Chapter VI (2)

Don Gerau soon showed this for himself. He was instructed by Philip to explain to Elizabeth the misdeeds of Dr. Man that had led to his expulsion, and to exonerate the Duke and Duchess of Feria, and especially the English relatives of the latter, from any blame in the matter. He was also to watch the introduction of warlike stores into England and keep in touch with the Duke of Alba in Flanders; but he is emphatically enjoined “to serve and gratify the Queen on every possible occasion, trying to keep her on good terms, and assuring her from me that I will always return her friendship as her good neighbour and brother.” De Spes, however, must have carried secret instructions in addition to this, because when he was passing through Paris, Mary Stuarts ambassador, the Archbishop of Glasgow, recommended to him the care of the imprisoned Queen’s affairs, “as she founded all her hopes on your Majesty’s favour,” and, in reply, de Spes said that he had orders to do everything he could for her. There is no such clause in his public instructions, and it is most unlikely that any ambassador of Philip would have dared to plunge without instructions into conspiracies against the Government to which he was accredited, as de Spes did immediately after his arrival in England.

Before crossing the Channel, de Spes had a conference with the Duke of Alba at Utrecht, where a long list of Philip’s grievances against Elizabeth were discussed. The indictment was a grave one, the injuries said to be inflicted by the English upon Spaniards and Flemings amounting in value, it was computed, to 300,000 ducats a year; and it is certain that at this interview between the two fiery Spaniards plans for revenging and amending this state of things were canvassed and agreed upon. In England at the time there resided a Spanish merchant, ambitious to fill a diplomatic _rôle_, and, although he had lived in London for thirty years at least, he was as zealous and intolerant in religious affairs as de Spes, or even Philip himself. This man, of whom we shall hear much presently, Antonio de Guaras, anxious to ingratiate himself, had sent to de Spes in Flanders two broadsheets that had just been published in England attacking Philip’s system and the communications that it was known passed between the English Catholics and the King of Spain. Such papers, of course, had been published in Guzman’s time, but he had wisely passed them by or minimised their importance. To de Spes they served as a spark to the tinder of his passion, and he arrived in England fuming with rage at the insolence of the heretics.

As de Spes rode from Dover towards London, with a long train of Spanish residents in England at his heels, early in September, 1568, he was overtaken by a Scottish gentleman (probably James Beton) on his way from Paris in the service of the imprisoned Mary, with whom he was going to seek an interview. De Spes listened eagerly to his story of the ill-treatment of Mary by the “heretics,” and told him that he had letters in London from King Philip to her. He had enough prudence to tell the Scot when, after their arrival in the capital, he came for the King’s letter to take to Mary that it would be wise that he, as Spanish ambassador, should not be seen too prominently in her interests; but he associated himself at once in all the Scottish Queen’s plans to escape from her bondage, and sent her warm messages of encouragement. Almost at the same time (15th September) Philip himself was writing from the Escorial an important letter to the Duke of Alba. The Queen of Scots, he said, had written praying for his help to extricate her from Elizabeth’s hands, and professing her readiness to die in defence of the faith.[175] “I have refrained from arriving at any decision or answering her autograph letter ... until you tell me what you think of the business, and in what way and to what extent I should assist her. I beg you to write to me by the first opportunity on the matter, and in the meanwhile to encourage the Queen the best you can to persevere firmly in her saintly purpose; for whilst she does so God will not abandon her.”[176] It is obvious from this that Philip had not decided yet to help Mary, but only to encourage her until affairs appeared to him propitious, and we shall be able to judge, therefore, to what extent the zeal of de Spes precipitated matters.

Elizabeth was making a progress through Hampshire, and Guzman presented his successor to her at Newbury on the 12th September, 1568. To the scornful anger of de Spes, Cardinal Chatillon, the Huguenot brother of Coligny, was also seeking audience of the Queen, and being feasted and made much of in the interval by Sir Thomas Gresham at his house in London. That a Cardinal, a prince of the Catholic Church, followed by a wife and family and with several bishops at his side as unorthodox as he, should be ruffling about the streets of London in cape and sword and jewelled cap, shocked de Spes gravely; but that he should be asking, and obtaining, arms from the Tower of London and money and English volunteers to fight against the Catholics and the King in France made the Spaniard more bitter than anything else. The new ambassador had not been installed in Paget House[177] a fortnight before Mary Stuart’s emissaries were in close conference with him. One of them came to him early in October disguised as a merchant, saying that he was bearing letters from her to the Duke of Alba in Flanders. The Conference of York, which had been summoned to decide Mary’s guilt or innocence of the murder of her husband, was already gathering, and the Scottish Queen herself was at Bolton. How eager de Spes was even thus early to engage in plots in her favour is seen in the letter he wrote to the King on the 9th October giving him this news. “Where she is the Catholics are more numerous than in any part of the country. She knows how to ingratiate herself with her keepers, and has many sympathisers on her side. It will not be difficult to release her, and even to raise a great revolt against this Queen; but it will be more prudent that your Majesty should not appear in this, and I will do nothing until I receive orders from your Majesty or the Duke.”[178]

