by Derek Wilson
In France the peace was short-lived. Conflict broke out twice more during the 1560s. Civil war is always the worst kind of war. In our own age, we have witnessed in Africa, the Middle East, the Balkans and elsewhere the bestial behaviour of which frenzied mobs are capable. Calvinist preachers urged congregations to acts of iconoclasm. Jesuit priests stirred their people to blood lust and murder. Charles de Guise, Cardinal of Lorraine, employed death squads. Stories such as this were commonplace: Marguerite de Hurtelon, a Huguenot widow, was slaughtered along with her four children and the family servants. ‘Almighty God,’ one protester expostulated to the king, how can you allow such crimes to go unpunished: ‘these execrable executioners . . . slit the throat of this mother, then shot her five times in her breasts with a pistol and then burned the hands and feet of Faith, her eldest daughter, in order to make her tell them where her mother had hidden some money . . . after the massacre [they led] pigs into the house; in order to make them eat up all those poor dead corpses.’16
Stories such as this and a host of equally revolting rumours circulating in England reinforced the popular perception of Catholicism Foxe’s Acts and Monuments was already fostering. Walsingham and his friends continued to urge English intervention in France not only to support their co-religionists, nor even to raise the Gospel standard in the cosmic warfare against Antichrist, but to erect barriers to protect England from the infiltration of papist agents. By the end of the decade the Bishop of Winchester took it as axiomatic that Pius V was sponsoring desperate men who ‘besiege the tender frame of the most noble virgin Elizabeth with almost endless attacks and most studiously endeavour to compass her death both by poison and violence and witchcraft and treason and all other means of that kind which could ever be imagined and which it is horrible even to relate’.17 Elizabeth’s persistence in remaining ‘a most noble virgin’ made the Protestant Reformation more vulnerable. Until England had a royal heir everything hung upon the slender thread of her life.
By 1570 there was a claimant – a Catholic claimant – to the throne; one who would for years be an albatross round the neck of Elizabeth’s government. In August 1561 the eighteen-year-old Mary Stuart arrived in Edinburgh to take up residence in her capital. She was the only child of James V and the great-granddaughter of Henry VII of England. She had, briefly, been Queen of France as wife of Francis II, thus uniting the crowns of the two nations – a situation alarming to the new Queen of England. With the death of Francis that particular threat disappeared but she remained a dynastic inconvenience. In Catholic eyes Elizabeth was a bastard and, therefore, Mary should by right occupy the English throne as well as the Scottish. Moreover, Mary was a Guise on her mother’s side. Accordingly, she figured prominently in the scheming of her uncle, the Cardinal of Lorraine. This fact rendered her continued presence in France inconvenient to her mother-in-law, who objected to the Guise faction pursuing their own dynastic diplomacy. Catherine was, therefore, very pleased to see the back of Mary in August 1561.
Elizabeth did not share this satisfaction, partly because in the complex relations which ensued between the two neighbouring kingdoms she found herself at loggerheads with Cecil and the majority of her Council. In the 1550s Calvinism had spread even more rapidly in Scotland than in France, a state of affairs which surprised and delighted John Knox, who reported gleefully: ‘If I had not seen it with my own eyes – my own country, I could not have believed it.’ The leaders of the nation resented the French domination of the government during the regime of the regent, Mary of Guise. Left to her own devises Mary would have sought some accommodation on the religious issue. It is ironical that the two events which forced her hand were the accession of Elizabeth Tudor and the return of John Knox. The emergence of a Protestant state in the south strengthened the hand of the Lords of the Congregation as the Calvinist leaders called themselves, and Knox’s fiery preaching stirred them to rebellion. They formed a new church or ‘kirk’. Elizabeth was pleased to have a Protestant ally north of the border and welcomed the withering of French influence. What she could not stomach was the rising of the people against their divinely appointed sovereign.
