholicresentment seemed passing into fanaticism. Maddened by confiscation andpersecution, by the hopelessness of rebellion within or of deliverancefrom without, the fiercer Catholics listened to schemes of assassinationto which the murder of William of Orange lent a terrible significance. The detection of Somerville, a fanatic who had received the Host beforesetting out for London "to shoot the Queen with his dagg, " was followedby measures of natural severity, by the flight and arrest of Catholicgentry and peers, by a vigorous purification of the Inns of Court wherea few Catholics lingered, and by the despatch of fresh batches ofpriests to the block. The trial and death of Parry, a member of theHouse of Commons who had served in the royal household, on a similarcharge fed the general panic. The leading Protestants formed anassociation whose members pledged themselves to pursue to the death allwho sought the Queen's life, and all on whose behalf it was sought. Theassociation soon became national, and the Parliament met together in atransport of horror and loyalty to give it legal sanction. All Jesuitsand seminary priests were banished from the realm on pain of death, anda bill for the security of the Queen disqualified any claimant of thesuccession who instigated subjects to rebellion or hurt to the Queen'sperson from ever succeeding to the Crown. 

[Sidenote: Death of Mary Stuart. ]

The threat was aimed at Mary Stuart. Weary of her long restraint, of herfailure to rouse Philip or Scotland to her aid, of the baffled revolt ofthe English Catholics and the baffled intrigues of the Jesuits, Mary hadbent for a moment to submission. "Let me go, " she wrote to Elizabeth;"let me retire from this island to some solitude where I may prepare mysoul to die. Grant this and I will sign away every right which either Ior mine can claim. " But the cry was useless, and in 1586 her despairfound a new and more terrible hope in the plots against Elizabeth'slife. She knew and approved the vow of Anthony Babington and a band ofyoung Catholics, for the most part connected with the royal household, to kill the Queen and seat Mary on the throne; but plot and approvalalike passed through Walsingham's hands, and the seizure of Mary'scorrespondence revealed her connivance in the scheme. Babington with hisfellow-conspirators was at once sent to the block, and the provisions ofthe act passed in the last Parliament were put in force against Mary. Inspite of her protests a Commission of Peers sate as her judges atFotheringay Castle; and their verdict of "guilty" annihilated under theprovisions of the statute her claim to the Crown. The streets of Londonblazed with bonfires, and peals rang out from steeple to steeple at thenews of Mary's condemnation; but in spite of the prayer of Parliamentfor her execution and the pressure of the Council Elizabeth shrank fromher death. The force of public opinion however was now carrying allbefore it, and after three months of hesitation the unanimous demand ofher people wrested a sullen consent from the Queen. She flung thewarrant signed upon the floor, and the Council took on themselves theresponsibility of executing it. On the 8th of February 1587 Mary died ona scaffold which was erected in the castle-hall at Fotheringay asdauntlessly as she had lived. "Do not weep, " she said to her ladies, "Ihave given my word for you. " "Tell my friends, " she charged Melville, "that I die a good Catholic. "

[Sidenote: Philip and England. ]

