Изображения страниц
PDF
EPUB

against Elizabeth, whose government was to be overthrown by the rescue of the queen of Scots, and by a revolt at home, supported by Spanish and even French troops, by aid from the duke of Alva, and with sanction and supply from the supreme pontiff. Ridolpho, a Florentine banker in London, was the secret agent of the pope in exciting the catholics to revolt.* As the moment for action approached, Morton, formerly a dignitary of the Roman catholic church at York, was sent from Italy, whither he had retired, with the title of apostolical penitentiary, to persuade his kinsmen in the north to take up arms for the restoration of religion. + Nothing could more effectually promote his purpose than the tidings of which he could not fail to be the bearer, that Pius V. had issued or prepared a bull against Elizabeth, which, with the temper and pretensions of the eleventh century, anathematised the queen and all her adherents as heretics; deprived her of her pretended right over England; absolved all her subjects from the oath and the duty of allegiance; and enjoined, under pain of excommunication, all the inhabitants of her dominions, that they should not dare to obey her laws or commands. In consequence of apprehensions thus excited, the queen of Scots was removed from Bolton, where she had too many catholic neighbours, to Tutbury Castle, a place more distant from the borders. White, a gentleman of Elizabeth's household, warns Cecil against suffering many to have conference with her. "For besides," said he, " that she has a goodly personage, she hath withal an alluring grace, a pretty Scottish speech, and a searching wit, clouded (softened) with mildness. § She found means in her new dwelling to despatch secret messages to * Norris to Cecil. Paris, July 7. 1568. Haynes, 466. + Camd. i. 194. Dod, ii. 114.

Dod, ii. 306. This famous bull, " Regnans in excelsis," &c., is dated by Camden and Dod 5 Calend. Mart. 1569, which, in modern language and style, would be the 23d of February, 1570. One copy Dod found dated 5 Cal. Maii, 1570, which would make it two months later.

The activity of Pius V. in fomenting insurrection in England may be seen in his life by Hieronymo Catena, first published at Rome in 1588. The writer brings the narrative down to the trial of the duke of Norfolk. The substance is in Camden.

White to Cecil, Feb. 26. 1568. Haynes, 509.

Westmoreland, Northumberland; Radcliffe, a brother of lord Sussex; Leonard Dacres, the uncle of lord Dacres; and to the families of Norton and Tempest, men of tried fidelity to the ancient church. Hartlepool, in the bishopric of Durham, was chosen to be the port where the auxiliaries to be supplied by the duke of Alva were to land. The buzz of so many hostile preparations, in distant and various quarters, would have reached a government less watchful than that of Elizabeth.

Rumours of an insurrection were prevalent early in the autumn*, which caused the earl of Sussex to be sent to take the command in the north. Lord Hunsden was shortly after despatched to Berwick, to second Sussex. After several ineffectual efforts to recall the border chiefs to their duty, the queen summoned them, on the duty of their allegiance, to repair to her court. † Northumberland paused at the near approach of peril. Mis followers, distrusting his wavering and inconstant disposition, now shrinking from the fearful consequences which, in a moment of rashness inspired by religious zeal, he had irrevocably incurred, had recourse to the expedient of conquering his fear of distant peril by the fear of present danger. He was roused at midnight by one of his servants, named Beckwith, who frightened his master by calling on him hastily to arise and shift for himself; for that his enemies, Ulstrop and Vaughan, were about the park, and had beset him with great numbers of men. He ran to the house of one of his gamekeepers, without waiting to ascertain who or how many his enemies were. The bolder conspirators caused the bells of his town of Alnwick to be rung backward, in order to increase the numbers, the consternation, and confusion of the multitude. On the next day he was driven into the irreparable act of marching at the head of his vassals to join Westmoreland at Brancespeath. In the manifesto of these two lords they declared it to be their purpose, in concert with the other nobility of the realm, to pro

* Camden.

+ Queen to West. and North. Nov. 10. 1569. Haynes, 552.

vide for the safety of her majesty's person; to rescue her out of the hands of evil counsellors; to obtain liberty for their consciences; and to settle true religion on such foundations as might supersede the interference of foreign princes, who would otherwise interpose to cure the long distempers of this distracted island.* On their march to Durham they manifested their fidelity to the faith of their fathers by a flag, on which the body of Christ, with the five wounds received in the crucifixion, was painted, which was borne before their van by Mr. Norton, a venerable old gentleman of the country, who, with his five sons, devoted himself for the restoration of his religion. They purified the cathedral of Durham by burning the heretical (and probably in their opinion unfaithful) versions of the Bible, and the books of public devotion, which had been profaned by heretics. On the 14th of November, at Darlington, the earls and their followers publicly heard mass. In about nine days after, they mustered 9000 men on a moor near Witherby; a force with which they had intended to march against York, had they not been induced by the advance of some of the queen's troops, who threw themselves into that city, to secure the country behind them by laying siege to the fortress of Barnard's Castle, which occupied the revolters for eleven critical days. On the 6th of December, Sussex began his march from York against the insurgents, and established his head-quarters at Hexham on the 20th, and when the insurgents had retreated almost to the border of Scotland, at Neworth Castle, in Cumberland. The earls of Northumberland and Westmoreland fled to Scotland, leaving their followers to the mercy of an exasperated party, whose execution of justice was accounted in their own age rigorous, and would in our times be justly deemed cruel.

