In every parliament of Elizabeth the House of Commons was zealously attached to the protestant interest. This, as well as an apprehension of disturbance from a contested succession, led to those importunate solicitations that she would choose a husband, which she so artfully evaded. A determination so contrary to her apparent interest, and to the earnest desire of her people, may give some countenance to the surmises of the time, that she was restrained from marriage by a secret consciousness that it was unlikely to be fruitful.[188] Whether these conjectures were well founded, of which I know no evidence, or whether the risk of experiencing that ingratitude which the husbands of sovereign princesses have often displayed, and of which one glaring example was immediately before her eyes, outweighed in her judgment that of remaining single, or whether she might not even apprehend a more desperate combination of the catholic party at home and abroad, if the birth of any issue from her should shut out their hopes of Mary's succession, it is difficult for us to decide.
Though the queen's marriage were the primary object of these addresses, as the most probable means of securing an undisputed heir to the crown, yet she might have satisfied the parliament in some degree by limiting the succession to one certain line. But it seems doubtful whether this would have answered the proposed end. If she had taken a firm resolution against matrimony, which, unless on the supposition already hinted, could hardly be reconciled with a sincere regard for her people's welfare, it might be less dangerous to leave the course of events to regulate her inheritance. Though all parties seem to have conspired in pressing her to some decisive settlement on this subject, it would not have been easy to content the two factions, who looked for a successor to very different quarters.[189] It is evident that any confirmation of the Suffolk title would have been regarded by the Queen of Scots and her numerous partisans as a flagrant injustice, to which they would not submit but by compulsion: and on the other hand, by re-establishing the hereditary line, Elizabeth would have lost her check on one whom she had reason to consider as a rival and competitor, and whose influence was already alarmingly extensive among her subjects.
_Imprisonment of Lady Catherine Grey._--She had, however, in one of the first years of her reign, without any better motive than her own jealous and malignant humour, taken a step not only harsh and arbitrary, but very little consonant to policy, which had almost put it out of her power to defeat the Queen of Scots' succession. Lady Catherine Grey, who has been already mentioned as next in remainder of the house of Suffolk, proved with child by a private marriage, as they both alleged, with the Earl of Hertford. The queen, always envious of the happiness of lovers, and jealous of all who could entertain any hopes of the succession, threw them both into the Tower. By connivance of their keepers, the lady bore a second child during this imprisonment. Upon this Elizabeth caused an enquiry to be instituted before a commission of privy counsellors and civilians; wherein, the parties being unable to adduce proof of their marriage, Archbishop Parker pronounced that their cohabitation was illegal, and that they should be censured for fornication. He was to be pitied if the law obliged him to utter so harsh a sentence, or to be blamed if it did not. Even had the marriage never been solemnised, it was impossible to doubt the existence of a contract, which both were still desirous to perform. But there is reason to believe that there had been an actual marriage, though so hasty and clandestine that they had not taken precautions to secure evidence of it. The injured lady sunk under this hardship and indignity;[190] but the legitimacy of her children was acknowledged by general consent, and, in a distant age, by a legislative declaration. These proceedings excited much dissatisfaction; generous minds revolted from their severity, and many lamented to see the reformed branch of the royal stock thus bruised by the queen's unkind and impolitic jealousy.[191] Hales, clerk of the hanaper, a zealous protestant, having written in favour of Lady Catherine's marriage, and of her title to the succession, was sent to the Tower.[192] The lord keeper Bacon himself, a known friend to the house of Suffolk, being suspected of having prompted Hales to write this treatise, lost much of his mistress's favour. Even Cecil, though he had taken a share in prosecuting Lady Catherine, perhaps in some degree from an apprehension that the queen might remember he had once joined in proclaiming her sister Jane, did not always escape the same suspicion;[193] and it is probable that he felt the imprudence of entirely discountenancing a party from which the queen and religion had nothing to dread. There is reason to believe that the house of Suffolk was favoured in parliament; the address of the Commons in 1563, imploring the queen to settle the succession, contains several indications of a spirit unfriendly to the Scottish line;[194] and a speech is extant, said to have been made as late as 1571, expressly vindicating the rival pretension.[195] If indeed we consider with attention the statute of 13 Eliz. c. 1, which renders it treasonable to deny that the sovereigns of this kingdom, with consent of parliament, might alter the line of succession, it will appear little short of a confirmation of that title, which the descendants of Mary Brandon derived from a parliamentary settlement. But the doubtful birth of Lord Beauchamp and his brother, with an ignoble marriage, which Frances, the younger sister of Lady Catherine Grey, had thought it prudent to contract, deprived this party of all political consequence much sooner, as I conceive, than the wisest of Elizabeth's advisers could have desired; and gave rise to various other pretensions, which failed not to occupy speculative or intriguing tempers throughout this reign.
_Mary, Queen of Scotland._--We may well avoid the tedious and intricate paths of Scottish history, where each fact must be sustained by a controversial discussion. Every one will recollect, that Mary Stuart's retention of the arms and style of England gave the first, and, as it proved, inexpiable provocation to Elizabeth. It is indeed true, that she was queen consort of France, a state lately at war with England, and that if the sovereigns of the latter country, even in peace, would persist in claiming the French throne, they could hardly complain of this retaliation. But, although it might be difficult to find a diplomatic answer to this, yet every one was sensible of an important difference between a title retained through vanity, and expressive of pretensions long since abandoned, from one that several foreign powers were prepared to recognise, and a great part of the nation might perhaps only want opportunity to support.[196] If, however, after the death of Francis II. had set the Queen of Scots free from all adverse connections, she had with more readiness and apparent sincerity renounced a pretension which could not be made compatible with Elizabeth's friendship, she might perhaps have escaped some of the consequences of that powerful neighbour's jealousy. But, whether it were that female weakness restrained her from unequivocally abandoning claims which she deemed well founded, and which future events might enable her to realise even in Elizabeth's lifetime, or whether she fancied that to drop the arms of England from her scutcheon would look like a dereliction of her right of succession, no satisfaction was fairly given on this point to the English court. Elizabeth took a far more effective revenge, by intriguing with all the malecontents of Scotland. But while she was endeavouring to render Mary's throne uncomfortable and insecure, she did not employ that influence against her in England, which lay more fairly in her power. She certainly was not unfavourable to the Queen of Scots' succession, however she might decline compliance with importunate and injudicious solicitations to declare it. She threw both Hales and one Thornton into prison for writing against that title.
