How shameful it is that princes so great should be afraid of a heretical and excommunicated woman . . .54
Sometimes, the long arm of Elizabeth’s intelligence network could reach out and strike at these Catholic fugitives. An easy target was Dr John Story, Regius Professor of Canon Law at Oxford, who had used his home in Greyfriars, London, to interrogate Protestant suspects during Mary’s short reign. According to the evangelical polemicist John Foxe, Story boasted in 1555 that ‘there has been yet never one burnt but I have spoken with and have been a cause of his dispatch’.55 He escaped from the Marshalsea gaol and fled to Flanders in 1563, renounced his allegiance to Elizabeth and served as a customs officer in the Spanish Netherlands, receiving a pension from Philip. In 1570, he was lured by English agents on to a ship in Antwerp harbour and was landed at the Norfolk port of Great Yarmouth. At his trial in May 1571 he faced charges of high treason for supporting the 1569 rebellion and encouraging a Spanish invasion. Story claimed he was now a Spanish subject, citing the Biblical precedent: ‘God commanded Abraham to go forth from the land and country where he was born, from his friends and kinfolks into another country.’ He had followed the prophet’s example to allay his conscience and ‘so forsake his country and the laws of this realm . . .’ ‘Every man is born free,’ Story declared, ‘and he has the whole face of the earth before him to dwell and abide in where he likes best.’56 Vengeance was not to be denied. His plea was rejected and he was hanged, drawn and quartered at Tyburn on 1 June 1571.57
Burghley also tried to discourage those considering fleeing the country by introducing legislation to confiscate their property. The Fugitives Act of 1571 declared that any subject who departed England without licence and did not return within six months would forfeit the profits from their property, as well as losing their goods and chattels.58 But no legislation can quench the fire of religious faith. By 1575, there was a two-hundred-strong company of exiles, commanded by an English captain, in the Spanish army in the Netherlands, all of whom had sworn allegiance to Philip. Their ranks were later swelled by Irish and Scottish Catholics.59
Another, more single-minded opponent of the Catholic cause in England now began to manipulate events. On 20 December 1573, Sir Francis Walsingham was appointed joint principal secretary of state with Burghley, who was also lord treasurer. As a devout and radical Protestant he, like around a thousand others, had fled England after Mary’s accession to the throne, fearing persecution. Elizabeth, whose own Protestant beliefs were insipid by comparison,60 believed him a ‘rank puritan’ and sometimes unfairly castigated him for caring more for his fellow evangelicals than he did for England. The queen nicknamed him her ‘dark Moor’ because of his swarthy, brooding appearance.
She had little grasp of what febrile nightmares haunted him. As English ambassador to the French court, he had been a horrified witness to the terrors of the St Bartholomew’s Day massacre of Huguenots in Paris on Sunday 24 August 1572. More than three thousand Protestants were shot or hacked to death by a Catholic mob and disciplined troops of soldiers in a carefully planned pogrom that began at dawn. The carnage continued into October with seventy thousand killed in Toulouse, Bordeaux, Lyons, Rouen and Orléans. So many corpses floated in the Rhône at Lyons that the river water was not drunk for three months.
Walsingham, together with a number of terrified fugitives, was besieged in his residency in the quai des Bernardins in Faubourg St Germain.61 The Huguenot general François de Beauvais was dragged out of the building and lynched by the Parisians.62 Eventually the ambassador was granted protection by soldiers sent by the French king Charles IX63 and he managed to smuggle his wife and four-year-old daughter safely out of the city.
In Rome, a new Pope, Gregory XIII, triumphantly called for public rejoicing and had a Te Deum sung to celebrate this famous victory over the heretics. He struck a medal to commemorate the event with an image on its reverse of an avenging angel, armed with a cross and drawn sword, slaying the Huguenots.64 Giorgio Vasari was commissioned to paint three frescoes portraying the destruction of the Protestants on the south wall of the Vatican’s Sala Regia state reception room, an antechamber to the Sistine Chapel.65
Given Walsingham’s harrowing experience, it was predictable that after his appointment there would be strenuous efforts by Elizabeth’s government to punish Catholic recusants. Their arrests and punishments increased by leaps and bounds.66
In addition to his role as secretary of state, Walsingham served as the queen’s spymaster. He created an astonishing organisation for covert action against enemies of the state, as well as for counter-intelligence and espionage. He also established a network of informers to defeat domestic threats.67
But all these efforts failed to suppress recusancy in England, now bolstered and succoured by a succession of singularly brave seminary priests, smuggled into the realm to shore up the harassed faithful.
