that we should have the guard and use of some such places, for sure access and recess of our people and soldiers in safety, and for furniture of them with victuals and other things requisite and necessary, whilst it shall be needful for them to continue in those countries, for the aiding thereof in these their great calamities, miseries, and imminent danger; and until the countries may be delivered of such strange forces as do now oppress them, and recover their ancient lawful liberties and manner of government, to live in peace as they have heretofore done, and do now most earnestly in lamentable manner desire to do, which are the very only true ends of all our actions now intended." At the conclusion, the queen alluded to the "cankered conceits," uttered by malicious tongues, and blasphemous reports, in such infamous libels, that in no age had the devil employed more spirits replenished with all wickedness to utter his rage. An appendix was added to this declaration, in consequence of an account of the siege of Antwerp, printed at Milan, in which, said she, we found ourselves most maliciously charged with two notable crimes, no less hateful to the world than most repugnant and contrary to our own natural inclination. The one with ingratitude towards the king of Spain, who, as the author saith, saved our life, being justly by sentence adjudged to death in our sister's time; the other, that there were persons corrupted with great promises, and that with our intelligence, to take away the prince of Parma's life. Now, knowing how men are maliciously bent, in this declining age of the world, both to judge, speak, and write maliciously, falsely, and unreverently of princes, and holding nothing so dear unto us as the conservation of our reputation and honour to be blameless, we found it very expedient not to suffer two such horrible imputations to pass under silence. And for answer of the first point, touching our ingratitude towards the king of Spain, as we do most willingly acknowledge that we were beholding unto him in the time of our late sister, which we then did acknowledge very thank ELIZABETH'S VINDICATION. 315 fully, and have sought many ways since in like sort to requite, so do we utterly deny as a most manifest untruth, that ever he was the cause of the saving of our life, as a person by course of justice sentenced unto death, who ever carried ourself towards our said sister in such dutiful sort, as our loyalty was never called in question, much less any sentence of death* pronounced against us: a matter such as in respect of the ordinary course of proceeding, as by process in law, by place of trial, by the judge that should pronounce such sentence, and other necessary circumstances in like cases usual, especially against one of our quality, as it could not but have been publicly known, if any such thing had been put in execution. This, then, being true, we leave to the world to judge how maliciously and injuriously the author of the said pamphlet dealeth with us in charging us with a Ivice that of all others we do most hate and abhor. And by the manifest untruth of this imputation, men, not transported with passion, may easily discern what untruth is contained in the second, by which we are charged with an intended attempt against the life of the prince of Parma. He is one of whom we have ever had an honourable conceit, in respect of those singular rare parts we always have noted in him, which hath won unto him as great a reputation as any man this day living carrieth of his degree and quality; and so have we al *This accusation was not made by pamphleteers and mere libellers only. Herrera, the royal chronicler, in his Historia General del Mundo for the first seventeen years of Philip's reign, asserts that Elizabeth was on three several occasions condemned to death for treason against her sister, and as often pardoned through the king's intercession: “Y el librarla los Españoles con tanto cuydado de la muerte, dezian los Franceses que se hazia porque no sucediesse en la corona de Inglaterra Maria reyna de Escocia, casada con Francisco delfin de Francia; y los Españoles dezian contra los Franceses que procuravan de engañar a Ysabel, metiendola en estos trabajos, para que muriendo por ellos, quedasse desembarazada la sucession a la reyna de Escocia. Let. vi. c. 13. p. 399. Herrera probably believed what he asserted, if what Strada affirms be true, that the statement was made by Philip himself! That king, the jesuit says, was incensed against Elizabeth," tanto quidem acriore sensu, quanto pro beneficiis, proque vitâ ipsâ, quam ei bis terque se dedisse rex affirmabat, dum conspirationum insimulatam, è carcere, capitalique judicio liberaverat; pro his aliisque promeritis alias super alias accepisse se indesinenter injurias agnoscebat." P. 526. The chronicler adds that Calais was betrayed, with Elizabeth's consent, she hoping thereby to break her sister's heart," para acabar con estos enojos tanto mas presto la vida de su hermana." ways delivered out by speech unto the world, when any occasion hath been offered to make mention of him. And touching the prosecution, committed unto him, of the wars in the Low Countries, as all men of judgment know, that the taking away of his life carrieth no likelihood that the same shall work any end of the said prosecution, so is it manifestly known that no man hath dealt more honourably than the said prince, either in duly observing of his promise, or extending grace and mercy where merit and desert hath craved the same; and, therefore, no greater impiety by any could be wrought, nor nothing more prejudicial to ourself (so long as the king shall continue the prosecution of the cause in that forcible sort he now doth), than to be an instrument to take him away from thence