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MEMOIRS OF THE COURT OF QUEEN ELIZABETH
BY LUCY AIKIN
IN TWO VOLUMES.
(combined)
LONDON:
PRINTED FOR LONGMAN, HURST, REES, ORME, AND BROWN,
PATERNOSTER ROW.
1818.
PRINTED BY RICHARD AND ARTHUR TAYLOR, SHOE-LANE.
PREFACE.
In the literature of our country, however copious, the eye of the
curious student may still detect important deficiencies.
We possess, for example, many and excellent histories, embracing every
period of our domestic annals;--biographies, general and particular,
which appear to have placed on record the name of every private
individual justly entitled to such commemoration;--and numerous and
extensive collections of original letters, state-papers and other
historical and antiquarian documents;--whilst our comparative penury is
remarkable in royal lives, in court histories, and especially in that
class which forms the glory of French literature,--memoir.
To supply in some degree this want, as it affects the person and reign
of one of the most illustrious of female and of European sovereigns, is
the intention of the work now offered with much diffidence to the
public.
Its plan comprehends a detailed view of the private life of Elizabeth
from the period of her birth; a view of the domestic history of her
reign; memoirs of the principal families of the nobility and
biographical anecdotes of the celebrated characters who composed her
court; besides notices of the manners, opinions and literature of the
reign.
Such persons as may have made it their business or their entertainment
to study very much in detail the history of the age of Elizabeth, will
doubtless be aware that in the voluminous collections of Strype, in the
edited Burleigh, Sidney, and Talbot papers, in the Memoirs of Birch, in
various collections of letters, in the chronicles of the times,--so
valuable for those vivid pictures of manners which the pen of a
contemporary unconsciously traces,--in the Annals of Camden, the
Progresses of Nichols, and other large and laborious works which it
would be tedious here to enumerate, a vast repertory existed of curious
and interesting facts seldom recurred to for the composition of books of
lighter literature, and possessing with respect to a great majority of
readers the grace of novelty. Of these and similar works of reference,
as well as of a variety of others, treating directly or indirectly on
the biography, the literature, and the manners of the period, a large
collection has been placed under the eyes of the author, partly by the
liberality of her publishers, partly by the kindness of friends.
In availing herself of their contents, she has had to encounter in full
force the difficulties attendant on such a task; those of weighing and
comparing authorities, of reconciling discordant statements, of bringing
insulated facts to bear upon each other, and of forming out of materials
irregular in their nature and abundant almost to excess, a compact and
well-proportioned structure.
How far her abilities and her diligence may have proved themselves
adequate to the undertaking, it remains with a candid public to decide.
Respecting the selection of topics it seems necessary however to remark,
that it has been the constant endeavour of the writer to preserve to her
work the genuine character of Memoirs, by avoiding as much as possible
all encroachments on the peculiar province of history;--that amusement,
of a not illiberal kind, has been consulted at least equally with
instruction:--and that on subjects of graver moment, a correct sketch
has alone been attempted.
By a still more extensive course of reading and research, an additional
store of anecdotes and observations might unquestionably have been
amassed; but it is hoped that of those assembled in the following pages,
few will be found to rest on dubious or inadequate authority; and that a
copious choice of materials, relatively to the intended compass of the
work, will appear to have superseded the temptation to useless
digression, or to prolix and trivial detail.
The orthography of all extracts from the elder writers has been
modernized, and their punctuation rendered more distinct; in other
respects reliance may be placed on their entire fidelity.
MEMOIRS OF THE COURT OF QUEEN ELIZABETH.
VOL. I.
CHAPTER I.
1533 TO 1536.
Birth of Elizabeth.--Circumstances attending the marriage of her
parents.--Public entry of Anne Boleyn into London.--Pageants
exhibited.--Baptism of Elizabeth.--Eminent persons present.--Proposal of
marriage between Elizabeth and a French prince.--Progress of the
reformation.--Henry persecutes both parties.--Death of Catherine of
Arragon.--Disgrace of Anne Boleyn.--Her death.--Confesses an obstacle to
her marriage.--Particulars on this subject.--Elizabeth declared
illegitimate.--Letter of lady Bryan respecting her.--The king marries
Jane Seymour.
On the 7th of September 1533, at the royal palace of Greenwich in Kent,
was born, under circumstances as peculiar as her after-life proved
eventful and illustrious, ELIZABETH daughter of king Henry VIII. and his
queen Anne Boleyn.
Delays and difficulties equally grievous to the impetuous temper of the
man and the despotic habits of the prince, had for years obstructed
Henry in the execution of his favourite project of repudiating, on the
plea of their too near alliance, a wife who had ceased to find favor in
his sight, and substituting on her throne the youthful beauty who had
captivated his imagination. At length his passion and his impatience had
arrived at a pitch capable of bearing down every obstacle. With that
contempt of decorum which he displayed so remarkably in some former, and
many later transactions of his life, he caused his private marriage with
Anne Boleyn to precede the sentence of divorce which he had resolved
that his clergy should pronounce against Catherine of Arragon; and no
sooner had this judicial ceremony taken place, than the new queen was
openly exhibited as such in the face of the court and the nation.
An unusual ostentation of magnificence appears to have attended the
celebration of these august nuptials. The fondness of the king for pomp
and pageantry was at all times excessive, and on this occasion his love
and his pride would equally conspire to prompt an extraordinary display.
Anne, too, a vain, ambitious, and light-minded woman, was probably
greedy of this kind of homage from her princely lover; and the very
consciousness of the dubious, inauspicious, or disgraceful circumstances
attending their union, might secretly augment the anxiety of the royal
pair to dazzle and impose by the magnificence of their public
appearance. Only once before, since the Norman conquest, had a king of
England stooped from his dignity to elevate a private gentlewoman and a
subject to a partnership of his bed and throne; and the bitter
animosities between the queen's relations on one side, and the princes
of the blood and great nobles on the other, which had agitated the reign
of Edward IV., and contributed to bring destruction on the heads of his
helpless orphans, stood as a strong warning against a repetition of the
experiment.
The unblemished reputation and amiable character of Henry's "some-time
wife," had long procured for her the love and respect of the people; her
late misfortunes had engaged their sympathy, and it might be feared that
several unfavorable points of comparison would suggest themselves
between the high-born and high-minded Catherine and her present
rival--once her humble attendant--whose long-known favor with the king,
whose open association with him at Calais, whither she had attended him,
whose private marriage of uncertain date, and already advanced
pregnancy, afforded so much ground for whispered censures.
On the other hand, the personal qualities of the king gave him great
power over popular opinion. The manly beauty of his countenance, the
strength and agility which in the chivalrous exercises of the time
rendered him victorious over all competitors; the splendor with which he
surrounded himself; his bounty; the popular frankness of his manners,
all conspired to render him, at this period of his life, an object of
admiration rather than of dread to his subjects; while the respect
entertained for his talents and learning, and for the conscientious
scruples respecting his first marriage which he felt or feigned, mingled
so much of deference in their feelings towards him, as to check all
hasty censures of his conduct. The protestant party, now considerable
by zeal and numbers, foresaw too many happy results to their cause from
the circumstances of his present union, to scrutinize with severity the
motives which had produced it. The nation at large, justly dreading a
disputed succession, with all its long-experienced evils, in the event
of Henry's leaving behind him no offspring but a daughter whom he had
lately set aside on the ground of illegitimacy, rejoiced in the prospect
of a male heir to the crown. The populace of London, captivated, as
usual, by the splendors of a coronation, were also delighted with the
youth, beauty, and affability of the new queen.
The solemn entry therefore of Anne into the city of London was greeted
by the applause of the multitude; and it was probably the genuine voice
of public feeling, which, in saluting her queen of England, wished her,
how much in vain! a long and prosperous life.
The pageants displayed in the streets of London on this joyful occasion,
are described with much minuteness by our chroniclers, and afford ample
indications that the barbarism of taste which permitted an incongruous
mixture of classical mythology with scriptural allusions, was at its
height in the learned reign of our eighth Henry. Helicon and Mount
Parnassus appeared on one side; St. Anne, and Mary the wife of Cleophas
with her children, were represented on the other. Here the three Graces
presented the queen with a golden apple by the hands of their orator
Mercury; there the four cardinal Virtues promised, in set speeches, that
they would always be aiding and comforting to her.
On the Sunday after her public entry, a day not at this period regarded
as improper for the performance of such a ceremonial, Henry caused his
queen to be crowned at Westminster with great solemnity; an honor which
he never thought proper to confer on any of her successors.
In the sex of the child born to them a few months afterwards, the hopes
of the royal pair must doubtless have sustained a severe disappointment:
but of this sentiment nothing was suffered to appear in the treatment of
the infant, whom her father was anxious to mark out as his only
legitimate offspring and undoubted heir to the crown.
She was destined to bear the auspicious name of Elizabeth, in memory of
her grandmother, that heiress of the house of York whose marriage with
the earl of Richmond, then Henry VII., had united the roses, and given
lasting peace to a country so long rent by civil discord. The
unfortunate Mary, now in her sixteenth year, was stripped of the title
of princess of Wales, which she had borne from her childhood, that it
might adorn a younger sister; one too whose birth her interest, her
religion, and her filial affection for an injured mother, alike taught
her to regard as base and infamous.
A public and princely christening served still further to attest the
importance attached to this new member of the royal family.
By the king's special command, Cranmer archbishop of Canterbury stood
godfather to the princess; and Shakespeare, by a fiction equally
poetical and courtly, has represented him as breaking forth on this
memorable occasion into an animated vaticination of the glories of the
"maiden reign." Happy was it for the peace of mind of the noble
personages there assembled, that no prophet was empowered at the same
time to declare how few of them should live to share its splendors; how
awfully large a proportion of their number should fall, or behold their
nearest connexions falling, untimely victims of the jealous tyranny of
Henry himself, or of the convulsions and persecutions of the two
troubled reigns destined to intervene before those halcyon days which
they were taught to anticipate!
For the purpose of illustrating the truth of this remark, and at the
same time of introducing to the reader the most distinguished personages
of Henry's court, several of whom will afterwards be found exerting
different degrees of influence on the character or fortunes of the
illustrious subject of this work, it may be worth while to enumerate in
regular order the performers in this august ceremonial. The
circumstantial Holinshed, to whom we are indebted for their names and
offices, will at the same time furnish some of those minute particulars
which serve to bring the whole pompous scene before the eye of fancy.
Early in the afternoon, the lord-mayor and corporation of London, who
had been summoned to attend, took boat for Greenwich, where they found
many lords, knights, and gentlemen assembled. The whole way from the
palace to the friery was strown with green rushes, and the walls were
hung with tapestry, as was the Friers' church in which the ceremony was
performed.
A silver font with a crimson canopy was placed in the middle of the
church; and the child being brought into the hall, the long procession
set forward. It began with citizens walking two-and-two, and ended with
barons, bishops, and earls. Then came, bearing the gilt basins, Henry
earl of Essex, the last of the ancient name of Bourchier who bore the
title. He was a splendid nobleman, distinguished in the martial games
and gorgeous pageantries which then amused the court: he also boasted of
a royal lineage, being sprung from Thomas of Woodstock, youngest son of
Edward III.; and perhaps he was apprehensive lest this distinction might
hereafter become as fatal to himself as it had lately proved to the
unfortunate duke of Buckingham. But he perished a few years after by a
fall from his horse; and leaving no male issue, the king, to the disgust
of this great family, conferred the title on the low-bred Cromwel, then
his favorite minister.
The salt was borne by Henry marquis of Dorset, the unfortunate father of
lady Jane Grey; who, after receiving the royal pardon for his share in
the criminal plot for setting the crown on the head of his daughter,
again took up arms in the rebellion of Wyat, and was brought to expiate
this treason on the scaffold.
