by Derek Wilson
In one respect at least Walsingham’s work became easier. As the nature and extent of the threat to England’s security became increasingly obvious the members of the Council closed ranks. Elizabeth could no longer stop her ears to rumours of plots or dismiss them as anti-Catholic propaganda put out by troublesome Puritans. There could now be no ignoring of the widespread anxiety about terrorism. Nor was it a case of irrational anxiety conjuring up demons.
In the night, imagining some fear,
How easy is a bush supposed a bear!7
Walsingham kept everyone furnished with hard evidence. The result was the remarkable Bond of Association, drawn up early in October by Burghley and Walsingham, now successfully working in tandem. (Camden suggested that Leicester was the moving force behind the bond.)8 This, if not exactly Walsingham’s finest hour, certainly witnessed the accomplishment of what he had been striving for throughout the last dozen years – the safeguarding of the Protestant state.
The Bond of Association grasped the nettle of what would happen in the event of an attempt on the queen’s life. It tried to ensure that such a catastrophe would not lead to a Catholic takeover. It was, in effect, a mirror image of the Catholic League operating in France – a reinforcing of the national religion at all costs. Loyal leaders of the political nation at central and regional levels were invited to set their hands to a document pledging their determination to bring to account everyone in any way connected to such a plot. They were ‘to prosecute such person or persons to the death, and to take the uttermost revenge on them for their utter overthrow and extirpation’. Any pretender to the Crown in whose name the plot was devised was to find him/herself along with his/her heirs permanently debarred from inheritance. The Bond was an extraordinary document, conceived in fear and showing little sign of coherent thought. We might think of it as a political thermometer, indicating that the patient was in a state of high fever. It was certainly not, to continue the medical metaphor, a prescription for restoring that patient to full health. It made no provision for the government of the country in the event of the sudden death of the head of state. It was entirely concerned with the nation’s reaction to a terrorist outrage. It warned those who might be contemplating such an act that they would gain nothing from it.
Copies of the Bond were drawn up with the utmost haste and distributed throughout the realm, to meeting points where local dignitaries gathered to sign, in some cases with great and solemn ceremony. When the Council arrived at Hampton Court on 19 October to append their names to the document they were joined by scores of church leaders. During the ensuing days a motley of assemblies took place all over the country – mayors and aldermen, members of trade guilds, groups of clergy, noblemen together with their tenants and estate workers, merchant communities – all came together to pledge their undying support for the politico-religious status quo.
And it was a fraud – or, at least, a stratagem very close to fraud. In its desperation the government needed a ‘spontaneous’ demonstration of national unity. So it set about choreographing such a display. Walsingham inserted the following clause in instructions sent out to conveners of public meetings:
Your lordship shall not need to take knowledge that you received the copy from me but rather from some other friend of yours in these parts; for that her Majesty would have the matter carried in such sort as this course held for her [safety] may seem to [come more] from the particular care of her well-affected subjects than to grow from any public direction.9
Yet, if there was an element of deception in this, ultimate responsibility for it rests with the queen. Underlying the Bond of Association was the old problem – Elizabeth’s refusal to conceive or nominate an heir. Her people were increasingly obsessed by the what-would-happen-if question. Their sovereign, in effect, responded that this was none of their business. Her determination, even in these desperate circumstances, to keep her subjects hands off all prerogative matters became clear when parliament assembled. It was essential to give legislative force to the Bond of Association, so writs went out immediately for the first election in twelve years.
The session, which ran from 23 November 1584 to 29 March 1585 with an unusually long Christmas recess (21 December – 4 February), had more than its share of drama. Giving the Bond statutory force raised two constitutional issues. The first concerned the debarring of claimants to the throne. The Council obviously had Mary Stuart in mind, since any likely Catholic plot, whether or not carried out with her connivance, would have her accession as its objective. But the wording of the Bond could also be taken as excluding James from the succession. Elizabeth intervened personally to ensure that the ‘Act for provision to be made for the surety of the Queen’s most royal person’ did not blight the Scottish king’s rights unless he had been privy to a plot to remove Elizabeth. The other issue was more fundamental because it concerned the meaning of sovereignty. In the event of the queen being snatched away from them, by what process would her subjects be provided with a replacement? Burghley, doubtless with the support of his colleagues, proposed a bill which would vest power in a ‘Great Council’, augmented by leading judges to a number of thirty-plus members, who would consider the claims of all rivals and, with the aid of parliament, in effect, elect their next sovereign. This proposal ran quite counter to existing practice and constitutional theory according to which it was axiomatic that on the monarch’s death all crown offices became vacant, allowing the new incumbent a completely free hand in filling them. The interregnum solution, a radical, almost republican, proposal, was advocated warmly by most of the Council. Thomas Digges, parliamentarian and one of the scholars of the Dudley-Sidney-Walsingham circle (‘the foremost scientific and mathematical writer of Elizabethan England’)10 advocated quite baldly that parliament should be a permanent feature of national life, a new assembly being automatically elected as soon as its predecessor was dissolved, so that the country would never lack a governing body. This was logical, practical and, of course, to Elizabeth quite unacceptable. It was an affront to the holy cow of prerogative. She quashed the draft bill before ever it reached the parliament house.