The blow was hardly struck before Elizabeth turned with fury on theministers who had forced her hand. Cecil, who had now become LordBurghley, was for a while disgraced, and Davison, who carried thewarrant to the Council, was sent to the Tower to atone for an act whichshattered the policy of the Queen. The death of Mary Stuart in factseemed to have removed the last obstacle out of Philip's way. It had putan end to the divisions of the English Catholics. To the Spanish king, as to the nearest heir in blood who was of the Catholic Faith, Marybequeathed her rights to the Crown, and the hopes of her more passionateadherents were from that moment bound up in the success of Spain. Theblow too kindled afresh the fervour of the Papacy, and Sixtus the Fifthoffered to aid Philip with money in his invasion of the heretic realm. But Philip no longer needed pressure to induce him to act. Drake'striumph had taught him that the conquest of England was needful for thesecurity of his dominion in the New World, and for the mastery of theseas. The presence of an English army in Flanders convinced him that theroad to the conquest of the States lay through England itself. Nor didthe attempt seem a very perilous one. Allen and his Jesuit emissariesassured Philip that the bulk of the nation was ready to rise as soon asa strong Spanish force was landed on English shores. They numbered offthe great lords who would head the revolt, the Earls of Arundel andNorthumberland, who were both Catholics, the Earls of Worcester, Cumberland, Oxford, and Southampton, Viscount Montacute, the LordsDacres, Morley, Vaux, Wharton, Windsor, Lumley, and Stourton. "Allthese, " wrote Allen, "will follow our party when they see themselvessupported by a sufficient foreign force. " Against these were only "thenew nobles, who are hated in the country, " and the towns. "But thestrength of England is not in its towns. " All the more warlike countieswere Catholic in their sympathies; and the persecution of the recusantshad destroyed the last traces of their loyalty to the Queen. Threehundred priests had been sent across the sea to organize theinsurrection, and they were circulating a book which Allen had latelypublished "to prove that it is not only lawful but our bounden duty totake up arms at the Pope's bidding and to fight for the Catholic faithagainst the Queen and other heretics. " A landing in the Pope's namewould be best, but a landing in Philip's name would be almost as secureof success. Trained as they were now by Allen and his three hundredpriests, English Catholics "would let in Catholic auxiliaries of anynation, for they have learned to hate their domestic heretic more thanany foreign power. "

[Sidenote: Philip and France. ]

What truth there was in the Jesuit view of England time was to prove. But there can be no doubt that Philip believed it, and that the promiseof a Catholic rising was his chief inducement to attempt an invasion. The operations of Parma therefore were suspended with a view to thegreater enterprise and vessels and supplies for the fleet which had forthree years been gathering in the Tagus were collected from every portof the Spanish coast. Only France held Philip back. He dared not attackEngland till all dread of a counter-attack from France was removed; andthough the rise of the League had seemed to secure this, its success hadnow become more doubtful. The king, who had striven to embarrass it byplacing himself at its head, gathered round him the politicians and themoderate Catholics who saw in the triumph of the new Duke of Guise theruin of the monarchy; while Henry of Navarre took the field at the headof the Huguenots, and won in 1587 the victory of Coutras. Guise restoredthe balance by driving the German allies of Henry from the realm; butthe Huguenots were still unconquered, and the king, standing apart, feda struggle which lightened for him the pressure of the League. Philipwas forced to watch the wavering fortunes of the struggle, but while hewatched, another blow fell on him from the sea. The news of the comingArmada called Drake again to action. In April 1587 he set sail withthirty small barks, burned the storeships and galleys in the harbour ofCadiz, stormed the ports of the Faro, and was only foiled in his aim ofattacking the Armada itself by orders from home. A descent upon Corunnahowever completed what Drake called his "singeing of the Spanish king'sbeard. " Elizabeth used the daring blow to back some negotiations forpeace which she was still conducting in the Netherlands. But on Philip'sside at least these negotiations were simply delusive. The Spanish pridehad been touched to the quick. Amidst the exchange of protocols Parmagathered seventeen thousand men for the coming invasion, collected afleet of flat-bottomed transports at Dunkirk, and waited impatiently forthe Armada to protect his crossing. The attack of Drake however, thedeath of its first admiral, and the winter storms delayed the fleet fromsailing. What held it back even more effectually was the balance ofparties in France. But in the spring of 1588 Philip's patience wasrewarded. The League had been baffled till now not so much by theresistance of the Huguenots as by the attitude of the king. So long asHenry the Third held aloof from both parties and gave a rallying pointto the party of moderation the victory of the Leaguers was impossible. The difficulty was solved by the daring of Henry of Guise. The fanaticalpopulace of Paris rose at his call; the royal troops were beaten offfrom the barricades; and on the 12th of May the king found himself aprisoner in the hands of the Duke. Guise was made lieutenant-general ofthe kingdom, and Philip was assured on the side of France. 

