Tudors (History of England Vol 2)

by Ackroyd, Peter

  The earls of Northumberland and Westmorland were now summoned to court by Elizabeth. ‘We and our country were shamed for ever,’ Westmorland’s wife lamented, ‘that now in the end we should seek holes to creep into.’ Her advice, therefore, was to stand firm and to confront the queen in what would be a ‘hurly-burly’. At Topcliffe, the estate of Northumberland, the bells were rung in reverse order as the well-known call to arms. The earls rose in November 1569, in the name of the old religion. They rode to Durham Cathedral with their men, where they pulled down the communion table; then they ripped to pieces the English Bible and the Book of Common Prayer before demanding that the Latin Mass be once more performed. It was the most serious test that Elizabeth had yet faced, with the prospect of civil war dividing the realm made infinitely more dangerous with the introduction of the religious question. The Spanish ambassador played a double part, promising much to the conservative cause but delivering very little. The French ambassador in turn was delighted at the prospect of England’s collapsing into the same religious turmoil as his own country.

  Two days later the rebellious earls rode through Ripon in the traditional armour of the Crusaders, wearing a red cross; they were in procession behind the banner of the Five Wounds of Christ, another emblem of the old faith. This was how the Pilgrims of Grace had ridden against Henry VIII thirty-three years before. It was the sign of the north, which had remained predominantly Catholic; in fact many of the northern rebels were the sons of those who had participated in the earlier movement. The father of Northumberland himself, Sir Thomas Percy, had been attainted and executed after the failure of the Pilgrimage of Grace. After the earls had arrived in Ripon, Mass was celebrated in the collegiate church, where a proclamation was addressed to those of ‘the old, Catholic religion’. The queen’s evil councillors had attempted to destroy ‘the true and Catholic religion towards God’ and had thus thrown the realm into confusion. The candles were lit and the organ pealed out.

  Yet on 28 November 1569 the earls sent forth another address in which the issue of the succession took the place of religion. It was a way of rallying more support, but it was only partly successful in its purpose. Many of the great northern lords refused to join them in insurrection. The earl of Cumberland, for example, could not be moved. In contrast most of the English nobility rallied about the queen, prominent among them the earl of Sussex. Lord Hunsdon was sent north, while the earl of Bedford was dispatched to the west of England in case of danger there. Mary herself was taken to Coventry, where she was securely placed behind the red sandstone city wall. If Mary had been able to reach the rebels, a general insurrection might have ensued. It was said that the Spanish had a fleet, with guns and powder, waiting at Zeeland in the Netherlands. But ‘if’ is not a word to be used by historians. As a result of the Catholic threat, the Act of Uniformity was more strictly enforced, including the compulsory swearing of the oath of supremacy.

  Elizabeth said at the beginning of the troubles that ‘the earls were old in blood, but poor in force’, and in that respect her judgement proved to be correct. They had expected popular support, but none was evident. They remained at Tadcaster in the north of Yorkshire for three days, and then retraced their steps. Their armies were demoralized and began to break up even as they were being pursued by the queen’s soldiers. The only battle of the campaign was fought at Naworth, in February 1570, where Hunsdon defeated a rebel force under the command of Lord Dacre.

  The northern rebellion, known as ‘the Rising of the North’, was in effect already at an end. The earls of Northumberland and Westmorland had fled across the border into Scotland, and the remaining insurgents were quickly arrested. The lowlier of them were hanged, and almost 300 suffered death in Durham alone. Scarcely a local town or village did not boast a gibbet. It is estimated that approximately 900 were executed for treason, making it the single most fatal act of reprisal in Tudor history. It was a measure of the queen’s fury, but also of her fear. She had already made it clear that ‘you may not execute any that hath freeholds or noted wealthy’. She wanted their money rather than their lives; the lands and estates of the mightier or most prosperous were therefore confiscated. Northumberland was sold to England by the Scots for £2,000 and subsequently executed, while Westmorland sought sanctuary in the Spanish Netherlands.

