Kitabı oku: «Memoirs of the Court of Queen Elizabeth», sayfa 25

CHAPTER XVI

1568 TO 1570

Proceedings of the commissioners at York in the cause of Mary.—Intrigues of the duke of Norfolk with the regent Murray.—The conferences transferred to Westminster.—Mary's guilt disclosed.—Fresh intrigues of Norfolk.—Conspiracy for procuring his marriage with Mary.—Conduct of Throgmorton.—Attempt to ruin Cecil baffled by the queen.—Endeavour of Sussex to reconcile Norfolk and Cecil.—Norfolk betrayed by Leicester—his plot revealed—committed to the Tower.—Mary given in charge to the earl of Huntingdon.—Remarks on this subject.—Notice of Leonard Dacre—of the earls of Westmorland and Northumberland.—Their rebellion.—Particulars of the Norton family.—Severities exercised against the rebels.—Conduct of the earl of Sussex.—Rising under Leonard Dacre.—His after-fortunes and those of his family.—Expedition of the earl of Sussex into Scotland.—Murder of regent Murray.—Influence of this event on the affairs of Elizabeth.—Campaign in Scotland.—Papal bull against the queen.—Trifling effect produced by it.—Attachment of the people to her government.

The three commissioners named by Elizabeth to sit as judges in the great cause between Mary and her subjects, of which she had been named the umpire, were the duke of Norfolk, the earl of Sussex, and sir Ralph Sadler, a very able negotiator and man of business. On the part of the Scottish nation, the regent Murray, fearing to trust the cause in other hands, appeared in person, attended by several men of talent and consequence. The situation of Mary herself was not more critical or more unprecedented, and scarcely more humiliating, than that in which Murray was placed by her appeal to Elizabeth. Acting on behalf of the infant king his nephew, he saw himself called upon to submit to the tribunal of a foreign sovereign such proofs of the atrocious guilt of the queen his sister; as should justify in the eyes of this sovereign, and in those of Europe, the degradation of Mary from the exalted station which she was born to fill, her imprisonment, her violent expulsion from the kingdom, and her future banishment or captivity for life:—an attempt in which, though successful, there was both disgrace to himself and detriment to the honor and independence of his country; and from which, if unsuccessful, he could contemplate nothing but certain ruin. Struck with all the evils of this dilemma; with the danger of provoking beyond forgiveness his own queen, whose restoration he still regarded as no improbable event, and with the imprudence of relying implicitly on the dubious protection of Elizabeth, Murray long hesitated to bring forward the only charge dreaded by the illustrious prisoner,—that of having conspired with Bothwell the murder of her husband.

In the mean time Maitland, a Scottish commissioner secretly attached to Mary, found means to open a private communication with the duke of Norfolk, and to suggest to this nobleman, now a widower for the third time, the project of obtaining for himself the hand of Mary, and of replacing her by force on the throne of her ancestors. The vanity of Norfolk, artfully worked upon by the bishop of Ross, Mary's prime agent, caused him to listen with complacency to this rash proposal; and having once consented to entertain it, he naturally became earnest to prevent Murray from preferring that heinous accusation which he had at length apprized the English commissioners that he was provided with ample means of substantiating. After some deliberation on the means of effecting this object, he accordingly resolved upon the step of discovering his views to the regent himself, and endeavouring to obtain his concurrence. Murray, who seems to have felt little confidence in the stability of the government of which he was the present head, and who judged perhaps that the return of the queen as the wife of an English protestant nobleman would afford the best prospect of safety to himself and his party, readily acceded to the proposal, and consented still to withhold the "damning proofs" of Mary's guilt which he held in his hand.