William Courtney marquis of Exeter followed with the taper of virgin
wax; a nobleman who had the misfortune to be very nearly allied to the
English throne; his mother being a daughter of Edward IV. He was at this
time in high favor with the king his cousin, who, after setting aside
his daughter Mary, had even declared him heir-apparent, to the
prejudice of his own sisters: but three years after he fell a victim to
the jealousy of the king, on a charge of corresponding with his
proscribed kinsman cardinal Pole: his honors and estates were forfeited;
and his son, though still a child, was detained in close custody.
The chrism was borne by lady Mary Howard, the beautiful daughter of the
duke of Norfolk; who lived not only to behold, but, by the evidence
which she gave on his trial, to assist in the most unmerited
condemnation of her brother, the gallant and accomplished earl of Surry.
The king, by a trait of royal arrogance, selected this lady, descended
from our Saxon monarchs and allied to all the first nobility, for the
wife of his base-born son created duke of Richmond; but it does not
appear that the spirit of the Howards was high enough in this reign to
feel the insult as it deserved.
The royal infant, wrapped in a mantle of purple velvet, having a long
train furred with ermine, was carried by one of her godmothers, the
dowager-duchess of Norfolk. Anne Boleyn was this lady's
step-grand-daughter: but in this alliance with royalty she had little
cause to exult; still less in the closer one which was afterwards formed
for her by the elevation of her own grand-daughter Catherine Howard. On
discovery of the ill conduct of this queen, the aged duchess was
overwhelmed with disgrace; she was even declared guilty of misprision of
treason, and committed to custody, but was released by the king after
the blood of Catherine and her paramours had quenched his fury.
The dowager-marchioness of Dorset was the other godmother at the
font:--of the four sons of this lady, three perished on the scaffold;
her grand-daughter lady Jane Grey shared the same fate; and the
surviving son died a prisoner during the reign of Elizabeth, for the
offence of distributing a pamphlet asserting the title of the Suffolk
line to the crown.
The marchioness of Exeter was the godmother at the confirmation, who had
not only the affliction to see her husband brought to an untimely end,
and her only son wasting his youth in captivity, but, being herself
attainted of high treason some time afterwards, underwent a long and
arbitrary imprisonment.
On either hand of the duchess of Norfolk walked the dukes of Norfolk and
Suffolk, the only nobles of that rank then existing in England.
Their names occur in conjunction on every public occasion, and in almost
every important transaction, civil and military, of the reign of Henry
VIII., but the termination of their respective careers was strongly
contrasted. The duke of Suffolk had the extraordinary good fortune never
to lose that favor with his master which he had gained as Charles
Brandon, the partner of his youthful pleasures. What was a still more
extraordinary instance of felicity, his marriage with the king's sister
brought to him neither misfortunes nor perils, and he did not live to
witness those which overtook his grand-daughters. He died in peace,
lamented by a sovereign who knew his worth.
The duke of Norfolk, on the contrary, was powerful enough by birth and
connexions to impress Henry with fears for the tranquillity of his son's
reign. The memory of former services was sacrificed to present alarm.
Almost with his last breath he ordered his old and faithful servant to
the scaffold; but even Henry was no longer absolute on his death-bed.
For once he was disobeyed, and Norfolk survived him; but the long years
of his succeeding captivity were poorly compensated by a brief and tardy
restoration to liberty and honors under Mary.
One of the child's train-bearers was the countess of Kent. This was
probably the widow of the second earl of that title and of the name of
Grey: she must therefore have been the daughter of the earl of Pembroke,
a zealous Yorkist who was slain fighting in the cause of Edward IV.
Henry VIII. was doubtless aware that his best hereditary title to the
crown was derived from his mother, and during his reign the Yorkist
families enjoyed at least an equal share of favor with the Lancastrians,
whom his father had almost exclusively countenanced.
Thomas Boleyn earl of Wiltshire, the proud and happy grandfather of the
princely infant, supported the train on one side. It is not true that he
afterwards, in his capacity of a privy councillor, pronounced sentence
of death on his own son and daughter; even Henry was not inhuman enough
to exact this of him; but he lived to witness their cruel and
disgraceful end, and died long before the prosperous days of his
illustrious grandchild.
On the other side the train was borne by Edward Stanley third earl of
Derby. This young nobleman had been a ward of Wolsey, and was carefully
educated by that splendid patron of learning in his house and under his
own eye. He proved himself a faithful and loyal subject to four
successive sovereigns; stood unshaken by the tempests of the most
turbulent times; and died full of days in the possession of great
riches, high hereditary honors, and universal esteem, in 1574.
A splendid canopy was supported over the infant by four lords, three of
them destined to disastrous fates. One was her uncle, the elegant,
accomplished, viscount Rochford, whom the impartial suffrage of
posterity has fully acquitted of the odious crime for which he suffered
by the mandate of a jealous tyrant.
Another was lord Hussey; whom a rash rebellion brought to the scaffold a
few years afterwards. The two others were brothers of that illustrious
family of Howard, which furnished in this age alone more subjects for
tragedy than "Thebes or Pelops' line" of old. Lord William, uncle to
Catherine Howard, was arbitrarily adjudged to perpetual imprisonment and
forfeiture of goods for concealing her misconduct; but Henry was pleased
soon after to remit the sentence: he lived to be eminent in the state
under the title of lord Howard of Effingham, and died peacefully in a
good old age. Lord Thomas suffered by the ambition so frequent in his
house, of matching with the blood royal. He formed a secret marriage
with the lady Margaret Douglas, niece to the king; on discovery of
which, he was committed to a close imprisonment, whence he was only
released by death.
After the ceremony of baptism had been performed by Stokesly bishop of
London, a solemn benediction was pronounced upon the future queen by
Cranmer, that learned and distinguished prelate, who may indeed be
reproached with some too courtly condescensions to the will of an
imperious master, and what is worse, with several cruel acts of
religious persecution; but whose virtues were many, whose general
character was mild and benevolent, and whose errors and weaknesses were
finally expiated by the flames of martyrdom.
In the return from church, the gifts of the sponsors, consisting of cups
and bowls, some gilded, and others of massy gold, were carried by four
persons of quality: Henry Somerset second earl of Worcester, whose
father, notwithstanding his illegitimacy, had been acknowledged as a
kinsman by Henry VII., and advanced to the peerage; lord Thomas Howard
the younger, a son of the duke of Norfolk who was restored in blood
after his father's attainder, and created lord Howard of Bindon; Thomas
Ratcliffe lord Fitzwalter, afterwards earl of Sussex; and sir John
Dudley, son of the detested associate of Empson, and afterwards the
notorious duke of Northumberland, whose crimes received at length their
due recompense in that ignominious death to which his guilty and
extravagant projects had conducted so many comparatively innocent
victims.
We are told, that on the same day and hour which gave birth to the
princess Elizabeth, a son was born to this "bold bad man," who received
the name of Robert, and was known in after-times as earl of Leicester.
It was believed by the superstition of the age, that this coincidence of
their nativities produced a secret and invincible sympathy which secured
to Dudley, during life, the affections of his sovereign lady. It may
without superstition be admitted, that this circumstance, seizing on the
romantic imagination of the princess, might produce a first impression,
which Leicester's personal advantages, his insinuating manners, and
consummate art of feigning, all contributed to render deep and
permanent.
The personal history of Elizabeth may truly be said to begin with her
birth; for she had scarcely entered her second year when her
marriage--that never-accomplished project, which for half a century
afterwards inspired so many vain hopes and was the subject of so many
fruitless negotiations, was already proposed as an article of a treaty
between France and England.
Henry had caused an act of succession to be passed, by which his divorce
was confirmed, the authority of the pope disclaimed, and the crown
settled on his issue by Anne Boleyn. But, as if half-repenting the
boldness of his measures, he opened a negotiation almost immediately
with Francis I., for the purpose of obtaining a declaration by that king
and his nobility in favor of his present marriage, and the intercession
of Francis for the revocation of the papal censures fulminated against
him. And in consideration of these acts of friendship, he offered to
engage the hand of Elizabeth to the duke d'Angouleme, third son of the
French king. But Francis was unable to prevail upon the new pope to
annul the acts of his predecessor; and probably not wishing to connect
himself more closely with a prince already regarded as a heretic, he
suffered the proposal of marriage to fall to the ground.
The doctrines of Zwingle and of Luther had at this time made
considerable progress among Henry's subjects, and the great work of
reformation was begun in England. Several smaller monasteries had been
suppressed; the pope's supremacy was preached against by public
authority; and the parliament, desirous of widening the breach between
the king and the pontiff, declared the former, head of the English
church. After some hesitation, Henry accepted the office, and wrote a
book in defence of his conduct. The queen was attached, possibly by
principle, and certainly by interest, to the antipapal party, which
alone admitted the validity of the royal divorce, and consequently of
her marriage; and she had already engaged her chaplain Dr. Parker, a
learned and zealous reformist, to keep a watchful eye over the childhood
of her daughter, and early to imbue her mind with the true principles of
religious knowledge.
But Henry, whose passions and interests alone, not his theological
convictions, had set him in opposition to the old church establishment,
to the ceremonies and doctrines of which he was even zealously attached,
began to be apprehensive that the whole fabric would be swept away by
the strong tide of popular opinion which was now turned against it, and
he hastened to interpose in its defence. He brought to the stake several
persons who denied the real presence, as a terror to the reformers;
whilst at the same time he showed his resolution to quell the adherents
of popery, by causing bishop Fisher and sir Thomas More to be attainted
of treason, for refusing such part of the oath of succession as implied
the invalidity of the king's first marriage, and thus, in effect,
disallowed the authority of the papal dispensation in virtue of which it
had been celebrated.
Thus were opened those dismal scenes of religious persecution and
political cruelty from which the mind of Elizabeth was to receive its
early and indelible impressions.
The year 1536, which proved even more fertile than its predecessor in
melancholy incidents and tragical catastrophes, opened with the death of
Catherine of Arragon; an event equally welcome, in all probability, both
to the sufferer herself, whom tedious years of trouble and mortification
must have rendered weary of a world which had no longer a hope to
flatter her; and to the ungenerous woman who still beheld her, discarded
as she was, with the sentiments of an enemy and a rival. It is
impossible to contemplate the life and character of this royal lady,
without feelings of the deepest commiseration. As a wife, the bitter
humiliations which she was doomed to undergo were entirely unmerited;
for not only was her modesty unquestioned, but her whole conduct towards
the king was a perfect model of conjugal love and duty. As a queen and a
mother, her firmness, her dignity, and her tenderness, deserved a far
other recompense than to see herself degraded, on the infamous plea of
incest, from the rank of royalty, and her daughter, so long heiress to
the English throne, branded with illegitimacy, and cast out alike from
the inheritance and the affections of her father. But the memory of this
unhappy princess has been embalmed by the genius of Shakespeare, in the
noble drama of which he has made her the touching and majestic heroine;
and let not the praise of magnanimity be denied to the daughter of Anne
Boleyn, in permitting those wrongs and those sufferings which were the
price of her glory, nay of her very existence, to be thus impressively
offered to the compassion of her people.
Henry was moved to tears on reading the tender and pious letter
addressed to him by the dying hand of Catherine; and he marked by
several small but expressive acts, the respect, or rather the
compunction, with which the recollection of her could not fail to
inspire him. Anne Boleyn paid to the memory of the princess-dowager of
Wales--such was the title now given to Catherine--the unmeaning
compliment of putting on yellow mourning; the color assigned to queens
by the fashion of France: but neither humanity nor discretion restrained
her from open demonstrations of the satisfaction afforded her by the
melancholy event.
Short was her unfeeling triumph. She brought into the world a few days
afterwards, a dead son; and this second disappointment of his hopes
completed that disgust to his queen which satiety, and perhaps also a
growing passion for another object, was already beginning to produce in
the mind of the king.
