"The persecution is now very grave," a contemporary wrote. "New prisons are appointed in every county, as the old ones are full of recusants." Thousands were taken, many of them gentlemen and others of substance; thousands more waited fearfully for their lives to be disrupted, perhaps destroyed, by the sudden appearance of grim-faced officers at their gates.
There were other tactics, counter-evangelism being the most obvious. Sermons of recantation by former Catholics were a frequent occurrence in London, though it is questionable whether any staunch Catholics heeded them. Aylmer, bishop of London, tried to persuade Cecil to finance a plan to send committed, rigorous Puritans into Catholic regions—Lancashire, Staffordshire, Shropshire "and such other like barbarous countries"—to reconvert them, but the idea came to nothing. 3 By the time Campion and his companions arrived in England in the summer of 1580 the jails were full of recusants, and many of those who had so far escaped capture were living hunted lives.
The odyssey of Campion and his Jesuit partner Robert Persons lasted only a year, but during those few months of eventful sojourning much was accomplished. Guided by cohorts of eager young Catholic gentlemen they traveled throughout the country, staying in the houses of recusants and always moving on before they could be discovered by the authorities. They preached, heard confessions, celebrated masses and reconciled men and women to the church, welcomed wherever they went by great numbers of the devout. They became famous, both because the royal agents searched high and low for them and because Campion's written explanation of his mission—"Campion's Brag," as his enemies called it—reached a wide audience.
The journeys of the two Jesuits put new heart into an already revitalized Catholicism. Absolutely confident of the ultimate success of the Jesuit Order, Campion looked forward to the probability of his own execution with joyous humility: "We have made a league," he wrote, "cheerfully to carry the cross you shall lay upon us, and never to despair your recovery, while we have a man left to enjoy your Tyburn, or to be racked with your torments, or consumed with your prisons." Many were caught up in this spirit of hope and of fearlessness; Persons recorded how the believers he encountered showed a "wonderful fortitude of mind and readiness to suffer any travail on account of religion," and heard mass with such "sighs and frequent sobs" that he was moved to tears.
Fear of imminent discovery intensified the mood. At any moment, the Jesuits and their hosts knew, royal agents might burst in and arrest them, led by an informer or a heavily bribed servant. "Sometimes, when we are sitting merrily at table," Persons wrote, "there comes an insistent rapping at the door we associate with the police. We all start up and listen, hearts beating, like deer who hear the hunters halloo." There was no time for flight, only for prayer. "Not a word is spoken, not a sound is heard, till the servant comes in to say what it is. If it is nothing, we laugh—all the more merrily because of our fright." 4
For Campion the tension ended in capture in June, 1581. (Persons escaped to the continent; he was to remain a moving spirit behind plots against Elizabeth.) After months of questioning and torture he came, with the other two priests, to his execution in December.
Hard rain had turned the earth to deep mud around the scaffold by the time the condemned men were in position and the queen's councilors had harangued the crowd into uneasy silence. The onlookers stood huddled together in the cold and wet, miserable yet watchful, waiting to be caught up in a transcendent drama. Campion addressed them, and Sherwin, and the young visionary Bryant, who "with his naturally innocent and angelic face" moved his hearers by his expression of profound joy.
The three stood in wheeled carts beneath the gallows, and the ropes were put around their necks. It was their last moment of life; they prayed, and the crowd prayed with them. Then the carts were jerked out from under their feet. The weight of their bodies pulled the nooses tight, breaking their necks instantly. But Bryant's noose had been carelessly placed, so that when his cart was pulled away he was left hanging by his chin, in great pain, but still living.
Almost at once the bodies were cut down so that the methodical butchery of disemboweling and dismembering—routine for the corpses of traitors—could begin. But Bryant, resisting the executioners, "made great efforts to rise," and continued to cling to life "in full consciousness" as his abdomen was cut open and its organs disgorged. The spectators pressed closer, awed, horrified, amazed at the young priest's unnatural fortitude. This was the miracle they had come to see, a dying man, his body carried beyond bodily limits, defying death.
"Ere the limbs were severed," an eyewitness wrote, "evidently in the extremity of agony," Bryant "raised his mangled body and stood upright on his feet to the great astonishment of all beholders." 5
All the eviscerated corpses were beheaded, then cut in four sections and displayed prominently in places where Londoners gathered. The ghoulish spectacle was meant to be a chilling warning against treason, but it was a clear invitation to relic-collecting as well. Part of Campion's quartered body was placed on one of the City gates. Someone cut off a finger, and the incident set off "great efforts" in the royal council to investigate and locate the thief. For these executions were set apart from all previous executions of priests and lay Catholics. Within days of the event stories of the queen's cruelty and bigotry were circulating, and Catholic propagandists in England and elsewhere were making the names of the martyrs widely known.