The first to be captured was Father Cuthbert Mayne, arrested on 8 June 1577 in Probus, Cornwall.68 Papers found on him declared that if
any Catholic prince took in hand to invade any realm to reform the same to the authority of the See of Rome that the Catholics in that realm should be ready to assist and help them.69
Many more priests followed him to the traitor’s scaffold after being betrayed by Walsingham’s agents or hunted down by his questing pursuivants in the narrow, stinking streets of London or in cramped, cunningly disguised hiding places in country houses.
That same month, the new Bishop of London, John Aylmer, wrote to the secretary, warning that Catholicism was enjoying a worrying resurgence; he and the Archbishop of Canterbury, Edmund Grindal, had received complaints from their brother bishops that ‘the Papists do marvellously increase, both in number and in [the] obstinate withdrawing of themselves from the Church and service of God’.70
Perhaps religious indoctrination would stem this Romish tide flooding across England? A group of recusants were taken to York Cathedral in August 1580 where they were exhorted to ‘forsake your vain and erroneous opinions of Popery and conform yourself with all dutiful obedience to [the] true religion now established’. This appeal was rudely ignored and the prisoners tried to avoid listening by holding their hands over their ears and coughing loudly. After refusing to recite the Lord’s Prayer in English, they were packed off to York Castle.71
It was increasingly apparent that measures to counter Catholicism were failing signally. On 18 March 1581, an Act to ‘retain the Queen’s Majesty’s subjects in their due Obedience’72 was passed that imposed punitive fines of £20 per month on those not attending divine service, limits on their travel and on communicating with other Catholics. Stunned and traumatised Catholics offered Elizabeth the gigantic bribe of 150,000 crowns (£37,500, or more than £95 million in 2013 spending power) to drop the legislation. She refused. The new Spanish ambassador in London, Bernardino de Mendoza, warned that ‘it was evident to them that God is about to punish them with greater calamities and persecutions than ever’. He feared the legislation would ‘root out the Catholic religion in this country’ and passed on their pleas to Philip ‘as buttress and defender of the Catholic Church, humbly beseeching you to turn your eyes upon their affliction and to succour them until God should complete their liberation’. Specifically, they wanted the Spanish king to use his good offices to ensure the appointment of an English Cardinal in Rome:
They seek the notification to his Holiness of the great importance in order to prevent the vile weed of heresy from quite choking the good seed sown here by the seminarists), that an English cardinal should be appointed.73
In the spring of 1582, Walsingham considered a novel plan to transport recusants to a new colony in North America, thousands of miles away from the dangers they posed to England or the welcoming arms of a Catholic Europe. In our terms, this seems almost as outlandish as sending Catholics to the moon, given just how little known the American continent was then. But for Walsingham, the plan was the ideal solution to many of Elizabethan Eng
land’s domestic and international ills. Doubtless, he cynically believed that if they did not drown during the perilous transatlantic voyage, it would be only a matter of time before native Americans, disease or starvation would kill them all off.
Paradoxically, this proposal for a Catholic homeland in Florida seemingly emanated from Sir George Peckham,74 a Buckinghamshire squire who had been imprisoned in the winter of 1580–1 for distributing alms to jailed Catholics in London, and Sir Thomas Gerard, a notorious papist who had been an unhappy guest of her majesty for a botched attempt to free Mary Queen of Scots. However, Walsingham undoubtedly masterminded the plan. It can surely be no coincidence that Sir Philip Sidney, who sought to marry Walsingham’s sixteen-year-old daughter Frances, had valuable rights to lands in America and Sidney sold these to Peckham in July 1583, providing the cash to pay off some of his debts and allow the marriage to go ahead that September.75 The acceptable face of the expedition was supplied by the forty-four-year-old adventurer Sir Humphrey Gilbert (half-brother to Sir Walter Raleigh), who had earlier requested a royal licence for a voyage of discovery to the other side of the Atlantic.