And when Mary's secretary, Lethington, urged that Henry's testament, which alone stood in their way, should be examined, alleging that it had not been signed by the king, she paid no attention to this imprudent request.[197]
The circumstances wherein Mary found herself placed on her arrival in Scotland were sufficiently embarrassing to divert her attention from any regular scheme against Elizabeth, though she may sometimes have indulged visionary hopes; nor it is probable that with the most circumspect management she could so far have mitigated the rancour of some or checked the ambition of others, as to find leisure for hostile intrigues. But her imprudent marriage with Darnley, and the far greater errors of her subsequent behaviour, by lowering both her resources and reputation as far as possible, seemed to be pledges of perfect security from that quarter. Yet it was precisely when Mary was become most feeble and helpless, that Elizabeth's apprehensions grew most serious and well founded.
At the time when Mary, escaped from captivity, threw herself on the protection of a related, though rival queen, three courses lay open to Elizabeth, and were discussed in her councils. To restore her by force of arms, or rather by a mediation which would certainly have been effectual, to the throne which she had compulsorily abdicated, was the most generous, and would probably have turned out the most judicious proceeding. Reigning thus with tarnished honour and diminished power, she must have continually depended on the support of England, and become little better than a vassal of its sovereign. Still it might be objected by many, that the queen's honour was concerned not to maintain too decidedly the cause of one accused by common fame, and even by evidence that had already been made public, of adultery and the assassination of her husband. To have permitted her retreat into France would have shown an impartial neutrality; and probably that court was too much occupied at home to have afforded her any material assistance. Yet this appeared rather dangerous; and policy was supposed, as frequently happens, to indicate a measure absolutely repugnant to justice, that of detaining her in perpetual custody.[198] Whether this policy had no other fault than its want of justice, may reasonably be called in question.
_Combination in favour of Mary._--The queen's determination neither to marry nor limit the succession had inevitably turned every one's thoughts towards the contingency of her death. She was young indeed; but had been dangerously ill, once in 1562,[199] and again in 1568. Of all possible competitors for the throne, Mary was incomparably the most powerful, both among the nobility and the people. Besides the undivided attachment of all who retained any longings for the ancient religion, and many such were to be found at Elizabeth's court and chapel, she had the stronghold of hereditary right, and the general sentiment that revolts from acknowledging the omnipotency of a servile parliament.
Cecil, whom no one could suspect of partiality towards her, admits in a remarkable minute on the state of the kingdom, in 1569, that "the Queen of Scots' strength standeth by the universal opinion of the world for the justice of her title, as coming of the ancient line."[200] This was no doubt in some degree counteracted by a sense of the danger which her accession would occasion to the protestant church, and which, far more than its parliamentary title, kept up a sort of party for the house of Suffolk. The crimes imputed to her did not immediately gain credit among the people; and some of higher rank were too experienced politicians to turn aside for such considerations. She had always preserved her connections among the English nobility, of whom many were catholics, and others adverse to Cecil, by whose counsels the queen had been principally directed in all her conduct with regard to Scotland and its sovereign.[201] After the unfinished process of enquiry to which Mary submitted at York and Hampton Court, when the charge of participation in Darnley's murder had been substantiated by evidence at least that she did not disprove, and the whole course of which proceedings created a very unfavourable impression both in England and on the continent, no time was to be lost by those who considered her as the object of their dearest hopes. She was in the kingdom; she might, by a bold rescue, be placed at their head; every hour's delay increased the danger of her being delivered up to the rebel Scots; and doubtless some eager protestants had already begun to demand her exclusion by an absolute decision of the legislature.
Elizabeth must have laid her account, if not with the disaffection of the catholic party, yet at least with their attachment to the Queen of Scots. But the extensive combination that appeared, in 1569, to bring about by force the Duke of Norfolk's marriage with that princess, might well startle her cabinet. In this combination Westmoreland and Northumberland, avowed catholics, Pembroke and Arundel, suspected ones, were mingled with Sussex and even Leicester, unquestioned protestants.
The Duke of Norfolk himself, greater and richer than any English subject, had gone such lengths in this conspiracy that his life became the just forfeit of his guilt and folly. It is almost impossible to pity this unhappy man, who lured by the most criminal ambition, after proclaiming the Queen of Scots a notorious adulteress and murderer, would have compassed a union with her at the hazard of his sovereign's crown, of the tranquillity and even independence of his country, and of the reformed religion.[202] There is abundant proof of his intrigues with the Duke of Alva, who had engaged to invade the kingdom. His trial was not indeed conducted in a manner that we can approve (such was the nature of state proceedings in that age), nor can it, I think, be denied that it formed a precedent of constructive treason not easily reconcilable with the statute; but much evidence is extant that his prosecutors did not adduce; and no one fell by a sentence more amply merited, or the execution of which was more indispensable.[203]
_Bull of Pius V._--Norfolk was the dupe throughout all this intrigue of more artful men; first of Murray and Lethington, who had filled his mind with ambitious hopes, and afterwards of Italian agents employed by Pius V. to procure a combination of the catholic party. Collateral to Norfolk's conspiracy, but doubtless connected with it, was that of the northern Earls of Northumberland and Westmoreland, long prepared, and perfectly foreseen by the government, of which the ostensible and manifest aim was the re-establishment of popery.[204] Pius V., who took a far more active part than his predecessor in English affairs, and had secretly instigated this insurrection, now published his celebrated bull, excommunicating and deposing Elizabeth, in order to second the efforts of her rebellious subjects.[205] This is, perhaps, with the exception of that issued by Sixtus V. against Mary IV. of France, the latest blast of that trumpet, which had thrilled the hearts of monarchs.
Yet there was nothing in the sound that bespoke declining vigour; even the illegitimacy of Elizabeth's birth is scarcely alluded to; and the pope seems to have chosen rather to tread the path of his predecessors, and absolve her subjects from their allegiance, as the just and necessary punishment of her heresy.