Pamphlets, libels, broadsheets denouncing Queen Elizabeth and the merciless persecutors who served her appeared in great numbers. One book
told of "Mr. Norton the Rackmaster," who was in charge of the dreaded oak frame on which prisoners, tied down at the wrists and ankles, were stretched to the bursting point. Norton was said to have boasted that he racked Bryant until he was "one foot longer than ever God made him," and to have kept the wretched Campion stretched on the frame for the whole of one endless night. (Norton, himself tortured by various "domestic afflictions," was much distressed by his adverse celebrity and wrote in his own defense that he acted "only in pursuance of orders and in conjunction with others." 6 )
The ghosts of the dead priests proved to be more pernicious than all their sermons and masses when they were alive. The report of their martyrdom was spread by word of mouth and in print, and this, combined with the attacks on the queen and government, led to more conversions to Catholicism. To counteract the slander official declarations of policy toward recusants were issued, in which Elizabeth's mercy and clemency were stressed along with her habit of pardoning at least some of those condemned to execution. But such statements failed to lessen the impact of the recent deaths, especially at foreign courts. "There be men in the world which drink blood as easily as beasts do water," wrote one European Jesuit of the English councilors. And at their head, he added, was the wicked, bloodthirsty English queen.
The queen, just then, was troubled by a pain in her hip, and this, plus upsetting news of a military reverse for the rebel forces and the English troops supporting them in Flanders, made her unusually bad tempered when the Spanish ambassador Mendoza arrived for an audience. 7 He was led into the privy chamber at Richmond, and found her sitting under her canopy of estate, with two councilors and three ladies in attendance.
It was Elizabeth's custom, when receiving ambassadors, to step down from the raised dais beneath the canopy and, extending her hand to be kissed, to greet them formally in Italian. il Sia il ben venuto, signor ambas-ciatore, " she would say gravely, then return to her place. Now when Mendoza entered, however, she was pointedly rude, disregarding his entrance entirely and taking no notice as he approached her. When she did speak it was not to greet him but to complain of the pain that was annoying her and to add that it had been bothering her for a long time.
Though irritated and fatigued himself, Mendoza took the queen as he found her, sweeping off his hat with a respectful gesture and replying that, though she had delayed granting him an audience for a very long time— unconscionably long, he was thinking—he would gladly have wa
ited longer rather than vex her with business while she was in pain. His words were remarkably gracious, under the circumstances; having been put off day after
day, he was abruptly told at noon this day that the queen would see him in two hours. He was ten miles from the palace at the time, but rode there as fast as possible, only to be icily informed by three of the tall gentlemen pensioners and then by the haughty lord chamberlain, once he arrived, that he was very late.
Mendoza stood, hat in hand, waiting for Elizabeth to acknowledge his sentiment with thanks as she usually did. Instead she remained silent, holding her hip.
"How about the letter which you have from his majesty?" she asked at length.
Mendoza gave her a letter from Philip II, which angered her as she read it with its accusations of English belligerence and provocation. With "much hectoring and vociferation," the queen said roundly that, had she genuinely wanted to stir up trouble, it would have taken King Philip's fleets far off their courses to prevent her.
Boastful talk was one thing, action another, Mendoza replied, adding without emphasis that the fleets of Spain were so well prepared that they could triumph over any enemy, no matter how large and powerful. He went on to list the mounting irritations that were exacerbating England's conflict with Spain: the money Elizabeth was giving Alencon to enable him to fight the Spanish in the Low Countries, the English pirates plundering Spanish ships, the vast treasure seized by Drake and never returned. How could she have done more than this, the ambassador asked plainly, without openly declaring war on King Philip?
Without a moment's hesitation Elizabeth snapped back "that she neither knew nor understood anything" about any of these things.
But he himself had been telling her about them for three and a half years, Mendoza insisted. Perhaps "it would be necessary to see whether cannons would not make her hear them better."
If he thought to frighten her, Elizabeth said, stiffening in her seat, she would "put him into a place where he could not say a word." But her voice was low and lacking in its customary note of fierce challenge, and Mendoza found the change noteworthy.
In all probability, Elizabeth was weary. Her painful hip throbbed mercilessly, and as she disliked taking medicine she was most likely doing nothing to alleviate it. She was under a good deal of strain. The situation in the Netherlands nagged at her, forcing her ever closer to the brink of actual war, draining her treasury, playing havoc with her private life. Foreign policy demands clashed with the strongly felt desires of her subjects. The men around her, men made increasingly shrill in their counsel and brittle in their views by age and the tense political climate, delivered themselves
of their vehement opinions and disapproved of what use she made of them. Cecil shook his head in dismay at England's dangerous position, Walsing-ham insisted that Elizabeth must strike the first blow at the Catholic enemy, and immediately. Leicester bemoaned the growing numbers of recusants and the queen's apparent blindness to the threat they posed. 'The Lord of his mercy open her eyes!" he wrote to Walsingham, praying that God might do what the royal councilors could not.
Elizabeth and Mendoza exchanged threats, but before long both saw nothing to be gained from continuing this and Elizabeth signaled an end to the personal discussion by asking Mendoza to call in his secretary, she in turn dismissing her ladies and summoning two of her councilors to join the talks.