Petitions were presented to Elizabeth and she generously granted them a patent under the Great Seal of England to colonise nine million acres (36,000 km2) in Florida on the banks of the ‘River Norumbega’. Unknown to its organisers, there were inherent problems with the expedition. Firstly, the river belonged to legend, and today can be identified with the mighty Penobscot in Maine, rather than in Florida. Secondly, Gilbert had some unfortunate personality traits, verging on mental instability. Thirdly, Florida was claimed by Philip and was occupied by Spanish troops. Those issues aside, the promoters also had not reckoned with the machinations of the Spanish ambassador Mendoza, who argued that establishing such a colony would weaken Catholic resolve to fight against the Protestant state. He reported to Philip on 11 July 1582 that as Peckham and Gerard
were desirous of living as Catholics, without endangering their lives, they thought the proposal was a good one and they gave an account to other Catholics who . . . offered to aid the enterprise with money . . .
They are to be allowed to live as their consciences dictate and enjoy such revenues as they may possess in England.
This privilege is not confined to those who leave here for the purpose of colonisation but is extended to all Englishmen away from England, even to those who may have been declared rebels and whom the Queen now restores to her grace and favour, embracing them once more as loyal subjects.
The ambassador fumed:
The only object of this is to weaken and destroy [the Catholics] . . . since they have now discovered that persecution, imprisonment and the shedding of martyrs’ blood only increase the number of Catholics; and if the proposed measure be adopted, the seminaries abroad cannot be maintained, nor would it be possible for the priests who come hither to continue their propaganda if there were no persons here to shelter and support them.
By this means, what little blood be left in this diseased body would be drained.
Mendoza went to great pains to reveal the stark truth behind Elizabeth’s generosity. Florida belonged to Spain and was defended by fortresses – ‘so directly they landed they would be slaughtered’. As a result, some withdrew from the expedition but others ‘persist in their intentions, believing it is not really against your majesty because on the map the country is called “New France” which, they say, proves it was discovered by Frenchmen and that since Cortés76 fitted out ships . . . to go and conquer countries for the Catholic church, they could do the same’.77
Despite Mendoza’s best efforts, the plan failed for other reasons. Eleven months later Gilbert sailed from Plymouth with five ships on a reconnaissance mission that proved disastrous, mainly due to him capriciously ignoring wise advice in seamanship. One vessel returned home early because it ran out of supplies. Then, instead of sunny Florida, Gilbert found himself off Newfoundland and he lost two ships during the voyage home. Delight ran aground and sank, drowning all but one of her crew of sixteen. The brand-new Squirrel disappeared in mountainous seas with all hands, including Gilbert himself. It is not hard to imagine the scale of Walsingham’s wrath that his adroit plan to dump recusants in the New World had failed.
Plots to invade England meanwhile continued to be hatched with varying degrees of credibility. In July 1572, the madcap adventurer and privateer Sir Thomas Stukeley suggested a hopelessly optimistic scheme to Philip of Spain to overthrow Elizabeth:
[Sir Leonard] Dacres offers for the hire of six thousand soldiers, one thousand being foreign harquebusiers,78 in six months to wrest the kingdom [of England] from the pretended [queen], or at least to wrest from her [the counties of] Cumberland, Westmorland, Northumberland, Durham, Yorkshire and Lancashire, and make of them a safe refuge and, as it were, a realm free and independent, wither all Catholics may repair.79
This plan was conceived in a fantasy world. Stukeley was either unaware of the depredations inflicted upon the northern counties following the 1569 rebellion, or his sanguinity was unconnected with reality. Could he really believe that Elizabeth’s ministers would allow part of her realm to be hived off to become a safe haven for her Catholic subjects? Would they permit it to survive as a secure base from which the rest of England could be conquered? His confidence was astonishing: if Philip entertained any doubts about this plan, Stukeley could capture and occupy the Isle of Wight, Portsmouth and Southampton instead ‘because these places are in that part of England where there are many Catholics’. These three objectives could be seized ‘at a stroke, in a single night and in less than twelve hours. From thence to London is not a two days’ journey and one can march straight upon the city.’ Not for nothing was Philip nicknamed ‘the Prudent’ by his subjects. He ignored Stukeley.