  This was the last of what may be called the traditional rebellions led by the feudal warlords of the old faith. The great lords, the Percys and the Nevilles, had once been considered to be the de facto rulers of their territories where they exercised more power and authority than the monarch. Yet now they had failed to ignite the northern lands in open revolt. Many of the Catholics of the region had no wish to challenge the political and social order of the country. Even the tenantry of the great families were reluctant to rise. The crisis that Cecil had most feared had been overcome, with the old faith now associated with treason and force. It was described as ‘a cold pie for the papists’. The loyalty of the majority of the realm had been reaffirmed. The northern rebellion represented one of the great and silent transitions in the nation’s history.

  Just after the revolt was suppressed a further challenge to the queen’s authority was mounted in Rome. In early 1570, Pope Pius V issued a bull in which he excommunicated Elizabeth as a paramount heretic and tyrant. It stated that ‘the pretended queen of England’ could no longer command allegiance, and that she was ‘the servant of iniquity’. Its denunciation covered any person who obeyed her laws and commands. The queen herself was now a legitimate object of attack by any assassin of the old faith; her death would speed his way to heaven. It was the last stand of medieval religion, the final occasion when a pope would try to depose a reigning monarch.

  Yet it might be considered a blow against English Catholics more than against the English queen. They were now being urged to depose their sovereign just after the signal failure of the northern earls to do so. It was, to say the least, bad timing. If the bull had been released at the time of the northern rising it might have persuaded some of the fainter hearts. But it was now possible to claim that the Catholics of England could no longer be good and loyal subjects.

  A copy of the papal bull was nailed to the gates of the palace of the bishop of London. The offender, John Felton, was put on the rack to determine the names of his accomplices or associates; he said nothing, but he suffered the gruesome death of the traitor. Just as he mounted the scaffold, however, he drew out a diamond ring and sent it to Elizabeth – ‘the pretender’ – as a last gift. He was beatified by a later pope as Blessed John Felton. Yet his militant cause was already lost at the time he was quartered and disembowelled. It is no accident that in this year the great book of Protestant faith, Foxe’s Book of Martyrs, was reissued in a much more elaborate second edition. A memorandum from the privy council to the two archbishops declared that this was a ‘work of very great importance and necessary knowledge both touching religion and other good offices, the matter whereof being very profitable to bring Her Majesty’s subjects to good opinion, understanding and dear liking of the present government’. Rarely have religion and politics been so closely aligned.

  It is also significant this was the first year in which Elizabeth’s accession day, 17 November, became the object of celebration. It was named as ‘the queen’s holy day’, and became an annual event that had no precedent in earlier reigns. The church bells rang in every parish; there were bonfires, and candles, and bread, and beer. It became a Protestant equivalent to the sacred festivals of the medieval Church, conflating Elizabeth with the Virgin Mary. On ‘Crownation Day’, as it came to be known, there was scarcely a spot in England where bells could not be heard.

  It was now possible that England would be invaded by the great Catholic powers, in solemn unity with Rome, and it was said that the English were beginning to fear their own shadows. The English fleet was mobilized, and the sheriffs were obliged to enrol local men in the service of home defence; shooting practice was organized on the village greens o
f southern and eastern England. In the summer of the year much anxiety, therefore, was aroused at the sight of a great Spanish fleet; yet it was sailing to Antwerp in order to escort the new bride of Philip II. The Spanish had in any case no desire to fight a war against England, and Philip remonstrated with the pope for not consulting him before issuing the bull. The French king, Charles IX, made a similar protest. The papal bull had the indirect consequence of facilitating trade between England and Turkey; the infidel queen was happy to come to terms with the infidel Ottomans.

  The rebellious earls were still colluding with their Scottish hosts in plotting against Elizabeth, and as a result the border was troubled by alarms or incursions. In the spring of 1570 an English force was sent into southern Scotland both as a punishment and a warning; in the course of this venture ninety strong castles, houses and dwelling places, as well as towns and villages, were utterly destroyed. The position of the queen of Scotland was still in doubt. She was effectively under house arrest but many of the nobility of England wished to see her restored to her throne; Cecil, and some other councillors, did not. Elizabeth herself was hesitant and indecisive.

