CHAPTER XI.

General view of the first ten years of Elizabeth-Movement of Rome against Protestantism--The persecutions in the Netherlands and in France-Intrigues against Elizabeth-Insurrection of the north-Pius V. issues a bull of excommunication against Elizabeth-Parliament of 1571-Statutes against papists-Puritanical party in the House of Commons-Motion for reform of abuses in the Church-Trial and execution of the duke of Norfolk-Troubles of Scotland-The Huguenots of France propitiated by the marriage of the prince of Navarre -Coligny shot-The massacre of Saint Bartholomew resolved upon-Its perpetration--Effect of the news upon the court and people of England-New danger of the queen of Scots.

THE contemporaries of Elizabeth regarded the first ten years of her reign. as "her halcyon days." The transition from the fiery Catholicism of Mary Tudor to the temperate Protestantism of her sister Elizabeth had been accomplished without bloodshed or convulsion. In the parliament of 1559, the nation was quietly led back to its ecclesiastical condition in the time of Edward VI.; and conformity was not rendered difficult or impossible by any needless stringency towards those who adhered to the old religion. In the parliament of 1563 measures of a stronger character were adopted against papists. Symptoms began to manifest themselves of a more active opposition to the civil and religious settlement under Elizabeth, induced by the arguments of catholic teachers who were spread about the country. Some persons, lay and ecclesiastical, were deterred from conformity, and others left

166

GENERAL VIEW OF TEN YEARS OF THIS REIGN.

[1568. the realm. But still there was no outbreak produced either by supineness or persecution. The parliament of 1566 passed no new law that, in any matter of importance, touched the subject of religion. Differences of opinion as to ceremonial observances had arisen amongst the English protestants themselves; and those who were called Puritans were fast becoming an organised power. But at the time when Mary Stuart had crossed the Solway, and the great question of policy had been raised as to her detention, the state of Protestantism in Europe, upon the maintenance of which in England the government of Elizabeth was to stand or fall, was one of great insecurity and alarm. The halcyon days were fast passing away. The people of this country had been prospering in the labours of peace. They had been extending their commerce to distant lands where the benefits of inter-communication had been little appreciated by earlier adventurers. Their sailors had gone forth to

make maritime discoveries. Frobisher was seeking a new passage to India; and Hawkins had found a fresh source of wealth in the hateful African slavetrade. Gresham was building an Exchange in London, where the merchants of all nations might meet to buy and sell. The great principles of commerce were so far understood that merchandise was allowed to be exported and imported in foreign ships, upon the payment of alien imposts; and the English and Flemish merchants united their contributions for marine insurance. The people were lightly taxed, for the government was an economical one. Whatever were the religious differences of the community, its various members united peaceably in the duties of their several callings. They felt that they were under a firm government; and in the security of such a government,

1568.]

MOVEMENT OF ROME AGAINST PROTESTANTISM.

167

despotic enough but not corrupt or lavish, the wealth and intelligence of England were steadily progressing.

In 1568, when Elizabeth and her ministers were displaying towards Mary Stuart a policy which it is easy to call unjust and cruel, treacherous and ungenerous, the heretical queen of England and her protestant subjects were the objects of the bitterest hatred of those who thought the time was come to extirpate heresy by fire and sword. A Dominican monk of the severest life -a zealot who had distinguished himself as an inquisitor-became pope in 1566, under the title of Pius V. A more furious bigot never sat on the papal throne; and his bigotry was the more terrible from the circumstance that it was conscientious. When he sent a force to the aid of the French catholics, he told their leader "to take no Huguenot prisoner, but instantly to kill every one that fell into his hands." When the savage duke of Alva was butchering without remorse in the Netherlands, the holy father sent him a consecrated hat and sword, in admiration of his Christian proceedings. Pius V. avowed his desire to devote the treasures of the church, even to its chalices and crucifixes, to carry a religious war into England; and to head such an expedition himself. The influence of this frantic persecutor over kings who made their religious intolerance an instrument of their cruel tyranny, such as Philip II., was enormous. This Pope of the Inquisition, as he has been called, arose, with his sole idea of extirpating heresy by force, at a time when the two great religious principles were coming into open conflict. The period for accommodation had passed away. In 1568 Alva was appointed by Philip, Captain-general of the Netherlands. His mission was to destroy the heretics, root and branch; and he accomplished his work with a success that left his master and his master's holy counsellor nothing to desire. While Alva was, in Valenciennes, Ghent, Brussels, Antwerp, hanging, beheading, racking, burning, and confiscating, the secretary of Philip said to the papal nuncio, "are you now satisfied with the proceedings of the king?" The smiling nuncio answered, "quite satisfied." The tribunal which condemned the victims whom their officers had ferreted out, was called the "Council of Blood." From the great commercial cities of the Netherlands there were hosts of fugitives, although the most terrible penalties were denounced against those who attempted to fly. Many came for refuge to England. The same asylum was sought by Huguenots of France, when the hopes of their party were destroyed on the field of Moncontour. They said,

"Our hearths we abandon, our lands we resign;
But, Father, we kneel to no altar but thine." +

Amongst these refugees were not only a great number who professed Calvinistic opinions, but others who carried their principle of liberty of conscience into the avowal of doctrines which even liberal protestants considered dangerous. Those who were opposed to infant baptism were held, with great injustice, to belong to the old sect of anabaptists, whose social opinions were deemed adverse to all regular government. Whilst the general body of exiles, by the recital of their injuries, diffused a popular hatred of papal persecution, some strengthened that dislike to many of the ceremonial

Ranke, vol. i. p. 393.

+ Macaulay, "Songs of the Huguenots."