But neither the Scottish associates of Murray nor the English cabinet were disposed to rest satisfied with this feeble and temporizing conduct. Mary's commissioners too, emboldened by his apparent timidity, of which the motives were probably not known to them all, began to push their advantage in a manner which threatened final defeat to his party: the queen of England artfuly incited him to proceed; and in spite of his secret engagements with the duke and his own reluctance, he at length saw himself compelled to let fall the long suspended stroke on the head of Mary. He applied to the English court for encouragement and protection in his perilous enterprise; and Elizabeth, being at length suspicious of the intrigue which had hitherto baffled all her expectations from the conferences at York, suddenly gave orders for the removal of the queen of Scots from Bolton-castle and the superintendence of lord Scrope, the duke's brother-in-law, to the more secure situation of Tutbury-castle in Staffordshire and the vigilant custody of the earl of Shrewsbury. At the same time she found pretexts for transferring the conferences from York to Westminster, and added to the number of her commissioners sir Nicholas Bacon, lord-keeper, the earls of Arundel and Leicester, lord Clinton, and Cecil.

Anxious to preserve an air of impartiality, Elizabeth declined giving to the regent all the assurances for his future security which he required; but on his arrival in London she extended to him a reception equally kind and respectful, and by alternate caresses and hints of intimidation she gradually led him on to the production of the fatal casket containing the letters of Mary to Bothwell, by which her participation in the murder of her husband was clearly proved.

After steps on the part of his sovereign from which the duke might have inferred her knowledge of his secret machinations; after discoveries respecting the conduct of Mary which impeached her of guilt so heinous, and covered her with infamy so indelible; prudence and honor alike required that he should abandon for ever the thought of linking his destiny with hers. But in the light and unbalanced mind of Norfolk, the ambition of matching with royalty unfortunately prepon derated over all other considerations: he speedily began to weave anew the tissue of intrigue which the removal of the conferences had broken off; and turning once more with fond credulity to Murray, by whom his cause had been before deserted, he again put confidence in his assurances that the marriage-project had his hearty approbation, and should receive his effectual support. Melvil informs us that this fresh compact was brought about by sir Nicholas Throgmorton, "being a man of a deep reach and great prudence and discretion, who had ever travelled for the union of this isle." But notwithstanding his "deep reach," he was certainly imposed upon in this affair; for the regent, insincere perhaps from the beginning, had now no other object than to secure his present personal safety by lavishing promises which he had no intention to fulfil. Melvil, who attended him on his return to Scotland, thus explains the secret of his conduct: "At that time the duke commanded over all the north parts of England, where our mistress was kept, and so might have taken her out when he pleased. And when he was angry at the regent, he had appointed the earl of Westmorland to lie in his way, and cut off himself and so many of his company as were most bent upon the queen's accusation. But after the last agreement, the duke sent and discharged the said earl from doing us any harm; yet upon our return the earl came in our way with a great company of horse, to signify to us that we were at his mercy."

It is difficult to believe, notwithstanding this po sitive testimony, that the duke of Norfolk, a man of mild dispositions and guided in the main by religion and conscience, would have hazarded, or would not have scrupled, so atrocious, so inexpiable an act of violence, as that of cutting off the regent of Scotland returning to his own country under sanction of the public faith and the express protection of the queen: but he may have indulged himself in vague menaces, which Westmorland, a bigoted papist, ripe for rebellion against the government of Elizabeth, would have felt little reluctance to carry into effect, and thus the regent's duplicity might in fact be prompted and excused to himself by a principle of self-defence.

Whatever degree of confidence Norfolk and his advisers might place in Murray's sincerity, they were well aware that other steps must be taken, and other confederates engaged, before the grand affair of the marriage could be put in a train to ensure its final success. There was no immediate prospect of Mary's regaining her liberty by means of the queen of England, or with her concurrence; for since the production of the great charge against her, to which she had instructed her commissioners to decline making any answer, Elizabeth had regarded her as one who had suffered judgement to go against her by default, and began to treat her accordingly. Her confinement was rendered more rigorous, and henceforth the still pending negotiations respecting her return to her own country were carried on with a slackness which evidently proceeded from the dread of Mary, and the reluctance of Elizabeth, to bring to a decided determination a business which could not now be ended either with credit or advantage to the deposed queen.

