1587.] NOTE ON DAVISON'S STATEMENTS. 211 the Davison MS., and we read, "One [at] Wingfield." The one who would “undertake it" would not necessarily be an assassin; and from the answer of Davison to this allusion of the queen, it is quite clear that he did not view the refusal of Paulet and Drury to "undertake it" as a refusal to perpetrate a secret murder. He "discoursed unto her the great extremity she would have exposed those poor gentlemen to; for if, in a tender care of her surety, they should have done that she desired, she must either allow their act, or disallow it." Whatever it was to be, it was to be an open act. Elizabeth,—if we altogether reject the two suspicious letters from the evidence,-desired an informal public execution, but not a mysterious removal of the condemned prisoner. The trial of Mary took place while Leicester was in the Netherlands. On the 25th of October he wrote from Utrecht a letter to Walsingham, in which he says, My heart cannot rest for fear, since I heard that your matters are deferred. . . . . I do fear, if I had been there with you, I should rather have put myself into her majesty's place, than suffered this dreadful mischief to be prolonged, for her destruction."* Elizabeth wished some one to take upon himself the responsibility of "her majesty's place"--a wretched device, but not a scheme of assassination. But any objections that might be raised to the internal evidence of the authenticity of these letters would be overthrown, if the originals were preserved, and the signatures could be compared with the well-known autographs of Walsingham and Davison. They are professedly copies; and yet Mr. Tytler calls them "original letters ;" and another historian speaks of them as "unquestionable documents." In quoting them, or commenting upon them, we are sometimes referred to the Harleian MS. There, indeed, may we find copies of the two letters, which copies are thus described in the Catalogue of the MSS. in the British Museum :-"One is dated the 1st, the other the 6th of Feb., 1586. Both copies partly in lord Oxford's own hand, and inclosed in a letter from the duke of Chandos to his lordship, who had lent them to him, expressing his return of them and opinion that they are a very valuable curiosity, and deserve well to be preserved. Dated Cannons, Aug. 23, 1725." The famous Robert Harley died in May, 1724, and was succeeded by his son Edward, to whom the duke of Chandos must have returned the "very valuable curiosity." At that time, however, they had been published by Dr. Mackenzie, as illustrative of Davison's apology, in his "Worthies," 1722; and by Thomas Hearne, in his edition of Robert of Gloucester's Chronicle, which bears the date of 1724. Hearne says, they were copied by a friend of his, in September, 1717, from a manuscript folio book, containing letters to and from sir Amias Paulet, when the queen of Scots' governor at Fotheringay. Where is that "manuscript folio book," so curious on many other accounts? Hearne gives us, after the letter of Walsingham and Davison, the following as entries in what Dr. Lingard calls "the letter-book" of Paulet : "This letter was received at Fotheringay the 2nd of February, at five in the afternoon." Immediately after, we have "An abstract of a letter from Mr. Secretary Davison, of the said 1st of February, 1586, as followeth :-'I pray you let this and the inclosed be committed to the fire, which measure shall be likewise met to your answer, after it hath been communicated to her majesty for her satisfaction."" But Davison is still anxious; and we have next, "A postscript in a letter from Mr. Secretary Davison, of the 3d of February, 1586'I entreated you in my last letters to burn both the letters sent unto you for the argument's sake; which, by your answer to the secretary (which I have seen) appeareth not to be done. I pray you let me intreat you to make heretics both of th' one and th' other, as I mean to use yours after her majesty hath seen it.'" Davison is further so uneasy about the murderous letter, that he adds a * "Leycester Correspondence," p. 447. 212 NOTE ON DAVISON'S STATEMENTS. [1537. postscript to the postscript," I pray you let me know what you have done with my letters, because they are not fit to be kept." The letters, it is said, were not burnt. Chalmers gives an extract of a letter from Paulet, in which he says, "If I should say I burnt the papers you wot of, I cannot tell if anybody would believe me; and therefore I reserve them to be delivered into your own hands at my coming to London." Dr. Lingard, who quotes this, says, "He might do so but the letter and answer had previously been entered into his letter-book. Had this not happened, the fact would never have come to light." How does Dr. Lingard know that "the papers you wot of" refers to the letter of the 1st of February? If the letter-book itself were come to light we should be better satisfied as to "the fact." As it is, these laborious postscripts, so carefully preserved, appear very much like the performance of some fabricator overdoing his work. There is one expression which to us is very suspicious: "I pray you let me intreat you to make heretics both of th' one and th' other." Was this a common joke of the "Home Office" of 1587? Walsingham, in a letter to Leicester about the Babington Conspiracy (Cottonian MS.), says, pray your lordship make this letter an heretic after you have read the same. Or was this remarkable expression worked into Secretary Davison's postscript by one who had been struck by it in the Cotton MS. ?