Sir Francis Walsingham
Page 14
But Elizabeth was by now quite convinced that anything that smelled of Geneva was a threat to good monarchical government. She refused to be hustled along the path which, she was convinced, had as its destination the establishment of a dour Calvinist republic. Surrounded by councillors and church leaders who espoused a theology to which she was emotionally and intellectually disinclined, she dug her heels in. The casus belli between the queen and her Puritan advisers was ‘the godly exercises of prophesying’. These were regular weekday meetings of Puritan clergy held for mutual instruction and encouragement. They took the form of a sermon which members of the public were urged to attend followed by discussion and prayer among the ministers themselves. The objectives were raising the standards of preaching and creating a unified body of biblical teaching. As such there could be little objection to them and the exercises were supported by several noble and gentry families. Many of the meetings were financially supported by municipal councils and rural landowners. However, reactionary elements in church and state, among which the queen was definitely included, were always worried about potentially disruptive conventicles. The prophesyings were outside episcopal control and, in several cases, were addressed by radicals who had been deprived of church office. There were instances of Presbyterian teaching and criticism of the established order but these were exaggerated by opponents and alarmists. There was a long and uncomfortable tradition of parish priests stirring their people to revolt. The Pilgrimage of Grace (1536–7) and the Prayer Book Rebellion (1549) were still vivid in the memory of many of the queen’s subjects. Elizabeth decided that the prophesyings were to cease.
She was becoming increasingly sensitive to criticism and had recently had more than enough of that from her parliament. Peter Wentworth, Walsingham’s brother-in-law, was despatched to the Tower for a speech made on 8 February 1576, which has gone down in the annals of the long struggle for parliamentary freedom. Wentworth exposed two stratagems used by the court to stifle debate:
One is a rumour that runneth about the House, and this it is: take heed what you do, the Queen’s majesty liketh not of such a manner. Whosoever preferreth it, she will be much offended with him . . . The other is sometimes a message is brought into the House either of commanding or inhibiting very injurious unto the freedom of speech and consultation. I would to God, Mr Speaker, that these two were buried in Hell, I mean rumours and messages.
The shocked house heard Wentworth go on to attack the queen directly for overruling parliamentary decisions.
Her Majesty hath committed great faults, yea dangerous faults to herself and the state . . . It is a dangerous thing in a prince unkindly to entreat and abuse his or her nobility and people as her Majesty did the last Parliament, and it is a dangerous thing in a prince to oppose or bend herself against her nobility and people.
He concluded by assuring his hearers that he was motivated by
the advancement of God’s glory, our honourable sovereign’s safety and . . . the sure defence of this noble isle of England, and all by maintaining the liberties of the honourable council, the fountain from whence all these do spring.16
Wentworth never asserted in as many words that sovereignty was vested in the people rather than in the Crown but the queen might be forgiven for concluding that his zealous oratory tended in that direction.
Wentworth was only detained for a month (although this would not be his only sojourn in the Tower). However angry Elizabeth was, there was not much she could do by way of punishing the outspoken MP. She was wise enough not to risk a direct confrontation with the House of Commons. The Archbishop of Canterbury was a different matter. She had made him and she could break him. She was determined to have her own way in the church. In the summer or autumn of 1576 she ordered Grindal to put an end to the prophesyings. She went further. So concerned was she about the influence of the ‘enthusiasts’ that she told Grindal that three or four preachers per shire were quite sufficient for the education of the people. The rest of the ministers could read approved homilies.
