Chapter V (1)

1558-1565

Accession of Elizabeth—The beginning of the long duel—Feria
urges Philip to use force—Philip’s many difficulties—He offers
his hand to Elizabeth—The Peace of Cateau Cambresis—The
Franco-Spanish Alliance—Fears of a Catholic League—Philip
marries a French Princess—English Catholics appeal to
Philip—Mary Stuart claims the Crown of England—War with
Scotland—Philip’s efforts to effect a reconciliation—Bishop
Quadra—His relations with Leicester—Intrigue for a Catholic
reaction in England—Mary Stuart approaches Philip—Disgrace
and death of Quadra—A war of tariffs—Guzman de Silva,
ambassador—The interviews of Bayonne—Failure of the Catholic
League

Though Mary’s death had long been foreseen, Feria was distracted when it came, for change was on all sides, and each change unfavourable to Spanish interests. “It is very early,” he wrote, “to talk about marriage yet; but the confusion and instability of these people in all their affairs make it necessary for us to be the more alert, so as not to lose the opportunities that may offer, and especially in the matter of marriage.... The new Queen and the people hold themselves free from your Majesty, and will listen to any ambassadors who may come to treat of marriage. Your Majesty understands better than I how important it is that this affair should go through your hands, which will be difficult except with great negotiations and expenditure.” He continues by urging Philip not to allow the Emperor Ferdinand to offer the hand of either of his sons to Elizabeth, and opines that the English would not favour Savoy, whilst, he says, the nobles recognise that it would be impossible for the Queen to marry an Englishman. This was, of course, preliminary to the suggestion of Feria that Philip should marry Elizabeth himself. “The more I think of this business the more certain I am that everything depends upon the husband this woman may take. If he be a suitable one, religious matters will go on well, and the realm will remain friendly with your Majesty; but if not, all will be spoilt. If she decides to marry out of the country she will at once fix her eyes upon your Majesty, although some of them here will be sure to pitch upon the Archduke Ferdinand.”[137]

Feria, who had lorded over Mary’s Council, found the members now sorely changed. They had mostly been bribed heavily by him, and the ambassador roundly abuses them for their ingratitude. They were indeed, such of them as were included in Elizabeth’s Council, too anxious to clear themselves from the odium of the past to smile upon the unpopular Spanish connection; though secretly Lord William Howard, Clinton, and Paget promised their services to Feria. As for the people at large, the death of Mary was to them as if a crushing weight had been lifted from their hearts. Even as she lay dying, the sacred things—the images, relics, and the like—of which she had enforced the veneration, were openly slighted; and Feria wrote a few days after her death: “The people are wagging their tongues a good deal about the Queen’s having sent great sums of money to your Majesty, and that I have sent you 200,000 ducats since I came. They say that it is through your Majesty that the country is in such want, and that Calais was lost; and also that through your not coming to see the Queen she died of grief.”

Under Cecil’s guidance Elizabeth’s first steps were prudent and wise in the extreme. The religious burnings were at once stopped, and those persons who were imprisoned on the charge of heresy were enlarged on their own recognisances; but most of the members of Mary’s Catholic Council were retained, though reinforced by seven new Protestant Councillors, Cecil and Parry being given the most influential duties. But, moderate though the new rulers were, the Catholics, and especially the Spanish party, were in dismay. Only a week after the Queen’s accession Feria wrote to Philip: “The kingdom is entirely in the hands of young folks, heretics, and traitors, and the Queen favours no man who served her sister. The old people and the Catholics are dissatisfied, but dare not open their lips. The Queen seems to me incomparably more feared than her sister was, and gives her orders as absolutely as her father did.”

In the meanwhile the new Queen heard Mass, and made no change in religious observance, but she turned her back upon Bonner when he went to greet her with the other Bishops, and took care to show that, Catholic or Protestant, she was not going to be the submissive tool of either Spain or France, though she professed a desire to be friendly with both. “These people,” wrote Feria, “try to make it known everywhere that your Majesty will have no more influence here than if you had not married the late Queen, and they persuade the present Queen not to be intimate with me. As she is much taken up with the people, she does as they wish her to do, and treats foreigners slightingly. I have therefore decided to go slowly until things settle down and I see who takes the lead. Up to the present nothing is certain, and every one talks as his wishes lead him. I wonder they have not sent me crazy. The whole point is the husband she chooses, and we must try by money arrangements that he shall be one agreeable to your Majesty.”

Elizabeth declined to receive personally either Feria or Dassonleville until she approached London, though Feria sent her an amiable message by Lady Clinton when she arrived at the Charter House, and a splendid ring from Philip by Controller Parry. At the Charter House on the following day the ambassador first saluted the Queen. He was a gallant, handsome gentleman, one of the first nobles in Spain; and Elizabeth was most gracious to him, taking off her glove as soon as he entered the room, in order that he might kiss her hand. The chamber was crowded with people, and it was, of course, no time for political business. He was only in England, he assured her, in order to serve her and let her royal brother-in-law know how best he might gratify her wishes, so as to help forward the good understanding already existing. Feria ventured to touch lightly upon religion, hoping that she would be careful on that point; but to this she gave a broad reply, which Feria thought equivocal. When he left her she had almost allayed his fears, so fine was her diplomacy, and he sent her that day by Lady Clinton two more rings that had belonged to Mary—“as I saw she was so fond of her jewels, and I thought best to give her even the poorest of them.”