Elizabeth had dismissed the regent to his government without open approbation of his conduct as without censure; but he had received from her in private an important supply of money, and such other effectual aids as not only served to establish the present preponderance of his authority, but would enable him, it was thought, successfully to withstand all future attempts for the restoration of Mary. Evidently then it was only by the raising of a formidable party in the English court that any thing could be effected in behalf of the royal captive; but her agents and those of the duke assured themselves that ample means were in their hands for setting this machine in action.

Elizabeth, it was now thought, would not marry: the queen of Scots was generally admitted to be her legal heir; and it appeared highly important to the welfare of England that she should not transfer her claims, with her hand, to any of the more powerful princes of Europe; consequently the duke entertained little doubt of uniting in favor of his suit the suffrages of all those leading characters in the English court who had formerly conveyed to Mary assurances of their attachment to her title and interests. His own influence amongst the nobility was very considerable, and he readily obtained the concurrence of the earl of Pembroke, the earl of Arundel (his first wife's father), and lord Lumley (a catholic peer closely connected with the house of Howard). The design was now im parted to Leicester, who entered into it with an ostentation of affectionate zeal which ought perhaps to have alarmed the too credulous duke. As if impatient to give an undeniable pledge of his sincerity, he undertook to draw up with his own hand a letter to the queen of Scots, warmly recommending the duke to her matrimonial choice, which immediately received the signatures of the three nobles above mentioned and the rest of the confederates. By these subscribers it was distinctly stipulated, that the union should not take place without the knowledge and approbation of the queen of England, and that the reformed religion should be maintained in both the British kingdoms;—conditions by which they at first perhaps believed that they had provided sufficiently for the interests of Elizabeth and of protestantism: it was however immediately obvious that the duke and his agents had the design of concealing carefully all their measures from their sovereign, till the party should have gained such strength that it would no longer be safe for her to refuse a consent which it was well known that she would always be unwilling to grant.

But when, on encouragement being given by Mary to the hopes of her suitor, the kings of France and Spain, and even the Pope himself, were made privy to the scheme and pledged to give it their assistance, all its English, and especially all its protestant supporters, ought to have been aware that their undertaking was assuming the form of a conspiracy with the enemies of their queen and country against her government and personal safety; against the public peace, and the religion by law established; and nothing can excuse the blindness, or palliate the guilt, of their perseverance in a course so perilous and so crooked.

Private interests were doubtless at the bottom with most or all of the participators in this affair who were not papists; and those,—they were not a few,—who envied or who feared the influence and authority of Cecil, eagerly seized the occasion to array against him a body of hostility by which they trusted to work his final and irretrievable ruin.

It seems to have been by an ambitious rivalry with the secretary, that sir Nicholas Throgmorton, whose early life had exhibited so bold a spirit of resistance to tyranny and popery when triumphant and enthroned, had been carried into a faction which all his principles ought to have rendered odious to him. In his intercourses with the queen of Scots as ambassador from Elizabeth, he had already shown himself her zealous partisan. In advising her to sign for her safety the deed of abdication tendered to her at Loch-Leven, he had basely suggested that the compulsion under which she acted would excuse her from regarding it as binding: to the English crown he also regarded her future title as incontrovertible. He now represented to his party, that Cecil was secretly inclined to the house of Suffolk; and that no measure favorable to the reputation or authority of the queen of Scots could be carried whilst he enjoyed the confidence of his mistress. By these suggestions, the duke, unfortunately for himself, was led to sanction an at tempt against the power and reputation of this great minister.

Leicester, who had long hated his virtues; the old corrupt statesmen Winchester, Pembroke, and Arundel; and the discontented catholic peers Northumberland and Westmorland, eagerly joined in the plot. It was agreed to attack the secretary in the privy-council, on the ground of his having advised the detention of the money going into the Low Countries for the service of the king of Spain, and thus exposing the nation to the danger of a war with this potentate; and Throgmorton is said to have advised that, whatever he answered, they should find some pretext for sending him to the Tower; after which, he said, it would be easy to compass his overthrow.