Since nothing so much strengthens any government as an unsuccessful endeavour to subvert it, it may be thought that the complete failure of the rebellion under the Earls of Northumberland and Westmoreland, with the detection and punishment of the Duke of Norfolk, rendered Elizabeth's throne more secure. But those events revealed the number of her enemies, or at least of those in whom no confidence could be reposed. The rebellion, though provided against by the ministry, and headed by two peers of great family but no personal weight, had not only assumed for a time a most formidable aspect in the north, but caused many to waver in other parts of the kingdom.[206] Even in Norfolk, an eminently protestant county, there was a slight insurrection in 1570, out of attachment to the duke.[207] If her greatest subject could thus be led astray from his faith and loyalty, if others not less near to her councils could unite with him in measures so contrary to her wishes and interests, on whom was she firmly to rely? Who, especially, could be trusted, were she to be snatched away from the world, for the maintenance of the protestant establishment under a yet unknown successor? This was the manifest and principal danger that her counsellors had to dread. Her own great reputation, and the respectful attachment of her people, might give reason to hope that no machinations would be successful against her crown; but let us reflect in what situation the kingdom would have been left by her death in a sudden illness, such as she had more than once experienced in earlier years, and again in 1571. "You must think," Lord Burleigh writes to Walsingham, on that occasion, "such a matter would drive me to the end of my wits."
And Sir Thomas Smith expresses his fears in equally strong language.[208] Such statesmen do not entertain apprehensions lightly.
Whom, in truth, could her privy council, on such an event, have resolved to proclaim? The house of Suffolk, had its right been more generally recognised than it was (Lady Catherine being now dead), presented no undoubted heir. The young King of Scotland, an alien and an infant, could only have reigned through a regency; and it might have been difficult to have selected from the English nobility a fit person to undertake that office, or at least one in whose elevation the rest would have acquiesced. It appears most probable that the numerous and powerful faction who had promoted Norfolk's union with Mary would have contrived again to remove her from her prison to the throne. Of such a revolution the disgrace of Cecil and of Elizabeth's wisest ministers must have been the immediate consequence; and it is probable that the restoration of the catholic worship would have ensued. These apprehensions prompted Cecil, Walsingham, and Smith to press the queen's marriage with the Duke of Anjou far more earnestly than would otherwise have appeared consistent with her interests. A union with any member of that perfidious court was repugnant to genuine protestant sentiments.
But the queen's absolute want of foreign alliances, and the secret hostility both of France and Spain, impressed Cecil with that deep sense of the perils of the time which his private letters so strongly bespeak.
A treaty was believed to have been concluded in 1567, to which the two last-mentioned powers, with the Emperor Maximilian and some other catholic princes, were parties, for the extirpation of the protestant religion.[209] No alliance that the court of Charles IX. could have formed with Elizabeth was likely to have diverted it from pursuing this object; and it may have been fortunate that her own insincerity saved her from being the dupe of those who practised it so well. Walsingham himself, sagacious as he was, fell into the snares of that den of treachery, giving credit to the young king's assurances almost on the very eve of St. Bartholomew.[210]
_Statutes for the queen's security._--The bull of Pius V., far more injurious in its consequences to those it was designed to serve than to Elizabeth, forms a leading epoch in the history of our English catholics. It rested upon a principle never universally acknowledged, and regarded with much jealousy by temporal governments, yet maintained in all countries by many whose zeal and ability rendered them formidable--the right vested in the supreme pontiff to depose kings for heinous crimes against the church. One Felton affixed this bull to the gates of the Bishop of London's palace, and suffered death for the offence. So audacious a manifestation of disloyalty was imputed with little justice to the catholics at large, but might more reasonably lie at the door of those active instruments of Rome, the English refugee priests and jesuits dispersed over Flanders and lately established at Douay, who were continually passing into the kingdom, not only to keep alive the precarious faith of the laity, but, as was generally surmised, to excite them against their sovereign.[211] This produced the act of 13 Eliz. c. 2; which, after reciting these mischiefs, enacts that all persons publishing any bull from Rome, or absolving and reconciling any one to the Romish church, or being so reconciled, should incur the penalties of high treason; and such as brought into the realm any crosses, pictures, or superstitious things consecrated by the pope or under his authority, should be liable to a premunire. Those who should conceal or connive at the offenders were to be held guilty of misprision of treason. This statute exposed the catholic priesthood, and in great measure the laity, to the continual risk of martyrdom; for so many had fallen away from their faith through a pliant spirit of conformity with the times, that the regular discipline would exact their absolution and reconciliation before they could be reinstated in the church's communion. Another act of the same session, manifestly levelled against the partisans of Mary, and even against herself, makes it high treason to affirm that the queen ought not to enjoy the crown, but some other person; or to publish that she is a heretic, schismatic, tyrant, infidel, or usurper of the crown; or to claim right to the crown, or to usurp the same during the queen's life; or to affirm that the laws and statutes do not bind the right of the crown, and the descent, limitation, inheritance, or governance thereof. And whosoever should during the queen's life, by any book or work written or printed, expressly affirm, before the same had been established by parliament, that any one particular person was or ought to be heir and successor to the queen, except the same be the natural issue of her body, or should print or utter any such book or writing, was for the first offence to be imprisoned a year, and to forfeit half his goods; and for the second to incur the penalties of a premunire.[212]
It is impossible to misunderstand the chief aim of this statute. But the House of Commons, in which the zealous protestants, or, as they were now rather denominated, puritans, had a predominant influence, were not content with these demonstrations against the unfortunate captive. Fear, as often happens, excited a sanguinary spirit amongst them; they addressed the queen upon what they called the great cause, that is, the business of the Queen of Scots, presenting by their committee reasons gathered out of the civil law to prove that "it standeth not only with justice, but also with the queen's majesty's honour and safety, to proceed criminally against the pretended Scottish queen."[213]
Elizabeth, who could not really dislike these symptoms of hatred towards her rival, took the opportunity of simulating more humanity than the Commons; and when they sent a bill to the upper house attainting Mary of treason, checked its course by proroguing the parliament. Her backwardness to concur in any measures for securing the kingdom, as far as in her lay, from those calamities which her decease might occasion, could not but displease Lord Burleigh. "All that we laboured for," he writes to Walsingham in 1572, "and had with full consent brought to fashion, I mean a law to make the Scottish queen unable and unworthy of succession to the crown, was by her majesty neither assented to nor rejected, but deferred." Some of those about her, he hints, made herself her own enemy by persuading her not to countenance these proceedings in parliament.[214] I do not think it admits of much question that, at this juncture, the civil and religious institutions of England would have been rendered more secure by Mary's exclusion from a throne, which indeed, after all that had occurred, she could not be endured to fill without national dishonour. But the violent measures suggested against her life were hardly, under all the circumstances of her case, to be reconciled with justice; even admitting her privity to the northern rebellion and to the projected invasion by the Duke of Alva. These however were not approved merely by an eager party in the Commons: Archbishop Parker does not scruple to write about her to Cecil--"If that only [one] desperate person were taken away, as by justice soon it might be, the queen's majesty's good subjects would be in better hope, and the papists' daily expectation vanquished."[215] And Walsingham, during his embassy at Paris, desires that "the queen should see how much they (the papists) built upon the possibility of that dangerous woman's coming to the crown of England, whose life was a step to her majesty's death;"
adding that "she was bound for her own safety and that of her subjects, to add to God's providence her own policy, so far as might stand with justice."[216]
_Catholics more rigorously treated._--We cannot wonder to read that these new statutes increased the dissatisfaction of the Roman catholics, who perceived a systematic determination to extirpate their religion.