He saw her again three days afterwards at Somerset House, where she was staying, and told her that a truce had been settled between France and Spain during the peace negotiations. She showed her suspicions in a moment, thinking that the intention was to isolate her and leave her at hostilities with France. By means of Cecil, however, Feria persuaded her that her fears were unfounded; and in another conversation she exerted all her blandishments upon him to convince him that her leanings were not towards the French, whilst he further delighted her by telling her that he had at Whitehall and at her disposal a casket of jewels that had belonged to her sister. In this sort of intercourse Elizabeth was a match for any one living. It was not until Feria tried to pledge her to anything that he found out his powerlessness. He had occupied the royal residence called Durham Place, in the Strand, as a dwelling house, but he had also apartments at Whitehall, and he tried hard to obtain a renewal of these, “although I am much afraid they will not give it to me. I have little chance of talking to people unless I am inside the Palace, and they are so suspicious of me that, as the late Chancellor (Heath) plainly told me, nobody dares to speak to me.... They are very glad to be free of your Majesty, as though you had done them harm instead of good. Although in several of my letters to your Majesty I have said how small a party you have here, I am never satisfied that I have said enough to describe things as they really are. I am so isolated from them that I am much embarrassed and puzzled to get the means of discovering what is going on; for truly they run away from me as if I were the devil. The best way will be for me to get my foot into the Palace, so as to speak oftener with the Queen, as she is a woman very fond of argument.”

The great question for the Spaniards was Elizabeth’s marriage. If she married a Protestant or a man open to French influence, the effect upon Spanish interests might be disastrous. The gossip on the subject at Court shifted from day to day—sometimes an English suitor, sometimes Prince Eric, sometimes one of the Archdukes, Philip’s cousins, being the favourite. Savoy was always rejected by public voice, because of the fear that he might drag England into war with France to recover his dominions. None of the suitors mentioned except Savoy would have suited Spanish ends. The Archdukes, if they would accept the absolute dictation of their cousin Philip, would have been the least objectionable of the foreign Princes: but Philip was not on very good terms with the Austrian branch of his family at this time; for he was still sore about the succession to the Empire, and the Archdukes were too much dependent upon the Lutherans to please him. So the conviction grew in Feria’s mind that the only satisfactory solution would be for Philip to marry Elizabeth himself. He proposed to appeal to her pride, and to suggest that it would be beneath her to match less splendidly than her sister. Little did either he or his master understand the subtle mind with which they had to deal. Elizabeth was, of course, anxious to keep on good terms with them, and indeed to restore England to its former position as the balancing power, but, smile and coquette as she might, she would never allow herself to be drawn into a position from which she could not retreat.

Feria—impatient, scornful, and proud—began to tire of this inconclusive dallying, especially as he saw, both at Court and outside, that the Protestants were growing bolder, and the Queen herself was relaxing her orthodox observance. He complained bitterly to Philip that everything was hidden from him, and that he could learn nothing, though the Queen said that he knew too much about English affairs; that he was proud, and that she would be glad if he were recalled. “I am afraid,” he wrote, “that one fine day we shall find this woman married, and I shall be the last man to learn anything about it.... I overlook many things and try not to take offence or to appear inquisitive; but their enmity and evil consciences make them so suspicious of me that they think I know everything, and in return for all my efforts to please, I believe that they would like to see me thrown into the river—that is to say, the Queen and her friends would—for the Catholics and goodly people are glad that your Majesty should gain ground here.”

The fear that Elizabeth would slip through their fingers was accentuated for the Spaniards by the idea that her proceedings in religion might induce the Pope to listen to French prompting and excommunicate her, declaring her throne forfeit to the next Catholic heir, Mary of Scotland, Dauphiness of France. Anything would have suited Philip better than that, and it appears to have been this consideration which finally moved him to dazzle the new Queen, and cut out all the other suitors by proposing formally to become her husband himself. Elizabeth had, of course, in her two previous conversations with Feria, understood his veiled allusions to the subject; and when he had pressed his demand for rooms in the Palace of Whitehall, Elizabeth, with prudish modesty, sent word by Cecil that, as she was unmarried and Feria might be her suitor, it would be improper for him to sleep under the same roof. Feria, recognising the absurdity of the alleged reason, believed that the refusal was owing to French intrigue, and urged his master to act promptly. “Your Majesty must get the affair into your own grasp. We must look to it at once that the King of France does not get in and spoil the crop that your Majesty has sown here.” Thus abjured, Philip took the plunge, once more in a pure spirit of martyrdom—not this time on account of disparity of age or lack of attraction on the part of his bride-elect, but rather because of her doubtful orthodoxy.