-the friend of Hearne, who found these choice bits, and no other, in the "Manuscript folio book." If these letters and postscripts were forgeries, they were founded upon the "discourse" of Davison, as "transcribed by Mr. John Urry, of Christchurch." They fit tolerably well; but there is one slip. The haste with which the letters were exchanged, at a distance of eighty miles, is very remarkable. The answer to the secretary's letter of the 1st of February is in London on the 3rd, according to Davison's postscript, in which he says that he has seen it. But in Davison's "discourse we find that the queen asks him on the 4th if he had heard from Paulet, and he tells her "no." That same afternoon he says, "I met with letters from him, in answer to those that were written some few days before." In Davison's story, after the date of the 1st of February, we have to fix the other dates by following the narrative day by day. It was easy to mistake the exact date, in the manufacture of a letter to suit the narrative, and give it a darker hue. We might leave this mysterious question at this point, had we not a few words to add about the period at which the correspondence so calculated to damage the memory of the Protestant queen Elizabeth was first given to the world. It was in the hottest period of Jacobite plots for the bringing in of the Pretender. Harley, who makes copies of these letters, was implicated in these intrigues. They are first published by Dr. Mackenzie, in 1722; and being re-published in 1725, in a "Life of Mary, Queen of Scots," by Freebairne, he says, with a curious sort of candour, speaking of the odious charge about assassination, "This affair, which leaves so foul a stain upon queen Elizabeth's reputation, I dare not assert to be fact," and he adds that, therefore, he shall only transcribe these letters; a copy of which, transcribed from the originals, was sent to the Doctor by our learned countryman, Mr. John Hurry, of Christ's Church College, Oxon." Mr. John Urry, the incompetent editor of Chaucer, was known to Harley and Atterbury; and he might have received the letters from some zealous friend of the Stuarts. Hearne, who publishes them in 1724, was a non-juror; and his anxiety to give them to the world was shown by his thrusting them into the middle of a glossary of an ancient chronicle which he published. Lastly, Dr. Jebb prints the two letters in the Appendix to his History of Mary, queen of Scots, published in London, also in 1725. From that time the odious charge against Elizabeth has mainly rested upon these letters, as those who printed them clearly saw. "Leycester Correspondence," p. 342. Funeral of Sir Philip Sidney-Preparations for the Invasion of England by Spain-Drake's Expedition to Cadiz-Suspected policy of James VI.-The Armada announced-The spirit of the country-Camp at Tilbury-The Mariners of England-Defences of the coast-The demeanour of the queen-Her oration at Tilbury-Loyalty of the Catholics. LONDON has had its rejoicings that the great blow has been struck which is to deliver England from the dread of a papist successor to Elizabeth. The bells of the city's hundred steeples have proclaimed the stern exultation of the citizens that the voice of the parliament had at last been listened to. There is secret anger amongst a few; and generous pity in many a woman's heart. But the common sentiment is that the danger of domestic treason has been removed; and that the other danger of foreign invasion is less to be dreaded. In another week the patriotic feelings of the people are wisely stirred in their utmost depths. The queen has undertaken the charge of a costly public funeral of sir Philip Sidney. He who under the walls of Zutphen had perished untimely-who was no more to show his knightly bearing in the Tilt-yard, or to wander amidst the flower-enamelled meadows 214 PREPARATIONS FOR INVASION BY SPAIN. * [1587. of his own Penshurst-is lying insensible to earthly hopes or fears, at the house of the Minorites, without Aldgate. On the 16th of February there is a magnificent pageant in honour of the self-denying hero. From the Minories to St. Paul's there is a long procession of the rulers of the city, clad in solemn purple. Young men selected from the train-bands march "three and three, in black cassokins, with their short pikes, halberds, and ensign trailing on the