Governments ought always to remember that the intimidation of a few disaffected persons is dearly bought by alienating any large portion of the community.[217] Many retired to foreign countries, and receiving for their maintenance pensions from the court of Spain, became unhappy instruments of its ambitious enterprises. Those who remained at home could hardly think their oppression much mitigated by the precarious indulgences which Elizabeth's caprice, or rather the fluctuation of different parties in her councils, sometimes extended to them. The queen indeed, so far as we can penetrate her dissimulation, seems to have been really averse to extreme rigour against her catholic subjects: and her greatest minister, as we shall more fully see afterwards, was at this time in the same sentiments. But such of her advisers as leaned towards the puritan faction, and too many of the Anglican clergy, whether puritan or not, thought no measure of charity or compassion should be extended to them. With the divines they were idolaters; with the council they were a dangerous and disaffected party; with the judges they were refractory transgressors of statutes; on every side they were obnoxious and oppressed. A few aged men having been set at liberty, Sampson, the famous puritan, himself a sufferer for conscience sake, wrote a letter of remonstrance to Lord Burleigh. He urged in this that they should be compelled to hear sermons, though he would not at first oblige them to communicate.[218] A bill having been introduced in the session of 1571 imposing a penalty for not receiving the communion, it was objected that consciences ought not to be forced. But Mr. Strickland entirely denied this principle, and quoted authorities against it.[219] Even Parker, by no means tainted with puritan bigotry, and who had been reckoned moderate in his proceedings towards catholics, complained of what he called "a Machiavel government;" that is, of the queen's lenity in not absolutely rooting them out.[220]
This indulgence, however, shown by Elizabeth, the topic of reproach in those times, and sometimes of boast in our own, never extended to any positive toleration, nor even to any general connivance at the Romish worship in its most private exercise. She published a declaration in 1570, that she did not intend to sift men's consciences, provided they observed her laws by coming to church; which, as she well knew, the greater part deemed inconsistent with their integrity.[221] Nor did the government always abstain from an inquisition into men's private thoughts. The inns of court were more than once purified of popery by examining their members on articles of faith. Gentlemen of good families in the country were harassed in the same manner.[222] One Sir Richard Shelley, who had long acted as a sort of spy for Cecil on the continent, and given much useful information, requested only leave to enjoy his religion without hindrance; but the queen did not accede to this without much reluctance and delay.[223] She had indeed assigned no other ostensible pretext for breaking off her own treaty of marriage with the Archduke Charles, and subsequently with the Dukes of Anjou and Alencon, than her determination not to suffer the mass to be celebrated even in her husband's private chapel. It is worthy to be repeatedly inculcated on the reader, since so false a colour has been often employed to disguise the ecclesiastical tyranny of this reign, that the most clandestine exercise of the Romish worship was severely punished. Thus we read in the life of Whitgift, that on information given that some ladies and others heard mass in the house of one Edwards by night, in the county of Denbigh, he being then Bishop of Worcester and Vice-President of Wales, was directed to make inquiry into the facts; and finally was instructed to commit Edwards to close prison, and as for another person implicated, named Morice, "if he remained obstinate, he might cause some kind of torture to be used upon him, and the like order they prayed him to use with the others."[224] But this is one of many instances, the events of every day, forgotten on the morrow, and of which no general historian takes account. Nothing but the minute and patient diligence of such a compiler as Strype, who thinks no fact below his regard, could have preserved them from oblivion.[225]
It will not surprise those who have observed the effect of all persecution for matters of opinion upon the human mind, that during this period the Romish party continued such in numbers and in zeal as to give the most lively alarm to Elizabeth's administration. One cause of this was beyond doubt the connivance of justices of the peace, a great many of whom were secretly attached to the same interest, though it was not easy to exclude them from the commission, on account of their wealth and respectability.[226] The facility with which catholic rites can be performed in secret, as before observed, was a still more important circumstance. Nor did the voluntary exiles established in Flanders remit their diligence in filling the kingdom with emissaries. The object of many at least among them, it cannot for a moment be doubted, from the aera of the bull of Pius V., if not earlier, was nothing less than to subvert the queen's throne. They were closely united with the court of Spain, which had passed from the character of an ally and pretended friend, to that of a cold and jealous neighbour, and at length of an implacable adversary. Though no war had been declared between Elizabeth and Philip, neither party had scrupled to enter into leagues with the disaffected subjects of the other. Such sworn vassals of Rome and Spain as an Allen or a Persons, were just objects of the English government's distrust: it is the extension of that jealousy to the peaceful and loyal which we stigmatise as oppressive, and even as impolitic.[227]
_Fresh laws against the catholic worship._--In concert with the directing powers of the Vatican and Escurial, the refugees redoubled their exertions about the year 1580. Mary was now wearing out her years in hopeless captivity; her son, though they did not lose hope of him, had received a strictly protestant education; while a new generation had grown up in England, rather inclined to diverge more widely from the ancient religion than to suffer its restoration. Such were they who formed the House of Commons that met in 1581, discontented with the severities used against the puritans, but ready to go beyond any measures that the court might propose to subdue and extirpate popery.