All this foregathering with Scottish agents on the part of de Spes was not lost upon the English Government, whose spies reported everything. De Spes says that Cecil sneeringly asked Beton (the nephew of the Archbishop of Glasgow, who was in London on his way from Paris to see Mary) “whether he had been with his complaints to the new Spanish ambassador yet, and how often he went to Paget House.” In these circumstances it is not surprising that relations grew rapidly acrimonious between Philip’s ambassador and Elizabeth’s ministers. He pressed with boldness and persistence the claims of the Spanish shipmasters for the depredations committed by English rovers, and by the Huguenots and Dutch rebels who took shelter in English ports; and to these claims Cecil retorted by bringing up the old grievance of Dr. Man’s expulsion, and certain insulting references to the Queen of England contained in a recently published Spanish book by Dr. Illescas on Pontifical History. To make matters worse, de Spes did not confine himself to the redress of Spanish grievances, but made himself the champion of Catholics generally. A Portuguese envoy, Dr. Alvarez, was in London to ask Elizabeth to forbid English ships to go to the coast of Guinea, where Hawkins had been slave-trading, and suddenly one morning the Bishop of London’s men appeared before the house in which Alvarez lived and demanded that certain Englishmen then attending Mass there should be delivered to them for punishment. The Portuguese refused to surrender them, and the house was soon surrounded by a threatening crowd. Word was carried to de Spes, who immediately sent off one of his household to demand of the Lord Mayor (Sir Roger Martin) the dispersal of the mob. “What is the cause of the gathering?” asked the chief magistrate, and when the Spaniard told him that it was a question of Catholic worship, Sir Roger burst out in a rage that he would rather send his men to reinforce the mob than to disperse it in such a case.

The presence of such a firebrand ambassador as this in London, in constant communication, as Elizabeth’s ministers knew, with all the elements of disaffection in England, and in close correspondence with the terrible Duke of Alba in Flanders, convinced the English Government that evil plans were brewing. It was known that Philip’s principal difficulty was money. The expense of the campaigns in Flanders and the constant wars in the Mediterranean had exhausted the resources of Castile, and Philip’s credit was as bad as could be. Alba’s troops were unpaid and growing mutinous, committing outrage and depredations upon Catholics as much as upon Protestants. The Duke had pressed, again and again, for money from Spain, and the English spies in Flanders had continued to send alarmist reports, all premature as we see now, but then believed to be true, of the hostile intentions of Alba against England as soon as he had crushed the Dutchmen and obtained the needed resources from Spain.

Chance threw into Elizabeth’s way a means of paralysing Alba for a time and rendering impossible the plans to injure her that she knew were hatching. Philip had, with infinite difficulty, managed to contract, at usurious rates, a loan of money from Genoese bankers, and, with his characteristic caution, he had stipulated that the money should be delivered by the lenders to the agents of the Duke of Alba in Antwerp. The Channel was infested with Huguenot privateers and pirates of all sorts on the look out for ships flying the Spanish flag, and the Dutch “Beggars” blockaded the Belgian coast. The ships, six or seven of them, which were bringing Philip’s borrowed treasure were known to have sailed late in November, and the rovers were all on the alert for them when they came. Finding themselves chased, the treasure ships ran into English ports, some into Plymouth, some to Falmouth, and the largest of them into Southampton, in order to escape their pursuers and claim official English protection. Even in port the privateers threatened the fugitives, and two of the treasure ships, swift Biscay cutters, fearing that the heretics on shore were as dangerous as their colleagues afloat, boldly ran the blockade of pirates and escaped, eventually arriving safely in Antwerp. But the others, and especially the big ship in Southampton with £31,000 in money on board, could only cling desperately to the English port authorities, whilst they sent swift messengers to Benedict Spinola, the famous Genoese banker in London, the agent and partner of the lenders, praying him to obtain safety for them.

Spinola, being, of course, interested in the treasure, went at once to de Spes, and asked him to request officially of the Queen’s Council that the money should be protected effectively in the English ports, and, if necessary, landed and conveyed overland to Dover for transmission to Antwerp under English convoy. De Spes lost no time, and on the 29th November saw the Queen, who readily promised him a passport to carry the money overland, or, if the Genoese preferred it, she would have the ships convoyed to their destination. Satisfied with this, de Spes wrote to Alba for instructions as to which course to follow. In the meanwhile Admiral Wynter was leaving the Thames with an English squadron to relieve the Huguenots besieged by the King of France in Rochelle, and on the way he looked into the Channel ports to ensure the safety of the treasure ships. Before Wynter sailed finally from England Spinola, who was interested, as great financiers are to-day, in many enterprises, wrote to him that he had just received word that rumours were current in Spain of a great disaster having happened on the coast of Mexico to Captain John Hawkins, the bold English sailor who had on more than one occasion braved the Spanish prohibition and had conducted successful trading expeditions to the Spanish colonies. De Spes had been bitterly complaining of this, and it was feared, said Spinola, that the Hawkins expedition, in which he had an interest, had been attacked and annihilated by the Spanish authorities.