The queen’s stubborn opposition is all the more remarkable given the dramatic circumstances of the time. The extraordinary Parry affair actually began its life on the floor of the House of Commons. William Parry, riding high on the wave of conciliar approval, had acquired a seat. On 17 December, parliament was discussing the second major bill of the session concerned with the expulsion of Jesuits and the punishment of any who succoured them. All members warmly supported harsh measures. Then Parry rose to speak. He not only opposed the bill; he did so in the most extreme language and denounced what he called the base motives of those who supported a measure which would result in nothing but ‘blood, danger, despair and confiscation’. He then mystified the shocked house even further by refusing to give his reasons for the outburst. He would, he said, only explain himself to the queen. From this point Parry’s dealing and double-dealing unravelled and he was abandoned by Walsingham and others who had originally patronized him.
Religion was now uppermost in MPs’ minds, and not only because of the Catholic threat. In July 1583 there occurred an event Elizabeth had long been looking forward to. Archbishop Grindal died. The queen had long since decided on his successor, her leading episcopal yes-man, John Whitgift, Bishop of Worcester. Whitgift was an establishment man, unimaginative, loyal within the narrow confines of his vision and a stickler for rules and regulations. Add to this ambition and an aptitude for impressing the right people and you have the sort of man likely to get to the top of any organization. It followed that the new archbishop was a dedicated enemy of the Puritans. He had spent years locked in intermittent literary warfare with Thomas Cartwright, the acknowledged spokesman of those extreme radicals who campaigned for a root-and-branch reformation of the structures of the church to bring it in line, as they saw it, with the New Testament model. Whitgift’s Panglossian view of the Elizabethan settlement was that ev
erything was for the best in this best of all possible churches. Their ponderous disputation was, of course, a dialogue of the deaf. However, it could not fail to commend to the queen the man who ardently championed her authority in church and state. Whitgift wrote:
I am persuaded that the external government of the church under a Christian magistrate must be according to the kind and form of government used in the commonwealth; else how can you make the prince supreme governor of all states and causes ecclesiastical? Will you so divide the government of the church from the government of the commonwealth, that, the one being a monarchy, the other must be a democracy, or an aristocracy? This were to divide one realm into two, and to spoil the prince of the one half of her jurisdiction and authority. If you will therefore have the queen of England rule as monarch over all her dominions, then must you also give her leave to use one kind and form of government in all and every part of the same, and so to govern the church in ecclesiastical affairs as she doth the commonwealth in civil.
He deliberately invoked that spectre of republicanism that haunted Elizabeth’s imaginings and accounted for her detestation of Puritans:
[I]n this commonwealth it is necessary that one should be over all, except you will transform as well the state of the kingdom as you would of the church; which is not unlike to be your meaning; for not long after you add that the ‘commonwealth must be framed according to the church’, meaning that the government of the commonwealth ought not to be monarchical, but either democratical, or aristocratical.11
As soon as he was installed Whitgift made it clear that his new broom had exceedingly harsh bristles. He issued instructions, with royal backing, to enforce uniformity of doctrine and practice. All clergy were enjoined, on pain of deprivation, to endorse and abide by the Book of Common Prayer in its entirety. This intentionally confrontational approach constituted an assault on tender Puritan consciences and provoked a storm of protest throughout the province of Canterbury. Around 500 clergy declined to make the required subscription to Whitgift’s articles. The Council was in despair. At the very time that all Englishmen should be sinking their differences in the face of the Catholic threat it seemed that the senior ecclesiastic was deliberately ripping open old wounds which, given time and patience, might heal themselves. In June 1584, Walsingham joined with Burghley in persuading Whitgift to adopt a more softly-softly approach. Clergy were, as a result, permitted to make a partial subscription.
It was too late. The battle lines had been drawn. Whitgift simply changed his tactics. He prosecuted selected radicals in the ecclesiastical courts and he cultivated Sir Christopher Hatton who, for reasons of personal advancement, adopted the queen’s religious policy and became a serious rival to Leicester in the Council. The Puritan clergy similarly organized themselves and presented petitions to their conciliar supporters against proceedings which, as Burghley observed, smacked of the Spanish Inquisition. This was the situation when parliament assembled in November 1584. It was obvious that there was going to be trouble. The House of Commons now included many new members no less zealous for religion than their predecessors but lacking the caution those predecessors had learned from previous encounters with the queen. Foreseeing difficulties, Leicester convened a meeting at Lambeth Palace where the radicals and reactionaries could argue the case. Predictably the debate generated more heat than light. It was the ever-pragmatic Walsingham who played the peacemaker. He persuaded the archbishop to stop hounding incumbents who conformed outwardly and did not draw attention to themselves. Henceforth it would only be new appointees who were obliged to subscribe. It was, however, too late to head off the parliamentary critics.