Holinshed, iv. 235.

The share of the Nortons in this revolt, and the extinction of their family, are the subject of Mr. Wordsworth's White Doe of Rylstone, — a poem in which the blended powers of history and legend, placed amidst beautiful scenes, and enthroned as it were in the remains of ancient piety, breathe a sage and solemn strain of poetical sentiment.

66

Our information concerning particulars is here more than commonly defective. On the 4th or 5th of January, sixty-six constables and others" were executed at Durham. Sir George Bowes, charged with the administration of martial law, executed many favourers of the rebellion in divers places of the country." "'* Northumberland fled to Scotland; and being made prisoner in the castle of Lochleven by Moray, he was, long after, surrendered by Morton to the English government, who caused him to be executed at York. Westmoreland also ran across the borders, where he was welcomed by the Carrs † and Scotts, two border tribes, who were partisans of Mary. A signal act of baseness was perpetrated on this occasion by one whose pride and prejudice might have been deemed a security for his superiority to such degrading falsehood. Robert Constable, the son of an ancient and distinguished family in Yorkshire, tendered his services to sir Ralph Sadler, first as a spy to discover the number of the rebels; but soon after the flight of the two earls into Scotland (to use his own words), "I waded deeply into a more treacherous kind of service, to trap them that trusted in me, as Judas did Christ." His intended victim was the earl of Westmoreland, who was either his uncle or his cousin. At Fernihurst, where the fugitive earl had been sheltered, Constable urged him to throw himself upon the mercy of the English government, as his best or only chance. The rest can be adequately told only in his own words: "The tears overhayled his cheeks abundantly: I could not forbear to weep to see him suddenly fall to repentance. When we retired into a secret chamber he said,

* Holinshed, iv. 337. This appears to be the narrative nearest to the events; and it is corroborated by the insertion of some names. Modern writers, by leaving out the words "and others," and by representing Bowes's executions to have occurred in every village from Newcastle to Wetherby, have exaggerated severities which were doubtless excessive. Leslie, who is quoted by Hume, is not an admissible witness against Elizabeth's lieu

tenants.

+ Carr of Fernihurst (the ancestor of the marquis of Lothian), according to Dugdale, i. 301. Sir R. Sadler tells us, that lady Northumberland, with lord Westmoreland, Norton, Tempest, and Radcliffe, were "maintained against the regent's will by lord Hume, Fernihurst, Buccleugh, Johnstone," and other border chiefs. Sadler, ii. 96.

Dugdale, i. 301.

'Cousin Robert, you are my kinsman, nearly come forth from my house, and one whom I trust and dearly love." Though the remembrances of near kindred did not shake the purpose of Constable, he knew how to turn it to account, by reminding his employer what obstacles of affection he conquered in his zeal for the public cause, and how much his importunate demand for large sums of money were justified by such heroic sacrifices.

The treachery of Constable did not inveigle Westmoreland into the snare. But it affords a frightful example of a government accepting the service of infamous men, who entice accused or suspected persons to be slaughtered, on pretext that they only bring forward the lurking disposition to guilt, which would otherwise have been mischievously exerted; a practice which in general offences against society is an attempt to do the works of justice by the power of depravity, and in political charges has the additional fault of bolting the doors of sanctuary against those whose defeat may be their only crime. The earl of Westmoreland escaped into Flanders, and died in 1584, in the station beneath his habits, and, it may be hoped, abhorrent from his feelings, of commandant of a Spanish regiment, in the midst of the indignities and wrongs to which emigrants are often doomed, against which his own dignity, age, and calamities did not protect him, and which were unsparingly practised towards those unpitied Englishmen who, as we shall see afterwards, had betrayed to the enemy the important fortresses intrusted to English faith.†

In defiance of victory and rigour, Leonard Dacres, uncle of the lord Dacres of the north, renewed the rebellion towards the close of January, 1570, when he collected 3000 men at Naworth castle, which was his dwelling, and which is still preserved, a beautiful specimen of the border architecture of that age. On the 22d of Fe

*Sadler, ii. 110-124.

+"The estate of English fugitives under the king of Spain."-Sadler, ii. 208-330. A very curious tract, probably written to serve a purpose; but bearing many marks of tolerable veracity and accuracy.

Now a seat of the earl of Carlisle.

« ПредыдущаяПродолжить »