[Sidenote: The Armada sails. ]

The revolution was hardly over when at the end of May the Armada startedfrom Lisbon. But it had scarcely put to sea when a gale in the Bay ofBiscay drove its scattered vessels into Ferrol, and it was only on thenineteenth of July 1588 that the sails of the Armada were seen from theLizard, and the English beacons flared out their alarm along the coast. The news found England ready. An army was mustering under Leicester atTilbury, the militia of the midland counties were gathering to London, while those of the south and east were held in readiness to meet adescent on either shore. The force which Parma hoped to lead consistedof forty thousand men, for the Armada brought nearly twenty-two thousandsoldiers to be added to the seventeen thousand who were waiting to crossfrom the Netherlands. Formidable as this force was, it was far too weakby itself to do the work which Philip meant it to do. Had Parma landedon the earliest day he purposed, he would have found his way to Londonbarred by a force stronger than his own, a force too of men in whoseranks were many who had already crossed pikes on equal terms with hisbest infantry in Flanders. "When I shall have landed, " he warned hismaster, "I must fight battle after battle, I shall lose men by woundsand disease, I must leave detachments behind me to keep open mycommunications; and in a short time the body of my army will become soweak that not only I may be unable to advance in the face of the enemy, and time may be given to the heretics and your Majesty's other enemiesto interfere, but there may fall out some notable inconveniences, withthe loss of everything, and I be unable to remedy it. " What Philipreally counted on was the aid which his army would find within Englanditself. Parma's chance of victory, if he succeeded in landing, lay in aCatholic rising. But at this crisis patriotism proved stronger thanreligious fanaticism in the hearts of the English Catholics. The news ofinvasion ran like fire along the English coasts. The whole nationanswered the Queen's appeal. Instinct told England that its work was tobe done at sea, and the royal fleet was soon lost among the vessels ofthe volunteers. London, when Elizabeth asked for fifteen ships and fivethousand men, offered thirty ships and ten thousand seamen, while tenthousand of its train-bands drilled in the Artillery ground. Everyseaport showed the same temper. Coasters put out from every littleharbour. Squires and merchants pushed off in their own little barks fora brush with the Spaniards. In the presence of the stranger allreligious strife was forgotten. The work of the Jesuits was undone in anhour. Of the nobles and squires whose tenants were to muster under theflag of the invader not one proved a traitor. The greatest lords onAllen's list of Philip's helpers, Cumberland, Oxford, andNorthumberland, brought their vessels up alongside of Drake and LordHoward as soon as Philip's fleet appeared in the Channel. The Catholicgentry who had been painted as longing for the coming of the stranger, led their tenantry, when the stranger came, to the muster at Tilbury. 

[Sidenote: The two fleets. ]

The loyalty of the Catholics decided the fate of Philip's scheme. Evenif Parma's army succeeded in landing, its task was now an impossibleone. Forty thousand Spaniards were no match for four millions ofEnglishmen, banded together by a common resolve to hold England againstthe foreigner. But to secure a landing at all, the Spaniards had to bemasters of the Channel. Parma might gather his army on the Flemishcoast, but every estuary and inlet was blocked by the Dutch cruisers. The Netherlands knew well that the conquest of England was planned onlyas a prelude to their own reduction; and the enthusiasm with whichEngland rushed to the conflict was hardly greater than that whichstirred the Hollanders. A fleet of ninety vessels, with the best Dutchseamen at their head, held the Scheldt and the shallows of Dunkirk, andit was only by driving this fleet from the water that Parma's army couldbe set free to join in the great enterprise. The great need of theArmada therefore was to reach the coast of Flanders. It was ordered tomake for Calais, and wait there for the junction of Parma. But even ifParma joined it, the passage of his force was impossible without acommand of the Channel; and in the Channel lay an English fleet resolvedto struggle hard for the mastery. As the Armada sailed on in a broadcrescent past Plymouth, the vessels which had gathered under LordHoward of Effingham slipped out of the bay and hung with the wind upontheir rear. In numbers the two forces were strangely unequal, for theEnglish fleet counted only eighty vessels against the hundred andforty-nine which composed the Armada. In size of ships the disproportionwas even greater. Fifty of the English vessels, including the squadronof the Lord Admiral and the craft of the volunteers, were little biggerthan yachts of the present day. Even of the thirty Queen's ships whichformed its main body, there were but four which equalled in tonnage thesmallest of the Spanish galleons. Sixty-five of these galleons formedthe most formidable half of the Spanish fleet; and four galleys, fourgalleasses armed with fifty guns apiece, fifty-six armed merchantmen, and twenty pinnaces made up the rest. The Armada was provided with 2500cannons, and a vast store of provisions; it had on board 8000 seamen andmore than 20, 000 soldiers; and if a court-favourite, the Duke of MedinaSidonia, had been placed at its head, he was supported by the ableststaff of naval officers which Spain possessed. 