It is difficult to understand how so sagacious a man as Philip can have been so blind to the character of his sister-in-law as to have believed that an offer made in the spirit displayed in his letter to his ambassador could have been accepted by her. On 10th January, 1559, the King wrote thus to Feria: “I highly approve of the course you have adopted in persuading her and the Council that it is not to her interest to marry a subject. As regards myself, if she should broach the subject to you, you should treat it in such a way as neither to accept nor reject the suggestion entirely. In a matter of such grave importance it was necessary for me to take counsel and consider it maturely in all its bearings, before I sent you my decision. Many great obstacles present themselves, and it is difficult for me to reconcile my conscience to it, as I am obliged to reside in my other dominions, and consequently could not be much in England, which, apparently, is what they fear; and also because the Queen has not been sound in religion, and it would not look well for me to marry her unless she were a Catholic. Besides this, such a marriage would appear like entering upon a perpetual war with France, seeing the claims that the Queen of Scots has to the English Crown. The urgent need for my presence in Spain, which is greater than I can say here, and the heavy expense I should be put to in England by reason of the costly entertainment necessary to the people there, together with the fact that my Treasury is so utterly exhausted as to be unable to meet the most pressing ordinary expenditure, much less new and onerous burdens: bearing in mind these and many other difficulties no less grave, ... I nevertheless cannot lose sight of the enormous importance of such a match to Christianity and the preservation of religion, which has been restored in England by the help of God. Seeing the importance that the country should not relapse into its former errors, which would cause to our neighbouring dominions serious dangers and difficulties, I have decided to put aside all other considerations which might be urged against it, and am resolved to render this service to God, and offer to marry the Queen of England; and I will use every possible effort to effect this, if it can be done on the conditions that will be explained to you. The first and most important is that you should satisfy yourself that the Queen will profess the same religion that I do, the same that I ever shall hold, and that she will persevere in the same and uphold it in the country, doing with that end all that may appear necessary to me. She will have to obtain secret absolution from the Pope and the necessary dispensation, so that when I marry her she will be a Catholic, which she has not hitherto been. In this way it is evident and manifest that I am serving the Lord in marrying her, and that she has been converted by my act. You will not propose any conditions until you see how the Queen is disposed towards the matter itself; and mark well that you must first broach the subject alone, as she has already opened the door to such an approach.”[138] Later Philip mentions that the clause in his marriage treaty with Mary granting Flanders to the issue of the marriage could not be conceded in the case of Elizabeth.

There are few letters extant that reveal so clearly as this does the character of Philip. As he points out in his long preamble, the objections to the match are numerous and grave. Elizabeth was of doubtful orthodoxy, excommunicate and officially declared a bastard, the daughter of a woman whom Catholic Spaniards looked upon as the personification of evil, and yet to marry her the proudest monarch on earth and the champion of the Church omnipotent was ready to salve his conscience, sacrifice personal desires and lavish upon a people he loathed the money wrung painfully from the Castilian subjects that he loved. The talk of his sacrifice to God no doubt was sincerely uttered and believed by himself, because he ever identified his political aims with the cause of the Almighty; but the real reason for his willingness to marry Elizabeth in spite of everything was primarily to prevent England from slipping away from his grasp to the irreparable injury of his cause. If England became a Protestant power under Elizabeth, he foresaw that it would reinforce the elements in his own dominions with which his great struggle was even now visible on the horizon; if it became Catholic under Mary Stuart, matters would be still worse for him, because his great rival France would then hold the whip hand over him for ever from across the Channel. It was a dire predicament for a proud, devout monarch to find himself in, and of the two great evils that threatened, Philip proposed to choose the lesser in marrying Elizabeth “for the greater glory of God.”

But it takes two persons to make a marriage, and Elizabeth, unlike her sister, had no notion of allowing herself and England to be made the tools of another’s ambitions, for she had ambitions of her own, and in most cases they were not identical with those of her brother-in-law. In one particular alone they coincided, namely, in the need for excluding the French from gaining control of England by means of Mary Stuart or otherwise, and this was the point that restrained Philip from proceeding to extremities with Elizabeth for thirty years of provocation. Feria, who was in closer touch with the progress of affairs in England than his master, must have seen the impracticability of proposing for Elizabeth’s hand in the spirit of his instructions, and, although he saw her in the little chamber at Whitehall on the eve of the opening of Parliament on the 25th January, where she chatted very affably with him, he did not venture to mention the question of marriage, as he had been told that Parliament would press her to choose a husband, and thought that he had better wait until then. But Philip was impatient, the English Peace Commissioners at Cateau Cambresis, who had now been joined by Lord William Howard, were standing out firmly for the restoration of Calais as a condition of the general peace.[139] If Elizabeth showed herself ready to become Philip’s wife and the obedient tool of his policy, he was willing to make a stand too on the subject of Calais; but he was determined not to be kept at war for the sake of the English if Elizabeth persevered in her proposed Parliamentary action with regard to religious reform, and he peremptorily instructed Feria to remonstrate earnestly with her on the subject, and to tell her from him, “as a good and true brother, who really wishes her well, both on account of our relationship and because I wish to see her firmly established on the throne, that I warn her to ponder deeply the evils which may result to England, particularly so early in her reign, from any change in religion.... You will enforce this by all the good arguments and persuasions that you can employ, ... but if you can obtain no success in that way you will consider whether it will be well to press the Queen by saying that if this change is made, all idea of my marriage with her must be broken off. If she has any thoughts that way this may be effective.”[140]