168

INTRIGUES AGAINST ELIZABETH.

[1569. observances of the English church, which gradually established a large class who, in their hatred of popery, would tolerate no forms that appeared derived from the ancient worship. A few became obnoxious to that intolerance which, in the earlier days of the Reformation, hunted out those who, deservedly or not, were suspected of holding to the opinions which John of Leyden rendered infamous. But the puritan doctrines, or the more heterodox, as yet gave slight trouble to the government of Elizabeth, compared with the civil and religious dangers apprehended in the present crisis of Catholic hostility to every form of Protestantism. The furious pope had his agents in England denouncing the queen as a heretic. Philip was maturing plots by advances of money to his spies in London. Alva was devising plans for an invasion of the island that had cast off the successor of St. Peter. Around Mary Stuart were concentred all the intrigues that sought to place the orthodox and legitimate descendant of Henry VII. upon the throne of the heretical and illegitimate daughter of Anne Boleyn. The insurrection of the north, of 1569, was no immature combination of a few discontented papist nobles, but a result of the general movement against the reformers that was agitating Europe. Those who regard this crisis through the thick veil of their sentimentalities about the unfortunate Scottish queen, with the usual trashy belief in Elizabeth's jealousy of her superior charms, will do well to abstain from the study of what they call history, and surrender themselves with an undivided trust to the professed writers of poetry and romance. History has to deal with serious truths, and not with morbid sympathies and blind nationalities. It was the glory of the first ten years of Elizabeth's reign that "no English blood had been shed on the scaffold or in the field for a public quarrel, whether civil or religious."* If, during the next twenty years, we have, amidst a constant advance of national prosperity, to trace the course of conspiracies and insurrections, we must look at England as the arena where the two great principles that were dividing Europe were fought out. The victory remained with the sagacious statesmen who best understood the character of the nationstatesmen led by a ruler unsurpassed in the highest attributes of a sovereign; one who in every danger was equal to the emergency; who felt the grandeur of her position as the head of the Reformation; whose force of character made that Protestantism secure which was once more than doubtful; who, in the hour of her greatest trial, when the catholic world gathered together all its strength to crush the heretic islanders, threw herself boldly upon the affections of her people, one and all, and the danger was overpast; the sovereign to whom we chiefly owe that, after the lapse of three hundred years, the faith which she built up is so safe that it allows the widest toleration to take the place of the exclusive conformity of her time. This is the queen that history should paint. The foibles of the woman belong to a lower province of literature.

In the autumn of 1569 there were symptoms of disquiet in the northern counties. Cecil, in a letter of the 13th of October, to the earls of Shrewsbury and Huntingdon, says, in a postscript, "My lords,—It may be that you have [heard] or shall hear of a fond rumour stirred up the 6th of

* Mackintosh.

1569.]

INSURRECTION OF THE NORTH.

169

this month, in the North Riding and the Bishopric, of a rising should be; but it was a vain smoke, but without any spark of any account." * When the wary minister wrote this he probably knew perfectly well that the smoke was not without fire. The general disaffection of the northern catholics was well known. Sadler wrote, from the border counties, "There are not in all this country ten gentlemen that do favour and allow of her majesty's proceedings in the cause of religion." + Dr. Norton, who had been a prebendary of York in the time of queen Mary, had come from Rome with the title of apostolical penitentiary. He had incited the catholic priests and the northern gentlemen by statements that the pope was about to issue a bull of deposition against Elizabeth. He was a relative of the families of Norton and Markenfeld, whom Mary Stuart numbered amongst her friends. The earls of Westmorland and Northumberland were in secret communication with her. The adroitness by which Mary contrived to elude the vigilance of those who had her custody is one of the most remarkable points of her character. She was always borne up by the belief that she had the right to the throne filled by Elizabeth, and that the people of England would support her in that right if she had her liberty. The arrest of Norfolk precipitated the insurrection. The schemes for foreign aid were devised but not perfected. Alva was to have sent an auxiliary force to land at Hartlepool. These schemes and preparations could not be concealed from the vigilance of Elizabeth's ministers. On the 10th of November the earls of Westmorland and Northumberland were summoned to repair to court. Apprehensive of arrest Northumberland marched with his vassals to join Westmorland at the castle of Brancepeth. There was no longer any disguise. A proclamation was issued, addressed to all professing the catholic faith, to restore the ancient worship; and the earls marched on to Durham with a banner representing the bleeding Saviour-" the banner of the five wounds." It was borne by a brave old man, whose fate, and the fate of his eight sons, have been preserved from the oblivion of dry annals by the legends which a true poet has invested with almost historical reality. The Nortons of Rylstone may claim our tears; but we have little pity for the weak earls, who, when Sussex appeared against them with a strong force, fled to Scotland, leaving their followers to the terrible vengeance that followed a suppressed revolt. Northumberland, after a confinement of several years at Lochleven, was given up to the English government, and executed. Westmorland died an exile in Flanders. There was a subsequent revolt under lord Dacres of the North, which was put down after a battle, in which the catholics fought with desperation. The English Bible and Common Prayer had been burnt by the insurgents of 1569 in the cathedral of Durham. Their avowed intention was to march to Tutbury, and release Mary. Had they succeeded, the nation would have been plunged into a terrible civil war. The Catholics of the thinly-inhabited border countries were numerous as well as desperate; but the Protestants of the more densely peopled parts of England, and especially of the great towns, were far too united to have the old worship forced back upon them, the contest involving a new struggle for the crown. Their horror of the past

Lodge, vol. ii. p. 26.

Wordsworth, "White Doe of Rylstone.'

+ Quoted in Lingard, vol. viii. p. 54.