[Sidenote: The fight with the Armada. ]

Small however as the English ships were, they were in perfect trim; theysailed two feet for the Spaniards' one; they were manned with 9000 hardyseamen, and their Admiral was backed by a crowd of captains who had wonfame in the Spanish seas. With him were Hawkins, who had been the firstto break into the charmed circle of the Indies; Frobisher, the hero ofthe North-West passage; and above all Drake, who held command of theprivateers. They had won too the advantage of the wind; and, closing inor drawing off as they would, the lightly-handled English vessels, whichfired four shots to the Spaniards' one, hung boldly on the rear of thegreat fleet as it moved along the Channel. "The feathers of theSpaniard, " in the phrase of the English seamen, were "plucked one byone. " Galleon after galleon was sunk, boarded, driven on shore; and yetMedina Sidonia failed in bringing his pursuers to a close engagement. Now halting, now moving slowly on, the running fight between the twofleets lasted throughout the week, till on Sunday, the twenty-eighth ofJuly, the Armada dropped anchor in Calais roads. The time had come forsharper work if the junction of the Armada with Parma was to beprevented; for, demoralized as the Spaniards had been by the mercilesschase, their loss in ships had not been great, and their appearance offDunkirk might drive off the ships of the Hollanders who hindered thesailing of the Duke. On the other hand, though the numbers of Englishships had grown, their supplies of food and ammunition were fast runningout. Howard therefore resolved to force an engagement; and, lightingeight fire-ships at midnight, sent them down with the tide upon theSpanish line. The galleons at once cut their cables, and stood out inpanic to sea, drifting with the wind in a long line off Gravelines. Drake resolved at all costs to prevent their return. At dawn on thetwenty-ninth the English ships closed fairly in, and almost their lastcartridge was spent ere the sun went down. 

[Sidenote: Flight of the Armada. ]

Hard as the fight had been, it seemed far from a decisive one. Threegreat galleons indeed had sunk in the engagement, three had driftedhelplessly on to the Flemish coast, but the bulk of the Spanish vesselsremained, and even to Drake the fleet seemed "wonderful great andstrong. " Within the Armada itself however all hope was gone. Huddledtogether by the wind and the deadly English fire, their sails torn, their masts shot away, the crowded galleons had become mereslaughter-houses. Four thousand men had fallen, and bravely as theseamen fought, they were cowed by the terrible butchery. Medina himselfwas in despair. "We are lost, Señor Oquenda, " he cried to his bravestcaptain; "what are we to do?" "Let others talk of being lost, " repliedOquenda, "your Excellency has only to order up fresh cartridge. " ButOquenda stood alone, and a council of war resolved on retreat to Spainby the one course open, that of a circuit round the Orkneys. "Neveranything pleased me better, " wrote Drake, "than seeing the enemy flywith a southerly wind to the northwards. Have a good eye to the Princeof Parma, for, with the grace of God, I doubt not ere it be long so tohandle the matter with the Duke of Sidonia, as he shall wish himself atSt. Mary Port among his orange trees. " But the work of destruction wasreserved for a mightier foe than Drake. The English vessels were soonforced to give up the chase by the running out of their supplies. Butthe Spanish ships had no sooner reached the Orkneys than the storms ofthe northern seas broke on them with a fury before which all concert andunion disappeared. In October fifty reached Corunna, bearing tenthousand men stricken with pestilence and death. Of the rest some weresunk, some dashed to pieces against the Irish cliffs. The wreckers ofthe Orkneys and the Faroes, the clansmen of the Scottish Isles, thekernes of Donegal and Galway, all had their part in the work of murderand robbery. Eight thousand Spaniards perished between the Giant'sCauseway and the Blaskets. On a strand near Sligo an English captainnumbered eleven hundred corpses which had been cast up by the sea. Theflower of the Spanish nobility, who had been sent on the new crusadeunder Alonzo da Leyva, after twice suffering shipwreck, put a third timeto sea to founder on a reef near Dunluce. 