It is traditionally related, that at Jane Seymour's first coming to
court, the queen, espying a jewel hung round her neck, wished to look at
it; and struck with the young lady's reluctance to submit it to her
inspection, snatched it from her with violence, when she found it to
contain the king's picture, presented by himself to the wearer. From
this day she dated her own decline in the affections of her husband, and
the ascendancy of her rival. However this might be, it is certain that
the king about this time began to regard the conduct of his once
idolized Anne Boleyn with an altered eye. That easy gaiety of manner
which he had once remarked with delight, as an indication of the
innocence of her heart and the artlessness of her disposition, was now
beheld by him as a culpable levity which offended his pride and alarmed
his jealousy. His impetuous temper, with which "once to suspect was once
to be resolved," disdained to investigate proofs or to fathom motives; a
pretext alone was wanting to his rising fury, and this he was not long
in finding.
On May-day, then observed at court as a high festival, solemn justs were
held at Greenwich, before the king and queen, in which viscount
Rochford, the queen's brother, was chief challenger, and Henry Norris
principal defender. In the midst of the entertainment, the king suddenly
rose and quitted the place in anger; but on what particular provocation
is not certainly known. Saunders the Jesuit, the great calumniator of
Anne Boleyn, says that it was on seeing his consort drop her
handkerchief, which Norris picked up and wiped his face with. The queen
immediately retired, and the next day was committed to custody. Her
earnest entreaties to be permitted to see the king were disregarded, and
she was sent to the Tower on a charge of treason and adultery.
Lord Rochford, Norris, one Smeton a musician, and Brereton and another
gentleman of the bed-chamber, were likewise apprehended, and brought to
trial on the accusation of criminal intercourse with the queen. They
were all convicted; but from the few particulars which have come down to
us, it seems to be justly inferred, that the evidence produced against
some at least of these unhappy gentlemen, was slight and inconclusive.
Lord Rochford is universally believed to have fallen a victim to the
atrocious perjuries of his wife, who was very improperly admitted as a
witness against him, and whose infamous conduct was afterwards fully
brought to light. No absolute criminality appears to have been proved
against Weston and Brereton; but Smeton confessed the fact. Norris died
much more generously: he protested that he would rather perish a
thousand times than accuse an innocent person; that he believed the
queen to be perfectly guiltless; he, at least, could accuse her of
nothing; and in this declaration he persisted to the last. His
expressions, if truly reported, seem to imply that he might have saved
himself by criminating the queen: but besides the extreme improbability
that the king would have shown or promised any mercy to such a
delinquent, we know in fact that the confession of Smeton did not obtain
for him even a reprieve: it is therefore absurd to represent Norris as
having died in vindication of the honor of the queen; and the favor
afterwards shown to his son by Elizabeth, had probably little connexion
with any tenderness for the memory of her mother, a sentiment which she
certainly exhibited in no other circumstance.
The trial and condemnation of the queen followed. The process was
conducted with that open disregard of the first principles of justice
and equity then universal in all cases of high treason: no counsel were
assigned her, no witnesses confronted with her, and it does not appear
that she was even informed of Smeton's confession: but whether, after
all, she died innocent, is a problem which there now exist no means of
solving, and which it is somewhat foreign from the purpose of this work
to discuss.
One part of this subject, however, on account of the intimate relation
which it bears to the history of Elizabeth, and the influence which it
may be presumed to have exercised in the formation of her character,
must be treated somewhat at large.
The common law of England, by an anomaly truly barbarous, denounced,
against females only, who should be found guilty of high treason, the
punishment of burning. By menaces of putting into execution this
horrible sentence, instead of commuting it for decapitation, Anne Boleyn
was induced to acknowledge some legal impediment to her marriage with
the king; and on this confession alone, Cranmer, with his usual
subserviency, gratified his royal master by pronouncing that union null
and void, and its offspring illegitimate.
What this impediment, real or pretended, might be, we only learn from a
public declaration made immediately afterwards by the earl of
Northumberland, stating, that whereas it had been pretended, that a
precontract had subsisted between himself and the late queen, he has
declared upon oath before the lords of the council, and taken the
sacrament upon it, that no such contract had ever passed between them.
In explanation of this protest, the noble historian of Henry VIII.[1]
furnishes us with the following particulars. That the earl of
Northumberland, when lord Percy, had made proposals of marriage to Anne
Boleyn, which she had accepted, being yet a stranger to the passion of
the king; that Henry, unable to bear the idea of losing her, but averse
as yet to a declaration of his sentiments, employed Wolsey to dissuade
the father of lord Percy from giving his consent to their union, in
which he succeeded; the earl of Northumberland probably becoming aware
how deeply the personal feelings of the king were concerned: that lord
Percy, however, refused to give up the lady, alleging in the first
instance that he had gone too far to recede with honor; but was
afterwards compelled by his father to form another matrimonial
connexion. It should appear by this statement, that some engagement had
in fact subsisted between Northumberland and Anne; but there is no
necessity for supposing it to have been a contract of that solemn nature
which, according to the law as it then stood, would have rendered null
the subsequent marriage of either party. The protestation of the earl
was confirmed by the most solemn sanctions; which there is no ground for
supposing him capable of violating, especially as on this occasion, so
far from gaining any advantage by it, he was likely to give high offence
to the king. If then, as appears most probable, the confession by which
Anne Boleyn disinherited and illegitimatised her daughter was false; a
perjury so wicked and cowardly must brand her memory with everlasting
infamy:--even should the contrary have been the fact, the transaction
does her little honor; in either case it affords ample justification to
that daughter in leaving, as she did, her remains without a monument and
her conduct without an apology.
[Note 1: Lord Herbert of Chirbury.]
The precarious and equivocal condition to which the little Elizabeth was
reduced by the divorce and death of her mother, will be best illustrated
by the following extracts of a letter addressed soon after the event, by
lady Bryan her governess, to lord Cromwel. It may at the same time amuse
the modern reader to remark the minute details on which, in that day,
the first minister of state was expected to bestow his personal
attention.
* * * * *
"...My lord, when your lordship was last here, it pleased you to say,
that I should not mistrust the king's grace, nor your lordship. Which
word was more comfort to me than I can write, as God knoweth. And now it
boldeneth me to show you my poor mind. My lord, when my lady Mary's
grace was born, it pleased the king's grace to [appoint] me lady
mistress, and made me a baroness. And so I have been to the children his
grace have had since.
"Now, so it is, my lady Elizabeth is put from that degree she was afore;
and what degree she is at now, I know not but by hearsay. Therefore I
know not how to order her, nor myself, nor none of hers that I have the
rule of; that is, her women and her grooms. Beseeching you to be good
lord to my lady and to all hers; and that she may have some rayment. For
she hath neither gown, nor kirtle, nor petticoat, nor no manner of
linen, nor foresmocks, nor kerchiefs, nor sleeves, nor rails, nor
body-stitchets, nor mufflers, nor biggins. All these, her grace's
_mostake_[2], I have driven off as long as I can, that, by my troth, I
cannot drive it no lenger. Beseeching you, my lord, that you will see
that her grace may have that is needful for her, as my trust is ye will
do--that I may know from you by writing how I shall order myself; and
what is the king's grace's pleasure and yours, that I shall do in every
thing.
"My lord, Mr. Shelton saith he is the master of this house: what fashion
that shall be, I cannot tell; for I have not seen it before.--I trust
your lordship will see the house honourably ordered, howsomever it hath
been ordered aforetime.
"My lord, Mr. Shelton would have my lady Elizabeth to dine and sup
every day at the board of estate. Alas! my lord, it is not meet for a
child of her age to keep such rule yet. I promise you, my lord, I dare
not take it upon me to keep her in health and she keep that rule. For
there she shall see divers meats and fruits, and wine: which would be
hard for me to restrain her grace from it. Ye know, my lord, there is no
place of correction there. And she is yet too young to correct greatly.
I know well, and she be there, I shall nother bring her up to the king's
grace's honour, nor hers; nor to her health, nor my poor honesty.
Wherefore I show your lordship this my desire. Beseeching you, my lord,
that my lady may have a mess of meat to her own lodging, with a good
dish or two, that is meet for her grace to eat of.
"God knoweth my lady hath great pain with her great teeth, and they come
very slowly forth: and causeth me to suffer her grace to have her will,
more than I would. I trust to God and her teeth were well graft, to have
her grace after another fashion than she is yet: so as I trust the
king's grace shall have great comfort in her grace. For she is as toward
a child, and as gentle of conditions, as ever I knew any in my life.
Jesu preserve her grace! As for a day or two at a hey time, or
whensomever it shall please the king's grace to have her set abroad, I
trust so to endeavour me, that she shall so do, as shall be to the
king's honour and hers; and then after to take her ease again.
"Good my lord, have my lady's grace, and us that be her poor servants in
your remembrance.
"_From Hunsdon_." (No date of time.)
[Note 2: This is a word which I am utterly unable to explain; but it
is thus printed in Strype's "Memorials," whence the letter is copied.]
* * * * *
On the day immediately following the death of the unfortunate Anne
Boleyn, the king was publicly united in marriage to Jane Seymour; and an
act of parliament soon after passed by which the lady Elizabeth was
declared incapable of succeeding to the crown, which was now settled on
the offspring of Henry by his present queen.
CHAPTER II.
1536 TO 1542.
Vague notions of hereditary succession to the English throne.--Henry's
jealousy of the royal family.--Imprisonment of lord T. Howard and lady
M. Douglas.--After-fortunes of this lady.--Princess Mary reconciled with
her father.--Dissolution of monasteries proceeds.--Insurrections in
Lincolnshire and Yorkshire.--Remarkable trait of the power of the
nobles.--Rebellion of T. Fitzgerald.--Romantic adventures of Gerald
Fitzgerald.--Birth of prince Edward.--Death of the queen.--Rise of the
two Seymours.--Henry's views in their advancement.--His enmity to
cardinal Pole.--Causes of it.--Geffrey Pole discloses a plot.--Trial and
death of lord Montacute, the marquis of Exeter, sir Edward Nevil, and
sir N. Carew.--Particulars of these persons.--Attainder of the
marchioness of Exeter and countess of Salisbury.--Application of these
circumstances to the history of Elizabeth.--Decline of the protestant
party.--Its causes.--Cromwel proposes the king's marriage with Anne of
Cleves.--Accomplishments of this lady.--Royal marriage.--Cromwel made
earl of Essex.--Anger of the Bourchier family.--Justs at
Westminster.--The king determines to dissolve his marriage.--Permits the
fall of Cromwel.--Is divorced.--Behaviour of the queen.--Marriage of the
king to Catherine Howard.--Ascendency of the papists.--Execution of the
countess of Salisbury--of lord Leonard Grey.--Discovery of the queen's
ill-conduct.--Attainders passed against her and several others.
Nothing could be more opposite to the strict principles of hereditary
succession than the ideas entertained, even by the first lawyers of the
time of Henry VIII., concerning the manner in which a title to the crown
was to be established and recognised.
When Rich, the king's solicitor, was sent by his master to argue with
sir Thomas More on the lawfulness of acknowledging the royal supremacy;
he inquired in the course of his argument, whether sir Thomas would not
own for king any person whatever,--himself for example,--who should have
been declared so by parliament? He answered, that he would. Rich then
demanded, why he refused to acknowledge a head of the church so
appointed? "Because," replied More, "a parliament can make a king and
depose him, and that every parliament-man may give his consent
thereunto, but a subject cannot be bound so in case of supremacy[3]."
Bold as such doctrine respecting the power of parliaments would now be
thought, it could not well be controverted at a time when examples were
still recent of kings of the line of York or Lancaster alternately
elevated or degraded by a vote of the two houses, and when the father of
the reigning sovereign had occupied the throne in virtue of such a
nomination more than by right of birth.
[Note 3: See Herbert's Henry VIII.]
But the obvious inconveniences and dangers attending the exercise of
this power of choice, had induced the parliaments of Henry VIII. to join
with him in various acts for the regulation of the succession. It was
probably with the concurrence of this body, that in 1532 he had declared
his cousin, the marquis of Exeter, heir to the crown; yet this very
act, by which the king excluded not only his daughter Mary, but his two
sisters and their children, every one of whom had a prior right
according to the rules at present received, must have caused the
sovereignty to be regarded rather as elective in the royal family than
properly hereditary--a fatal idea, which converted every member of that
family possessed of wealth, talents, or popularity, into a formidable
rival, if not to the sovereign on the throne, at least to his next heir,
if a woman or a minor, and which may be regarded as the immediate
occasion of those cruel proscriptions which stained with kindred blood
the closing years of the reign of Henry, and have stamped upon him to
all posterity the odious character of a tyrant.