  In this febrile atmosphere talk of marriage was revived, with Prince Henry, the duke of Anjou, raised as a possible favourite. He was seventeen years younger than Elizabeth but, as the brother of the king of France, he was a most acceptable offering. It had been rumoured that his family wished to marry him to the queen of Scots and it is possible that Elizabeth stepped forward to prevent that union. She would now need all of her arts of guile and deceit infinitely to prolong the negotiations. It is unlikely that she ever really considered marrying him, but matters of state might still have overturned her personal predilections. A union between France and England would have thwarted the power of Spain.

  Anjou’s mother, Catherine de Medici, was enthusiastic for the match. ‘Such a kingdom for one of my children!’ she explained to the French ambassador in England. But the young prince himself proved refractory. He was, according to one of the English negotiators sent to Paris, ‘obstinate, papistical and restive like a mule’. The fact that he was ‘papistical’, at least in theory, did not bode well for the peace of England; Elizabeth, having only recently been threatened by the earls of the old faith, was reluctant to make any concessions on the matter of private Masses or Catholic confessors.

  Another and more private impediment was discovered. In this period the queen suffered from an ulcer on the shin of her leg, a painful condition difficult to cure. Her father had also contracted ulcers. The young prince came to hear of this, and referred to her publicly as ‘an old creature with a sore leg’. He also called her a ‘putain publique’ or common whore. This was not promising. Yet still the discussions continued, growing warmer or becoming chillier according to the general temperature of European affairs. Elizabeth ordered her principal negotiators to delay and defer decisions; they were asked to tell Catherine de Medici ‘not to be over-anxious as desiring so precise an answer until the matter may be further treated of’. In circumlocution, and prevarication, Elizabeth was pre-eminent. The affair was drawn out for some months on a very fine line, and in desperation the queen was eventually offered the hand of Anjou’s younger brother, Francis, duke of Alençon. Yet the duke of Alençon was disfigured by pockmarks. It was believed that the price of accepting the pockmarks would be the return of Calais to England, but once more the proposals got precisely nowhere. The queen delayed and hesitated, seeming not to know her own mind from one day to the next. In truth there was never any real likelihood that she would marry.

  The duke of Norfolk was released from the Tower in the summer of 1570, humiliated but not necessarily humbled. He sent Elizabeth a document vowing ‘never to deal in that cause of marriage of the Queen of Scots’, but soon enough he was drawn into another conspiracy against the throne. The plot was engineered by a banker from Florence, Roberto di Ridolfi, who had lived in London for some years and who had the full confidence of the Spanish ambassador. Ridolfi communicated with Norfolk and the Scottish queen, on the understanding that certain lords would rise up and set Mary free; at this point Mary’s supporters would come over the border in force.

  It was the merest fantasy, and it is hard to credit the serious involvement of any of the alleged conspirators. The duke of Alva, Philip’s representative in the Spanish Netherlands, dismissed it as foolish nonsense. Yet there were some in England who favoured the scheme, among them the duke of Norfolk. He shrank from signing any incriminating documents but gave his verbal support. The duke’s ‘instructions’ to Ridolfi were read over to him, and he assented to their contents. ‘We commission you to go with all expedition, first to Rome and then to the Catholic king, that you may lay before his Holiness and his Majesty the wretched state of this island, our own particular wrongs . . . and an assured mode by which our country and ourselves can obtain relief.’ It was his dearest wish ‘to advance the title of the queen of Scots, to restore the Catholic religion’. Eight peers and four knights were then named, who together would command an army of 45,000 men. Their purpose would be to depose Elizabeth and proclaim Mary as queen. Spain was to send an army of 6,000 men and, after landing at Harwich or Portsmouth, they would join themselves with the insurgent English forces. It is very likely that Ridolfi himself wrote the letter but by listening to these details, and not rejecting them, Norfolk had committed high treason. It seems that he had uttered only one word when he heard them: ‘Well.’ It would be enough to condemn him.