Mary faced the same basic problem as her sister sovereign to the south – how to establish acceptable and effective female rule in a situation where the words ‘female rule’ were regarded as a contradiction in terms. Early in her reign she actually confronted John Knox (now the minister of St Giles’ Cathedral, Edinburgh) on the subject of the ‘monstrous regiment’ and obtained from the bigoted preacher a partial retraction. But Mary was not Elizabeth. She lacked the intellectual stringency and emotional control of the older woman. Elizabeth had had her fling with Robert Dudley in 1559–60 and had then settled (with at least initial reluctance) to a celibate life. That was impossible for Mary. She needed a man to share her throne and her bed. And her choices were abysmal. In 1565 she married her cousin, Henry Stuart, Lord Darnley. Elizabeth was furious because this made Mary’s claim to the English Crown even stronger. She wanted to strengthen the ties between the two queendoms – but on her own terms. She had even proposed her beloved Robert as a suitable husband but Mary was not prepared to accept Elizabeth’s cast-offs (and Dudley had no stomach for the match either). It took very little time for Mary to realize that Darnley’s charm was but a mantle thrown over the character of an arrogant, ambitious and ruthless bully. He initiated plots and intrigues with the sole purpose of reinforcing his own position. Religion was simply a tool to be used for achieving his own ends. News and rumours from north of the border spread rapidly along the international evangelical grapevine:
Within these few days king Philip privately sent thither a certain Italian abbot, with Spanish gold; a craft man, and trained for intrigue . . . The new king [Darnley], who had hitherto abstained from going to mass, and had of his own accord attended the sermons, for the sake of popularity, when he first heard of the ship being expected to arrive on the morrow, became on a sudden more confident, and having taken courage, would no longer play the hypocrite. He went to church, and ordered mass to be said before him as usual. At that very time Knox, who is a preacher in the same town, and in the next church, was declaiming with his accustomed boldness, before a crowded congregation, against the mad idolatries, and the whole pontifical dominion. In the mean time this ship of king Philip, tossed about by the winds and tempests, shattered and broken by the waves, with its mast sprung, its timbers stove in, the pilots lost, bereft of crew and cargo, is driven, a mere wreck, and filled with water, upon the coast of England. I doubt not but that this has happened by divine providence, to teach the infatuated king what a dangerous thing it is to hear mass.18
This report from John Jewel, Bishop of Salisbury, is typical of news circulating in the circle of Walsingham and his friends.
Others were not content passively to receive news about affairs in Scotland. Cecil and his conciliar colleagues were disturbed that Catholicism was in the ascendant in Scotland and that the Lords of the Congregation were on the defensive. Anything that destabilized the political situation north of the border was to England’s advantage and they did everything in their power to promote discord. So when their Scottish allies informed them of an assassination plot which would cause mayhem at Mary’s court they gave it their tacit backing. The result was the brutal murder of David Rizzio, Mary’s secretary and, supposedly, her lover and a papal spy, in March 1566. The repercussions of their bloody act were exactly what Cecil had wanted – feuds, plots and counter-plots around the Scottish throne. They culminated, less than a year later, in the assassination of Darnley at Kirk o’Field. The chief conspirator was James Hepburn, Earl of Bothwell, who aimed to step into the murdered king’s shoes. Within weeks he had achieved his objective. He was divorced from his wife and married to Mary with what was considered to be, at the very least, indecent haste.
The obvious inference was widely drawn from this sequence of events: Mary and Bothwell had long been lovers and had together planned the death of Darnley. The Lords of the
Congregation, many of whom were up to their elbows in the late king’s blood, encouraged this false rumour and, in distant London, William Cecil played his part in spreading the calumny in diplomatic quarters. By the autumn suspicion had turned into widely believed fact. The veteran diplomat at Strasbourg could confidently assert to Bullinger:
The bishop of London, I suppose, has given you an account of the parricide perpetrated by the queen of Scots, and her justly deserved punishment, namely that she has been taken prisoner, and compelled to abdicate the kingdom, after having confessed that her husband had been taken off by her counsel and co-operation; and that her most profligate paramour had taken refuge in some maritime fortress built upon a rock.19
The truthful elements in Christopher Mont’s letter were that Mary and Bothwell had attempted to face it out with the Lords of the Congregation and been defeated. The one-year-old Prince James had been crowned king and his mother was in captivity. She escaped and, on 16 May 1568, fled into England where, for the next nineteen years, she would be Elizabeth’s prisoner.