FROM A PAINTING BY ZUCCHERO IN THE NATIONAL PORTRAIT GALLERY]

Feria was in a quandary, for he knew how impossible it was, seeing Elizabeth’s temper, to deal with her in this way. After two or three inconclusive interviews with the Queen, in which the question of the religious changes was pressed and the marriage broadly hinted at, Feria came to close quarters with her. She began with her usual professions of disinclination to marry at all, and was proceeding, as he feared, to decline her brother-in-law’s proposal, when the ambassador stopped her and said he did not want an answer then. After some coquettish verbal fencing she promised him that she would give him a good answer if she gave him one at all. And then came the serious part of the business. Howard had written to her that Alba had said that they (the Spaniards) could not stand out for Calais any longer, but must make peace in any case.[141]

Elizabeth worked herself up into a rage about this, and began to storm about Mary of Scotland’s claims upon England. She was not so poor that she could not get what money and soldiers she needed to hold her own, she said. Her people were all grumbling, she declared, at the waste of money upon the fleet for Philip’s service and other heavy expenditure the late Queen had incurred for him; and Feria had much ado to enforce his view that England owed a deep debt of gratitude to Philip, and the unreasonableness of expecting that he would keep at war with France for the sake of a single town like Calais. He was afraid even to speak about the religious point for fear of exacerbating their relations: “Yet, although I plainly see her going to perdition, it seems to me that if the marriage can be carried through, the rest will soon be arranged in accordance with the glory of God and the wishes of your Majesty. If the marriage do not take place, all I could say to the Queen about religion would be of little avail, as she is so badly advised by the heretics who surround her, and it might even prejudice the principal matter” (_i.e._, the marriage).

Events thereafter moved apace. To the Queen’s indignation she was forced to consent to a peace with France, postponing the restitution of Calais for eight years, to be followed by a peace with Scotland. The Act of Supremacy and the Act of Uniformity were passed; and every day, notwithstanding Elizabeth’s diplomatic professions of attachment to Spain and its King, the hold of the latter over England became less powerful. Philip had to make up his mind rapidly after the religious changes in the English Parliament had been made. It was clear to him then that Elizabeth would be no fit instrument to his ends. Feria was telling him hotly that “the only way to deal with these heretics is sword in hand,” and Alba, in Flanders, was for coercing Elizabeth before she grew strong enough to resist Spain and the English Catholics combined.

But Philip hated war, and had a supreme belief in his own diplomatic methods. He was face to face, moreover, with a new development. Always before France had been the insatiable rival of his house, and France had been a solid instrument in the hands of its King. But the Reformation was already confusing the traditional boundaries. Henry II. was growing apprehensive of the increasing spread of Calvinism in his own dominions, and a solution after Philip’s own heart was devised by the Churchmen that drew the Catholic rivals together to face the new danger of Protestantism throughout Europe. England was no longer to be the balancing power between them, but the enemy of both, so long as she remained Protestant. To cement this hopeful attempt to combine Europe politically on new lines Philip was to marry the eldest daughter of France, the Princess Elizabeth of Valois, who, so long as he had hopes of marrying Elizabeth, had been destined for his only son Don Carlos.

The close union of France and Spain caused, as usual, a wave of alarm to pass over England. Paget and the Spanish party in Elizabeth’s Court were for continuing the war against France at any cost and clinging to Philip as the sole chance of safety[142]; and, although the Queen and Cecil would not go so far as that, they did their best to mollify Feria and his master. When the ambassador saw the Queen on the 7th April, 1559 (the day that the news of the signing of the peace of Cateau Cambresis came to London) she was pouting and coquettishly aggrieved that Philip should have engaged himself to be married to any one but her, as she had given him no answer yet. Feria retorted crossly that the King could not wait four months for her answer, and when Cecil told him that they were quite willing to continue the war against France if Philip liked, the ambassador answered him rudely, and “I left them that day as bitter as gall.” Again and again the angry ambassador complained and remonstrated with the Queen about the religious changes and the licence now taken by the people. But she outwitted him at every point, kept up an elaborate pretence of negotiations to marry one of the Austrian Archdukes, who would depend entirely on Philip, and personally assured Feria that she was as good a Catholic as her father, the only point upon which she differed from the Spaniards being the supremacy of the Pope.

Thus England freed herself from Spanish tutelage within six months of Elizabeth’s accession. Feria said she “was a daughter of the devil and her chief ministers the greatest scoundrels and heretics in the land,” and when he went back to join his master in Flanders he breathed fire and slaughter against England and the Queen, whose diplomacy had stultified all his efforts. He had done his best to persuade Philip to pluck a quarrel with England that should give him an excuse for armed intervention, the deposition of Elizabeth by the Pope, and the patronage of Catharine Grey as a pretender for Elizabeth’s throne with the aid of the English Catholics, who, he assured Philip, were all in his favour.[143] But Philip thought that he had found a better way than by war and rejected the advice of his fiery councillors. To represent him in England there remained at Elizabeth’s Court the best possible instrument that could have been selected in the circumstances, the Bishop of Aquila, Alvaro de la Quadra, a supple, patient, unscrupulous old ecclesiastic, who had lived long in Italy and was an adept at sly, stealthy diplomacy, which so cleverly used religion as the stalking-horse of politics. Bishop Jewel calls him “a clever, crafty, old fox”; and he needed all his cunning, for his task for the next five years until it broke his heart was to keep Elizabeth, heretic though she might be, from joining either the Protestants or the French against Philip.