[Sidenote: Its effect on England. ]

"I sent my ships against men, " said Philip when the news reached him, "not against the seas. " It was in nobler tone that England owned herdebt to the storm that drove the Armada to its doom. On the medal thatcommemorated its triumph were graven the words, "The Lord sent his wind, and scattered them. " The pride of the conquerors was hushed before theirsense of a mighty deliverance. It was not till England saw the brokenhost "fly with a southerly wind to the north" that she knew what aweight of fear she had borne for thirty years. The victory over theArmada, the deliverance from Spain, the rolling away of the Catholicterror which had hung like a cloud over the hopes of the new people, waslike a passing from death unto life. Within as without, the dark skysuddenly cleared. The national unity proved stronger than the religiousstrife. When the Catholic lords flocked to the camp at Tilbury, or putoff to join the fleet in the Channel, Elizabeth could pride herself on avictory as great as the victory over the Armada. She had won it by herpatience and moderation, by her refusal to lend herself to thefanaticism of the Puritan or the reaction of the Papist, by her sympathywith the mass of the people, by her steady and unflinching preference ofnational union to any passing considerations of safety or advantage. Forthirty years, amidst the shock of religious passions at home and abroad, she had reigned not as a Catholic or as a Protestant Queen, but as aQueen of England, and it was to England, Catholic and Protestant alike, that she could appeal in her hour of need. "Let tyrants fear, " sheexclaimed in words that still ring like the sound of a trumpet, as sheappeared among her soldiers. "Let tyrants fear! I have always so behavedmyself that under God I have placed my chiefest strength and safeguardin the loyal hearts and goodwill of my subjects! And therefore I am comeamong you, as you see, resolved in the midst and heat of the battle tolive and die amongst you all. " The work of Edward and of Mary wasundone, and the strife of religions fell powerless before the sense of acommon country. 

[Sidenote: Its European results. ]

Nor were the results of the victory less momentous to Europe at large. What Wolsey and Henry had struggled for, Elizabeth had done. At heraccession England was scarcely reckoned among European powers. Thewisest statesmen looked on her as doomed to fall into the hands ofFrance, or to escape that fate by remaining a dependency of Spain. Butthe national independence had grown with the national life. France wasno longer a danger, Scotland was no longer a foe. Instead of hanging onthe will of Spain, England had fronted Spain and conquered her. She nowstood on a footing of equality with the greatest powers of the world. Her military weight indeed was drawn from the discord which rent thepeoples about her, and would pass away with its close. But a new andlasting greatness opened on the sea. She had sprung at a bound into asea-power. Her fleets were spreading terror through the New World asthrough the Old. When Philip by his conquest of Portugal had gatheredthe two greatest navies of the world into his single hand, England hadfaced him and driven his fleet from the seas. But the rise of Englandwas even less memorable than the fall of Spain. That Spain had fallenfew of the world's statesmen saw then. Philip thanked God that he couldeasily, if he chose, "place another fleet upon the seas, " and thedespatch of a second armada soon afterwards showed that his boast was atrue one. But what had vanished was his mastery of the seas. The defeatof the Armada was the first of a series of defeats at the hands of theEnglish and the Dutch. The naval supremacy of Spain was lost, and withit all was lost; for an empire so widely scattered over the world, andwhose dominions were parted by intervening nations, could only be heldtogether by its command of the seas. One century saw Spain stripped ofthe bulk of the Netherlands, another of her possessions in Italy, athird of her dominions in the New World. But slowly as her empire broke, the cause of ruin was throughout the same. It was the loss of hermaritime supremacy that robbed her of all, and her maritime supremacywas lost in the wreck of the Armada. 