by such violent means, that hath dealt in a more honourable and gracious sort in the charge committed unto him, than any other that hath ever gone before him, or is likely to succeed after him. Now, therefore, how unlikely it is, that we should be either author, or any way assenting to so horrible a fact, we refer to the judgment of such as look into causes, not with the eyes of their affection, but do measure and weigh things according to honour and reason. The best course, therefore, that both we and all other princes can hold, in this unfortunate age, that overfloweth with malignant spirits, is, through the grace and goodness of Almighty God, to direct our course in such sort, as they may rather show their wills through malice, than with just cause by desert to say ill either by speech or writing; assuring ourselves, that besides the punishment that such wicked libellers shall receive at the hands of the Almighty for depraving of princes and lawful magistrates, who are God's ministers, they both are and always shall be thought by all good men unworthy to live upon the face of the earth."* When Elizabeth thus openly allied herself with the United States, which was, in fact, declaring war against Spain, the other Christian princes "admired such manly દે Holinshed, 621-630. NEW PLANS OF INVASION. 317 fortitude in a woman; and the king of Sweden said, she had taken the crown from her head and adventured it upon the chance of war.' But no new or additional danger was drawn upon her by this declaration. The plan of invasion which Sebastian's expedition to Africa had frustrated, and which had been suspended in consequence of the subsequent events in Portugal, had been resumed two years before this treaty with the States was concluded. The prince of Parma had at that time been ordered to obtain accurate information respecting the English ports, and their means of defence: the Milanese engineer, Battista Piatti, who constructed the bridge over the Scheldt during the siege of Antwerp, was one of the persons thus employed; he had drawn up a report accordingly, and proceeded to Spain to give what farther information might be required. A negotiation pending with the queen of Scots, for her release, upon her engagement that her agents should attempt nothing to the injury of Elizabeth or of England was broken off, partly, says Camden, because of certain fears cast in the way by those who knew how to increase suspicions between women already displeased with one another; but chiefly in consequence of certain papers, which a Scotch jesuit, on his passage to Scotland, when captured by some Netherlanders, tore in pieces, and cast overboard: the wind blew them back into the ship, and from these fragments the designs of the pope, the Spaniard, and the Guises, for invading England, were discovered. The detection of a nearer treason led to the death of the queen of Scots, an act by which Elizabeth, if she lessened her own immediate danger and that of the nation, (which may well be doubted), brought upon herself an ineffaceable stain §, purchasing self-preservation at a *Camden, 321. † Strada, 526. Camden, 299. Parry in a letter to the queen, after his condemnation, says, "The queen of Scots is your prisoner. Let her be honourably entreated, but yet surely guarded. She may do you good; she will do you no harm, if the fault be not English. It importeth you much; so long as it is well with her, it is safe with you. When she is in fear, you are not without peril. Cherish, and love her, She is of your blood, and your undoubted heir in succession. It is so taken abroad, and will be found so at home." — Strype's 66 greater price than it is worth. But it is not upon Elizabeth that the blackest stigma should be affixed. The English parliament called upon her for blood. Not a voice in either house was raised against the popular cry. The commons came to a resolution, "that no other way, device, or means whatsoever could possibly be found or imagined, that safety could in any wise be had so long as the queen of Scots were living. *— To spare her," they said, were nothing else but to spill the people, who would take all impunity in this case very much to heart, and would not think themselves discharged of their oath of association, unless she were punished according to her deserts. And they called upon Elizabeth to remember the fearful examples of God's vengeance upon king Saul for sparing Agag, and upon king Ahab for sparing Benhadad."† To such purposes can public feeling be directed, and Scripture perverted! Some of those great personages who had corresponded with the royal prisoner, and were implicated more or less in the treasonable practices which under her name and with her concurrence were continually carried on, began now to act as her deadly enemies, thereby the better to conceal their own guilt.‡ The Spanish party thrust her forward to her own danger, that by her destruction the way might be cleared for the pretended title of the king of Spain. They had persuaded themselves that nothing but an absolute conquest of the island, like that by William of Normandy, could establish a catholic prince here, and reinstate the Romish religion in its full powers. And when the French king, Henry III. ||, sent a special ambassador publicly to speak in the queen of Scots behalf, that ambassador was charged with secret instructions to press upon Elizabeth the necessity of putting her to death as *Parliamentary History, 844. Ibid. 344. Camden, 363. Parry says of him, in the remarkable letter above quoted, " in which he speaks with the freedom as well as the sincerity of a dying man, the French king is French; you know that well enough. You will find him occupied when he should do you good. He will not lose a pilgrimage to save your crown." |