When Wynter received Spinola’s news on the 2nd December he was in Plymouth, assuring himself of the safety of the Spanish treasure ships there. Wynter naturally told the evil news he had learned from Spinola to William Hawkins, the brother of John, who lived in Plymouth, and William at once wrote to Cecil, who was also interested in the venture, suggesting that Spinola should be questioned, and if it turned out that the Spaniards had attacked the English trading expedition, the money in the ships now being protected by English guns should be seized in reprisal. This letter was written on the 3rd December, the day after the safe conduct had been signed by Elizabeth for bringing the treasure overland to Dover, and before Cecil can have received it this safe conduct was on its way in the hands of de Spes’s agents to Southampton, and so to Plymouth and Falmouth. Cecil’s messengers, however, were not far behind, and, in spite of the protest of the Spanish captain, Horsey, the Governor of the Isle of Wight, by Cecil’s secret orders, landed the treasure from the ship at Southampton and placed it in the keeping of the mayor of the town. Similar action was taken with the treasure at Plymouth and Falmouth, and when the news reached de Spes in London he at once jumped at the conclusion that the rumours were true that he had heard at Court to the effect that some of the Queen’s Council and her Huguenot friends had been urging her to keep the treasure for her own purposes.

Spinola, a resident in London, dependent largely upon Elizabeth’s goodwill and Cecil’s friendship, had, indeed, let out in conversation not only what he had heard about the Spanish attack upon John Hawkins’s expedition in Mexico, but also that the Genoese financiers were responsible for the money advanced to Philip until it was handed to the Spanish authorities in Flanders. “In that case,” said Elizabeth, “I can borrow it myself; for my credit is quite as good as that of the King of Spain.” Rash de Spes, however, did not wait for any such public avowal. To his intemperate and insolent protests Cecil and the other Councillors would only say that the money was quite safe, and for the present no other answer with regard to it could be given to him. This was on the 21st December and the ambassador at once sent a special courier to Alba with a letter praying, in burning indignation, that all English property and that of Spinola on Spanish soil should be seized.[179] Nothing more unwise than this can be conceived; for no sooner had Alba made the confiscatory proclamation than Elizabeth not only justified thereby her seizure of the money, now openly avowed, but at once confiscated all Spanish and Flemish property in England, including the ships that had brought the money.

De Spes had been saying for weeks past that the best way to bring the Queen to her knees, and to force her into the arms of Spain, would be to stop all English trade; and when he had sent to Alba the unwise advice to make the seizure of English property he still believed that such a measure would dismay the “heretic” Government. So far from doing that it placed Elizabeth technically in the right; for up to that point she had not openly avowed her intention of keeping the loan money; and the value of Spanish-Flemish property in England was immensely greater than that of English property in Philip’s dominions. The news of the seizure of the loan money fell upon Alba and his master like a death sentence. Without this money to pay his troops Alba was almost in despair, and Philip had exhausted his last rag of credit in raising the loan. In vain de Spes raged and fumed. Cecil and his mistress were perfectly cool about it; for they saw that the impetuousness of their opponents had put them in the right, and the large sum of ready money they had seized strengthened them as it proportionately weakened Philip. De Spes’s house was placed under guard; and a threatening mob in the City of London breathed vengeance upon the foreigners, and especially Spaniards, most of whom had fled into hiding. To make matters worse, a cipher letter from de Spes to Alba was intercepted and deciphered, full of violent and insulting references to Cecil, and other letters to Spanish friends in Flanders containing foolish abuse of the Queen herself.[180] Called upon peremptorily for explanation of these references, the ambassador could only palliate, disavow, and explain that he did not mean what he said; and he himself was placed under arrest and forbidden access to the Court.