But the penetration of Elizabeth enabled her to appretiate justly, with a single exception, the principles, characters, and motives of all her servants; and she knew that, while his enemies were exclusively attached to their own interests, Cecil was attached also to the interests of his prince, his country, and his religion; that while others,—with that far-sighted selfishness which involves men in so many intrigues, usually rendered fruitless or needless by the after-course of events,—were bent on securing to themselves the good graces of her successor, he was content to depend on her alone; that while others were the courtiers, the flatterers, or the ministers, of the queen, he, and perhaps he only, was the friend of Elizabeth. All the rest she knew that she could replace at a moment;—him never. Secret information was carried to her of all that her council were contriving, and had almost executed, against the secretary: full of indignation she hurried to their meeting, where she was not expected, and by her peremptory mandate put an instant stop to their proceedings; making Leicester himself sensible, by a warmth which did her honor, that the man who held the first place in her esteem was by no one to be injured with impunity.

The earl of Sussex, the true friend of Norfolk, and never his abettor in designs of which his sober judgement could discern all the criminality and all the rashness, was grieved to the soul that the artifices of his followers should have set him at variance with Cecil. He was doubtless aware of the advantage which their disagreement would minister against them both to the malignant Leicester, his and their common enemy; and trembling for the safety of the duke and the welfare of both, he addressed to the secretary, from the north, where he was then occupied in the queen's service, a letter on the subject, eloquent by its uncommon earnestness.

He tells him that he knows not the occasion of the coldness between him and the duke, of which he had acknowledged the existence; but that he cannot believe other, esteeming both parties as he does, than that it must have had its origin in misrepresentation and the ill offices of their enemies; and he implores him, as the general remedy of all such differences, to resort to a full and fair explanation with the duke himself, in whom he will find "honor, truth, wisdom and plainness."

These excellent exhortations were not without effect:

it is probable that the incautious duke had either been led inadvertently or dragged unwillingly, by his faction, into the plot against the secretary, whose ruin he was not likely to have sought from any personal motive of enmity; and accordingly a few weeks after (June 1569) we find Sussex congratulating Cecil, in a second letter, on a reconciliation between them which he trusts will prove entire and permanent⁶⁸.

Hitherto the queen had preserved so profound a silence respecting the intrigues of the duke, that he flattered himself she was without a suspicion of their existence; but this illusion was soon to vanish. In August 1569, the queen being at Farnham in her progress and the duke in attendance on her, she took him to dine with her, and in the course of conversation found occasion, "without any show of displeasure," but with sufficient significance of manner, to give him the advice, "to be very careful on what pillow he rested his head." Afterwards she cautioned him in plain terms against entering into any marriage treaty with the queen of Scots. The duke, in his first surprise, made no scruple to promise on his allegiance that he would entertain no thoughts of her; he even affected to speak of such a connexion with disdain, declaring that he esteemed his lands in England worth nearly as much as the whole kingdom of Scotland, wasted as it was by wars and tumults, and that in his tennis-court at Norwich he reckoned himself equal to many a prince.—These demonstrations were all insincere; the duke remained steady to his purpose, and his correspondence with the queen of Scots was not for a single day intermitted in submission to his Sovereign. But he felt that it was now time to take off the mask; and fully confiding in the strength of his party, he requested the earl of Leicester immediately to open the marriage proposal to her majesty, and solicit her consent. This the favorite promised, but for his own ends continued to defer the business from day to day.

Cecil, who had recently been taken into the consultations of the duke, urged upon him with great force the expediency of being himself the first to name his wishes to the queen; but Norfolk, either from timidity, or, more probably, from an ill-founded reliance on Leicester's sincerity, and a distrust, equally misplaced, of that of Cecil, whom he was conscious of having ill treated, neglected to avail himself of this wise and friendly counsel, by which he might yet have been preserved. Leicester, who watched all his motions, was at length satisfied that his purpose was effected,—the victim was inveigled beyond the power of retreat or escape, and it was time for the decoy-bird to slip out of the snare.