Here an act was passed, which, after repeating the former provisions that had made it high treason to reconcile any of her majesty's subjects, or to be reconciled to the church of Rome, imposes a penalty of 20 a month on all persons absenting themselves from church, unless they shall hear the English service at home: such as could not pay the same within three months after judgment were to be imprisoned until they should conform. The queen, by a subsequent act, had the power of seizing two-thirds of the party's land, and all his goods, for default of payment.[228] These grievous penalties on recusancy, as the wilful absence of catholics from church came now to be denominated, were doubtless founded on the extreme difficulty of proving an actual celebration of their own rites. But they established a persecution which fell not at all short in principle of that for which the inquisition had become so odious. Nor were the statutes merely designed for terror's sake, to keep a check over the disaffected, as some would pretend. They were executed in the most sweeping and indiscriminating manner, unless perhaps a few families of high rank might enjoy a connivance.[229]
_Execution of Campian and others._--It had certainly been the desire of Elizabeth to abstain from capital punishments on the score of religion.
The first instance of a priest suffering death by her statutes was in 1577, when one Mayne was hanged at Launceston, without any charge against him except his religion, and a gentleman who had harboured him was sentenced to imprisonment for life.[230] In the next year, if we may trust the zealous catholic writers, Thomas Sherwood, a boy of fourteen years, was executed for refusing to deny the temporal power of the pope, when urged by his judges.[231] But in 1581 several seminary priests from Flanders having been arrested, whose projects were supposed (perhaps not wholly without foundation) to be very inconsistent with their allegiance, it was unhappily deemed necessary to hold out some more conspicuous examples of rigour. Of those brought to trial the most eminent was Campian, formerly a protestant, but long known as the boast of Douay for his learning and virtues.[232] This man, so justly respected, was put to the rack, and revealed through torture the names of some catholic gentlemen with whom he had conversed.[233] He appears to have been indicted along with several other priests, not on the recent statutes, but on that of 25 Edw. III. for compassing and imagining the queen's death. Nothing that I have read affords the slightest proof of Campian's concern in treasonable practices, though his connections, and profession as a jesuit, render it by no means unlikely. If we may confide in the published trial, the prosecution was as unfairly conducted, and supported by as slender evidence, as any perhaps which can be found in our books.[234] But as this account, wherein Campian's language is full of a dignified eloquence, rather seems to have been compiled by a partial hand, its faithfulness may not be above suspicion. For the same reason I hesitate to admit his alleged declarations at the place of execution, where, as well as at his trial, he is represented to have expressly acknowledged Elizabeth, and to have prayed for her as his queen _de facto_ and _de jure_. For this was one of the questions propounded to him before his trial, which he refused to answer, in such a manner as betrayed his way of thinking. Most of those interrogated at the same time, on being pressed whether the queen was their lawful sovereign whom they were bound to obey, notwithstanding any sentence of deprivation that the pope might pronounce, endeavoured, like Campian, to evade the snare. A few, who unequivocally disclaimed the deposing power of the Roman see, were pardoned.[235] It is more honourable to Campian's memory that we should reject these pretended declarations, than imagine him to have made them at the expense of his consistency and integrity. For the pope's right to deprive kings of their crowns was in that age the common creed of the jesuits, to whose order Campian belonged; and the continent was full of writings published by the English exiles, by Sanders, Bristow, Persons, and Allen, against Elizabeth's unlawful usurpation of the throne. But many availed themselves of what was called an explanation of the bull of Pius V., given by his successor Gregory XIII.; namely, that the bull should be considered as always in force against Elizabeth and the heretics, but should only be binding on catholics when due execution of it could be had.[236] This was designed to satisfy the consciences of some papists in submitting to her government, and taking the oath of allegiance. But in thus granting a permission to dissemble, in hope of better opportunity for revolt, this interpretation was not likely to tranquillise her council, or conciliate them towards the Romish party.
The distinction, however, between a king by possession and one by right, was neither heard for the first, nor for the last time, in the reign of Elizabeth. It is the lot of every government that is not founded on the popular opinion of legitimacy, to receive only a precarious allegiance.
Subject to this reservation, which was pretty generally known, it does not appear that the priests or other Roman catholics, examined at various times during this reign, are more chargeable with insincerity or dissimulation than accused persons generally are.
The public executions, numerous as they were, scarcely form the most odious part of this persecution. The common law of England has always abhorred the accursed mysteries of a prison-house; and neither admits of torture to extort confession, nor of any penal infliction not warranted by a judicial sentence. But this law, though still sacred in the courts of justice, was set aside by the privy council under the Tudor line. The rack seldom stood idle in the Tower for all the latter part of Elizabeth's reign.[237] To those who remember the annals of their country, that dark and gloomy pile affords associations not quite so numerous and recent as the Bastile, yet enough to excite our hatred and horror. But standing as it does in such striking contrast to the fresh and flourishing constructions of modern wealth, the proofs and the rewards of civil and religious liberty, it seems like a captive tyrant, reserved to grace the triumph of a victorious republic, and should teach us to reflect in thankfulness, how highly we have been elevated in virtue and happiness above our forefathers.
Such excessive severities under the pretext of treason, but sustained by very little evidence of any other offence than the exercise of the catholic ministry, excited indignation throughout a great part of Europe. The queen was held forth in pamphlets, dispersed everywhere from Rome and Douay, not only as a usurper and heretic, but a tyrant more ferocious than any heathen persecutor, for inadequate parallels to whom they ransacked all former history.[238] These exaggerations, coming from the very precincts of the inquisition, required the unblushing forehead of bigotry; but the charge of cruelty stood on too many facts to be passed over, and it was thought expedient to repel it by two remarkable pamphlets, both ascribed to the pen of Lord Burleigh.
_Defence of the queen, by Burleigh._--One of these, entitled "The Execution of Justice in England for Maintenance of public and private Peace," appears to have been published in 1583. It contains an elaborate justification of the late prosecutions for treason, as no way connected with religious tenets, but grounded on the ancient laws for protection of the queen's person and government from conspiracy. It is alleged that a vast number of catholics, whether of the laity or priesthood, among whom the deprived bishops are particularly enumerated, had lived unmolested on the score of their faith, because they paid due temporal allegiance to their sovereign. Nor were any indicted for treason, but such as obstinately maintained the pope's bull depriving the queen of her crown. And even of these offenders, as many as after condemnation would renounce their traitorous principles, had been permitted to live; such was her majesty's unwillingness, it is asserted, to have any blood spilled without this just and urgent cause proceeding from themselves.