Even then, when the dire consequences of his imprudence must have been patent to him, he was in close cipher correspondence with Mary Stuart, who sent him news, which he took care to exaggerate, of Protestant plots being formed to murder King Philip. Writing to the King on the 8th January, 1569, he says, after pressing him to foment dissatisfaction in England by stopping all trade: “In the meanwhile means will be found to bring this country to its senses and subdue it to the Catholic faith. Those who have spoken to me about a rising for the Queen of Scots will not fail to return to the subject,[181] and I will inform the Duke [Alba], as your Majesty orders. Pray do not consider me or my safety, but take the best course for your Majesty’s interests.... These heretic knaves of the Council are going headlong to perdition, incited by Cecil, who is indescribably crazy in his zeal for heresy.” Later in the same letter de Spes tells how his own prediction came true and the conspirators did seek him. “The Earl of Northumberland came to see me disguised at four o’clock this morning, and is ready to serve your Majesty. I sent a post yesterday to the Duke by an Englishman who has secret communication with Flanders.... At midnight last night the Bishop of Ross came to offer the goodwill of his mistress [_i.e._, Mary Stuart] and of many gentlemen of this country, and I have reported this to the Duke [of Alba]. The Queen of Scotland told my servant to convey to me the following words: ‘Tell the ambassador that if his master will help me I shall be Queen of England in three months, and Mass shall be said throughout the land.’”[182]

It will be seen that before de Spes had been in England four months he had forced King Philip into a position of hardly veiled hostility towards England, at the very period when his lack of resources and the recrudescence of the war in the Netherlands made it impossible for him to attempt coercion upon Elizabeth. Alba himself was dismayed at the unexpectedly bold action of the English Government in seizing the treasure and embargoing all Spanish-Flemish property in England. The Flemish burghers, already sorely distressed by the civil war, were almost in open revolt at this stoppage of the rich English trade and the embargo of their property in England, and Alba, hard as he might be, was forced to make an attempt to reason with Elizabeth by means of some more pliable instrument than de Spes. The person chosen was the garrulous Flemish lawyer, Dassonleville, who had come to England just before Queen Mary Tudor’s death, but he found himself more contemptuously treated even than de Spes. Who was he, the Council asked, that he should seek audience of a Queen with a letter of credence from a person who, so far as she knew, was not a sovereign? Nothing wounded proud Alba so much as this slight, and poor Dassonleville was denied audience, and was placed under arrest in the house of the Sheriff of London.

By this time no less than 700,000 ducats worth of Flemish ships and property had been seized in England, besides Philip’s treasure of a million; and the Spaniards, especially Alba, were bitterly regretting the deplorable diplomacy of de Spes. Philip, who hated to come to prompt decisions, was now face to face with a crisis. In obedience to the clamours of his ambassador he had stopped all trade between his dominions and England; by which, instead of its bringing Elizabeth to her knees, his subjects suffered much more than the English. It was evident, however, that this state of things could not continue indefinitely, and he was driven by these circumstances, at the very time when he was more hardly pressed than ever, to consider whether he could now conquer England by means of the English Catholics and Mary Stuart. For such a conquest to be of use to him it was necessary to be quite sure that Mary should be free from French influence, and that the new Catholic Government should look to him alone for orders.

When, therefore, he received news from Alba and de Spes of the seizures he wrote to the former: “Don Gerau urges the opportunity which now presents itself to remedy religious affairs in that country by deposing the present Queen and giving the crown to the Queen of Scots, who will immediately be joined by all the Catholics. Please inquire what foundation there is for this, and what success would probably attend such a plan; as if there is anything in it, I should be glad to carry it out. It appears to me that, after my special obligation to maintain my own dominions in our holy faith, I am bound to make every effort to restore and preserve it in England, as in former times. If there is any good grounds for the suggestion, no time more opportune than the present could be found ... and in order not to miss the chance, I have thought well to refer the decision to you. If you think the opportunity will be lost by waiting to consult me you may at once take the steps you may see fitting.” It was not often that Philip went so far as this in a prompt decision, and to de Spes he was equally decided. “If what you suggest about taking the crown away from the Queen were successful, it would certainly be of great moment, and I would help it most willingly, in order to redress religion, and shelter and console the Catholics, who, I am convinced, are very numerous. You will learn all you can about this thoroughly and advise me and the Duke of Alba fully.”[183]

In the meanwhile the conspiracy, by far the most dangerous that Elizabeth ever had to face, was developing in London. Cecil, who, in fact, was the most pacific of ministers, is represented by the Spanish party as the firebrand, determined to precipitate a war with Spain. This was certainly not the case. He, with his cool head, understood how far he might go now that Philip was powerless to attack England. The seizure of the money destined to pay Alba’s troops had made all the difference, and Cecil and his mistress knew that they might for the present defy Spain with impunity. The news of the attack upon Hawkins’s expedition at San Juan de Lua was now confirmed and added to the determination of the English Protestant party to get even with a Power which, for the time at all events, was disabled for harm. But the conservative elements, the old English nobility, with their strong Catholic leanings, their traditions of awed regard for the alliance of the House of Burgundy and Spain, and with their long-standing jealousy of Cecil, saw in his present action a dangerous provocation to a Power they dreaded, and a possible opportunity of supplanting him and his party in the counsels of the Queen.