Grindal was dismayed and indignant. In his lengthy response he did not water down his feelings with flattery or false humility. He was astonished, he said, that her majesty should advocate reducing the number of preachers when both the Bible and common sense urged the need for energetic proclamation of the Gospel. As to the exercises, he had discussed them with his diocesans and concluded that most of the ministerial meetings were not only above reproach but ‘profitable to increase knowledge among the ministers and [tend] to the edifying of the hearers’. Therefore, Grindal declared,
I am forced with all humility, and yet plainly, to profess that I cannot with safe conscience and without the offence of the majesty of God give my assent to the suppressing of the said exercises . . . Bear with me, I beseech you, Madam, if I choose rather to offend your earthly Majesty than to offend the heavenly majesty of God.17
But Grindal did not stop here; he delivered to the queen a lecture on spiritual and temporal authority: ‘If you consult your ministers in matters of finance, it is surely more fitting that you should consult the bishops of the Lord on matters of religion . . . In a matter of faith . . . it is the practice of bishops to judge Christian [rulers], and not [rulers] bishops.’18 And the end of his letter got very personal. He commended the queen for supporting true religion, then added:
Ye have done many things well; but except ye persevere to the end, ye cannot be blessed. For if ye turn from God, then God would turn away his merciful countenance from you. And what remaineth then to be looked for, but only a terrible expectation of God’s judgements, and an heaping up of wrath against the day of wrath?19
Elizabeth was not accustomed to such forthright defiance. She was surrounded by ladies who catered to her every whim, gentlemen and lords who played the game of courtly love, councillors who addressed her with obsequious respect and deferred to her wishes even when they disagreed with her. Grindal’s diatribe pierced her ego like naked steel. She was so furious with him that all reason deserted her. She sent all her bishops a royal fiat to suppress the prophesyings and she instructed her Council to arrange for the archbishop’s dismissal from office.
This put the advisory body and particularly its Puritan caucus into a quandary. They managed to wriggle out of sacking Grindal on the grounds that they lacked legal warrant for such an unprecedented task but they did oversee the action that was taken against him. Walsingham and his colleagues do not emerge with much credit from their part in the long-drawn-out confrontation between queen and archbishop. Grindal was not deprived but he was sequestered, that is to say that, for the remaining six and a half years of his life, he was not allowed to carry out any of the duties pertaining to his office. Walsingham, Burghley and their allies were fully in sympathy with the archbishop and when they saw the domestic issue in the light of international events they could only deplore the queen’s action. By turning so violently against the primate and the ecclesiological position he represented she could only raise the hopes of those labouring for the reintroduction of Catholicism. Walsingham was profoundly convinced that the queen was wrong. He wrote as much in a private letter to Burghley: ‘you see how we proceed still in making war against God, whose ire we should rather seek to appease that he may keep the wars that most apparently approach towards us from us. God open her majesty’s eyes that she may both see her peril and acknowledge from whence the true remedy is to be sought.’20
Walsingham believed that only a royal U-turn would regain divine favour. Yet he did not remonstrate with the queen nor did he stand four square behind Grindal and put his own position at risk. In later years he would speak his mind frankly to the queen whatever the consequences but his position was not yet sufficiently secure for that. He explained the delicacy of his position and his own sense of priorities in a letter to his diplomatic colleague, William Davison in Antwerp. The Merchant Venturers in that city were proposing to use a ‘puritanized’ version of the Prayer Book in their worship. Walsingham advised a
gainst it:
I have thought good therefore, as one that wishes you well, to let you understand that if it should come to her Majesty’s ears it would greatly kindle offence as well against the Company of the said Adventurers for yielding to such a connivance as also against yourself for the furthering of the same. I do not write this as one that misliketh of such a form of exercise of prayer; only I would have all reformations done by public authority. It were very dangerous that every private man’s zeal should carry sufficient authority of reforming things amiss . . . If you knew with what difficulty we retain that we have, and that the seeking of more might hazard (according to man’s understanding) that which we already have, you would then, Mr. Davison, deal warily in this time when policy carrieth more sway than zeal. And yet have we great cause to thank God for that we presently enjoy, having God’s word sincerely preached and the sacraments truly administered. The rest we lack we are to beg by prayer and attend with patience.21
A flattering correspondent once informed Walsingham: ‘You are thought in Spain, France and Italy to govern that noble ship [i.e. the queen] and guard her from danger of shipwreck.’22 Those words must have brought a wry smile to Mr Secretary’s lips.