But that any matter of opinion, not proved to have ripened into an overt act, and extorted only, or rather conjectured, through a compulsive inquiry, could sustain in law or justice a conviction for high treason, is what the author of this pamphlet has not rendered manifest.[239]
A second and much shorter paper bears for title, "A Declaration of the favourable dealing of her Majesty's Commissioners, appointed for the examination of certain traitors, and of tortures unjustly reported to be done upon them for matter of religion." Its scope was to palliate the imputation of excessive cruelty with which Europe was then resounding.
Those who revere the memory of Lord Burleigh must blush for this pitiful apology. "It is affirmed for truth," he says, "that the forms of torture in their severity or rigour of execution have not been such and in such manner performed, as the slanderers and seditious libellers have published. And that even the principal offender, Campian himself, who was sent and came from Rome, and continued here in sundry corners of the realm, having secretly wandered in the greater part of the shires of England in a disguised suit, to be intent to make special preparation of treasons, was never so racked but that he was perfectly able to walk and to write, and did presently write and subscribe all his confessions. The queen's servants, the warders, whose office and act it is to handle the rack, were ever by those that attended the examinations specially charged to use it in so charitable a manner as such a thing might be.
None of those who were at any time put to the rack," he proceeds to assert, "were asked, during their torture, any question as to points of doctrine; but merely concerning their plots and conspiracies, and the persons with whom they had had dealings, and what was their own opinion as to the pope's right to deprive the queen of her crown. Nor was any one so racked until it was rendered evidently probable by former detections or confessions that he was guilty; nor was the torture ever employed to wring out confessions at random; nor unless the party had first refused to declare the truth at the queen's commandment." Such miserable excuses serve only to mingle contempt with our detestation.[240] But it is due to Elizabeth to observe, that she ordered the torture to be disused; and upon a subsequent occasion, the quartering of some concerned in Babington's conspiracy having been executed with unusual cruelty, gave directions that the rest should not be taken down from the gallows until they were dead.[241]
I should be reluctant, but for the consent of several authorities, to ascribe this little tract to Lord Burleigh, for his honour's sake. But we may quote with more satisfaction a memorial addressed by him to the queen about the same year, 1583, full not only of sagacious, but just and tolerant advice. "Considering," he says, "that the urging of the oath of supremacy must needs, in some degree, beget despair, since in the taking of it, he [the papist] must either think he doth an unlawful act, as without the special grace of God he cannot think otherwise, or else, by refusing it, must become a traitor, which before some hurt done seemeth hard; I humbly submit this to your excellent consideration, whether, with as much security of your majesty's person and state, and more satisfaction for them, it were not better to leave the oath to this sense, that whosoever would not bear arms against all foreign princes, and namely the pope, that should any way invade your majesty's dominions, he should be a traitor. For hereof this commodity will ensue, that those papists, as I think most papists would, that should take this oath, would be divided from the great mutual confidence which is now between the pope and them, by reason of their afflictions for him; and such priests as would refuse that oath then, no tongue could say for shame that they suffer for religion, if they did suffer.
"But here it may be objected, they would dissemble and equivocate with this oath, and that the pope would dispense with them in that case. Even so may they with the present oath both dissemble and equivocate, and also have the pope's dispensation for the present oath, as well as for the other. But this is certain, that whomsoever the conscience, or fear of breaking an oath, both bind, him would that oath bind. And that they make conscience of an oath, the trouble, losses, and disgraces that they suffer for refusing the same do sufficiently testify; and you know that the perjury of either oath is equal."
These sentiments are not such as bigoted theologians were then, or have been since, accustomed to entertain. "I account," he says afterwards, "that putting to death does no ways lessen them; since we find by experience, that it worketh no such effect, but, like hydra's heads, upon cutting off one, seven grow up, persecution being accounted as the badge of the church: and therefore they should never have the honour to take any pretence of martyrdom in England, where the fullness of blood and greatness of heart is such that they will even for shameful things go bravely for death; much more, when they think themselves to climb heaven, and this vice of obstinacy seems to the common people a divine constancy; so that for my part I wish no lessening of their number, but by preaching and by education of the younger under schoolmasters." And hence the means he recommends for keeping down popery, after the encouragement of diligent preachers and schoolmasters, are, "the taking order that, from the highest counsellor to the lowest constable, none shall have any charge or office but such as will really pray and communicate in their congregation according to the doctrine received generally into this realm;" and next, the protection of tenants against their popish landlords, "that they be not put out of their living, for embracing the established religion."--"This," he says, "would greatly bind the commons' hearts unto you, in whom indeed consisteth the power and strength of your realm; and it will make them less, or nothing at all, depend on their landlords. And, although there may hereby grow some wrong, which the tenants upon that confidence may offer to their landlords, yet those wrongs are very easily, even with one wink of your majesty's, redressed; and are nothing comparable to the danger of having many thousands depending on the adverse party."[242]
_Increased severity of the government._--The strictness used with recusants, which much increased from 1579 or 1580, had the usual consequence of persecution, that of multiplying hypocrites. For, in fact, if men will once bring themselves to comply, to take all oaths, to practise all conformity, to oppose simulation and dissimulation to arbitrary inquiries, it is hardly possible that any government should not be baffled. Fraud becomes an over-match for power. The real danger meanwhile, the internal disaffection, remains as before, or is aggravated. The laws enacted against popery were precisely calculated to produce this result. Many indeed, especially of the female sex, whose religion, lying commonly more in sentiment than reason, is less ductile to the sophisms of worldly wisdom, stood out and endured the penalties.
