1580-1582 Elizabeth's servants feared the coming of the Spanish through Ireland, while the English Catholics, and especially the English Catholic clergy in exile on the Continent, fancied, wrongly, that the Irish were fighting for the Papacy, and not for tribal independence, or, rather, for bare life, which tribal independence alone secured. In 1580 a large number of Spaniards and Italians landed at Smerwick, but was overpowered and slaughtered by Lord Grey, the Lord Deputy. This was followed by an unsuccessful rising, and it is said that in 1582 no less than 30,000 perished-mostly of starvation-in a single year. In England the landing of a Papal force at Smerwick produced the greater alarm because Parma had been gaining ground in the Netherlands, and the time might soon come when a Spanish army would be available for the invasion of England. For the present what the Government feared was any interruption to the process by which the new religion was replacing the old. In 1571 there had been an act of Parliament in answer to the Papal Bull of Deposition, declaring all who brought Bulls into the country, and all who were themselves reconciled to the see of Rome, or who reconciled others, to be traitors, but for a long time no use was made by Elizabeth of these powers. The Catholic exiles, however, had witnessed with sorrow the gradual decay of their religion in England, and in 1568 William Allen, one of their number, had founded a college at Douai (removed in 1578 to Rheims) as a seminary for missionaries to England. It was not long before seminary priests, as the missionaries were called, began to land. in England to revive the zeal of their countrymen, but it was not till 1577 that one of them, Cuthbert Mayne, was executed, technically for bringing in a copy of a Bull of a trivial character, but really for maintaining that Catholics would be justified in rising. to assist a foreign force sent to reduce England to obedience to the Papacy. There were, in fact, two rival powers inconsistent with one another. If the Papal power was to prevail, the queen's authority must be got rid of. If the queen's power was to prevail, the Pope's authority must be got rid of. In 1580 two Jesuits, Campion and Parsons, landed. They brought with them an explanation of the Bull of Deposition, which practically meant that no one need act on it till it was convenient to do so. They went about making converts and strengthening the lukewarm in the resolution to stand by their faith. 1580-1584 Elizabeth in her dread of religious strife had done her best to silence religious discussion and even religious teaching. Men in an age of religious controversy are eager to believe something. All the more vigorous of the Protestants were at this time Puritans, and now the more vigorous of those who could not be Puritans welcomed the Jesuits with joy. In 1581 Parliament, seeing nothing in what had happened but a conspiracy against the Crown, passed the first of the acts which became known as the Recusancy laws. In addition to the penalties on reconciliation to Rome and the introduction of Bulls, fines and imprisonment were to be inflicted for hearing or saying mass, and fines upon lay recusants— that is to say, persons who refused to go to church. Catholics were from this time frequently subjected to torture to drive them to give information which would lead to the apprehension of the priests. Campion was arrested and executed after cruel torture; Parsons escaped. If the Government and the Parliament did not see the whole of the causes of the Jesuit revival, they were not wrong in seeing that there was political danger. Campion was an enthusiast. Parsons was a cool-headed intriguer, and he continued from the continent to direct the threads of a conspiracy which aimed at Elizabeth's life. Elizabeth was seldom startled, but her ministers were the more frightened because the power of Spain was growing. In 1580 Philip took possession of Portugal and the Portuguese colonies, while in the Netherlands Parma was steadily gaining ground. Elizabeth had long been nursing the idea of the Alençon marriage and in 1581 it seemed as if she was in earnest about it. She entertained the Duke at Greenwich, gave him a kiss and a ring, then changing her mind sent him off to the Netherlands, where he hoped to be appointed by the Dutch to the sovereignty of the independent states. There were plots against William of Orange and Elizabeth, and aid was expected from Scotland, where the young James had become the tool of a Catholic intriguer. Philip, however, was too dilatory to succeed. In August James was seized by some Protestant Lords. In 1583 there was a renewal of the danger. The foolish Alençon made some false moves and a Spanish invasion of England from the Netherlands once more became feasible. In November, 1583, a certain Francis Throgmorton, having been arrested and racked, made known to Elizabeth the whole story of the intended invasion of the army of Guise. In January, 1584, 1584-1586 she sent the Spanish ambassador, Mendoza, out of England. On June 29 Balthazar Gerard assassinated the Prince of Orange. Those who had planned the murder of the Prince of Orange were planning the murder of Elizabeth. In their eyes she was a usurper, who by main force held her subjects from all hope of salvation by keeping them in ignorance of the teaching of the true Church, and they accordingly drew the inference that it was lawful to murder