On several occasions the nobles of this party had expressed to de Spes their annoyance at the seizure of the treasure; and we have seen that the Earl of Northumberland, the powerful Catholic head of the House of Percy, had sought him out secretly in the dead of night to make disloyal offers to him. The Duke of Norfolk, unhappily for himself, had also been drawn into these questionable intrigues by his father-in-law, the Earl of Arundel. Late in February, 1569, Norfolk and Arundel sent a Florentine banker in London, one Ridolfi, a great friend of de Spes and the Pope’s agent in England, to tell the Spanish ambassador that they had put up with Cecil’s impertinences and violence in seizing the treasure so far because they were not strong enough to resist him. “But they are gathering their friends, and letting the public know what is going on, in the hope and belief that they will be able to turn out the present accursed Government and raise a Catholic one, bringing the Queen to consent thereto. They think you [_i.e._, the Duke of Alba] will support them in this, and that the country will not lose the friendship of our King.” The object of this conspiracy was to capture (and probably kill) Cecil; and, although the nobles euphemistically professed to believe that Elizabeth would consent to a entire revolution in her religion and policy, it is evident that the intention of the majority was to depose her in favour of Mary Stuart. On the 2nd April de Spes writes: “The Duke of Norfolk and the Earl of Arundel wish to serve your Majesty. They have many friends and adherents in the country, and when they hear that your Majesty will accept their goodwill, they will declare themselves more openly at a convenient opportunity. The Duke of Alba ... orders me to entertain and caress them on your Majesty’s behalf, and says that he expects shortly your Majesty’s decision as to what is to be done.... If your Majesty orders measures to be taken for the conversion of the kingdom and the punishment of these insolent heretics and barefaced thieves, I do not think it will be difficult to bring them to subjection, or at least to change the Government and religion.... Many Catholics write to me secretly, saying that the moment they see your Majesty’s standard raised in this country they will all rise to serve you.”

But Cecil was too wary to be caught by such weaklings as Norfolk and Arundel, and by pretending to fall into their views for a time about the reconciliation and concessions to the Spaniards, he managed a few weeks after the above letter was written to throw the plans of the conspirators into confusion by dividing their counsels. In the meanwhile Alba (on the 10th March) had to tell Philip some unpleasant truths in answer to his suggestion that English affairs should be taken in hand and settled on the impracticable lines suggested by feather-headed de Spes. “I know not,” Alba wrote to the King, “whether an open rupture with England at the present time will be advantageous, considering the condition of your treasury, and these States being so exhausted with the war and late disturbances, and so lacking of ships and many other things necessary for a fresh war; and it would certainly be a grave loss of dignity, with your Majesty’s power, to return to the old negotiations. All things considered, I think it would be best to adopt a gentle course, writing to the Queen that, seeing the close friendship and alliance that have so long existed between the two countries, particularly between her father and the Emperor, and your brotherly affection for her, even though she should desire to quarrel, you will not consent to do so, and that it shall never be said that the tie that binds you together has been loosened.”

To this lame and impotent conclusion had even warlike Alba been brought by the inevitable logic of events. Elizabeth had seized the treasure, imprisoned two ambassadors, embargoed all Spanish property in her realms; she had at the time hundreds of Spanish sailors and others in gaol, and she rejected with contumely all attempts of the Spaniards to reconcile her on the basis of mutual concessions. The Dutch and the Huguenots depended now largely upon her support, and the English Catholics were made to feel more painfully than ever that appeals to their powerful friends upon the Continent could not protect them from the hard rule of their own Sovereign. And yet, withal, Alba had to confess that the only course now open to him was to speak fair, until at some future time a safe opportunity for injuring Elizabeth might arrive.

Up to this time since Philip had faced the necessity for winning England by other means than moral suasion, the projects for doing so had always run upon the lines of subsidising and supporting the revolt of the Catholic party in the interests of the Queen of Scots; and in this direction, but later with an ominous addition to the programme, the next attempts developed. During the sitting of the Conference of York in October, 1568, to investigate the charges against Mary relative to the murder of Darnley, the Duke of Norfolk had suggested to Lethington the desirability of hushing up the ugly business as against the Queen of Scots; and on the following day he had a long, private conversation with Murray to the same effect. Thomas Howard, fourth Duke of Norfolk, son of the martyred Surrey, was the greatest noble in England, a kinsman of the Queen, and up to this time ostensibly a Protestant. Personally, he was popular, for his manners were kindly and his possessions great, but, as events proved, he was as weak and unstable as he was ambitious. At this time he was about thirty-three years of age, and his wife, the daughter of the Earl of Arundel, and widow of Lord Dacre, had died. Such a man, with his personal prestige and his powerful name, was a fit instrument for stronger spirits than himself. In conversation with Murray at York, Norfolk said that Queen Elizabeth herself would not consider the subject of the succession, but it was necessary for the nobles of England to look ahead. “What could be Murray’s motive,” he asked, “in coming to England to blacken Queen Mary’s character and thus injuring her chances of the English succession?”