Promises had been made to previous parliaments concerning further reform of the church. Not only had those promises not been kept; Puritans now found themselves under the cosh of a reactionary regime. The Commons set up a committee to prepare religious legislation. The queen sent to inform them that they were not permitted to meddle in matters ecclesiastical. They ignored the prohibition. Elizabeth authorized a long parliamentary recess as a cooling off period. Parliament came back in February still determined to have satisfaction. Both houses eventually presented two bills. The queen vetoed them. On 29 February she summoned the speaker and told him in no uncertain terms that she would brook no more interference in her governance of the church.
Two days earlier Walsingham had had to endure another of her intemperate outbursts during a meeting of senior churchmen and leading councillors. The queen made ostentatious show of her support for the bishops:
We understand that some of the Nether House have used divers reproachful speeches against you, tending greatly to your dishonour, which we will not suffer; and that they meddle with matters above their capacity not appertaining unto them, for the which we will call some of them to an account. And we understand they be countenanced by some of our Council, which we will redress or else uncouncil some of them.
She grumbled about the behaviour of the London mercantile community:
where every merchant must have his schoolmaster and nightly conventicles expounding Scriptures and catechizing their servants and maids, in so much that I have heard how some of their maids have not sticked to control learned preachers, and say that such a man taught otherwise in our house.
And she made it abundantly clear that her personal animosity was greater towards Puritans than Catholics. She told of a letter received from some foreign correspondent:
who wrote that the papists were [in] hope to prevail again in England, for that her Protestants themselves misliked her, and indeed so [they] do, for I have heard that some of them of late have said that I was of no religion, neither hot [nor] cold, but such a one as one day would give God the vomit. I pray you look unto such men. I doubt not but you will look unto the papists, for that they not only have spite at me, and that very nearly, but at the whole realm and the state of religion. There is an Italian proverb which sayeth, ‘From mine enemy let me defend myself, but from a pretended friend, good Lord deliver me.’ Both these join together in one opinion against me for neither of them would have me to be queen of England.12
And it was those last words that revealed her deepest prejudice. She repeated them a month later when, at the earliest possible moment, she prorogued parliament.
Walsingham may well have breathed a sigh of relief when MPs packed their bags and rode off back to their shires and boroughs. Useless confrontation made the queen more difficult to handle than usual and was a distraction from his principal preoccupation – ‘being very careful for the safety of the queen and the realm’. From his letters and reports of others about his conduct we can detect a growing irascibility from 1585 onwards. This was partly due to failing health. Forced absences from court became more frequent because of ‘my old disease’. He was wearing himself out with overwork in his attempts to respond appropriately to the worrying situation at home, in Scotland and in the Low Countries. The very volume of intelligence reports constituted a problem. Walsingham’s desk must, at times, have been swamped with information, much of it mutually contradictory. Thus, the location of the presumed Catholic strike was a matter for constant assessment and reassessment: would it be Scotland, or Arundel, or Ireland, or the Kent coast? In the ever-difficult internal politics of court and Council he was always having to watch his own back. He could not rely on Burghley’s support. The treasurer was still dealing directly with Stafford. On one occasion Walsingham flew into a rage because the ambassador’s assessment of the Paris situation differed from that of his own agents and, when reported, humiliated him in front of the queen.
From December 1585 to December 1587 Leicester was, with one interlude, on campaign in the Netherlands. In his absence the Whitgift-Hatton caucus gained strength. Whitgift was admitted to the Council early in 1586 and a year later Hatton was appointed Lord Chancellor (a promotion owing more to royal favour than any experience of the law). At the very time that England found itself on the dizzying rim of the maelstrom of international
conspiracy, Walsingham felt his influence waning. Over the years Mr Secretary had perfected the art of bringing the queen round to his viewpoint on many issues. His secret was persistence. Without him nagging at her elbow and refusing to be deflected by her anger, Elizabeth fell prey to her own prevarication and the advice of others. A throwaway line in a letter Burghley wrote to his colleague highlights the role Walsingham so often played and which had become an established feature in the landscape of government: ‘I wish your health and presence here, where your ability to attend on her Majesty at all times might greatly further causes . . . by importunity that now, for lack of following, which I cannot do by [reason of] my lameness, remain unperfected.’13
In one area of policy Walsingham’s advice was, at last, heeded – or it may be that the logic of events prevented Elizabeth reaching any other conclusion. In the summer of 1584 Anjou had died. No longer could Elizabeth’s battles in the Netherlands be fought by proxy. Yet the survival of the United Netherlands (the Protestant northern states) still depended on foreign aid. In fact, their dependence was greater than ever. Parma’s brilliant and persistent campaign in the south was bringing more and more territory back under Spanish control. Brussels capitulated in March 1585. What was worse from an international point of view was that Antwerp, that great entrepôt, was being systematically starved into submission. By March it had lain under siege for nine months and there was no prospect of it surviving without the intervention of a relief force. (The end came in August and resulted in almost half the city’s population fleeing to the north.) The States General turned to both Henry III and Elizabeth as their only potential saviours. They offered sovereignty over their land in return for military aid. By early March it was known in London that the French king had declined. All eyes were now turned on Elizabeth. She had a clear choice: allow the Netherlanders to stew in their own juice and watch Spain seize control of the Narrow Seas and the western trade routes or stand shoulder to shoulder with the rebels, an act which would be, in effect, a declaration of war against Philip.