The first sufferer by the suspicions of the king was lord Thomas Howard,
half-brother to the duke of Norfolk, who was attainted of high treason
in the parliament of 1536, for having secretly entered into a contract
of marriage with lady Margaret Douglas, the king's niece, through which
alliance he was accused of aiming at the crown. For this offence he was
confined in the Tower till his death; but on what evidence of traitorous
designs, or by what law, except the arbitrary mandate of the monarch
confirmed by a subservient parliament, it would be difficult to say.
That his marriage was forbidden by no law, is evident from the passing
of an act immediately afterwards, making it penal to marry any female
standing in the first degree of relationship to the king, without his
knowledge and consent.
The lady Margaret was daughter to Henry's eldest sister, the
queen-dowager of Scotland, by her second husband the earl of Angus. She
was born in England, whither her mother had been compelled to fly for
refuge by the turbulent state of her son's kingdom, and the ill success
of her own and her husband's struggles for the acquisition of political
power. In the English court the lady Margaret had likewise been
educated, and had formed connexions of friendship; whilst her brother
James V. laboured under the antipathy with which the English then
regarded those northern neighbours, with whom they were involved in
almost perpetual hostilities. It might easily therefore have happened,
in case of the king's death without male heirs, that in spite of the
power recently bestowed on him by parliament of disposing of the crown
by will, which it is very uncertain how he would have employed, a
connexion with the potent house of Howard might have given the title of
lady Margaret a preference over that of any other competitor. Henry was
struck with this danger, however distant and contingent: he caused his
niece, as well as her spouse, to be imprisoned; and though he restored
her to liberty in a few months, and the death of Howard, not long
afterwards, set her free from this ill-starred engagement, she ventured
not to form another, till the king himself, at the end of several years,
gave her in marriage to the earl of Lenox; by whom she became the mother
of lord Darnley, and through him the progenitrix of a line of princes
destined to unite another crown to the ancient inheritance of the
Plantagenets and the Tudors.
The princess Mary, after the removal of Anne Boleyn, who had exercised
towards her the utmost insolence and harshness, ventured upon some
overtures towards a reconciliation with her father; but he would accept
them on no other conditions than her adopting his religious creed,
acknowledging his supremacy, denying the authority of the pope, and
confessing the unlawfulness of her mother's marriage. It was long before
motives of expediency, and the persuasion of friends, could wring from
Mary a reluctant assent to these cruel articles: her compliance was
rewarded by the return of her father's affection, but not immediately by
her reinstatement in the order of succession. She saw the child of Anne
Boleyn still a distinguished object of the king's paternal tenderness;
the new queen was likely to give another heir to the crown; and whatever
hopes she, with the catholic party in general, had founded on the
disgrace of his late spouse, became frustrated by succeeding events.
The death of Catherine of Arragon seemed to have removed the principal
obstacles to an agreement between the king and the pope; and the holy
father now deigned to make some advances towards a son whom he hoped to
find disposed to penitence: but they were absolutely rejected by Henry,
who had ceased to dread his spiritual thunders. The parliament and the
convocation showed themselves prepared to adopt, without hesitation, the
numerous changes suggested by the king in the ancient ritual; and
Cromwel, with influence not apparently diminished by the fall of the
late patroness of the protestant party, presided in the latter assembly
with the title of vicegerent, and with powers unlimited.
The suppression of monasteries was now carried on with increasing rigor,
and thousands of their unfortunate inhabitants were mercilessly turned
out to beg or starve. These, dispersing themselves over the country, in
which their former hospitalities had rendered them generally popular,
worked strongly on the passions of the many, already discontented at the
imposition of new taxes, which served to convince them that the king and
his courtiers would be the only gainers by the plunder of the church;
and formidable insurrections were in some counties the result. In
Lincolnshire the commotions were speedily suppressed by the
interposition of the earl of Shrewsbury and other loyal noblemen; but it
was necessary to send into Yorkshire a considerable army under the duke
of Norfolk. Through the dexterous management of this leader, who was
judged to favor the cause of the revolters as much as his duty to his
sovereign and a regard to his own safety would permit, little blood was
shed in the field; but much flowed afterwards on the scaffold, where the
lords Darcy and Hussey, sir Thomas Percy, brother to the earl of
Northumberland, and several private gentlemen, suffered as traitors.
The suppression of these risings strengthened, as usual, the hands of
government, but at the expense of converting into an object of dread, a
monarch who in the earlier and brighter period of his reign had been
regarded with sentiments of admiration and love.
In lord Herbert's narrative of this insurrection, we meet with a passage
too remarkable to be omitted. "But the king, who was informed from
divers parts, but chiefly from Yorkshire, that the people began there
also to take arms, and knowing of what great consequence it might be if
the great persons in those parts, though the rumour were false, should
be said to join with him, had commanded George earl of Shrewsbury,
Thomas Manners earl of Rutland, and George Hastings earl of Huntingdon,
to make a proclamation to the Lincolnshire-men, summoning and commanding
them on their allegiance and peril of their lives to return; which, as
it much disheartened them, so many stole away," &c.
In this potency of the hereditary aristocracy of the country, and
comparative feebleness, on some occasions at least, of the authority of
the most despotic sovereign whom England had yet seen on the throne, we
discern at once the excuse which Henry would make to himself for his
severities against the nobility, and the motive of that extreme
popularity of manners by which Elizabeth aimed at attaching to herself
the affections of the middling and lower orders of her subjects.
Soon after these events, Henry confirmed the new impressions which his
subjects had received of his character, by an act of extraordinary, but
not unprovoked, severity, which involved in destruction one of the most
ancient and powerful houses among the peerage of Ireland, that of
Fitzgerald earl of Kildare. The nobleman who now bore this title had
married for his second wife lady Elizabeth Grey, daughter of the first
marquis of Dorset, and first-cousin to the king by his mother; he had
been favored at court, and was at this time lord deputy of Ireland. But
the country being in a very disturbed state, and the deputy accused of
many acts of violence, he had obeyed with great reluctance a summons to
answer for his conduct before the king in council, leaving his eldest
son to exercise his office during his absence. On his arrival, he was
committed to the Tower, and his son, alarmed by the false report of his
having lost his head, broke out immediately into a furious rebellion.
After a temporary success, Thomas Fitzgerald was reduced to great
difficulties: at the same time a promise of pardon was held out to him;
and confiding in it he surrendered himself to lord Leonard Grey, brother
to the countess his step-mother. His five uncles, also implicated in the
guilt of rebellion, were seized by surprise, or deceived into
submission. The whole six were then conveyed to England in the same
ship; and all, in spite of the entreaties and remonstrances of lord
Leonard Grey, who considered his own honor as pledged for the safety of
their lives, were hanged at Tyburn.
The aged earl had died in the Tower on receiving news of his son's rash
enterprise; and a posthumous attainder being issued against him, his
lands and goods were forfeited. The king however, in pity to the widow,
and as a slight atonement for so cruel an injustice, permitted one of
her daughters to retain some poor remains of the family plate and
valuables; and another of them, coming to England, appears to have
received her education at Hunsdon palace with the princesses Mary and
Elizabeth her relations. Here she was seen by Henry earl of Surry, whose
chaste and elegant muse has handed her down to posterity as the lovely
Geraldine, the object of his fervent but fruitless devotion. She was
married first to sir Anthony Brown, and afterwards became the wife of
the earl of Lincoln, surviving by many years her noble and unfortunate
admirer.
The countess of Kildare, and the younger of her two sons, likewise
remained in England obscure and unmolested; but the merciless rancour of
Henry against the house of Fitzgerald still pursued its destitute and
unoffending heir, who was struggling through a series of adventures the
most perilous and the most romantic.
This boy, named Gerald, then about twelve years old, had been left by
his father at a house in Kildare, under the care and tuition of Leverous
a priest who was his foster-brother. The child was lying ill of the
small-pox, when the news arrived that his brother and uncles had been
sent prisoners to England: but his affectionate guardian, justly
apprehensive of greater danger to his young charge, wrapped him up as
carefully as he could, and conveyed him away with all speed to the house
of one of his sisters, where he remained till he was quite recovered.
Thence his tutor removed him successively into the territories of two or
three different Irish chieftains, who sheltered him for about three
quarters of a year, after which he carried him to his aunt the lady
Elenor, at that time widow of a chief named Maccarty Reagh.
This lady had long been sought in marriage by O'Donnel lord of
Tyrconnel, to whose suit she had been unpropitious: but wrought upon by
the hope of being able to afford effectual protection to her unfortunate
nephew, she now consented to an immediate union; and taking Gerald along
with her to her new home in the county of Donegal, she there hospitably
entertained him for about a year. But the jealous spirit of the
implacable king seemed to know no rest while this devoted youth still
breathed the air of liberty, and he caused a great reward to be offered
for his apprehension, which the base-minded O'Donnel immediately sought
to appropriate by delivering him up. Fortunately the lady Elenor
discovered his intentions in time, and instantly causing her nephew to
disguise his person, and storing him, like a bountiful aunt, with
"sevenscore portugueses," she put him under the charge of Leverous and
an old servant of his father's, and shipped him on board a vessel bound
for St. Malo's.
Having thus secured his escape, she loftily expostulated with her
husband on his villainy in plotting to betray her kinsman, whom she had
stipulated that he should protect to the utmost of his power; and she
bid him know, that as the danger of the youth had alone induced her to
form any connection with him, so the assurance of his safety should
cause her to sequester herself for ever from the society of so base and
mercenary a wretch: and hereupon, collecting all that belonged to her,
she quitted O'Donnel and returned to her own country.
Gerald, in the mean time, arrived without accident in Bretagne, and was
favorably received by the governor of that province, when the king of
France, being informed of his situation, gave him a place about the
dauphin. Sir John Wallop however, the English embassador, soon demanded
him, in virtue of a treaty between the two countries for the delivering
up of offenders and proscribed persons; and while the king demurred to
the requisition, Gerald consulted his safety by making a speedy retreat
into Flanders. Thither his steps were dogged by an Irish servant of the
embassador's; but the governor of Valenciennes protected him by
imprisoning this man, till the youth himself generously begged his
release; and he reached the emperor's court at Brussels, without further
molestation. But here also the English embassador demanded him; the
emperor however excused himself from giving up a fugitive whose youth
sufficiently attested his innocence, and sent him privately to the
bishop of Liege, with a pension of a hundred crowns a month. The bishop
entertained him very honorably, placing him in a monastery, and watching
carefully over the safety of his person, till, at the end of half a
year, his mother's kinsman, cardinal Pole, sent for him into Italy.
Before he would admit the young Irishman to his presence, the cardinal
required him to learn Italian; and allowing him an annuity, placed him
first with the bishop of Verona, then with a cardinal, and afterwards
with the duke of Mantua. At the end of a year and a half he invited him
to Rome, and soon becoming attached to him, took him into his house, and
for three years had him instructed under his own eye in all the
accomplishments of a finished gentleman. At the end of this time, when
Gerald had nearly attained the age of nineteen, his generous patron gave
him the choice either of pursuing his studies or of travelling to seek
his adventures. The youth preferred the latter; and repairing to Naples,
he fell in with some knights of Rhodes, whom he accompanied to Malta,
and thence to Tripoli, a place at that time possessed by the order,
whence they carried on fierce war against the "Turks and miscreants,"
spoiling and sacking their villages and towns, and taking many prisoners
whom they sold to the Christians for slaves. In these proceedings, the
young adventurer took a strenuous and valiant part, much to his profit;
for in less than a year he returned to Rome laden with a rich booty.
"Proud was the cardinal to hear of his prosperous exploits," and
increased his pension to three hundred pounds a year. Shortly after, he
entered into the service of Cosmo duke of Florence, and remained three
years his master of the horse.