ground." Brave comrades of Sidney in his battlefields are there; and there is the ambitious Leicester, who has not yet resigned his scheme of being sovereign of the Netherlands. The people gaze upon Drake, the great mariner who has circumnavigated the world; and has carried terror of the English flag through all the Spanish settlements. In the pomp of that funeral of Sidney there is something more than empty pageantry. A long course of prosperous industry might be supposed to have unfitted those who had been winning the spoils of peace, for the defence of their country at a time of great national danger. The memory of that brave knight, who had fallen in the war of principle in the Low Countries, would present an example worthy of all imitation to high and humble. But the ancient spirit was not dead. In the midst of many differences of opinion amongst Protestants connected with the discipline of the Church, and with Romanists living under severe laws, there was to be, in another year, such an outburst of patriotism as would manifest that the love of country was above all divisions of creed. That glorious manifestation of national spirit in 1588 was also to show that a people does not necessarily become weakened in character by a long course of prosperity, but that the accumulations of peace are the real resources of war. It is not the diffusion of comforts and luxuries that renders a nation unwarlike and apathetic. It is the treading out of true nationality by lawless rulers-the shutting-up of all the fountains of independent thought by slavish superstition-that destroy the patriotism of a people, and make them incapable of defending their homes. There were many things in the political condition of the English under Elizabeth that are opposed to our notions of freedom-that were essentially characteristic of an arbitrary government. But the people were thriving; they were living under an equal administration of justice; and they were trusted. They had arms in their hands, and they were taught how to use them. There was no standing army; but every man of full age was a soldier. The feudal military organisation was gone. There was an organisation of the people amongst themselves equally effective, and far more inspiriting. In the spring of 1587 it was certain that Spain was making great preparations for the invasion of England. This design was the result of no sudden resolve. Elizabeth was not to be hurled from the throne of the heretic island, because Philip was provoked out of his forbearance by "an insult to the majesty of sovereigns, which, as the most powerful of Christian monarchs, he deemed it his duty to revenge." The people of England by their parliament, Elizabeth by her ministers, "had taken, on a scaffold, the life of the queen of Scots;" but the projected invasion had been stimulated by that queen as the great scheme for bringing back England and Scotland to the Stow's "Annals," + Lingard, vol. viii. 1587.] DRAKE'S EXPEDITION TO CADIZ. 215 faith for which Philip and his adherents were calling into terrible vindictiveness all the horrors of the Inquisition and all the subtlety of the Jesuits. The day that was to decide for us which should prevail of the two principles that divided the Christian world was fast approaching. There was no hesitation here. Elizabeth provided Drake with four royal ships, and twenty-four other vessels were placed under his command by the citizens of London. On the 2nd of April this squadron was ready to sail out of Plymouth Sound. Drake wrote on that morning to Walsingham. "This last night past came unto us the Royal Merchant, with four of the rest of the London fleet; the wind would permit them no sooner. . . . The wind commands me away. Our ship is under sail. God grant we may so live in his fear, as the enemy may have cause to say that God doth fight for her majesty as well abroad as at home." In this solemn confidence in the Divine protection, went out these heroic men of an heroic age, "to stand," as Drake said, "for our gracious queen and country against Anti-Christ and his members;" and doubting not to give a good account of their enemies, "for they are the sons of men." * On the 19th of April he entered the harbour of Cadiz, which was filled with many Spanish ships, embarking provisions and warlike stores, and destined. to proceed to join the great armament at Lisbon. Defying the guns of the fortress, and the huge Spanish galleys, with the dash of the true English seaman, Drake made himself master of the roadstead; and in the course of two nights and one day had sunk, burnt, or captured shipping of ten thousand tons lading. To use his own expressive phrase, he had "singed the Spanish king's beard." He had tried the comparatively small English vessels against the mighty galleys. They ran under the protection of the fort, after two had been sunk. He had found that daring * Letter in State Paper Office, given in Barrow's "Life of Drake." |