He summoned to his aid a fit of sickness, the never-failing resource of the courtiers of Elizabeth in case of need. His pitying mistress, as he had doubtless anticipated, hastened to pay him a charitable visit at his own house, and he then suffered her to discover that his malady was occasioned by some momentous secret which weighed upon his spirits; and after due ostentation of penitence and concern, at length reveal ed to her the whole of the negotiations for the marriage of the duke with the queen of Scots, including the part which he had himself taken in that business.

Elizabeth, who seems by no means to have suspected that matters had gone so far, or that so many of her nobles were implicated in this transaction, was moved with indignation, and commanded the immediate attendance of the duke, who, conscious of his delinquency, and disquieted by the change which he thought he had observed in the countenance of her majesty and the carriage towards him of his brother peers, had sometime before quitted the court, and retired first to his house in London, and afterwards to his seat of Kenninghall in Norfolk. The duke delayed to appear, not daring to trust himself in the hands of his offended sovereign; and after a short delay, procured for him by the compassion of Cecil, who persisted in assuring the queen that he would doubtless come shortly of his own accord, a messenger was sent to bring him up to London. This messenger, on his arrival, found the duke apparently, and perhaps really, laboring under a violent ague; and he suffered himself to be prevailed upon to accept his solemn promise of appearing at court as soon as he should be able to travel, and to return without him.

Meanwhile the queen, now bent upon sifting this matter to the bottom, had written to require the Scottish regent to inform her of the share which he had taken in the intrigue, and whatever else he knew respecting it. Murray had become fully aware how much more important it was to his interests to preserve the favor and friendship of Elizabeth than to aim at keeping any measures with Mary, by whom he was now hated with extreme bitterness; and learning that the confidence of the duke had already been betrayed by the earl of Leicester, he made no scruple of acquainting her with all the particulars in which he was immediately concerned.

It thus became known to Elizabeth, that as early as the conferences at York, the regent had been compelled, by threats of personal violence on his return to Scotland, to close with the proposals of the duke relative to his marriage;—that it was with a view to this union that Mary had solicited from the states of Scotland a sentence of divorce from Bothwell, which Murray by the exertion of his influence had induced them to refuse, and thus delayed the completion of the contract: but it appeared from other evidence, that written promises of marriage had actually been exchanged between the duke and Mary, and committed to the safe keeping of the French ambassador. It was also found to be a part of the scheme to betroth the infant king of Scots to a daughter of the duke of Norfolk.

The anger of Elizabeth disdained to be longer trifled with; and she dispatched a messenger with peremptory orders to bring up the duke, "his ague notwithstanding," who found him already preparing to set out on his journey. Cecil in one of his letters to sir Henry Norris, dated October 1569, relates these circumstances at length, and expresses his satisfaction in the last, both for the sake of the state and of the duke himself, whom, of all subjects, he declares he most loved and honored. He then proceeds thus: "The queen's majesty hath willed the earl of Arundel and my lord of Pembroke to keep their lodgings here, for that they were privy of this marriage intended, and did not reveal it to her majesty; but I think none of them did so with any evil meaning, and of my lord of Pembroke's intent herein I can witness, that he meant nothing but well to the queen's majesty; my lord Lumley is also restrained: the queen's majesty hath also been grievously offended with my lord of Leicester; but considering that he hath revealed all that he saith he knoweth of himself, her majesty spareth her displeasure the more towards him. Some disquiets must arise, but I trust not hurtful; for her majesty saith she will know the truth, so as every one shall see his own fault, and so stay.... My lord of Huntingdon is joined with the earl of Shrewsbury for the Scots queen's safety. Whilst this matter was in passing, you must not think but the queen of Scots was nearer looked to than before."

The duke on his arrival was committed to the Tower; but neither against him nor any of his adherents did the queen think proper to proceed by course of law, and they were all liberated after a restraint of longer or shorter duration.