As a consequence of these efforts of Norfolk, it was agreed with Murray and Lethington to make the Conference of York abortive, and Mary was informed of this by a letter from Norfolk.[184] In the course of the subsequent negotiations a few days afterwards, Lethington remarked that as Norfolk showed himself so much in favour of Mary, the whisper he had heard about the possibility of his marriage to her was probably true, and, according to Norfolk, earnestly advocated the match.[185] Norfolk listened, for the prospect of the matrimonial Crown of England was a tempting one, and his sister, Lady Scrope, who was with Mary at Bolton, had no difficulty in obtaining the Scottish Queen’s acceptance of a suggestion which seemed to secure for her cause the higher nobility of England, who were anxious to overthrow the Cecils, and Bacons, and Hunsdons, and other new men, who now ruled England. De Spes was very soon approached, and, of course, warmly approved of the plan to marry Norfolk to the Queen of Scots, whilst a close and affectionate correspondence was carried on between Mary and her new suitor. For a time the plan was frustrated by the alarm of Leicester, when he suspected the real object of it, and by the dexterity of Cecil, as has already been described.

Norfolk and Arundel had, however, never lost touch of de Spes, both of them constantly importuning him for money in return for their efforts in favour of the Spaniards in the seizure dispute. The Bishop of Ross, Mary’s busy agent, also kept the matter alive with de Spes. Norfolk, Arundel, Lumley, Northumberland, Cumberland, Montagu, Dacre, Morley, and many other Catholic nobles, de Spes wrote to Alba, were ready to join in the conspiracy to release Mary and place England under the control of King Philip, if some armed demonstration were made on their behalf from Flanders. But Alba, as he plaintively assured King Philip, was powerless to assail, or even to offend, Elizabeth further, until she could be persuaded to surrender the vast quantity of Spanish-Flemish property she now held. Until then, he said, they must speak fair and softly to her, though the English and other Protestant privateers were capturing and plundering every Spanish ship they came across.

In the meanwhile de Spes, still in disgrace and forbidden from Court, could only plot impotently through the Bishop of Ross and Italian intermediaries, many of them spies. The coming and going of such folk and the constant news sent by de Spes of the progress of the conspiracy, fairly alarmed Alba, who was now chiefly concerned in getting some of the confiscated property restored and trade reopened. In July he sent to de Spes, though he could ill spare it, the six thousand crowns bribe demanded by Norfolk, Arundel, and Lumley for their efforts in favour of the Spanish claims, and for the first time he spoke firmly to de Spes about his constant plotting. “I must again repeat,” he said, “to you, most emphatically, that you are not, on any account, to entertain approaches to you against the Queen or her Councillors, or anything touching them. On the contrary, if people come to you with such talk, you must be so reticent that they may never be able to say that any minister of the King has given ear to it.” At this very time the imprudent ambassador was almost daily or nightly closeted with some agent of the conspirators, and was warmly seconding their plans. But as pacific, almost humble, representations by other agents came from Alba to the English Government, in hope of some arrangement for the restitution, Elizabeth assumed a gentler attitude; though she gave up not an atom of her plunder, and she partially released de Spes from his imprisonment.

In the comparative remoteness of Winchester House, in Southwark, which he now rented, the Spanish ambassador, as imprudent as ever, found it easier than before to carry on his plots for the subjection of England; and, regardless of Alba’s stern injunction quoted above, he became more active and mischievous than ever. On the 25th July, 1569, he wrote to the King that the Bishop of Ross had been to see him at three o’clock that morning “to assure me of the wish of the Duke of Norfolk to serve your Majesty. He said he was a Catholic, and has the support, even in London, of many merchants and aldermen. I will report everything to the Duke of Alba and follow his instructions.” Shortly before this, Mary herself, in one of her many affectionate letters to Norfolk, had intimated that she was in communication with the Duke of Alba; and de Spes followed up the letter by an assurance that everything was almost ready for the great _coup_. Whilst Norfolk was thus playing the game of Spain and pretending to be a Catholic, he was full of Protestant professions to Murray, and to the French ambassador, La Mothe Fénélon, and he avowed himself at the same time the devoted servant of Catharine de Medici. A majority of the English Council had met in caucus and had decided in favour of Norfolk’s marriage with Mary; and although it is probable that most of the members were not aware of the plot behind the match, it is certain that neither Mary nor her intended husband deceived themselves with regard to the ultimate aim. Nor was there any concealment on the part of the Spaniards. Alba sent Mary a subsidy of 10,000 ducats in August (she had asked for 30,000 or 40,000), and at the same date de Spes wrote to the King: “I believe some great event will happen here soon, as the people are much dissatisfied and distressed for want of trade, and these gentlemen of Nonsuch have some new imaginations in their heads.”[186]