Chapter 6
‘GOD OPEN HER MAJESTY’S EYES’ FOREIGN AFFAIRS
1578–80
Satan is roaring like a lion, the world is going mad, Antichrist is resorting to every extreme, that he may with wolf-like ferocity devour the sheep of Christ: the sea is full of pirates, the soil of Flanders is wet with the blood of Christians: in France, Guise is reported to rage in his new slaughter-house against the Protestants. England, by the favour of God, is yet safe; but how can she be secure from human malignity? For it is greatly to be feared that the flames of our neighbour’s house may reach us; the Tridentine fathers enforcing that bloody decree of theirs, and our daily sins deserving the execution of it.1
So wrote Dr Laurence Humphrey, President of Magdalen College, Oxford, to a friend in Zurich, in August 1578. Many people in political and diplomatic circles shared his gloomy interpretation of international affairs. The peace England had enjoyed for the greater part of twenty years could not be relied on to continue. If one took a cosmic view, as devout Puritans, of course, did, England did not deserve the blessing of continued tranquillity. The diplomat Dr Thomas Wilson, an envoy in the Low Countries, witnessed at close quarters the miseries of a country where Protestant and Catholic forces were engaged in armed struggle. The lesson to be learned was clear to him, as he told Walsingham in April 1577: ‘never will I think that ever any perfect or assured amity will be amongst any that are divided in religion. The queen’s Majesty may perhaps mislike my plain writing in these matters after so bold a manner.’2 In fact, Elizabeth would have agreed with her diplomat’s assessment. Every state should have one religion. She had made up her mind what England’s ought to be. The trouble was that her church was under attack from both Catholic ritualists and Protestant evangelicals.
Walsingham and his associates had clear policy objectives. With the world as it was England could not pursue an isolationist religious policy. At home the Protestant state should be built up by sound preaching and the establishment of a ministry able to exercise moral discipline. Catholic infiltrators should be rooted out and severely dealt with. Mary Stuart should be neutralized as a political threat, by whatever means were available. Beleaguered Protestants in France and the Netherlands should be succoured. And England should join with other Protestant states to withstand the Catholic League which, according to Walsingham’s sources, had been formed.
No development in the sphere of European diplomacy could induce Elizabeth to espouse such a clear cut manifesto. She was incapable of being proactive. The only consistent element in her approach to foreign affairs was the desire to avoid commitment. Policy was decided on a day-to-day basis and might change on the instant at the arrival of the latest despatch. There was an element of wisdom, albeit small, in the queen’s attitude. Relations between the continental states were so multi-faceted and changeable that an element of short-termism and flexibility was sometimes necessary.
It may be helpful to provide a quick overview of international events in these years. Rome had discovered in Gregory XIII an energetic and industrious administrator. His most lasting innovation was the introduction of the Gregorian Calendar to replace the inaccurate Julian Calendar but his management skills extended to the foundation of several seminaries for the training of missionary priests. In 1578 he placed the English College in Rome (an offshoot of the Douai-Rheims College) under the control of the Jesuits and it became the power source for the reconversion of England. Winning back the Protestant island state remained a priority for the pope who was always ready to receive Catholic adventurers with some bold and invariably impractical invasion plan.
Any realistic scheme would require massive support from Philip II. He remained emotionally committed to the Enterprise of England but he was preoccupied with the seemingly endless debilitating wars in the Mediterranean and the Netherlands. The naval triumph of his half-brother, Don John of Austria, over the Turks at Lepanto in 1571 was a great morale boost but three years later Spain was driven out of Tunis and, in 1575, Philip’s treasury declared itself bankrupt. Appointing the charismatic and belligerent Don John as Governor of the Spanish Netherlands in 1576 could not disguise the fact that the position of the occupying force was precarious. Then, in 1578, there came a massive change of fortune. The young, headstrong and childless King Sebastian of Portugal was killed in battle. After the brief reign of the Cardinal, King Henry, Philip II became heir apparent by virtue of being the senior male relative of Sebastian (Philip’s nephew) and he asserted his claim, backed by a swift military intervention. With the Portuguese possessions in Brazil and the Orient added to his own empire, Philip now became awesomely powerful. A celebratory medal struck in 1580 modestly declaimed ‘The World is Not Enough’. This coincided with the arrival of news about Francis Drake’s circumnavigation (1577–80) during which he had harried the Pacific coast of South America, despoiled a Spanish bullion ship of a vast treasure and established commercial contacts in the ‘closed’ markets of the Spice Islands. This effrontery quickened Philip’s Anglophobia. Henceforth the Enterprise of England remained at the top of his agenda.