The adventurer was not discouraged. Moving from Madrid to Louvain, Stukeley drew up proposals for a new papal policy on military action against England, urging Gregory to promote an attack, when, he pledged, ‘a vast number [of Catholics] will join the invader and very few will oppose him’. He emphasised: ‘His Holiness should not desert the cause of the Queen of Scots, who after suffering much and sorely for so many years for the Catholic faith ought now not [to] be deprived of her realm.’80
In 1575–6, another scheme for invasion was proposed by English exiles in Rome, amongst them the peripatetic Stukeley; Sir Richard Shelley, prior of the Order of St John of Jerusalem in England; and Sir Francis Englefield, Mary Queen of Scots’ agent in Spain. They craved papal blessing and support for their enterprise and Gregory graciously provided them with special crucifixes and ten separate indulgences to those who treated the conspirators ‘with reverence or devotion’. These graces included:
For each time that prayer is made before any one of them for the prosperity of Holy Mother Church and the exaltation of the Holy Catholic Faith and the preservation and liberation of Mary Queen of Scots and the reduction of the realms of England, Scotland and Ireland and the extirpation of the heretics . . . fifty days and on feast [days] one hundred days’ indulgence.81
Like the others, this plan came to nought.
Two that did get off the ground were successive attempts to raise Ireland against Elizabeth’s rule. The exiled priest Nicholas Sanders won papal support for an invasion involving the Irish noble James Fitzmaurice Fitzgerald of Desmond in Munster and Stukeley in 1578. Unfortunately, the tiny force was unexpectedly diverted to Morocco to support the campaign by King Sebastian of Portugal against the infidel Turks, and Stukeley was killed at the Battle of Alcácer Quibir that year, when a cannonball tore off his legs.
Another expedition with just fifty soldiers landed in Ireland the following year, accompanied by Sanders as papal commissary. Gregory had already named his own illegitimate son, Giacomo Boncampagni, as King of Ireland if the invasion and a rebellion by Irish feudal lords succeeded. Reinforcements of six hundred papal troops – Irish, Italian and Spanish mercenaries under Sebastiano di San Guiseppe – landed in
Smerwick harbour (now called Ard na Caithne) on Kerry’s Dingle Peninsula on 10 September 1580. However, William Wynter’s English naval squadron captured the papal ships and blocked the invaders’ escape by sea. Undaunted, they refortified the nearby Iron Age earthwork, Dún an Óir (‘Fort of Gold’) and Sanders proudly unfurled the papal banner abo ve the earth ramparts.
It took some time for the English authorities in Dublin to react, but when their vengeance came, it was predictably brutal. After a ten-day siege that October, the Lord Deputy of Ireland, Arthur Grey, Fourteenth Baron Grey of Wilton, courteously accepted the invaders’ surrender and then beheaded every one of the garrison and their women. The rebellion collapsed after the English burnt crops and laid waste most of Munster. Subsequently, famine and disease killed up to a third of the county’s population. Sanders escaped and spent months as a fugitive in the wilds of south-west Ireland before dying of dysentery and starvation in the spring of 1581.
Walsingham uncovered a plot in 1583 involving Mendoza, his French counterpart Michel Castelnau, and twenty-nine-year-old Francis Throckmorton to land French troops at the port of Arundel in West Sussex, liberate Mary Queen of Scots and return England to Catholicism. Throckmorton was arrested on 4 November and papers found at his home identified a number of Catholic noblemen and an illegal pedigree of the descent of the crown of England, demonstrating the justice of Mary’s claim to the throne. The invasion had been delayed only by lack of funding, despite the promises of Pope Gregory and Philip to underwrite the costs of the expedition.
Mendoza was given fifteen days to leave England and he angrily retorted: ‘Bernardino Mendoza was born not to disturb kingdoms but to conquer them.’82 For all his bluster, he departed quietly. The following November he took up a new position as the Spanish ambassador in Paris.
The Spanish Armada Page 5