[Sidenote: The counter-attack on Spain. ]

If Philip met the shock with a calm patience, it at once ruined hisplans in the West. France broke again from his grasp. Since the day ofthe Barricades Henry the Third had been virtually a prisoner in thehands of the Duke of Guise; but the defeat of the Armada woke him to anew effort for the recovery of power, and at the close of 1588 Guise wassummoned to his presence and stabbed as he entered by the royalbodyguard. The blow broke the strength of the League. The Duke ofMayenne, a brother of the victim, called indeed the Leaguers to arms;and made war upon the king. But Henry found help in his cousin, Henry ofNavarre, who brought a Huguenot force to his aid; and the moderateCatholics rallied as of old round the Crown. The Leaguers called onPhilip for aid, but Philip was forced to guard against attack at home. Elizabeth had resolved to give blow for blow. The Portuguese werewrithing under Spanish conquest; and a claimant of the crown, DonAntonio, who had found refuge in England, promised that on his landingthe country would rise in arms. In the spring of 1589 therefore anexpedition of fifty vessels and 15, 000 men was sent under Drake and SirJohn Norris against Lisbon. Its chances of success hung on a quickarrival in Portugal, but the fleet touched at Corunna, and after burningthe ships in its harbour the army was tempted to besiege the town. ASpanish army which advanced to its relief was repulsed by an Englishforce of half its numbers. Corunna however held stubbornly out, and inthe middle of May Norris was forced to break the siege and to sail toLisbon. But the delay had been fatal to his enterprise. The country didnot rise; the English troops were thinned with sickness; want of cannonhindered a siege; and after a fruitless march up the Tagus Norris fellback on the fleet. The coast was pillaged, and the expedition returnedbaffled to England. Luckless as the campaign had proved, the bolddefiance of Spain and the defeat of a Spanish army on Spanish groundkindled a new daring in Englishmen while they gave new heart to Philip'senemies. In the summer of 1589 Henry the Third laid siege to Paris. Thefears of the League were removed by the knife of a priest, JacquesClément, who assassinated the king in August; but Henry of Navarre, or, as he now became, Henry the Fourth, stood next to him in line of blood, and Philip saw with dismay a Protestant mount the throne of France. 

[Sidenote: Henry the Fourth. ]

From this moment the thought of attack on England, even his own warfarein the Netherlands, was subordinated in the mind of the Spanish king tothe need of crushing Henry the Fourth. It was not merely that Henry'sProtestantism threatened to spread heresy over the West. Catholic orProtestant, the union of France under an active and enterprising rulerwould be equally fatal to Philip's designs. Once gathered round itsking, France was a nearer obstacle to the reconquest of the Netherlandsthan ever England could be. On the other hand, the religious strife, towhich Henry's accession gave a fresh life and vigour, opened wideprospects to Philip's ambition. Far from proving a check upon Spain, itseemed as if France might be turned into a Spanish dependency. While theLeaguers proclaimed the Cardinal of Bourbon king, under the name ofCharles the Tenth, they recognized Philip as Protector of France. Theirhope indeed lay in his aid, and their army was virtually his own. On theother hand Henry the Fourth was environed with difficulties. It was onlyby declaring his willingness to be "further instructed" in matters offaith, in other words by holding out hopes of his conversion, that hesucceeded in retaining the moderate Catholics under his standard. Hisdesperate bravery alone won a victory at Ivry over the forces of theLeague, which enabled him to again form the siege of Paris in 1590. Allrecognized Paris as the turning-point in the struggle, and the Leaguecalled loudly for Philip's aid. To give it was to break the work whichParma was doing in the Netherlands, and to allow the United Provinces abreathing space in their sorest need. But even the Netherlands were ofless moment than the loss of France; and Philip's orders forced Parmato march to the relief of Paris. The work was done with a skill whichproved the Duke to be a master in the art of war. The siege of Paris wasraised; the efforts of Henry to bring the Spaniards to an engagementwere foiled; and it was only when the king's army broke up from sheerweariness that Parma withdrew unharmed to the north. 