For even before the ink was dry that ratified the peace of Cateau Cambresis, before the pompous ceremonies in England, France, and Spain that celebrated it were finished, a stroke of Fate had rendered the union between the two great Catholic Powers unstable, and old political traditions were reasserting themselves. I have told elsewhere[144] of the ill-fated feast in Paris, when stern Alba wedded in June, 1559, as proxy for his master, the beautiful Valois Princess of fourteen. How her father, the gallant Henry, was stricken down mortally at the joust that followed, and how the rise of his long-neglected wife, Catharine de Medici, able and ambitious, soon made the Catholic League a hollow pretence. She needed not the dominance of the Guises and their Catholic friends, but so nicely to balance them against the Huguenots that she herself might hold the scale. She did not send her sweet daughter to Spain as a pledge for the extirpation of Protestantism root and branch, as had been intended, but to cajole Philip into helping her personally to hold her own as ruler of France, whichever faction was paramount, and to win, if possible, the heir of Spain for her younger daughter, so that her hold over the country might be perpetuated.

The accession also of young Francis II. and Mary Stuart to the throne of France, under the dominion of their ambitious Guise uncles, had driven a great wedge into the unity of the Catholic League. The Guises, who led the Catholic party in France, were now for a short time masters, on behalf of the young King and his wife, of the national resources, and were prepared to use them in furthering their Scottish niece’s claims to the English throne. This naturally drew Philip more to the side of Elizabeth, however perverse she might be, and, from the very first, rendered abortive the Catholic League secretly cemented by the treaty of Cateau Cambresis. When the death of Francis II., after his short reign, threw the Guises into the background and made Catharine de Medici Regent of France, matters were hardly improved. Philip was always a bad hand at playing another’s game, and though his young French wife lived happily with him, for he was a good husband, the purpose of her going to Spain was never achieved, and Philip was as anxious after his French marriage as before it to prevent his mother-in-law and his English sister-in-law from making common cause against him. They, knowing this as well as he, could, and did, always checkmate or paralyse him when they pleased by simulating friendship with each other, either by marriage talk or by a pretence of common interest. Whilst Catharine de Medici lived this was the problem of Europe, and to Philip it proved an insoluble one.

Feria and Alba were for ever advocating the high hand with Elizabeth, but Philip knew that his hollow union with France had drawn all Protestants together, so that if he aided the English Catholics to depose Elizabeth and crush Protestantism in her country, not only would Catholic France be against him, but the Lutheran Germans would be disturbed, and perhaps he might let loose the storm, of which the mutterings were already audible, over his own Netherlands. So, in spite of the Bishop of Aquila’s soft hints and Feria’s warlike advice, Philip decided, notwithstanding Elizabeth’s religious recalcitrancy, upon a policy of palliation and suavity in England. “You must,” he instructed his ambassador, “keep mainly in view by all means to avoid a rupture. I have already pointed out the importance of this, but it is so great that I cannot be satisfied without repeating it many times.” But yet he was ready even thus early if Elizabeth’s subjects attacked her for her religious measures to take full advantage of the opportunity for his own advantage, and so to prevent the French from establishing themselves in England. With these pacific instructions, therefore, he sent the great sum of 60,000 crowns “to gain friends,” and says, “I have also ordered, in case of need, that money shall be raised to fit out a fleet at short notice, so that it may be ready to carry men over to England if required.”

The difference between Feria’s arrogant methods and the Bishop’s blandness was soon seen in his intercourse with the Queen. Of her and her advisers in his letters to Philip he has nothing but violent abuse; but he was all tolerant kindness when he was with her, and got quite friendly with the “heretic” Cecil. He was lodged in Durham Place, as Feria had been, and was in close touch with Lady Mary Sidney and her brother, Lord Robert Dudley, who was soon to be created Earl of Leicester. During all the comedy of pretended marriage negotiations with the Archduke Charles the Bishop dexterously aided or hindered the progress as the interests of Philip seemed to dictate. If the Archduke was to come as a thoroughgoing Catholic and obedient servant of Spain well and good, but the moment there was any talk of his making religious concessions or appearing under Lutheran auspices, then the wily Bishop smiled upon the perennial second string of Lord Robert Dudley. In the meanwhile he was hand in glove with the discontented and dismayed English Catholics, gaining friends amongst them by money promises and blandishments, whilst his spies were busy discovering the weak points on the East Coast towards Flanders, making lists of the Catholic and disaffected English gentry, and whispering to them of the armed aid that in case of need would be sent by the Catholic King. To Philip the Bishop wrote often with affected humility, but with studied significance, saying how surprised the English Catholics were that he made no move to help them. “Your Majesty,” he wrote, “is the only hope of the godly and the dread of the wicked, if the latter are not to be allowed time to combat and weaken the Catholic party.”[145]