‘The monastery of El Escorial is as majestic and sublime as the religion that brought it into being; as severe and melancholy as its august founder.’ So says the official guide book and the best way to gain a quick impression of the character of Philip II of Spain is to visit the monastery-palace complex which he planned as soon as he became king and began to build in 1563. It stands on a shoulder of the Sierra Carpentera, commanding a wide plain. It is massive, gaunt, severe of line and intimidating. It is also a religious statement. It was designed as a replica of Solomon’s Temple and fronted by imposing statues of six Old Testament kings. At its heart stood the great Basilica of St Lawrence and the royal apartments were so arranged that Philip could watch the celebration of mass through a squint in the wall of his own chamber. Philip made much the same impression on contemporaries as did the building which deliberately mirrored his life. By the mid-sixteenth century Spain had emerged as the first western superpower and its ruler bestrode the world like a colossus, his rule embracing both East and West Indies, as well as much of Europe. The mariners of other seagoing nations never accepted the division of the globe made two generations earlier when popes had solemnly ‘granted’ unexplored regions to the rulers of Spain and Portugal but Iberian globalisation was a fait accompli. Philip did not doubt for a moment that he owed his position to God and that his paramount responsibility was the extension and defence of Catholicism.
To dedicated Spanish imperialists the potential for further conquest was limitless. Since God was on Spain’s side, victory was guaranteed. Philip’s agents were forever urging him to advance by faith, even if it meant overextending Spain’s impressive, but nevertheless finite, resources. They begged him to drive all Muslims from the Philippines, to annexe North America and even to conquer China. Philip did not dismiss such pipe dreams out of hand; after all, with God all things are possible. But, inevitably, he was more concerned with events closer to home.
The long feud with France had come to an end in the Treaty of Cateau-Cambrésis and Philip was thereafter free to concentrate on his worldwide mission. This involved succouring his colonies in the Americas and the Indies, pouring ships, men and treasure into the struggle against Islam in the Mediterranean and eastern Europe, and doing everything in his power to combat heresy. Yet much as he wanted to extirpate heresy among his European neighbours, the triangular relations of France, England and Scotland presented baffling diplomatic problems. Philip supported the Guise faction in order to restore France’s Catholic unity but also because the Calvinists in his Netherlands province would draw encouragement from Huguenot successes south of the border. The same arguments might have persuaded him to go to the aid of Mary Queen of Scots but to strengthen her position would have meant also strengthening France’s Scottish relations and provoking English enmity. Although the pope and his own ambassadors urged him to take a firm line with Elizabeth, Philip preferred, for the time being, to preserve diplomatic niceties and court her friendship. He believed – hoping against hope – that she would eventually ‘come to her senses’ and reconvert.
His preoccupation – his necessary preoccupation in view of its commercial importance – was with the Low Countries. Ironically, it was when this most pragmatic of bigots decided on an impressive show of strength that he set in motion that train of events which would lead to war with England, the Armada fiasco and the progressive collapse of Spanish rule. In the mid-1560s the Protestant revivalism that had swept France and Scotland hit the Netherlands. Calvinist preachers toured the country and radical groups enjoyed the protection of leading nobles. It was not long before iconoclastic mobs were attacking priests and Catholic churches. The outrages were sporadic and the regent, Margaret of Austria (Philip’s half-sister), managed to bring most disaffected areas under control with a mixture of force and diplomacy. However, by then Philip had overreacted. He was appalled that such an affront could have been offered to the Catholic church in his own territories. He told one of his own ministers that the news from the Low Countries weighed heavily on his soul. He vowed that the accursed Protestants would pay heavily for their presumption.