The “new imaginations,” whatever they were, hardly suited Philip. He had through life a distinct repugnance to associating himself with the French in any of his plans with regard to England. Norfolk and his friends, doubtless in good faith, desired by means of Mary Stuart to change the government and religion of England, with or without the deposition of Elizabeth, and in order to do so they were glad to obtain support from any quarter they could. They had primarily no desire to hand England, bound hard and fast, to Spain, which was alone what Philip wanted. It is certain that Mary herself was willing to do so, because she knew that no effective armed aid could come to her from France, divided as that country was religiously and with her enemy Catharine dominant. Whilst Norfolk and his friends, therefore, were bidding for support on all sides and obtaining it, Mary was endeavouring with her might to keep the Spaniards, upon whom alone she depended, from slipping away from her. By the Bishop of Ross she begged de Spes to obtain Philip’s consent to her marriage with Norfolk, and the ambassador, in relating this to the King, wrote: “The business is so far forward that it will be difficult now to prevent it, and if it is to be done I think it had better be with your Majesty’s consent, which cannot fail to be of great advantage to them, and will bind them more closely to your Majesty’s service. The Queen of Scots says that if she were at liberty, or could get such help as would enable her to bring her country into submission, she would deliver herself and her son entirely into your Majesty’s hands; but that now she is obliged to sail with the wind, though she will never depart from your Majesty’s wishes.”

Philip, indeed, was growing doubtful of the way the affair was progressing, and of de Spes’s management of it. “If the marriage of the Duke of Norfolk and the Queen of Scots,” he wrote, “is effected in the way, and with the objects you are informed, there is no doubt that it would be of great importance for the restoration of our true Faith in England, and would console the good Catholics now so oppressed. I desire these objects warmly, as you know; but they [the conspirators] must be very careful how they undertake the business, for if they make a mistake they will all be ruined. You did well in referring them to the Duke of Alba. You will limit yourself to this, in accordance with your orders, which you will not exceed.” Philip distrusted Norfolk, who up to that time had been a Protestant, and the Duke’s approaches to the French completed the King’s coolness towards him. But before this letter of Philip’s reached London the miserable Norfolk had collapsed. Leicester, who had been a party to the plan, again took fright when he began to understand the object behind it, and this time made a clean breast of it to the Queen herself.

Suddenly the blow fell. Mary Stuart’s prison was made closer, and Norfolk and the conservative lords were peremptorily summoned before the Queen at Windsor. The Duke, protesting his unalterable loyalty to Elizabeth, travelled in deadly fear as far as London, and on the day of his arrival at Howard House a messenger from the Earl of Northumberland came secretly to de Spes. Making a private sign, which had been agreed upon as a proof of genuineness, he said “that the Earl of Northumberland and his friends in the North had agreed to liberate the Queen of Scotland and establish the Catholic religion, returning to the amity and alliance with your Majesty which they so much desire. The Earl wished to know if your Majesty would approve of this, as he would undertake nothing that was not in your interest.” To this de Spes dared not say more than that he would write to the Duke of Alba about it. “The Duke of Norfolk,” he adds, “is here preparing all his friends.” So far from doing this, Norfolk was malingering in a panic, and two days later fled to Kenninghall, whimpering in a pitiable letter to Elizabeth that he never meant any harm. On his honour, he never dealt with the Queen of Scots further than he declared to the Queen and some of her Council. Such lying and prevarication was scorned by the irate Elizabeth. Ill or well, she wrote in a rage, Norfolk must come to her instantly, and, trembling with fear, the poor wretch went as slow as he dared to Windsor, there with lachrymose repentance to be ordered into arrest with Arundel, Lumley, Pembroke, and all the rest of his accomplices who were within Elizabeth’s reach.

It is clear that notwithstanding de Spes’s constant predictions of immediate coming success, and his repeated assurances that Elizabeth and her friends would be swept aside as a consequence of this plan, Philip was never greatly deceived by it. Alba had told him that he was powerless for the present, and he knew England sufficiently well to see that unless a large and well-organised force was used at the critical moment by him, an attempt to revolutionise England in his interests would fail. The trail of deadly deliberation, moreover, palsied every act of his life. At some time in August, 1569, when Mary Stuart’s appeals were reaching him, he instructed Alba to obtain full particulars of the military possibilities of the situation in England, in order that any action he might decide to take later should be effectual. A half-dozen or more envoys of various sorts, official and unofficial, had been sent over one after the other to try by some means to effect a mutual restitution of the seizures—Genoese financiers, Flemish diplomatists, and even Protestant merchants—but all without effect. On receiving the King’s orders, however, Alba instructed another embassy, surely the strangest for such a purpose ever seen, to go to England and endeavour to make terms with Elizabeth or bribe her advisers. The leader was one of Alba’s most trusted Italian generals, Ciappino Vitelli, and he was to be accompanied by fifty experienced military officers, with a couple of official secretaries for appearance’ sake. That their mission was not that which ostensibly appeared is clear from the fact that at the same time Alba sent another unofficial envoy—the Genoese merchant mariner Fiesco—to attempt to gain a restitution by the private bribery of Leicester and Cecil. Cecil and the Queen laughed at the idea of such an embassy as that of this fire-eating Ciappino coming to settle a commercial dispute, and when the party arrived at Calais for embarkation for England, Cobham, the Governor of Dover Castle, sent word that only Ciappino Vitelli himself and a small suite would be received. A still smaller number was allowed to proceed beyond Dover, and another detachment was stayed at Canterbury; so that by the time the gouty, obese, old Italian general was received by the Queen at Kingston-on-Thames, not even de Spes being allowed to accompany him to the presence, the military object of the mission was cleverly frustrated. The plague was raging in London, and Ciappino never entered the capital; and his interview with the Queen was mainly taken up by her angry complaint of the insolence of the Duke of Alba. After many days of quibbling, he was told that his powers were insufficient, and was politely invited to get out of the country as quickly as possible, his despatches to Alba being intercepted and read at Dover.