The tidings of Henry's death at length put an end to his exile, and he
hastened to London in the company of some foreign embassadors, and still
attended by his faithful guardian Leverous. Appearing at king Edward's
court in a mask, or ball, he had the good fortune to make a deep
impression on the heart of a young lady, daughter to sir Anthony Brown,
whom he married; and through the intercession of her friends was
restored to a part of his inheritance by the young monarch, who also
knighted him. In the next reign, the interest of cardinal Pole procured
his reinstatement in all the titles and honors of his ancestors. He was
a faithful and affectionate subject to queen Elizabeth, in whose reign
he turned protestant; was by her greatly favored, and finally died in
peace in 1585.[4]
That ill-directed restlessness which formed so striking a feature in the
character of Henry VIII. had already prompted him to interfere, as we
have seen, on more than one occasion, with the order of succession; and
the dangerous consequences of these capricious acts with respect to the
several branches of the royal family have already been observed. To the
people at large also, his instability on so momentous a point was
harassing and alarming, and they became as much at a loss to conjecture
what successor, as what religion, he would at last bequeath them.
Under such circumstances, great indeed must have been the joy in the
court and in the nation on the occurrence of an event calculated to end
all doubts and remove all difficulties--the birth of a prince of Wales.
This auspicious infant seemed to strangle in his cradle the serpents of
civil discord. Every lip hastened to proffer him its homage; every heart
united, or seemed at least to unite, in the general burst of
thankfulness and congratulation.
[Note 4: See Chron. of Ireland in Holinshed, _pass_. Collins's
Peerage, by sir E. Brydges, article _Viscount Leinster_.]
The zealous papists formed the party most to be suspected of insincerity
in their professions of satisfaction; but the princess Mary set them an
excellent example of graceful submission to what was inevitable, by
soliciting the office of godmother. Her sister was happily too young to
be infected with court-jealousies, or to behold in a brother an
unwelcome intruder, who came to snatch from her the inheritance of a
crown: between Elizabeth and Edward an attachment truly fraternal sprung
up with the first dawnings of reason; and notwithstanding the fatal blow
given to her interests by the act of settlement extorted from his dying
hand, this princess never ceased to cherish his memory, and to mention
him in terms of affectionate regret.
The conjugal felicities of Henry were destined to be of short duration,
and before he could receive the felicitations of his subjects on the
birth of his son, the mother was snatched away by death. The queen died
deeply regretted, not only by her husband, but by the whole court, whom
she had attached by the uncommon sweetness of her disposition. To the
princess Mary her behaviour had been the reverse of that by which her
predecessor had disgraced herself; and the little Elizabeth had received
from her marks of a maternal tenderness. Jane Seymour was accounted a
favourer of the protestant cause; but as she was apparently free from
the ambition of interfering in state affairs, her death had no further
political influence than what resulted from the king's marriage thus
becoming once more an object of speculation and court intrigue. It did
not even give a check to the advancement of her two brothers, destined
to act and to suffer so conspicuously in the fierce contentions of the
ensuing minority; for the king seemed to regard it as a point of policy
to elevate those maternal relations of his son, on whose care he relied
to watch over the safety of his person in case of his own demise, to a
dignity and importance which the proudest nobles of the land might view
with respect or fear. Sir Edward Seymour, who had been created lord
Beauchamp the year before, was now made earl of Hertford; and high
places at court and commands in the army attested the favor of his royal
brother-in-law. Thomas Seymour, afterwards lord high-admiral, attained
during this reign no higher dignity than that of knighthood; but
considerable pecuniary grants were bestowed upon him; and whilst he saw
his wealth increase, he was secretly extending his influence, and
feeding his aspiring spirit with fond anticipations of future greatness.
All now seemed tranquil: but a discerning eye might already have beheld
fresh tempests gathering in the changeful atmosphere of the English
court. The jealousies of the king, become too habitual to be discarded,
had in fact only received a new direction from the birth of his son: his
mind was perpetually haunted with the dread of leaving him, a
defenceless minor, in the hands of contending parties in religion, and
of a formidable and factious nobility; and for the sake of obviating the
distant and contingent evils which he apprehended from this source, he
showed himself ready to pour forth whole rivers of the best blood of
England.
The person beyond all comparison most dreaded and detested by Henry at
this juncture was his cousin Reginald Pole, for whom when a youth he had
conceived a warm affection, whose studies he had encouraged by the gift
of a deanery and the hope of further church-preferment, and of whose
ingratitude he always believed himself entitled to complain. It was the
long-contested point of the lawfulness of Henry's marriage with his
brother's widow, which set the kinsmen at variance. Pole had from the
first refused to concur with the university of Paris, in which he was
then residing, in its condemnation of this union: afterwards, alarmed
probably at the king's importunities on the subject, he had obtained the
permission then necessary for leaving England, to which he had returned,
and travelled into Italy. Here he formed friendships with the most
eminent defenders of the papal authority, now incensed to the highest
degree against Henry, on account of his having declared himself head of
the English church; and both his convictions and his passions becoming
still more strongly engaged on the side which he had already espoused,
he published a work on the unity of the church, in which the conduct of
his sovereign and benefactor became the topic of his vehement invective.
The offended king, probably with treacherous intentions, invited Pole to
come to England, and explain to him in person certain difficult passages
of his book: but his kinsman was too wary to trust himself in such
hands; and his refusal to obey this summons, which implied a final
renunciation of his country and all his early prospects, was
immediately rewarded by the pope, through the emperor's concurrence,
with a cardinal's hat and the appointment of legate to Flanders. But
alarmed, as well as enraged, at seeing the man whom he regarded as his
bitterest personal enemy placed in a situation so convenient for
carrying on intrigues with the disaffected papists in England, Henry
addressed so strong a remonstrance to the governess of the Netherlands,
as caused her to send the cardinal out of the country before he had
begun to exercise the functions of his legantine office.
From this time, to maintain any intercourse or correspondence with Pole
was treated by the king as either in itself an act of treason, or at
least as conclusive evidence of traitorous intentions. He believed that
the darkest designs were in agitation against his own government and his
son's succession; and the circumstance of the cardinal's still declining
to take any but deacon's orders, notwithstanding his high dignity in the
church, suggested to him the suspicion that his kinsman aimed at the
crown itself, through a marriage with the princess Mary, of whose
legitimacy he had shown himself so strenuous a champion. What foundation
there might be for such an idea it is difficult to determine.
There is an author who relates that the lady Mary was educated with the
cardinal under his mother, and hints that an early attachment had thus
been formed between them[5]: A statement manifestly inaccurate, since
Pole was sixteen years older than the princess; though it is not
improbable that Mary, during some period of her youth, might be placed
under the care of the countess of Salisbury, and permitted to associate
with her son on easy and affectionate terms. It is well known that after
Mary's accession, Charles V. impeded the journey of Pole into England
till her marriage with his son Philip had been actually solemnized; but
this was probably rather from a persuasion of the inexpediency of the
cardinal's sooner opening his legantine commission in England, than from
any fear of his supplanting in Mary's affections his younger rival,
though some have ascribed to the emperor the latter motive.
[Note 5: See Lloyd's Worthies, article _Pole_.]
When however it is recollected, that in consequence of Henry's having
caused a posthumous judgement of treason to be pronounced against the
papal martyr Becket, his shrine to be destroyed, his bones burned, and
his ashes scattered, the pope had at length, in 1538, fulminated against
him the long-suspended sentence of excommunication, and made a donation
of his kingdom to the king of Scots, and thus impressed the sanction of
religion on any rebellious attempts of his Roman-catholic subjects,--it
would be too much to pronounce the apprehensions of the monarch to have
been altogether chimerical. But his suspicion appears, as usual, to have
gone beyond the truth, and his anger to have availed itself of slight
pretexts to ruin where he feared and hated.
Such was the state of his mind when the treachery or weakness of Geffrey
Pole furnished him with intelligence of a traitorous correspondence
carried on with his brother the cardinal by several persons of
distinction attached to the papal interest, and in which he had himself
been a sharer. On his information, the marquis of Exeter, viscount
Montacute, sir Edward Nevil, and sir Nicholas Carew, were apprehended,
tried and found guilty of high treason. Public opinion was at this time
nothing; and notwithstanding the rank, consequence and popularity of the
men whose lives were sacrificed on this occasion; notwithstanding that
secret consciousness of his own ill-will towards them, which ought to
have rendered Henry more than usually cautious in his proceedings,--not
even an attempt was made to render their guilt clear and notorious to
the nation at large; and posterity scarcely even knows of what designs
they were accused; to overt acts it is quite certain that they had not
proceeded.
Henry lord Montacute was obnoxious on more than one account: he was the
brother of cardinal Pole; and as eldest son of Margaret, sole surviving
child of the duke of Clarence and heiress to her brother the earl of
Warwick, he might be regarded as succeeding to those claims on the crown
which under Henry VII. had proved fatal to the last-mentioned
unfortunate and ill-treated nobleman. During the early part of this
reign, however, he, in common with other members of the family of Pole,
had received marks of the friendship of Henry. In 1514, his mother was
authorized to assume the title of countess of Salisbury, and he that of
viscount Montacute, notwithstanding the attainder formerly passed
against the great house of Nevil, from whom these honors were derived.
In 1521 lord Montacute had been indicted for concealing the treasons,
real or pretended, of the duke of Buckingham; but immediately on his
acquittal he was restored to the good graces of his sovereign, and, two
years after, attended him on an expedition to France.
It is probable that lord Montacute was popular; he was at least a
partisan of the old religion, and heir to the vast possessions which his
mother derived from the king-making earl of Warwick her maternal
grandfather; sufficient motives with Henry for now wishing his removal.
If the plot in which he was charged by his perfidious brother with
participating, had in view the elevation of the cardinal to a
matrimonial crown by his union with the princess Mary, which seems to
have been insinuated, lord Montacute must at least stand acquitted of
all design of asserting his own title; yet it may justly be suspected
that his character of representative of the house of Clarence, was by
Henry placed foremost in the catalogue of his offences.
A similar remark applies still more forcibly to the marquis of Exeter.
Son of Catherine, youngest daughter of Edward IV., and so lately
declared his heir by Henry himself, it is scarcely credible that any
inducement could have drawn this nobleman into a plot for disturbing the
succession in favour of a claim worse founded than his own; and that the
blood which he inherited was the true object of Henry's apprehensions
from him, evidently appeared to all the world by his causing the son of
the unhappy marquis, a child at this period, to be detained a state
prisoner in the Tower during the remainder of his reign.
Sir Edward Nevil was brother to lord Abergavenny and to the wife of lord
Montacute--a connection likely to bring him into suspicion, and perhaps
to involve him in real guilt; but it must not be forgotten that he was a
lineal descendant of the house of Lancaster by Joan daughter of John of
Gaunt. The only person not of royal extraction who suffered on this
occasion was sir Nicholas Carew, master of the horse, and lately a
distinguished favourite of the king; of whom it is traditionally
related, that though accused as an accomplice in the designs of the
other noble delinquents, the real offence for which he died, was the
having retorted, with more spirit than prudence, some opprobrious
language with which his royal master had insulted him as they were
playing at bowls together[6]. The family of Carew was however allied in
blood to that of Courtney, of which the marquis of Exeter was the head.
[Note 6: See Fuller's Worthies in Surry.]
But the attempt to extirpate all who under any future circumstances
might be supposed capable of advancing claims formidable to the house of
Tudor, must have appeared to Henry himself a task almost as hopeless as
cruel. Sons and daughters of the Plantagenet princes had in every
generation freely intermarried with the ancient nobles of the land; and
as fast as those were cut off whose connection with the royal blood was
nearest and most recent, the pedigrees of families pointed out others,
and others still, whose relationship grew into nearness by the removal
of such as had stood before them, and presented to the affrighted eyes
of their persecutor, a hydra with still renewed and multiplying heads.