The chosen agent of his wrath was the veteran Fernando Alvarez de Toledo, Duke of Alva, who arrived in 1567 with 10,000 Spanish, Neapolitan and German troops. Alva was a byword for ferocity. Over the next six years he arrested and tried 12,000 people and executed at least 1,000, including leading members of Netherlands society. As the new regent he treated his subjects with utter contempt, taxing them heavily and removing several of their ancient privileges. The inevitable results were the resentment of a population who felt their religion and nationhood were being suppressed; emigration of Protestants to England, Scotland, Germany and Switzerland; the emergence of a resistance movement. Opposition was led by William the Silent, Prince of Orange. His base was in Germany but his more effective means of damaging the Spanish imperial regime was a band of pirates-cum-freedom-fighters known as the Sea Beggars who preyed on Philip’s shipping and ports.
Of course, news of Alva’s atrocities reached England rapidly.
The duke of Alva is clearly acting the part of Phalaris20 among our Low-Country neighbours. All persons of wealth, of whatever religion, are living in the greatest danger. For men, the rich especially, are daily dragged to execution, without regard to any form of law . . . Our commerce with the Netherlands has been interrupted on this account. Last winter the Spanish vessels, which through the medium of the Genoese merchants conveyed money to Alva from the pope, were driven by a tempest into our harbours, which are both numerous and safe. The sum, I believe, was 300,000 crowns. This sum, sent as it were from heaven, as all the neighbouring nations are raging with war, our queen, that she might have money ready against every emergency, determined to borrow from the merchants themselves, giving sufficient security for the repayment, at a given time, both of the principal and interest; a plan which has often been adopted by other sovereigns. When Alva heard this, he caused all our merchants now in the Netherlands to be arrested, together with their vessels and their freight. Our government did the same both to the Spaniards and Netherlanders. Our merchants therefore are now compelled to exercise their trade at Hamburg, a place far less convenient, and this to the great detriment of the whole of the Netherlands.21
Elizabeth’s impounding of the ‘heaven-sent’ Spanish gold, reported here by Bishop Grindal, marked a dramatic shift in relations between London and Madrid. It was not uncommon for maritime traffic through the Narrows to seek shelter from bad weather or pirates which was why English goodwill was so important to Spain. In November 1568 five ships carrying much-needed coin for Alva put into Plymouth and Southampton. It was an opportunity Elizabeth could, quite literally, not afford to ignore. She resorted to legal technicalities to justify hanging on to the treasure. The truculent Spanish ambassador, Guerau de Spes, protested loudly and also urged Alva to take reprisals against English vessels and merchants in the Netherlands. Alva, in turn, responde
d with his usual outraged impetuosity, imposing trade sanctions which did more damage to the commerce of his own territory than it did to England’s. So far from backing down, Elizabeth imposed reprisals against Spanish goods and merchants. What is important about this argument is not the rights and wrongs of it, but the mutual suspicion and the suppressed hostility which provoked it.
England and Spain were already moving towards a state of cold war; this incident simply precipitated something that was in train anyway. The Spanish government was pledged to the full restoration of papal Catholicism. England was emerging as the major obstacle to the achievement of this objective. The one person at the centre of international affairs who refused to believe (or, perhaps, refused to acknowledge) the inevitability of confrontation was Queen Elizabeth. For her, war with fellow monarchs was both economically disastrous and morally repugnant. It was probably for this reason that, in the early weeks of 1569, William Cecil summarized the state of the realm’s affairs for the edification of his royal mistress. He pointed out that the years of peace England had enjoyed were the result of good fortune which could not be expected to last. Spain had been preoccupied with its war against the Turks and its need to subdue rebellion in the Netherlands. France was riven by religious strife. Scotland’s rulers were dependent on English goodwill and their ex-queen still carried the stigma of Darnley’s murder. But all this was likely to change. Islamic hopes had received a severe blow with the death of Suleyman the Magnificent. Protestant minorities were being suppressed in the Low Countries and France. As long as Mary Stuart lived she was the hope of Catholics both sides of the border and a potential marriage prize for royal families intent on making mischief for England. He urged Elizabeth to accept the reality of the situation and shoulder her responsibilities as a Protestant monarch. She should help to establish a reformed European bloc by allying with Denmark, Sweden and the German Protestant princes, while giving generous aid to persecuted Calvinist minorities and strenuously enforcing the Act of Uniformity at home.