  The queen of Scotland added to the thickness of the mist by announcing that she had a secret that she could impart only to Elizabeth in person. ‘You have caused a rebellion in my realm,’ Elizabeth replied, ‘and you have aimed at my own life. You will say you did not mean these things. Madam, I would I could think so poorly of your understanding.’ She then declared that ‘those who would work on me through my fears know little of my character. You tell me you have some mystery which you wish to make known to me. If it be so, you must write it. You are aware that I do not think it well that you and I should meet.’

  Just as the plot was reaching its climax, in the spring of 1571, a parliament was summoned. Elizabeth had already reigned for thirteen years, and in that period only three sessions were held. She had no affection for its members, despite her protestations, because they dealt in grievances rather than remedies. She was still unmarried and, without a named heir or successor, the kingdom was in peril. The religious differences within the realm had also been emphasized by the late rebellion. Yet she needed the money that only parliament could authorize. So at the opening of the session she appeared in the robes of state with the golden coronal on her head. At her right hand sat the dignitaries of the Church and on her left hand were the lords of the realm; the privy councillors sat in the centre while the knights and burgesses of the lower house crowded at the back.

  The Commons were more interested in religion than in finance. This was the first parliament, after all, from which all Catholics were excluded. A bill was introduced that would compel Sunday attendance and twice-yearly communion. The queen hated religious debate and sent a message to the Commons forbidding them to discuss matters that did not concern them and ‘to avoid long speeches’. This was an order they chose to ignore. A bill was introduced, for example, proposing the reformation of the Book of Common Prayer. Elizabeth would not be permitted to behave like a tyrant or, in the phrase of the period, ‘like the Great Turk’.

  Some notice had to be taken of the papal bull, and it was agreed that it would be high treason ‘to affirm, by word or writing, that the queen was not queen’ or ‘that the queen was a heretic, schismatic, tyrant, infidel, or usurper of the crown’. Any Catholic priests travelling in disguise or posing as serving men in noble households were to be whipped or set in the stocks as ‘vagrants or Egyptians’. It also became treason to import any writings from ‘the bishop of Rome’, as the pope was called, or to introduce any crosses, pictures, or beads blessed by that bishop. With their righ
teous wrath appeased, parliament voted £100,000 for the queen’s treasury.

  The plot against Elizabeth was now beginning to unwind. Its leader, Ridolfi, was a great talker who did not always guard his words; he was also an inept conspirator. He confided messages in cipher to a courier who was arrested and searched when he arrived at Dover. Other secrets were obtained from the unfortunate man as he lay helpless upon a rack in the Tower. As a result the details of the conspiracy soon became known to Cecil. ‘I am thrown into a maze at this time,’ he wrote, ‘that I know not how to walk from dangers.’ The Spanish ambassador reported that Cecil was so alarmed that he had made preparations to flee the kingdom; he had urged his wife to pack her jewels and to be ready to leave at a moment’s notice. This report, however, may simply be the ambassador’s wishful thinking. Cecil himself was secure enough in council that, at the beginning of 1571, he was ennobled as Lord Burghley. Soon enough he was also appointed to be lord high treasurer.

  Mary denied any involvement in the conspiracy but she was at least complicit in the proposals, with a letter of agreement to the invasion ratified by her signature. Whether she knew all the details is uncertain. But she was described by one member of parliament as ‘the monstrous and huge dragon, and mass of the earth’. Elizabeth, on the revelation of the plot, no longer concerned herself with Mary’s restoration to the Scottish throne; from this time forward she seems to have concluded that the queen of Scots could never regain her liberty. The duke of Norfolk was in an even more pitiable state. The chance discovery of another coded letter led to his ruin, when searchers found the key to the code hidden between two tiles on the roof of Howard House. They also came upon a letter from Mary Stuart in the duke’s possession. In the early autumn of 1571 he was once more consigned to the Tower. Burghley also sent a letter to the earl of Shrewsbury, Mary Stuart’s custodian, that was marked as ‘sent from the court, the 5th of September, 1571, at 9 in the night’; it also had the familiar superscription for urgency, ‘haste, post haste, haste, haste, for life, life, life’. Mary was planning to escape and flee to Spain. The guard around her was redoubled.