But Philip was powerless to stir a finger to help them, much as they might cry to him. The death of Henry II. and the accession of Mary Stuart’s husband, as has been pointed out, had suddenly changed the situation. The claims of the Queen of Scots to the English throne, and the despatch of a strong French force to Leith to succour the Regent Mary of Lorraine, hardly pressed as she was by the rebels subsidised by Elizabeth, precipitated the eventuality that Philip dreaded most—a war in Scotland between France and the Queen of England. If in such a war the latter were beaten by the Guises, then farewell to Spanish influence in England, however Catholic the country might become. Yet Philip dared not fight on the behalf of heresy against the Catholic French element and the Guises, or the Huguenots would become all-powerful; whilst if he interfered in England at all to Elizabeth’s detriment his action would draw together in close unity the powerful Protestant party in England, the majority of the Scots who were Reformers, the Huguenots of France, who were panting for revenge on the Guises, and the Lutherans of Germany and Holland. With such a combination as this behind her Elizabeth might adopt a stronger anti-Catholic attitude than ever.

But what Philip dreaded even more than this was the encouragement that such a strong combination of Protestants would give to the Flemings, who were already straining in the leash to escape from the Spanish religious system. Philip sent envoys to England and France to urge, both by persuasion and threats, that the peace should be kept (March, 1560), but, as usual, his step was too late to prevent hostilities. The Bishop of Aquila, in his private letters to Feria, was scornful of his master’s methods. “If these envoys from his Majesty are only coming to talk, they will do more harm than good, as the Catholics here expect much more than that.... The Queen is greatly alarmed, and this is the time to do what ought to have been done before; but if we are always to be on the defensive and to palliate everything, I can only pray for patience, though I well know we shall never have such an opportunity again. All here are with us, and the very heretics are sick of it.”[146] The Bishop dared not write in this strain to Philip, though he said as much as he could; but the King saw, if his advisers did not, that he could not take up arms against Elizabeth without playing the French game, and it was equally impossible for him to fight his Catholic French allies on behalf of the heretic Queen. All he could do, therefore, was talk.

The result of the short war in Scotland was favourable to Elizabeth, and the pressing danger passed; but Philip’s threat to aid the French if she insisted upon continuing the hostilities brought home to Elizabeth and her minister that the Catholic League was still a danger to them. An attempt was made to persuade the Spaniards that the Queen would really marry the Archduke at once and follow Philip’s advice, the object being to weaken the friendship between Spain and France; but Lord Robert Dudley’s philandering was now so open, and Elizabeth so obviously fond of him, that the new pretence about the Archduke and her sudden Catholic professions deceived nobody.[147] Even Cecil lost heart at the difficulties created by this infatuation of the Queen for Dudley, and the Spanish ambassador chuckled with delight that the “heretics” were falling out amongst themselves and the Catholic cause was looking brighter.

As soon as the death of Dudley’s wife set him free he made an attempt, which for a time hoodwinked Bishop Quadra, to gain the support of Spain for his suit, and even wily Philip believed that England was going to fall under his sway again by means of the Queen’s lover, a belief that proved that he still failed to gauge Elizabeth’s true character. The intermediary in this case was Sir Henry Sidney, who, being a kinsman of the English Countess of Feria and the husband of Robert Dudley’s sister, was _persona grata_ at Durham House. He came to Bishop Quadra late in January, 1561, and after much circumlocution remarked that he was surprised that it had not been suggested to Philip that the opportunity offered “for gaining over Lord Robert by extending a hand to him now in the matter of his marriage with the Queen, and he would thereafter serve and obey your Majesty like one of your own vassals.” The Bishop was cool about it, for Dudley’s character was bad, and many evil tales were afloat about his wife’s recent death. The King of Spain, said the Bishop, had no need to win the Queen of England’s goodwill. She had not, moreover, shown herself very ready hitherto to take his advice upon anything, and it was not sure that she would do so in the matter of her marriage with Lord Robert. Sidney admitted that the rumours about the foul play upon Amy Robsart were generally believed, but he said they were untrue. The Queen, however, was really in love with Robert, and was most anxious to settle the religious question by the help of him as her husband. Yes, said the Bishop, that no doubt is very praiseworthy and necessary; but he did not see why the religious matter should be mixed up with so mundane a business as marrying Dudley. It ought to be undertaken whether the Queen was married or single. Sidney quite agreed. Matters in the country were in a bad way, he admitted, but the Queen and Robert were anxious to put things right, and he swore most solemnly that they intended to restore the Catholic religion in England by means of a General Council of the Church, in which England would join if King Philip would patronise the bridegroom and urge Elizabeth to marry him. The Bishop reminded Sidney that he had been led astray several times before by such talk when the Queen wanted for her own ends to appear friendly to Spain. It was, moreover, very improper to make religion the excuse. If Lord Robert repented of his heresy and wanted to recant there was nothing to prevent him from doing so without bargaining about it, and the interview ended by Sidney’s promising to bring Lord Robert himself to Durham House to satisfy the Bishop of his _bonâ fides_.