Elizabeth repeated the ambassador's reference to "bringing in cannons" for the benefit of her advisers, resuming her boastful tone, and told Mendoza once more that he need not try to frighten her. At once he became condescending and gallant. Smiling at her "fury and perturbation," he conceded that monarchs were never afraid of mere private men—and as for Elizabeth, "a lady and so beautiful that even lions would crouch before her," she need fear nothing at all. ("You know how timid and pusillanimous she is," he wrote to Philip II afterward in cipher.)
Her anger was soothed at this, or so Mendoza believed, and the conversation turned from insults and threats to substantive diplomatic matters. But there was no escaping the rancor that colored the meeting, or the unspoken issue—the queen's persecution of her Catholic subjects—that overshadowed it. Before long Mendoza and Elizabeth were quarreling again, with the Spaniard passing on a threat from his master that, unless Drake's treasure was returned, the goods of English merchants in Spain would be seized as compensation.
She would do nothing about Drake, she answered firmly, until Philip had made amends for his role in the attempted invasion of Ireland, and after repeating this twice she took leave of the ambassador "very drily."
Hoping to have the last word Mendoza called out that in future he would communicate with the royal council, raising his voice so that the councilors, hearing him, would think that he had initiated the breach and not the queen. But her voice could carry as well. As he was making his way out of the privy chamber he and everyone else in the room heard Elizabeth say, with a great sigh, "Volesse a Iddio che ognuno avesse il suo, e fosse in pace. " "Would to God that each had his own, and was at peace!"
Here lieth the worthy warrior Who never blooded sword; Here lieth the noble councilor Who never held his word Here lieth his excellency Who ruled all the state. Here lieth the earl of Leicester Whom all the world did hate.
I
n mid-December of 1585 a fleet of fifty English ships sailed into Flushing harbor, carrying "the flower and chief gallants of England." In command was Leicester, his stout torso and pot belly encased in parade armor and his spirits as high as they had ever been.
Destiny called him—at last. Though he was well into his sixth decade he had been given a command—nay, a sacred mission—that many a younger man might envy. He was to lead the English army in the Netherlands, to make war on the army of Spain.
Many saw an epoch-making confrontation in the offing, a battle, not just between overmighty Spain and truculent little England, not just between Catholic and Protestant, but between the forces of the Roman Antichrist and God's chosen people. Protestant patriotism blazed high. 'The freehold of England will be worth but little if this action quail," wrote one of Leicester's valiant captains. "The fire is kindled; whosoever suffers it to go out, it will grow dangerous." 1
Leicester strode the deck of his flagship self-importantly, now giving orders, now looking out across the water in a pose of farsighted leadership. No one was more aware than he that he had not been near a battlefield for thirty years, and that the summit of his military experience was brief service as ordnance master in Picardy during Mary Tudor's reign. He had
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no military bearing; his paunchy body, thinning gray beard and tired, lined eyes suggested dissipation and world-weariness rather than stout-hearted combativeness. Yet the queen had chosen him as her commander—not her ambitious new favorite Walter Ralegh, nor Leicester's nephew Sidney, whom she disliked, nor any of the other hotheaded younger men who longed to prove themselves in war and who tried their best to push the reluctant Elizabeth into full-scale conflict with her old enemy King Philip.
She had, in the end, chosen Leicester, but not without grave misgivings and maddening changes of mind. His inexperience, his inability to get along with either subordinates or equals without awakening their violent dislike, his questionable statesmanship were all against him; in his favor were his rank and wealth—though he had to borrow very heavily to finance his expedition—his known intimacy with her and his princely status in the eyes of the Dutch. In his favor too was his somewhat diffuse ambition and mildly befuddled grasp of affairs. Elizabeth feared war in that, as a woman, she would have to yield something of her authority to male commanders; in Leicester she hoped she had a commander who would, partly for want of clear-headed schemes of his own, do as she told him.
With her usual "strange dealings" she had made the preamble to the journey a nightmare for the earl. First he was informed of his appointment, then, having ordered a great deal of armor and supplies and having sent some two hundred letters of summons t
o his fighting men, he received word that the appointment had been held up. She found she could not spare him after all. She was fearful; an ailment plagued her, and she needed Leicester to comfort her when the attacks came and she lay in her bed fearing that "she should not live." He half expected the change of heart from her. She had always been dependent on him, and had never before been willing to let him go so far away from her for so long. She was not only dependent, she was often malicious, never allowing Leicester to forget that he had wounded her mortally by his deceitful marriage to Lettice Knollys and "ever taking occasion," as he put it, "to withdraw any good from me." 2
From the time of his original appointment in early September until the very day he sailed, December 8, the queen kept him in uncertainty. She exasperated him to the point of collapse. ("For my part," he wrote to Walsingham when he felt he could take no more of her caprice, "I am weary of life and all.") He felt sure that, whatever force he assembled and however well he equipped it, she would disapprove of it and give the command to someone else. Or her illness might return, or some other minor issue might arise to pique her and cause her to cancel all his carefully made preparations.
The first Elizabeth Page 43