But the oath of supremacy was not refused; the worship of the church was frequented by multitudes who secretly repined for a change; and the council, whose fear of open enmity had prompted their first severities, were led on by the fear of dissembled resentment to devise yet further measures of the same kind. Hence, in 1584, a law was enacted, enjoining all jesuits, seminary priests, and other priests, whether ordained within or without the kingdom, to depart from it within forty days, on pain of being adjudged traitors. The penalty of fine and imprisonment at the queen's pleasure was inflicted on such as, knowing any priest to be within the realm, should not discover it to a magistrate. This seemed to fill up the measure of prosecution, and to render the longer preservation of this obnoxious religion absolutely impracticable. Some of its adherents presented a petition against this bill, praying that they might not be suspected of disloyalty on account of refraining from the public worship, which they did to avoid sin; and that their priests might not be banished from the kingdom.[243] And they all very justly complained of this determined oppression. The queen, without any fault of theirs, they alleged, had been alienated by the artifices of Leicester and Walsingham. Snares were laid to involve them unawares in the guilt of treason; their steps were watched by spies; and it was become intolerable to continue in England. Camden indeed asserts that counterfeit letters were privately sent in the name of the Queen of Scots or of the exiles, and left in papists' houses.[244] A general inquisition seems to have been made about this time; but whether it was founded on sufficient grounds of previous suspicion, we cannot absolutely determine. The Earl of Northumberland, brother of him who had been executed for the rebellion of 1570, and the Earl of Arundel, son of the unfortunate Duke of Norfolk, were committed to the Tower, where the former put an end to his own life (for we cannot charge the government with an unproved murder); and the second, after being condemned for a traitorous correspondence with the queen's enemies, died in that custody. But whether or no some conspiracies (I mean more active than usual, for there was one perpetual conspiracy of Rome and Spain during most of the queen's reign), had preceded these severe and unfair methods by which her ministry counteracted them, it was not long before schemes, more formidable than ever, were put in action against her life. As the whole body of catholics was irritated and alarmed by the laws of proscription against their clergy, and by the heavy penalties on recusancy, which, as they alleged, showed a manifest purpose to reduce them to poverty;[245] so some desperate men saw no surer means to rescue their cause than the queen's assassination. One Somerville, half a lunatic, and Parry, a man who, long employed as a spy upon the papists, had learned to serve with sincerity those he was sent to betray, were the first who suffered death for unconnected plots against Elizabeth's life.[246]
_Plot in favour of Mary._--More deep-laid machinations were carried on by several catholic laymen at home and abroad, among whom a brother of Lord Paget was the most prominent.[247] These had in view two objects, the deliverance of Mary, and the death of her enemy. Some perhaps who were engaged in the former project did not give countenance to the latter. But few, if any, ministers have been better served by their spies than Cecil and Walsingham. It is surprising to see how every letter seems to have been intercepted, every thread of these conspiracies unravelled, every secret revealed to these wise counsellors of the queen. They saw that while one lived, whom so many deemed the presumptive heir, and from whose succession they anticipated, at least in possibility, an entire reversal of all that had been wrought for thirty years, the queen was as a mark for the pistol or dagger of every zealot. And fortunate, no question, they thought it, that the detection of Babington's conspiracy enabled them with truth, or a semblance of truth, to impute a participation in that crime to the most dangerous enemy whom, for their mistress, their religion, or themselves, they had to apprehend.
Mary had now consumed the best years of her life in custody; and, though still the perpetual object of the queen's vigilance, had perhaps gradually become somewhat less formidable to the protestant interest.
Whether she would have ascended the throne, if Elizabeth had died during the latter years of her imprisonment, must appear very doubtful, when we consider the increasing strength of the puritans, the antipathy of the nation to Spain, the prevailing opinion of her consent to Darnley's murder, and the obvious expedient of treating her son, now advancing to manhood, as the representative of her claim. The new projects imputed to her friends even against the queen's life, exasperated the hatred of the protestants against Mary. An association was formed in 1584, the members of which bound themselves by oath "to withstand and pursue, as well by force of arms as by all other means of revenge, all manner of persons, of whatsoever state they shall be and their abettors, that shall attempt any act, or counsel, or consent to anything that shall tend to the harm of her majesty's royal person; and never to desist from all manner of forcible pursuit against such persons, to the utter extermination of them, their counsellors, aiders, and abettors. And if any such wicked attempt against her most royal person shall be taken in hand or procured, whereby any that have, may or shall pretend title to come to this crown by the untimely death of her majesty so wickedly procured (which God of his mercy forbid!), that the same may be avenged, we do not only bind ourselves both jointly and severally never to allow, accept, or favour any such pretended successor, by whom or for whom any such detestable act shall be attempted or committed, as unworthy of all government in any christian realm or civil state, but do also further vow and promise, as we are most bound, and that in the presence of the eternal and everlasting God, to _prosecute such person or persons to death_, with our joint and particular forces, and to act the utmost revenge upon them, that by any means we or any of us can devise and do, or cause to be devised and done for their utter overthrow and extirpation."[248]
_Execution of Mary Queen of Scots._--The pledge given by this voluntary association received the sanction of parliament in an act "for the security of the queen's person, and continuance of the realm in peace."
This statute enacts that, if any invasion or rebellion should be made by or for any person pretending title to the crown after her majesty's decease, or if anything be confessed or imagined tending to the hurt of her person with the privity of any such person, a number of peers, privy counsellors, and judges, to be commissioned by the queen, should examine and give judgment on such offences, and all circumstances relating thereto; after which judgment all persons against whom it should be published should be disabled for ever to make any such claim.[249] I omit some further provisions to the same effect, for the sake of brevity. But we may remark that this statute differs from the associators' engagement, in omitting the outrageous threat of pursuing to death any person, whether privy or not to the design, on whose behalf an attempt against the queen's life should be made. The main intention of the statute was to procure, in the event of any rebellious movements, what the queen's counsellors had long ardently desired to obtain from her, an absolute exclusion of Mary from the succession. But, if the scheme of assassination, devised by some of her desperate partisans, had taken effect, however questionable might be her concern in it, I have little doubt that the rage of the nation would, with or without some process of law, have instantly avenged it in her blood. This was, in the language of parliament, their great cause; an expression which, though it may have an ultimate reference to the general interest of religion is never applied, so far as I remember, but to the punishment of Mary, which they had demanded in 1572, and now clamoured for in 1586. The addresses of both houses to the queen, to carry the sentence passed by the commissioners into effect, her evasive answers and feigned reluctance, as well as the strange scenes of hypocrisy which she acted afterwards, are well known matters of history, upon which it is unnecessary to dwell. No one will be found to excuse the hollow affectation of Elizabeth; but the famous sentence that brought Mary to the scaffold, though it has certainly left in popular opinion a darker stain on the queen's memory than any other transaction of her life, if not capable of complete vindication, has at least encountered a disproportioned censure.