It is proper to mention, that the adherents of Mary in her own time, and various writers since, have conspired to cast severe reflections upon Elizabeth for committing her to the joint custody of the earl of Huntingdon, because this nobleman, being descended by his mother, a daughter of Henry Pole lord Montacute, from the house of Clarence, was supposed to put his right of succession to the crown in competition with hers, and therefore to entertain against her peculiar animosity. But on the part of Elizabeth it may be observed, First, that there is not the slightest ground to suspect that this nobleman, who was childless, entertained the most distant idea of reviving the obsolete claims of his family; and certainly if Elizabeth had suspected him of it, he would never have held so high a place in her confidence. Secondly, nothing less than the death of Mary would have served any designs that he might have formed; and by joining him in commission with others for her safe keeping, Elizabeth will scarcely be said to have put it in his power to make away with her. Thirdly, the very writers who complain of the vigilance and strictness with which the queen of Scots was now guarded, all acknowledge that nothing less could have baffled the plans of escape which the zeal of her partisans was continually setting on foot. Amongst the warmest of these partisans was Leonard Dacre, a gentleman whose personal qualities, whose errors, injuries and misfortunes, all conspire to render him an object of attention, illustrative as they also are of the practices and sentiments of his age.

Leonard was the second son of William lord Dacre of Gilsland, descended from the ancient barons Vaux who had held lordships in Cumberland from the days of the Conqueror.

In 1568, on the death without issue of his nephew, a minor in wardship to the duke of Norfolk, Leonard as heir male laid claim to the title and family estates, but the three sisters of the last lord disputed with him this valuable succession; and being supported by the interest of the duke of Norfolk their step-father, to whose three sons they were married, they found means to defeat the claims of their uncle, though indisputably good in law;—one instance in a thousand of the scandalous partiality towards the rich and powerful exhibited in the legal decisions of that age.

Stung with resentment against the government and the queen herself, by whom justice had been denied him, Leonard Dacre threw himself, with all the impetuosity of his character, into the measures of the malcontents and the interests of the queen of Scots, and he laid a daring plan for her deliverance from Tutbury-castle. This plan the duke on its being communicated to him had vehemently opposed, partly from his repugnance to measures of violence, partly from the apprehension that Mary, when at liberty, might fall into the hands of a foreign and catholic party, and desert her engagements with him for a marriage with the king of Spain. Dacre, however, was not to be diverted from his design, especially by the man with whom he was at open enmity, and he assembled a troop of horse for its execution; but suspicions had probably been excited, and the sudden removal of the prisoner to Wingfield frustrated all his measures.

This was not the only attempt of that turbulent and dangerous faction of which the inconsiderate ambition of the duke had rendered him nominally the head but really the tool and victim, which he had now the grief to find himself utterly unable to guide or restrain.

The earls of Northumberland and Westmorland, heads of the ancient and warlike families of Percy and Nevil, were the first to break that internal tranquillity which the kingdom had hitherto enjoyed, without the slightest interruption, under the wise and vigorous rule of Elizabeth. The remoteness of these noblemen from the court and capital, with the poverty and consequent simplicity, almost barbarism, of the vassals over whom they bore sway, and whose homage they received like native and independent princes, appears to have nourished in their minds ideas of their own importance better suited to the period of the wars of the Roses than to the happier age of peace and order which had succeeded.

The offended pride of the earl of Westmorland, a man destitute in fact of every kind of talent, seems on some occasion to have conducted him to the discovery that at the court of Elizabeth the representative of the king-making Warwick was a person of very slender consideration. The failure of the grand attack upon the secretary, in which he had taken part, confirmed this mortifying impression; and the committal of his brother-in-law, the great and powerful duke of Norfolk himself, must subsequently have carried home to the bottom of his heart unwilling conviction that the preponderance of the ancient aristocracy of the country was subverted, and its proudest chieftains fast sinking to the common level of subjects. His attachment to the religion, with the other practices and prejudices of former ages, gave additional exasperation to his discontent against the established order of things: the incessant invectives of Romish priests against a princess whom the pope was on the point of anathematizing, represented the cause of her enemies as that of Heaven itself; and the spirit of the earl was roused at length to seek full vengeance for all the injuries sustained by his pride, his interests, or his principles.