In his letter to the King the Churchman expresses himself as being much shocked at the barefacedness of the proposal; but he goes on to say that he believes that it is only by this means that the Queen can be brought round to the Spanish side. The gossip about her and Dudley, he says, is so scandalous that she will not dare to marry him without some strong support; and there was no price she would not pay to obtain it. Such a tendency as that shown in Sidney’s proposal would, of course, be strenuously opposed by most of Elizabeth’s advisers; and Paget, with Cecil and his friends, attempted a diversion by strongly advocating a close alliance with France, where the young King Francis II. had recently died, and Catharine de Medici had become supreme. The Dudley intrigue with Spain, however, went on, though probably, as we see now, without the full knowledge of the Queen. Lord Robert at length came with Sidney to see the Bishop on the 13th February, and professed his readiness to be the humble servant of King Philip if he would recommend the Queen to marry him. Quadra was cautious. He had no special instructions, he said, and the King was now in Spain, a long way off; but he would promise Dudley that he would, the next time he saw the Queen, urge her to marry; and if she mentioned any particular person he (the Bishop) would enlarge upon Lord Robert’s good qualities and King Philip’s affection for him.

Two days later the smooth-tongued old Bishop found himself alone with the Queen, and ventured to say how glad he was to hear that her marriage was seriously under discussion at last. If she wished to consult the King of Spain on the matter the Bishop was very much at her service, though no instructions from Spain had been sent to him. The Queen talked wide of the subject for some time; but she said at last that she knew she was no angel, and would make the Bishop her confessor. She would not deny that she had some affection for Lord Robert for his good qualities, but had not decided to marry him or any one else. But she saw every day the necessity for her marriage, and that to satisfy the English humour it was desirable that she should marry an Englishman. What would the King of Spain think, she asked, if she married one of her servants? The Bishop said he did not know, but would ask if she directed him to do so; and then he launched out into warm praise of Dudley. Elizabeth promised to do nothing without Philip’s advice, and told the Bishop that when the time came she would speak to him on the subject. The Bishop, in relating the interview, says that he humoured her thus “because he saw the heretics so busy forming combinations with England, France, Scotland, and Germany, and, above all, because your Majesty’s neighbouring States are so pressed that a perverse decision of this woman might prejudice them, though she herself were ruined by it.”[148]

The Bishop, for all his sanctimonious horror that religion should be used in political bargaining, was really quite willing to carry through the deal and to patronise the marriage of Elizabeth and Dudley if he were assured of the payment. That Dudley was ready to promise anything and everything is also certain, but it is more than doubtful whether Elizabeth was aware of what he was promising. It suited her at the moment to meet the Catholic league between France and Spain, hollow as it was, by threatening combinations of Protestants; whilst at the same time, as a second string to her bow, cajoling the Spaniards into the idea that she was willing to be reconciled to them, and had Catholic leanings. When Bishop Quadra saw Dudley the next day Lord Robert was profuse in his thanks, for he knew from the Queen word for word what had passed. It had only been timidity that had prevented the Queen from deciding on the spot, he said, and he begged the Bishop to revert to the subject when he saw her again. His promises knew no bounds. Everything in England, even religion, he said, should be put into the hands of King Philip; and if the sending of a representative to the Council of the Church were not enough he would go himself. To this the Bishop replied that he would do his best to forward matters, but again, in shocked tones, he begged Lord Robert not to mention religion in the matter on any account. What the Queen and Dudley did about _that_ concerned their own consciences. Of course the Catholic King would be delighted to see all these religious dissensions settled, but it should not be a matter of bargain. “I am thus cautious with these people, because if they are playing false, which is quite possible, I do not wish to give them the opportunity of saying that we offered them your Majesty’s favour in return for their changing their religion.”

At the same time the Bishop urged upon his master that the moment had now come for action: either this bargain must be struck with Dudley, or help must be given to the enemies of the existing _régime_ to revolutionise England. “To let these affairs drift at the mercy of chance neither secures England to us nor punishes evil, and must end in disadvantage to your Majesty.” Philip was just as sanctimonious in profession and as pliable in practice as his ambassador. “Our principal aim,” he wrote in reply, “is directed to the service of our Lord, the maintenance of religion, and the settlement and pacification of England, and, as we see that Sidney’s proposals tend to this, and further bearing in mind that God if He wills can extract good from evil, we have decided that the negotiation suggested by Sidney should be listened to.” Dudley was to be helped to marry the Queen, but “the bargain and its payment must be clearly set forth in writing signed by Elizabeth herself, and she must give some earnest of her sincerity by liberating the Catholics she has in prison, she must undertake to send Catholic bishops and ambassadors to the Council of the Church, and submit herself unconditionally to its decisions. And, besides all this, she must begin by giving full toleration to Catholic worship.”