In any potential confrontation between Spain and England affairs in France added repeated complications. The life of the nation, of the court and of the royal family was crazed with rivalries and factions. France was, in fact, ungovernable. In May 1574 Charles IX died, the second of Catherine de Medici’s ill-fated brood, doomed to expire before the age of forty without siring an heir. His place was taken by his fanatical brother, Henri, duc d’Anjou. The youngest boy, Francis, duc d’Alençon, now assumed his brother’s title of Anjou. But he would rather have assumed the kingship. Of all Catherine’s sons Anjou was the most ambitious. He craved a crown – any crown. This rivalry at the very centre further weakened an already brittle political situation. Henry III kept his brother at court, a virtual prisoner. Also detained there was Henry of Navarre, next in line to the throne after Catherine’s sons and married to her daughter, Marguerite. Navarre had been brought up a Protestant and had fought with the Huguenots in the earlier wars of religion. In September 1575 Anjou escaped and cynically threw in his lot with the Protestants. Six months later he was joined by Navarre. Henry averted another major military confrontation by making a humiliating peace which granted the Huguenots an unprecedented degree of toleration and negated the Catholic advances made in the wake of the St Bartholomew Massacre. It was never going to work. Catholic leaders in Paris and the provinces simply refused to accept the peace terms and, within months, civil war had broken out again. This time Anjou fought alongside the Guises and other leaders of the Catholic Holy League. Navarre was excommunicated by the pope and debarred from the royal succession. Chaos persisted year in and year out, France’s royal government being neither able to win a war nor to sustain a peace. Social and econom
ic dislocation followed political and religious strife. Sporadic peasant revolts and bourgeois anti-government demonstrations became a regular feature of French life.
In 1578 the duc d’Anjou grabbed the headlines again. For a second time he escaped the confines of his brother’s court, travelled north and offered himself to the rebels in the Low Countries as their leader and protector. At the same time he sent envoys to London with avowals of undying love for Elizabeth and a serious marriage proposal. With all this going on it is not surprising that Walsingham, along with his colleagues, was bewildered. ‘We are in consultation,’ he wrote on 11 May, ‘what were fit to be done in the Low Country causes, which we find subject to so many difficulties as we know not what to resolve.’ He could not decide whether Anjou’s move was part of a French plot to annexe the Netherlands or a stratagem by the duke to carve for himself an independent kingdom. Nor could he conclude what the impact would be on the Low Countries or on Franco-Spanish relations.3
To the outside observer events in the Netherlands were, indeed, as confused and confusing as those in France. Don John arrived in 1576, intent on winning reputation by subduing the province and using it as a springboard for the invasion of England. His master in the Escorial was more pragmatic. With an empty purse and worrying despatches from all over the empire regularly keeping him at his desk long into the hours of darkness, he ordered his half-brother to make peace at all costs, even if it involved extending religious toleration to the Calvinists. Reluctantly, Don John disbanded the Spanish army of occupation and entered negotiations with the native government, the States General. The result was the Pacification of Ghent (1577). William of Orange (aka William the Silent) took up residence in Brussels as, eventually, a Spanish viceroy. (He removed to Antwerp the following year.) But the situation was very far from being a simple conflict between imperial power and nationalist rebels. Catholic nobles, who were in a majority in the States General, looked for religious unity. The Protestant areas – mainly Holland and Zeeland in the north-west – were interested in nothing less than complete independence from Spain. Don John sulked in his new headquarters in Nassau and took every opportunity to sow discord. Philip II had abated none of his religious zeal and prayed earnestly that God would reverse his fortunes and enable him to complete his holy mission to his troublesome province.