[Sidenote: England and Henry. ]

England was watching the struggle of Henry the Fourth with a keeninterest. The failure of the expedition against Lisbon had put an endfor the time to any direct attacks upon Spain, and the exhaustion of thetreasury forced Elizabeth to content herself with issuing commissions tovolunteers. But the war was a national one, and the nation waged it foritself. Merchants, gentlemen, nobles fitted out privateers. The sea-dogsin ever-growing numbers scoured the Spanish Main. Their quest had itsill chances as it had its good, and sometimes the prizes made were farfrom paying for the cost of the venture. "Paul might plant, and Apollosmight water, " John Hawkins explained after an unsuccessful voyage, "butit is God only that giveth the increase!" But more often the profit wasenormous. Spanish galleons, Spanish merchant-ships, were brought monthafter month to English harbours. The daring of the English seamen facedany odds. Ten English trading vessels beat off twelve Spanishwar-galleys in the Straits of Gibraltar. Sir Richard Grenville in asingle bark, the Revenge, found himself girt in by fifty men-of-war, each twice as large as his own. He held out from afternoon to thefollowing daybreak, beating off attempt after attempt to board him; andit was not till his powder was spent, more than half his crew killed, and the rest wounded, that the ship struck its flag. Grenville hadrefused to surrender, and was carried mortally wounded to die in aSpanish ship. "Here die I, Richard Grenville, " were his last words, "with a joyful and a quiet mind, for that I have ended my life as a goodsoldier ought to do, who has fought for his country and his queen, forhonour and religion. " But the drift of the French war soon forcedElizabeth back again into the strife. In each of the French provincesthe civil war went on: and in Britanny, where the contest ragedfiercest, Philip sent the Leaguers a supply of Spanish troops. Normandywas already in Catholic hands, and the aim of the Spanish king was tosecure the western coast for future operations against England. Elizabeth pressed Henry the Fourth to foil these projects, and in thewinter of 1591 she sent money and men to aid him in the siege of Rouen. 

[Sidenote: Henry's conversion. ]

To save Rouen Philip was again forced to interrupt his work of conquestin the Netherlands. Parma marched anew into the heart of France, andwith the same consummate generalship as of old relieved the town withoutgiving Henry a chance of battle. But the day was fast going against theLeaguers. The death of their puppet-king, Charles the Tenth, left themwithout a sovereign to oppose to Henry of Navarre; and their scheme ofconferring the crown on Isabella, Philip's daughter by Elizabeth ofFrance, with a husband whom Philip should choose, awoke jealousies inthe house of Guise itself, while it gave strength to the national partywho shrank from laying France at the feet of Spain. Even the Parliamentof Paris, till now the centre of Catholic fanaticism, protested againstsetting the crown of France on the brow of a stranger. The politiciansdrew closer to Henry of Navarre, and the moderate Catholics pressed forhis reconciliation to the Church as a means of restoring unity to therealm. The step had become so inevitable that even the Protestants weresatisfied with Henry's promise of toleration; and in the summer of 1593he declared himself a Catholic. With his conversion the civil war camepractically to an end. It was in vain that Philip strove to maintain thezeal of the Leaguers, or that the Guises stubbornly kept the field. AllFrance drew steadily to the king. Paris opened her gates in the springof 1594, and the chief of the Leaguers, the Duke of Mayenne, submittedat the close of the year. Even Rome abandoned the contest, and at theend of 1595 Henry received solemn absolution from Clement the Eighth. From that moment France rose again into her old power, and the oldnational policy of opposition to the House of Austria threw her weightinto the wavering balance of Philip's fortunes. The death of Parma hadalready lightened the peril of the United Provinces, but though theirstruggle in the Low Countries was to last for years, from the moment ofHenry the Fourth's conversion their independence was secure. Nor was therestoration of the French monarchy to its old greatness of less momentto England. Philip was yet to send an armada against her coasts; he wasagain to stir up a fierce revolt in northern Ireland. But all dangerfrom Spain was over with the revival of France. Even were England toshrink from a strife in which she had held Philip so gloriously at bay, French policy would never suffer the island to fall unaided under thepower of Spain. The fear of foreign conquest passed away. The longstruggle for sheer existence was over. What remained was theProtestantism, the national union, the lofty patriotism, the pride inEngland and the might of Englishmen, which had drawn life more vivid andintense than they had ever known before from the long battle with thePapacy and with Spain. 

END OF VOL. IV

TRANSCRIBER'S NOTES:

The following words used an oe ligature in the original:

 manoeuvres manoeuvring