Not content with these inflictions,--sufficiently severe it might be
thought to intimidate the papal faction,--Henry gratified still further
his stern disposition by the attainder of the marchioness of Exeter and
the aged countess of Salisbury. The marchioness he soon after released;
but the countess was still detained prisoner under a sentence of death,
which a parliament, atrocious in its subserviency, had passed upon her
without form of trial, but which the king did not think proper at
present to carry into execution, either because he chose to keep her as
a kind of hostage for the good behaviour of her son the cardinal, or
because, tyrant as he had become, he had not yet been able to divest
himself of all reverence or pity for the hoary head of a female, a
kinswoman, and the last who was born to the name of Plantagenet.
It is melancholy, it is even disgusting, to dwell upon these acts of
legalized atrocity, but let it be allowed that it is important and
instructive. They form unhappily a leading feature of the administration
of Henry VIII. during the latter years of his reign; they exhibit in the
most striking point of view the sentiments and practices of the age; and
may assist us to form a juster estimate of the character and conduct of
Elizabeth, whose infant mind was formed to the contemplation of these
domestic tragedies, and whose fame has often suffered by inconsiderate
comparisons which have placed her in parallel with the enlightened and
humanized sovereigns of more modern days, rather than with the stern and
arbitrary Tudors, her barbarous predecessors.
It is remarkable that the protestant party at the court of Henry, so far
from gaining strength and influence by the severities exercised against
the adherents of cardinal Pole and the ancient religion, was evidently
in a declining state. The feeble efforts of its two leaders Cromwel and
Cranmer, of whom the first was deficient in zeal, the last in courage,
now experienced irresistible counteraction from the influence of
Gardiner, whose uncommon talents for business, joined to his extreme
obsequiousness, had rendered him at once necessary and acceptable to his
royal master. The law of the Six Articles, which forbade under the
highest penalties the denial of several doctrines of the Romish church
peculiarly obnoxious to the reformers, was probably drawn up by this
minister. It was enacted in the parliament of 1539: a vast number of
persons were soon after imprisoned for transgressing it; and Cranmer
himself was compelled, by the clause which ordained the celibacy of the
clergy, to send away his wife.
Under these circumstances Cromwel began to look on all sides for
support; and recollecting with regret the powerful influence exerted by
Anne Boleyn in favor of the good cause, and even the gentler and more
private aid lent to it by the late queen, he planned a new marriage for
his sovereign, with a lady educated in the very bosom of the protestant
communion. Political considerations favored the design; since a treaty
lately concluded between the emperor and the king of France rendered it
highly expedient that Henry, by way of counterpoise, should strengthen
his alliance with the Smalcaldic league. In short, Cromwel prevailed.
Holbein, whom the king had appointed his painter on the recommendation
of sir Thomas More, and still retained in that capacity, was sent over
to take the portrait of Anne sister of the duke of Cleves; and rashly
trusting in the fidelity of the likeness, Henry soon after solicited her
hand in marriage.
"The lady Anne," says a historian, "understood no language but Dutch, so
that all communication of speech between her and our king was
intercluded. Yet our embassador, Nicholas Wotton doctor of law, employed
in the business, hath it, that she could both read and write in her own
language, and sew very well; only for music, he said, it was not the
manner of the country to learn it[7]." It must be confessed that for a
princess this list of accomplishments appears somewhat scanty; and
Henry, unfortunately for the lady Anne, was a great admirer of learning,
wit and talents, in the female sex, and a passionate lover of music,
which he well understood. What was still worse, he piqued himself
extremely on his taste in beauty, and was much more solicitous
respecting the personal charms of his consorts than is usual with
sovereigns; and when, on the arrival of his destined bride in England,
he hastened to Rochester to gratify his impatience by snatching a
private view of her, he found that in this capital article he had been
grievously imposed upon. The uncourteous comparison by which he
expressed his dislike of her large and clumsy person is well known.
Bitterly did he lament to Cromwel the hard fortune which had allotted
him so unlovely a partner, and he returned to London very melancholy.
But the evil appeared to be now past remedy; it was contrary to all
policy to affront the German princes by sending back their countrywoman
after matters had gone so far, and Henry magnanimously resolved to
sacrifice his own feelings, once in his life, for the good of his
country. Accordingly, he received the princess with great magnificence
and with every outward demonstration of satisfaction, and was married to
her at Greenwich in January 1540.
[Note 7: Herbert.]
Two or three months afterwards, the king, notwithstanding his secret
dissatisfaction, rewarded Cromwel for his pains in concluding this union
by conferring on him the vacant title of earl of Essex;--a fatal gift,
which exasperated to rage the mingled jealousy and disdain which this
low-born and aspiring minister had already provoked from the ancient
nobility, by intruding himself into the order of the garter, and which
served to heap upon his devoted head fresh coals of wrath against the
day of retribution which was fast approaching. The act of transferring
this title to a new family, could in fact be no otherwise regarded by
the great house of Bourchier, which had long enjoyed it, than either as
a marked indignity to itself, or as a fresh result of the general Tudor
system of depressing and discountenancing the blood of the Plantagenets,
from which the Bourchiers, through a daughter of Thomas of Woodstock,
were descended. The late earl had left a married daughter, to whom,
according to the customary courtesy of English sovereigns in similar
circumstances, the title ought to have been continued; and as this lady
had no children, the earl of Bath, as head of the house, felt himself
also aggrieved by the alienation of family honors which he hoped to have
seen continued to himself and his posterity.
In honor, probably, of the recent marriage of the king, unusually
splendid justs were opened at Westminster on May-day; in which the
challengers were headed by sir John Dudley, and the defenders by the
earl of Surry. This entertainment was continued for several successive
days, during which the challengers, according to the costly fashion of
ancient hospitality, kept open house at their common charge, and feasted
the king and queen, the members of both houses, and the lord-mayor and
aldermen with their wives.
But scenes of pomp and festivity had no power to divert the thoughts of
the king from his domestic grievance,--a wife whom he regarded with
disgust: on the contrary, it is probable that this season of courtly
revelry encreased his disquiet, by giving him opportunities of beholding
under the most attractive circumstances the charms of a youthful beauty
whom he was soon seized with the most violent desire of placing beside
him on the throne which he judged her worthy to adorn.
No considerations of rectitude or of policy could longer restrain the
impetuous monarch from casting off the yoke of a detested marriage: and
as a first step towards emancipation, he determined to permit the ruin
of its original adviser, that unpopular minister, but vigorous and
serviceable instrument of arbitrary power, whom he had hitherto defended
with pertinacity against all attacks.
No sooner was the decline of his favor perceived, and what so quickly
perceived at courts? than the ill-fated Cromwel found himself assailed
on every side. His active agency in the suppression of monasteries had
brought upon him, with the imputation of sacrilege, the hatred of all
the papists;--a certain coldness, or timidity, which he had manifested
in the cause of religious reformation in other respects, and
particularly the enactment of the Six Articles during his
administration, had rendered him an object of suspicion or dislike to
the protestants;--in his new and undefined office of royal vicegerent
for the exercise of the supremacy, he had offended the whole body of the
clergy;--and he had just filled up the measure of his offences against
the nobility by procuring a grant of the place of lord high-steward,
long hereditary in the great house of the Veres earls of Oxford. The
only voice raised in his favor was that of Cranmer, who interceded with
Henry in his behalf in a letter eloquent, touching, and even courageous,
times and persons considered. Gardiner and the duke of Norfolk urged on
his accusation; the parliament, with its accustomed subserviency,
proceeded against him by attainder; and having voted him guilty of
heresy and treason, left it in the choice of the king to bring him
either to the block or the stake for whichever he pleased of these
offences; neither of which was proved by evidence, or even supported by
reasonable probabilities. But against this violation in his person of
the chartered rights of Englishmen, however flagrant, the unfortunate
earl of Essex had forfeited all right to appeal, since it was himself
who had first advised the same arbitrary mode of proceeding in the cases
of the marchioness of Exeter, of the countess of Salisbury, and of
several persons of inferior rank connected with them; on whom capital
punishment had already been inflicted.
With many private virtues, Essex, like his great master Wolsey, and like
the disgraced ministers of despotic princes in general, perished
unpitied; and the king and the faction of Gardiner and of the Howards
seemed equally to rejoice in the free course opened by his removal to
their further projects. The parliament was immediately ordered to find
valid a certain frivolous pretext of a prior contract, on which its
master was pleased to demand a divorce from Ann of Cleves; and the
marriage was unanimously declared null, without any opportunity afforded
to the queen of bringing evidence in its support.
The fortitude, or rather phlegm, with which her unmerited degradation
was supported by the lady Anne, has in it something at once
extraordinary and amusing. There is indeed a tradition that she fainted
on first receiving the information that her marriage was likely to be
set aside; but the shock once over, she gave to the divorce, without
hesitation or visible reluctance, that assent which was required of her.
Taking in good part the pension of three thousand pounds per annum, and
the title of his _sister_ which her ex-husband was graciously pleased to
offer her, she wrote to her brother the elector to entreat him still to
live in amity with the king of England, against whom she had no ground
of complaint; and she continued, till the day of her death, to make his
country her abode. Through the whole affair she gave no indication of
wounded pride; unless her refusal to return in the character of a
discarded and rejected damsel, to the home which she had so lately
quitted in all the pomp and triumph of a royal bride, is to be regarded
as such. But even for this part of her conduct a different motive is
with great plausibility assigned by a writer, who supposes her to have
been swayed by the prudent consideration, that the regular payment of
her pension would better be secured by her remaining under the eyes and
within the protection of the English nation.
A very few weeks after this apparently formidable business had been thus
readily and amicably arranged, Catherine Howard niece to the duke of
Norfolk, and first cousin to Anne Boleyn, was declared queen. This lady,
beautiful, insinuating, and more fondly beloved by the king than any of
her predecessors, was a catholic, and almost all the members of the
council who now possessed office or influence were attached, more or
less openly, to the same communion. In consequence, the penalties of the
Six Articles were enforced with great cruelty against the reformers; but
this did not exempt from punishment such as, offending on the other
side, ventured to deny the royal supremacy; the only difference was,
that the former class of culprits were burned as heretics, the latter
hanged as traitors.
The king soon after seized the occasion of a trifling insurrection in
Yorkshire, of which sir John Nevil was the leader, to complete his
vengeance against cardinal Pole, by bringing to a cruel and ignominious
end the days of his venerable and sorrow-stricken mother, who had been
unfortunate enough thus long to survive the ruin of her family. The
strange and shocking scene exhibited on the scaffold by the desperation
of this illustrious and injured lady, is detailed by all our historians:
it seems almost incredible that the surrounding crowd were not urged by
an unanimous impulse of horror and compassion to rush in and rescue from
the murderous hands of the executioner the last miserable representative
of such a line of princes. But the eyes of Henry's subjects were
habituated to these scenes of blood; and they were viewed by some with
indifference, and by the rest with emotions of terror which effectually
repressed the generous movements of a just and manly indignation.
In public causes, to be accused and to suffer death were now the same
thing; and another eminent victim of the policy of the English Tiberius
displayed in a novel and truly portentous manner his utter despair of
the justice of the country and the mercy of his sovereign.
Lord Leonard Grey, late deputy of Ireland, was accused of favouring the
escape of that persecuted child his nephew Gerald Fitzgerald, of
corresponding with cardinal Pole, and of various other offences called
treasonable. Being brought before a jury of knights, "he saved them,"
says lord Herbert, "the labour of condemning him, and without more ado
confessed all. Which, whether this lord, who was of great courage, did
out of desperation or guilt, some circumstances make doubtful; and the
rather, that the articles being so many, he neither denied nor
extenuated any of them, though his continual fighting with the king's
enemies, where occasion was, pleaded much on his part. Howsoever, he had
his head cut off[8]."
[Note 8: Many years after, the earl of Kildare solemnly assured the
author of the "Chronicles of Ireland" in Holinshed, that lord Leonard
Grey had no concern whatever in his escape.]
The queen and her party were daily gaining upon the mind of the king;
and Cranmer himself, notwithstanding the high esteem entertained for him
by Henry, had begun to be endangered by their machinations, when an
unexpected discovery put into his hands the means of baffling all their
designs, and producing a total revolution in the face of the court.