It was indeed time that so dangerous a guest should be promptly asked to depart; for this was the most critical juncture of Elizabeth’s reign and her Crown trembled in the balance. All the lords were not so pusillanimous as Norfolk. Both Dacre and Northumberland had formally notified to de Spes that they were ready to take up arms in Philip’s service. For many months the imprudent ambassador had been going beyond his instructions and encouraging these nobles to expect effective aid from Philip. If only a small number of arquebusiers were sent to them from Flanders, said Northumberland and Westmorland, they would undertake to release Mary, subdue the North of England, restore Catholic worship, and make friends with Spain. “I feel sure,” wrote de Spes, “that they will attempt the task; and it will be better effected by them than by the Duke of Norfolk, as they are better fitted for it, and the Queen of Scots will have greater freedom in the choice of a husband.”

The questionable attitude of Westmorland and Northumberland caused Elizabeth to summon them to her presence. They disobeyed and, raising their standard, marched into Durham in force on the 14th November. Destroying the communion table in the cathedral, they caused Mass to be solemnly celebrated; and then pushing rapidly onward towards Ripon, Wetherby and Tadcaster, they finally assembled on Clifford Moor. The Earl of Sussex, the Queen’s Lieutenant in York, was for a time reduced to act on the defensive; and now, if Alba had been prompt and Philip ready, it is possible that the die might have been cast a winning number; and Mary Stuart, rescued from Tutbury, whither she had been rapidly carried, might have been made Queen of a Catholic Britain, under Spanish protection. When news came to de Spes of the southward march of the lords and their renewed prayers for aid from Flanders, he wrote to the King: “I have on several occasions written to your Majesty of the goodwill of these nobles, and I have given a letter in cipher to the gentleman they are sending to the Duke of Alba to ask for aid. They beg for prompt reply, as communications will soon be stopped.... It is certain that there has never been so good an opportunity either of punishing those who have so grievously opposed your Majesty’s interests, or of restoring the Catholic religion, in which consists the maintenance of our old alliance and friendship with this country.” To Alba de Spes wrote in jubilant strain on the 1st December. “The rebels,” he said, “were twelve thousand strong and were marching to release Mary and give battle to the Queen’s forces;” but he ominously adds that none of their confederates have yet risen. Ciappino Vitelli was still lingering at Colebrook, near Windsor, on the pretext of gout, though messages were being sent to him from the Queen that she considered his continued stay in England highly suspicious, as indeed it was, considering that he told de Spes, who doubtless conveyed it to the rebels, that they ought to march straight to London, where nothing could withstand them, seeing the confusion at Court, whilst their other friends would have a greater chance of moving.

And de Spes, the man who, before all others, had led these unfortunate lords to believe that Spanish aid would not fail them, was obliged, now that the crisis had come, to assure the Duke of Alba that he would “do nothing without orders from your Excellency.” The northern lords could not wait for Philip’s leaden pondering, nor upon Alba’s need, and, disheartened at the lack of response, they fell into disunion and wasted the precious time besieging Barnard Castle until the approach of Sussex with a newly organised army struck them with panic and they fled to Scotland—Northumberland to be sold basely to the English and to the scaffold; Westmorland, more unfortunate still, to seek lifelong exile in Spanish lands—a pathetic, poverty-stricken pensioner upon Philip’s irregular bounty, striving to earn his poor living by joining in plots to hand his native country over to the King of Spain. The rebellion in the North, for a time so threatening, was begun, as we have seen, without due preparation and conducted without ability to an inglorious termination.[187] But not a little of the blame for the miserable fiasco must be laid at the door of de Spes, who for months had been holding out hopes—as we see now, without authority—that an armed Spanish force from Flanders would be ready to support the rising. Alas! English Catholics, even after this first hard lesson, had yet to learn that Philip’s aid was not so lightly given, or given at all, without ample assurance that he alone should reap the harvest of success without incurring the penalties of failure.