her and to place Mary on her throne. They did not see that they had to do with a nation and not with a queen alone, and that, whether the nation was as yet Protestant or not, it was heart and soul with Elizabeth against assassins and invaders. In November, 1584, at the instigation of the Council, the mass of Englishmen-irrespective of creed-bound themselves in an association not only to defend the queen, but, in case of her murder, to put to death the person for whose sake the crime had been committed-or, in other words, to send Mary to the grave instead of to the throne. In 1585 this association, with considerable modifications, was confirmed by Parliament. At the same time an act was passed banishing all Jesuits and seminary priests, and directing that they should be put to death if they returned. In the meantime Philip's power was still growing. The wretched Alençon died in 1584, and a far distant cousin of the childless Henry III., Henry, king of Navarre, who was a Huguenot, became heir to the French throne. As Guise had now enough to do at home, Philip took the invasion of England into his own hands. He had first to extend his power in the Netherlands. In August the great port of Antwerp surrendered to Parma. The Dutch had offered to make Elizabeth their sovereign, and, though she had prudently refused, she sent an army to their aid, which accomplished nothing. What Elizabeth did not do was done by a crowd of young Englishmen who pressed over to the Netherlands to fight as volunteers for Dutch freedom. The best known of these was Sir Philip Sidney, whose head and heart alike seemed to qualify him for a foremost place among the new generation of Englishmen. Parma took Zutphen, and the territory of the Dutch Republic-the bulwark of England-was the smaller by its loss. By sea England more than held her own, and in 1586 Drake returned from a voyage to the West Indies laden with spoils. The Spanish invasion being still delayed, a new plot for murdering Elizabeth was formed. A number of young Catholics 1586 (of whom Anthony Babington was the most prominent) had been allowed to remain at Court by Elizabeth, who was perfectly fearless. Acting under the instructions of a priest named Ballard, they now sought basely to take advantage of their easy access to her person to assassinate her. They were detected and executed, and Walsingham, the Secretary of State who conducted the detective department of the government, discovered, or said that he had discovered, evidence of Mary Stuart's approving knowledge of the conspiracy. Elizabeth's servants felt that there was but one way of saving the life of the queen, and that was by taking the life of her whose existence made it worth while to assassinate Elizabeth. Mary was brought to trial and condemned to death on a charge of complicity in Babington's plot. When Parliament met it petitioned Elizabeth to execute the sentence. Elizabeth could not make up her mind. She knew that Mary's execution would save herself and the country from enormous danger, but she shrank from ordering the deed to be done. She signed the warrant for Mary's death, and then asked Mary's jailer Paulet to save her from responsibility by murdering his prisoner. On Paulet's refusal she continued her vacillations, till the Council authorized Davison, Walsingham's colleague in the Secretaryship, to send off the warrant without further orders. On February 8, 1587, Mary Stuart was beheaded at Fotheringhay. Elizabeth carried out to the last the part which she had assumed, threw the blame on Davison, dismissed him from her service, and fined him heavily. After Mary's death the attack on England would have to be conducted in open day. It would be no advantage to Philip and the Pope that Elizabeth should be murdered if her place was to be taken, not by Mary, but by Mary's Protestant son, James of Scotland. Chapter XXX ELIZABETH'S YEARS OF TRIUMPH. 1587-1603 LEADING DATES REIGN OF ELIZABETH, A.D. 1558-1603-DRAKE SINGES THE KING OF FTER Mary's execution Philip claimed the crown of England for himself or his daughter, the Infanta Isabella, on the plea that he was descended from a daughter of John of Gaunt, and prepared a great fleet in the Spanish and Portuguese harbors for the invasion of England. In attempting to overthrow Elizabeth he was eager not merely to suppress English Protestantism, but to put an end to English smuggling and piracy in Spanish America, and to stop the assistance given by Englishmen to the Netherlanders who had rebelled against him. Before his fleet was ready to sail Drake appeared off his coast, running into his ports, burning his store-ships, and thus making an invasion impossible for that year (1587). Drake, as he said on his return, had singed the king of Spain's beard. The Invincible Armada,1 as some foolish Spaniards called Philip's great fleet, set out at last in 1588. It was to sail up the Channel to Flanders, and to transport Parma and his army to England. Parma's soldiers were the best disciplined veterans in Europe, while Elizabeth's were raw militia, who had never seen a shot fired in actual war. If, therefore, Parma succeeded in landing, it would probably go hard with England. It was, therefore, in England's interest to fight the Armada at sea rather than on land. Even at sea the odds were in appearance against the English. The Spanish ships were not indeed so much larger than the largest 1 "Armada" was the Spanish name for any armed fleet. |