It was towards the close of the year 1541 that private information was
conveyed to the primate of such disorders in the conduct of the queen
before her marriage as could not fail to plunge her in infamy and ruin.
Cranmer, if not exceedingly grieved, was at least greatly perplexed by
the incident:--at first sight there appeared to be equal danger in
concealing or discovering circumstances of a nature so delicate, and
the archbishop was timid by nature, and cautious from the experience of
a court. At length, all things well weighed, he judiciously preferred
the hazard of making the communication at once, without reserve, and
directly, to the person most interested; and, forming into a narrative
facts which his tongue dared not utter to the face of a prince whose
anger was deadly, he presented it to him and entreated him to peruse it
in secret.
Love and pride conspired to persuade the king that his Catherine was
incapable of having imposed upon him thus grossly, and he at once
pronounced the whole story a malicious fabrication; but the strict
inquiry which he caused to be instituted for the purpose of punishing
its authors, not only established the truth of the accusations already
brought, but served also to throw the strongest suspicions on the
conjugal fidelity of the queen.
The agonies of Henry on this occasion were such as in any other husband
would have merited the deepest compassion: with him they were quickly
succeeded by the most violent rage; and his cry for vengeance was, as
usual, echoed with alacrity by a loyal and sympathizing parliament.
Party animosity profited by the occasion and gave additional impulse to
their proceedings. After convicting by attainder the queen and her
paramours, who were soon after put to death, the two houses proceeded
also to attaint her uncle, aunt, grandmother, and about ten other
persons, male and female, accused of being accessary or privy to her
disorders before marriage, and of not revealing them to the king when
they became acquainted with his intention of making her his consort; an
offence declared to be misprision of treason by an ex post facto law.
But this was an excess of barbarity of which Henry himself was ashamed:
the infamous lady Rochford was the only confident who suffered
capitally; the rest were released after imprisonments of longer or
shorter duration; yet a reserve of bitterness appears to have remained
stored up in the heart of the king against the whole race of Howard,
which the enemies of that illustrious house well knew how to cherish and
augment against a future day.
CHAPTER III.
1542 TO 1547.
Rout of Solway and death of James V. of Scotland.--Birth of queen
Mary.--Henry projects to marry her to his son.--Offers the hand of
Elizabeth to the earl of Arran.--Earl of Lenox marries lady M.
Douglas.--Marriage of the king to Catherine Parr.--Her person and
acquirements.--Influence of her conduct on Elizabeth.--Henry joins the
emperor against Francis I.--His campaign in France.--Princess Mary
replaced in order of succession, and Elizabeth also.--Proposals for a
marriage between Elizabeth and Philip of Spain.--The duke of Norfolk and
earl of Hertford heads of the catholic and protestant parties.
Circumstances which give a preponderance to the latter.--Disgrace of the
duke.--Trial of the earl of Surry.--His death and character.--Sentence
against the duke of Norfolk.--Death of Henry.
In the month of December 1542, shortly after the rout of Solway, in
which the English made prisoners the flower of the Scottish nobility,
the same messenger brought to Henry VIII. the tidings that the grief and
shame of this defeat had broken the heart of king James V., and that his
queen had brought into the world a daughter, who had received the name
of Mary, and was now queen of Scotland. Without stopping to deplore the
melancholy fate of a nephew whom he had himself brought to destruction,
Henry instantly formed the project of uniting the whole island under one
crown, by the marriage of this infant sovereign with the prince his
son. All the Scottish prisoners of rank then in London were immediately
offered the liberty of returning to their own country on the condition,
to which they acceded with apparent alacrity, of promoting this union
with all their interest; and so confident was the English monarch in the
success of his measures, that previously to their departure, several of
them were carried to the palace of Enfield, where young Edward then
resided, that they might tender homage to the future husband of their
queen.
The regency of Scotland at this critical juncture was claimed by the
earl of Arran, who was generally regarded as next heir to the crown,
though his legitimacy had been disputed; and to this nobleman,--but
whether for himself or his son seems doubtful,--Henry, as a further
means of securing the important object which he had at heart, offered
the hand of his daughter Elizabeth. So early were the concerns and
interests blended, of two princesses whose celebrated rivalry was
destined to endure until the life of one of them had become its
sacrifice! So remarkably, too, in this first transaction was contrasted
the high preeminence from which the Scottish princess was destined to
hurl herself by her own misconduct, with the abasement and comparative
insignificance out of which her genius and her good fortune were to be
employed in elevating the future sovereign of England.
Born in the purple of her hereditary kingdom, the monarchs of France and
England made it an object of eager contention which of them should
succeed in encircling with a second diadem the baby brows of Mary;
while the hand of Elizabeth was tossed as a trivial boon to a Scottish
earl of equivocal birth, despicable abilities, and feeble character. So
little too was even this person flattered by the honor, or aware of the
advantages, of such a connection, that he soon after renounced it by
quitting the English for the French party. Elizabeth in consequence
remained unbetrothed, and her father soon afterwards secured to himself
a more strenuous ally in the earl of Lenox, also of the blood-royal of
Scotland, by bestowing upon this nobleman the hand, not of his daughter,
but of his niece the lady Margaret Douglas.
Undeterred by his late severe disappointment Henry was bent on entering
once more into the marriage state, and his choice now fell on Catherine
Parr, sprung from a knightly family possessed of large estates in
Westmoreland, and widow of lord Latimer, a member of the great house of
Nevil.
A portrait of this lady still in existence, exhibits, with fine and
regular features, a character of intelligence and arch simplicity
extremely captivating. She was indeed a woman of uncommon talent and
address; and her mental accomplishments, besides the honor which they
reflect on herself, inspire us with respect for the enlightened
liberality of an age in which such acquirements could be placed within
the ambition and attainment of a private gentlewoman, born in a remote
county, remarkable even in much later times for a primitive simplicity
of manners and domestic habits. Catherine was both learned herself, and,
after her elevation a zealous patroness of learning and of
protestantism, to which she was become a convert. Nicholas Udal master
of Eton was employed by her to translate Erasmus's paraphrase of the
four gospels; and there is extant a Latin letter of hers to the princess
Mary, whose conversion from popery she seems to have had much at heart,
in which she entreats her to permit this work to appear under her
auspices. She also printed some prayers and meditations, and there was
found among her papers, after her death, a piece entitled "The
lamentations of a sinner bewailing her blind life," in which she
deplores the years that she had passed in popish observances, and which
was afterwards published by secretary Cecil.
It is a striking proof of the address of this queen, that she
conciliated the affection of all the three children of the king, letters
from each of whom have been preserved addressed to her after the death
of their father.
Elizabeth in particular maintained with her a very intimate and frequent
intercourse; which ended however in a manner reflecting little credit on
either party, as will be more fully explained in its proper place.
The adroitness with which Catherine extricated herself from the snare in
which her own religious zeal, the moroseness of the king, and the enmity
of Gardiner had conspired to entangle her, has often been celebrated.
May it not be conjectured, that such an example, given by one of whom
she entertained a high opinion, might exert no inconsiderable influence
on the opening mind of Elizabeth, whose conduct in the many similar
dilemmas to which it was her lot to be reduced, partook so much of the
same character of politic and cautious equivocation?
Henry discovered by experiment that it would prove a much more difficult
matter than he had apprehended to accomplish, either by force or
persuasion, the marriage of young Edward with the queen of Scots; and
learning that it was principally to the intrigues of Francis I., against
whom he had other causes also of complaint, that he was likely to owe
the disappointment of this favourite scheme, he determined on revenge.
With this design he turned his eyes on the emperor; and finding Charles
perfectly well disposed to forget all ancient animosities in sympathy
with his newly-conceived indignation against the French king, he entered
with him into a strict alliance. War was soon declared against France by
the new confederates; and after a campaign in which little was effected,
it was agreed that Charles and Henry, uniting their efforts, should
assail that kingdom with a force which it was judged incapable of
resisting, and without stopping at inferior objects, march straight to
Paris. Accordingly, in July 1544, preceded by a fine army, and attended
by the flower of his nobility splendidly equipped, Henry took his
departure for Calais in a ship the sails of which were made of cloth of
gold.
He arrived in safety, and enjoyed the satisfaction of dazzling with his
magnificence the count de Buren whom the emperor sent with a body of
horse to meet him; quarrelled soon after with that potentate, who found
it his interest to make a separate peace; took the towns of Montreuil
and Boulogne, neither of them of any value to him, and returned.
So foolish and expensive a sally of passion, however characteristic of
the disposition of this monarch, would not merit commemoration in this
place, but for the important influence which it unexpectedly exerted on
the fortune and expectations of Elizabeth through the following train of
circumstances.
The emperor, whose long enmity with Henry had taken its rise from what
he justly regarded as the injuries of Catherine of Arragon his aunt, in
whose person the whole royal family of Spain had been insulted, had
required of him as a preliminary to their treaty a formal
acknowledgement of the legitimacy of his daughter Mary. This Henry could
not, with any regard to consistency, grant; but desirous to accede as
far as he conveniently could to the wishes of his new ally, he consented
to stipulate, that without any explanation on this point, his eldest
daughter should by act of parliament be reinstated in the order of
succession. At the same time, glad to relent in behalf of his favorite
child, and unwilling perhaps to give the catholic party the triumph of
asserting that he had virtually declared his first marriage more lawful
than his second, he caused a similar privilege to be extended to
Elizabeth, who was thus happily restored to her original station and
prospects, before she had attained sufficient maturity of age to suffer
by the cruel and mortifying degradation to which she had been for
several years subjected.
Henceforth, though the act which declared null the marriage of the king
with Anne Boleyn remained for ever unrepealed, her daughter appears to
have been universally recognised on the footing of a princess of
England; and so completely were the old disputes concerning the divorce
of Catherine consigned to oblivion, that in 1546, when France, Spain and
England had concluded a treaty of peace, proposals passed between the
courts of London and Madrid for the marriage of Elizabeth with Philip
prince of Spain; that very Philip afterwards her brother-in-law and in
adversity her friend and protector, then a second time her suitor, and
afterwards again to the end of his days the most formidable and
implacable of her enemies. On which side, or on what assigned
objections, this treaty of marriage was relinquished, we do not learn;
but as the demonstrations of friendship between Charles and Henry after
their French campaign were full of insincerity, it may perhaps be
doubted whether either party was ever bent in earnest on the completion
of this extraordinary union.
The popish and protestant factions which now divided the English court,
had for several years acknowledged as their respective leaders the duke
of Norfolk and the earl of Hertford. To the latter of these, the painful
impression left on Henry's mind by the excesses of Catherine Howard, the
religious sentiments embraced by the present queen, the king's
increasing jealousy of the ancient nobility of the country, and above
all the visible decline of his health, which brought into immediate
prospect the accession of young Edward under the tutelage of his uncle,
had now conspired to give a decided preponderancy. The aged duke,
sagacious, politic, and deeply versed in all the secrets and the arts of
courts, saw in a coalition with the Seymours the only expedient for
averting the ruin of his house; and he proposed to bestow his daughter
the duchess of Richmond in marriage on sir Thomas Seymour, while he
exerted all his authority with his son to prevail upon him to address
one of the daughters of the earl of Hertford. But Surry's scorn of the
new nobility of the house of Seymour, and his animosity against the
person of its chief, was not to be overcome by any plea of expedience or
threatening of danger. He could not forget that it was at the instance
of the earl of Hertford that he, with some other nobles and gentlemen,
had suffered the disgrace of imprisonment for eating flesh in Lent; that
when a trifling defeat which he had sustained near Boulogne had caused
him to be removed from the government of that town, it was the earl of
Hertford who ultimately profited by his misfortune, in succeeding to the
command of the army. Other grounds of offence the haughty Surry had also
conceived against him; and choosing rather to fall, than cling for
support to an enemy at once despised and hated, he braved the utmost
displeasure of his father, by an absolute refusal to lend himself to
such a scheme of alliance. Of this circumstance his enemies availed
themselves to instil into the mind of the king a suspicion that the earl
of Surry aspired to the hand of the princess Mary; they also commented
with industrious malice on his bearing the arms of Edward the
Confessor, to which he was clearly entitled in right of his mother, a
daughter of the duke of Buckingham, but which his more cautious father
had ceased to quarter after the attainder of that unfortunate nobleman.