It is of course essential to any kind of apology for Elizabeth in this matter, that Mary should have been assenting to a conspiracy against her life. For it could be no real crime to endeavour at her own deliverance; nor, under the circumstances of so long and so unjust a detention, would even a conspiracy against the aggressor's power afford a moral justification for her death. But though the proceedings against her are by no means exempt from the shameful breach of legal rules, almost universal in trials for high treason during that reign (the witnesses not having been examined in open court); yet the depositions of her two secretaries, joined to the confessions of Babington and other conspirators, form a body of evidence, not indeed irresistibly convincing, but far stronger than we find in many instances where condemnation has ensued. And Hume has alleged sufficient reasons for believing its truth, derived from the great probability of her concurring in any scheme against her oppressor, from the certainty of her long correspondence with the conspirators (who, I may add, had not made any difficulty of hinting to her their designs against the queen's life),[250] and from the deep guilt that the falsehood of the charge must inevitably attach to Sir Francis Walsingham.[251] Those at least who cannot acquit the Queen of Scots of her husband's murder, will hardly imagine that she would scruple to concur in a crime so much more capable of extenuation, and so much more essential to her interests. But as the proofs are not perhaps complete, we must hypothetically assume her guilt, in order to set this famous problem in the casuistry of public law upon its proper footing.
It has been said so often, that few perhaps wait to reflect whether it has been said with reason, that Mary, as an independent sovereign, was not amenable to any English jurisdiction. This, however, does not appear unquestionable. By one of those principles of law, which may be called natural, as forming the basis of a just and rational jurisprudence, every independent government is supreme within its own territory.
Strangers, voluntarily resident within a state, owe a temporary allegiance to its sovereign, and are amenable to the jurisdiction of his tribunals; and this principle, which is perfectly conformable to natural law, has been extended by positive usage even to those who are detained in it by force. Instances have occurred very recently in England, when prisoners of war have suffered death for criminal offences; and if some have doubted the propriety of carrying such sentences into effect, where a penalty of unusual severity has been inflicted by our municipal law, few, I believe, would dispute the fitness of punishing a prisoner of war for wilful murder, in such a manner as the general practice of civil societies and the prevailing sentiments of mankind agree to point out. It is certainly true that an exception to this rule, incorporated with the positive law of nations, and established, no doubt, before the age of Elizabeth, has rendered the ambassadors of sovereign princes exempt, in all ordinary cases at least, from criminal process. Whether, however, an ambassador may not be brought to punishment for such a flagrant abuse of the confidence which is implied by receiving him, as a conspiracy against the life itself of the prince at whose court he resides, has been doubted by those writers who are most inclined to respect the privileges with which courtesy and convenience have invested him.[252] A sovereign, during a temporary residence in the territories of another, must of course possess as extensive an immunity as his representative. But that he might, in such circumstances, frame plots for the prince's assassination with impunity, seems to take for granted some principle that I do not apprehend.
But whatever be the privilege of inviolability attached to sovereigns, it must, on every rational ground, be confined to those who enjoy and exercise dominion in some independent territory. An abdicated or dethroned monarch may preserve his title by the courtesy of other states, but cannot rank with sovereigns in the tribunals where public law is administered. I should be rather surprised to hear any one assert that the parliament of Paris was incompetent to try Christina for the murder of Monaldeschi. And, though we must admit that Mary's resignation of her crown was compulsory, and retracted on the first occasion; yet after a twenty years' loss of possession, when not one of her former subjects avowed allegiance to her, when the King of Scotland had been so long acknowledged by England and by all Europe, is it possible to consider her as more than a titular queen, divested of every substantial right to which a sovereign tribunal could have regard? She was styled accordingly, in the indictment, "Mary, daughter and heir of James the Fifth, late King of Scots, otherwise called Mary Queen of Scots, dowager of France." We read even that some lawyers would have had her tried by a jury of the county of Stafford, rather than the special commission; which Elizabeth noticed as a strange indignity. The commission, however, was perfectly legal under the recent statute.[253]
But, while we can hardly pronounce Mary's execution to have been so wholly iniquitous and unwarrantable as it has been represented, it may be admitted that a more generous nature than that of Elizabeth would not have exacted the law's full penalty. The Queen of Scots' detention in England was in violation of all natural, public, and municipal law; and if reasons of state policy or precedents from the custom of princes are allowed to extenuate this injustice, it is to be asked whether such reasons and such precedents might not palliate the crime of assassination imputed to her. Some might perhaps allege, as was so frequently urged at the time, that if her life could be taken with justice, it could not be spared in prudence; and that Elizabeth's higher duty to preserve her people from the risks of civil commotion must silence every feeling that could plead for mercy. Of this necessity different judgments may perhaps be formed; it is evident that Mary's death extinguished the best hope of popery in England: but the relative force of the two religions was greatly changed since Norfolk's conspiracy; and it appears to me that an act of parliament explicitly cutting her off from the crown, and at the same time entailing it on her son, would have afforded a very reasonable prospect of securing the succession against all serious disturbance. But this neither suited the inclination of Elizabeth, nor of some among those who surrounded her.
_Continued persecution of Roman catholics_.--As the catholics endured without any open murmuring the execution of her on whom their fond hopes had so long rested, so for the remainder of the queen's reign they by no means appear, when considered as a body, to have furnished any specious pretexts for severity. In that memorable year, when the dark cloud gathered around our coasts, when Europe stood by in fearful suspense to behold what should be the result of that great cast in the game of human politics, what the craft of Rome, the power of Philip, the genius of Farnese, could achieve against the island-queen with her Drakes and Cecils--in that agony of the protestant faith and English name, they stood the trial of their spirits without swerving from their allegiance.
It was then that the catholics in every county repaired to the standard of the lord-lieutenant, imploring that they might not be suspected of bartering the national independence for their religion itself. It was then that the venerable Lord Montague brought a troop of horse to the queen at Tilbury, commanded by himself, his son and grandson.[254] It would have been a sign of gratitude if the laws depriving them of the free exercise of their religion had been, if not repealed, yet suffered to sleep, after these proofs of loyalty. But the execution of priests and of other catholics became on the contrary more frequent, and the fines for recusancy exacted as rigorously as before.[255] A statute was enacted, restraining popish recusants, a distinctive nam