This, again, shows that Philip was utterly at sea as regards the real condition of England at the time, and was still ignorant of Elizabeth’s character and position. Such demands as those he formulated as a preliminary were utterly out of the question, even as a final concession. Before this letter was received in London the insincerity of Elizabeth in the matter began to appear. The Earl of Bedford was sent to France, ostensibly to condole with Catharine for the death of Francis II.; but also to suggest that the French bishops—and especially those of Huguenot leaning—should join her in sending representatives to the Council, but not at Trent, as had been agreed, but somewhere else on this side of the Alps. The cleverness of this move is apparent. Catharine and Elizabeth would in such case seem to be making common cause, which would paralyse Philip; and at the same time the Catholics in England would be tranquillised with the idea that a Council of the Church would settle matters to their liking. Catharine, however, did not jump at the bait, as just then in the first days of her Regency she did not wish to quarrel with her Spanish son-in-law, or to drive the Catholic Guises to desperation by seeming to join with Elizabeth against them.

As soon as this became evident the English Queen grew cool about the Council, much to Dudley’s annoyance, who still tried to keep her up to the mark. She sent Cecil to the Spanish Bishop, asking him to move Philip to write to her recommending her to marry an Englishman, hinting at the same time that this was in Philip’s interest, as she might otherwise marry a foreign enemy of his. Cecil said that her idea was to bring Philip’s letter before a committee of peers, prelates, and commoners, all friends of Dudley, and they would recommend the marriage. This was all very well, said the Bishop, but how about Lord Robert’s religious pledges? But Cecil had no intention, nor probably had the Queen, of carrying out any such promises; and this new proposal was really intended to upset Dudley’s plan. So, gradually, a barrier of limitations and conditions was introduced by Cecil, which made the affair impossible. The Anglican and Lutheran bishops were to sit in the Council; certain points of doctrine must be settled beforehand; the Pope or his legate might be President but not ruler of the Council; and the place of meeting must be mutually agreed upon by all the princes. Dudley alternately fumed and sulked at this diversion by his opponents, and tried desperately to keep the Spanish Bishop in hand. It had, of course, been evident to the latter at once that Philip’s attitude as shown in his instructions was impossible. “Elizabeth,” he said, “had not entered into the business so humbly and submissively that he could lay down the law to her and insist upon her pledging herself in writing”; besides, it would be most unwise to give the “heretics” the opportunity, if they were playing false, of proving that they had got Philip to bargain for his political help in return for religious concessions.

FROM A PAINTING AT THE NATIONAL PORTRAIT GALLERY]

In the meanwhile, encouraged by this philandering, a Papal Nuncio was hurrying across Europe to be ready at a moment’s notice to sail from Flanders to England and invite the representatives of Elizabeth to the Council of Trent. This Nuncio, the Abbé Martinengo, was to be received at Greenwich privately, and not to go through the streets of London, which it was thought would not be safe. Dudley was again in the seventh heaven of blissful anticipation, and ready, if he was the Queen’s husband, to lay England and the faith he had professed at Philip’s feet. He would restore the Catholic Church, he promised, the Queen should give a good answer to the Nuncio about the Council of the Church, and some of the Protestant bishops even, he said, were beginning to waver. But Cecil saw which way matters were tending, and promptly stepped in with another diversion. Protestant feeling in England was already becoming excited at the rumour that a Papal Nuncio was on his way to see the Queen, and Bishop Quadra found himself a prey to intense unpopularity for having, it was said, plotted to bring about a Catholic revolution. The Nuncio was informed that he would not be allowed to land in England (April, 1561), Sidney was hurried off to his post in Wales, Dudley retired before the storm, and Cecil, triumphant, had the satisfaction of knowing that he had prevented England from being dragged into Philip’s clutches again by the ambition of a worthless courtier, aided by the Queen’s momentary weakness.

Bishop Quadra was deeply mortified by the way in which he had been misled, and became more desirous than ever that strong measures should be taken to aid the Catholics to rebel against Elizabeth. After unsuccessfully approaching the French Huguenots to obtain help from them for his marriage with the Queen, Dudley had the impudence, in January, 1562, to approach Quadra again and offer his servile obedience to Spain in return for the aid of King Philip towards his marriage; but the bait was stale, for, as the Bishop wrote, the Catholics thoroughly distrusted Dudley now, and he was of no use any longer as a Spanish instrument.

Though Philip had failed again to secure England as a satellite, the need for his doing so was as urgent as ever, for the Netherlands were seething in discontent, the Huguenots in France were being supported for the time by the Regent Catharine, and it looked as if the stronger coming combination in Europe would not be Catholic but Protestant. To counteract this threatening state of affairs it was necessary for Philip to try a new tack. The massacre of Vassy had precipitated the opening of the first war of religion in France (March, 1562), and this made it expedient for him to strengthen the Guises. So a proposal, upon which, when Cardinal Lorraine had made it a year before, he had looked upon coldly, was now regarded with favour. This was no less than the marriage of the widowed Mary Stuart, now in Scotland, and on ill terms with Catharine, with Philip’s heir, Don Carlos. It was not such a match as the Spanish King in ordinary circumstances would have considered adequate for his son; but as Mary was the Catholic heiress of England, and might by a turn of the wheel become Queen of Britain she was a useful countercheck to Protestant combinations.