The sick mind of Henry received with eagerness all these suggestions,
and the ruin of the earl was determined[9]. An indictment of high
treason was preferred against him: his proposal of disproving the
charge, according to a mode then legal, by fighting his principal
accuser in his shirt, was overruled; his spirited, strong and eloquent
defence was disregarded--a jury devoted to the crown brought in a
verdict of guilty; and in January 1547, at the early age of
seven-and-twenty, he underwent the fatal sentence of the law.
[Note 9: One extraordinary, and indeed unaccountable, circumstance
in the life of the earl of Surry may here be noticed:--that while his
father urged him to connect himself in marriage with one lady, while the
king was jealous of his designs upon a second, and while he himself, as
may be collected from his poem "To a lady who refused to dance with
him," made proposals of marriage to a third, he had a wife living. To
this lady, who was a sister of the earl of Oxford, he was united at the
age of fifteen, she had borne him five children; and it is pretty plain
that they were never divorced, for we find her, several years after his
death, still bearing the title of countess of Surry, and the guardian of
his orphans. Had the example of Henry instructed his courtiers to find
pretexts for the dissolution of the matrimonial tie whenever interest or
inclination might prompt, and did our courts of law lend themselves to
this abuse? A preacher of Edward the sixth's time brings such an
accusation against the morals of the age, but I find no particular
examples of it in the histories of noble families.]
No one during the whole sanguinary tyranny of Henry VIII. fell more
guiltless, or more generally deplored by all whom personal animosity or
the spirit of party had not hardened against sentiments of compassion,
or blinded to the perception of merit. But much of Surry has survived
the cruelty of his fate. His beautiful songs and sonnets, which served
as a model to the most popular poets of the age of Elizabeth, still
excite the admiration of every student attached to the early literature
of our country. Amongst other frivolous charges brought against him on
his trial, it was mentioned that he kept an Italian jester, thought to
be a spy, and that he loved to converse with foreigners and conform his
behaviour to them. For his personal safety, therefore, it was perhaps
unfortunate that a portion of his youth had been passed in a visit to
Italy, then the focus of literature and fount of inspiration; but for
his surviving fame, and for the progress of English poetry, the
circumstance was eminently propitious; since it is from the return of
this noble traveller that we are to date not only the introduction into
our language of the Petrarchan sonnet, and with it of a tenderness and
refinement of sentiment unknown to the barbarism of our preceding
versifiers; but what is much more, that of heroic blank verse; a noble
measure, of which the earliest example exists in Surry's spirited and
faithful version of one book of the AEneid.
The exalted rank, the splendid talents, the lofty spirit of this
lamented nobleman seemed to destine him to a station second to none
among the public characters of his time; and if, instead of being cut
off by the hand of violence in the morning of life, he had been
permitted to attain a length of days at all approaching to the
fourscore years of his father, it is probable that the votary of letters
would have been lost to us in the statesman or the soldier. Queen Mary,
who sought by her favor and confidence to revive the almost extinguished
energies of his father, and called forth into premature distinction the
aspiring boyhood of his son, would have intrusted to his vigorous years
the highest offices and most weighty affairs of state. Perhaps even the
suspicions of her father might have been verified by the event, and her
own royal hand might itself have become the reward of his virtues and
attachment.
Elizabeth, whose maternal ancestry closely connected her with the house
of Howard, might have sought and found, in her kinsman the earl of
Surry, a counsellor and friend deserving of all her confidence and
esteem; and it is possible that he, with safety and effect, might have
placed himself as a mediator between the queen and that formidable
catholic party of which his misguided son, fatally for himself, aspired
to be regarded as the leader, and was in fact only the instrument. But
the career of ambition, ere he had well entered it, was closed upon him
for ever; and it is as an accomplished knight, a polished lover, and
above all as a poet, that the name of Surry now lives in the annals of
his country.
Of the five children who survived to feel the want of his paternal
guidance, one daughter, married to the earl of Westmorland, was
honorably distinguished by talents, erudition, and the patronage of
letters; but of the two sons, the elder was that unfortunate duke of
Norfolk who paid on the scaffold the forfeit of an inconsiderate and
guilty enterprise; and the younger, created earl of Northampton by James
I., lived to disgrace his birth and fine talents by every kind of
baseness, and died just in time to escape punishment as an accomplice in
Overbury's murder.
The duke of Norfolk had been declared guilty of high treason on grounds
equally frivolous with his son; but the opportune death of Henry VIII.
on the day that his cruel and unmerited sentence was to have been
carried into execution, saved his life, when his humble submissions and
pathetic supplications for mercy had failed to touch the callous heart
of the expiring despot. The jealousies however, religious and political,
of the council of regency, on which the administration devolved,
prompted them to refuse liberty to the illustrious prisoner after their
weakness or their clemency had granted him his life. During the whole
reign of Edward VI. the duke was detained under close custody in the
Tower; his estates were confiscated, his blood attainted, and for this
period the great name of Howard disappears from the page of English
history.
CHAPTER IV.
1547 TO 1549.
Testamentary provisions of Henry VIII.--Exclusion of the Scottish
line.--Discontent of the earl of Arundel.--His character and
intrigues.--Hertford declared protector--becomes duke of
Somerset.--Other titles conferred.--Thomas Seymour made
lord-admiral--marries the queen dowager.--His discontent and
intrigues.--His behaviour to Elizabeth.--Death of the queen.--Seymour
aspires to the hand of Elizabeth--conspires against his brother--is
attainted--put to death.--Particulars of his intercourse with
Elizabeth.--Examinations which she underwent on this subject.--Traits of
her early character.--Verses on admiral Seymour.--The learning of
Elizabeth.--Extracts from Ascham's Letters respecting her, Jane Grey,
and other learned ladies.--Two of her letters to Edward VI.
The death of Henry VIII., which took place on January 28th 1547, opened
a new and busy scene, and affected in several important points the
situation of Elizabeth.
The testament by which the parliament had empowered the king to regulate
the government of the country during his son's minority, and even to
settle the order of succession itself, with as full authority as the
distribution of his private property, was the first object of attention;
and its provisions were found strongly characteristic of the temper and
maxims of its author. He confirmed the act of parliament by which his
two daughters had been rendered capable of inheriting the crown, and
appointed to each of them a pension of three thousand pounds, with a
marriage-portion of ten thousand pounds, but annexed the condition of
their marrying with the consent of such of his executors as should be
living. After them, he placed in order of succession Frances marchioness
of Dorset, and Eleanor countess of Cumberland, daughters of his younger
sister the queen-dowager of France by Charles Brandon duke of Suffolk;
and failing the descendants of these ladies he bequeathed the crown to
the next heir. By this disposition he either totally excluded, or at
least removed from their rightful place, his eldest and still surviving
sister the queen-dowager of Scotland, and all her issue;--a most absurd
and dangerous indulgence of his feelings of enmity against the Scottish
line, which might eventually have involved the nation in all the horrors
of a civil war, and from which in fact the whole calamitous destinies of
the house of Suffolk, which the progress of this work will record, and
in some measure also the long misfortunes of the queen of Scots herself,
will be found to draw their origin. Sixteen executors named in the will
were to exercise in common the royal functions till young Edward should
attain the age of eighteen; and to these, twelve others were added as a
council of regency, invested however with no other privilege than that
of giving their opinions when called upon. The selection of the
executors and counsellors was in perfect unison with the policy of the
Tudors. The great officers of state formed of necessity a considerable
portion of the former body, and four of these, lord Wriothesley the
chancellor, the earl of Hertford lord-chamberlain, lord St. John master
of the household, and lord Russel privy-seal, were decorated with the
peerage; but with the exception of sir John Dudley, who had lately
acquired by marriage the rank of viscount Lisle, these were the only
titled men of the sixteen. Thus it appeared, that not a single
individual amongst the hereditary nobility of the country enjoyed in a
sufficient degree the favor and confidence of the monarch, to be
associated in a charge which he had not hesitated to confer on persons
of no higher importance than the principal gentlemen of the bed-chamber,
the treasurer of Calais, and the dean of Canterbury.
Even the council reckoned among its members only two peers: one of them
the brother of the queen-dowager, on whom, since the fall of Cromwel,
the title of earl of Essex had at length been conferred in right of his
wife, the heiress of the Bourchiers: the other, the earl of Arundel,
premier earl of England and last of the ancient name of Fitzalan; a
distinguished nobleman, whom vast wealth, elegant tastes acquired in
foreign travel, and a spirit of magnificence, combined to render one of
the principal ornaments of the court, while his political talents and
experience of affairs qualified him to assume a leading station in the
cabinet. The loyalty and prudence of the Fitzalans must have been
conspicuous for ages, since no attainder, during so long a period of
greatness, had stained the honor of the race; and the moderation or
subserviency of the present earl had been shown by his perfect
acquiescence in all the measures of Henry, notwithstanding his private
preference of the ancient faith: to crown his merits, his blood appears
to have been unmingled with that of the Plantagenets. Notwithstanding
all this, the king had thought fit to name him only a counsellor, not an
executor. Arundel deeply felt the injury; and impatience of the
insignificance to which he was thus consigned, joined to his
disapprobation of the measures of the regency with respect to religion,
threw him into intrigues which contributed not a little to the
turbulence of this disastrous period.
It was doubtless the intention of Henry, that the religion of the
country, at least during the minority of his son, should be left
vibrating on the same nice balance between protestantism and popery on
which it had cost him so much pains to fix it; and with a view to this
object he had originally composed the regency with a pretty equal
distribution of power between the adherents of the two communions. But
the suspicion, or disgust, which afterwards caused him to erase the name
of Gardiner from the list, destroyed the equipoise, and rendered the
scale of reformation decidedly preponderant. In vain did Wriothesley, a
man of vigorous talents and aspiring mind, struggle with Hertford for
the highest place in the administration; in vain did Tunstal bishop of
Durham,--no bigot, but a firm papist,--check with all the authority that
he could venture to exert, the bold career of innovation on which he
beheld Cranmer full of eagerness to enter; in vain did the catholics
invoke to their aid the active interference of Dudley; he suffered them
to imagine that his heart was with them, and that he watched an
opportunity to interpose with effect in their behalf, whilst, in fact,
he was only waiting till the fall of one of the Seymours by the hand of
the other should enable him to crush the survivor, and rise to
uncontrolled authority on the ruins of both.
The first attempt of the protestant party in the regency showed their
intentions; its success proved their strength, and silenced for the
present all opposition. It was proposed, and carried by a majority of
the executors, that the earl of Hertford should be declared protector of
the realm, and governor of the king's person; and the new dictator soon
after procured the ratification of this appointment, which overturned
some of the most important clauses of the late king's will, by causing a
patent to be drawn and sanctioned by the two houses which invested him,
during the minority, with all the prerogatives ever assumed by the most
arbitrary of the English sovereigns, and many more than were ever
recognised by the constitution.
As if in compensation for any disrespect shown to the memory of the
deceased monarch by these proceedings, the executors next declared their
intention of fulfilling certain promises made by him in his last
illness, and which death alone had prevented him from carrying into
effect. On this plea, they bestowed upon themselves and their adherents
various titles of honor, and a number of valuable church preferments,
now first conferred upon laymen, the protector himself unblushingly
assuming the title of duke of Somerset, and taking possession of
benefices and impropriations to a vast amount. Viscount Lisle was
created earl of Warwick, and Wriothesley became earl of Southampton;--an
empty dignity, which afforded him little consolation for seeing himself
soon after, on pretence of some irregular proceedings in his office,
stripped of the post of chancellor, deprived of his place amongst the
other executors of the king, who now formed a privy council to the
protector, and consigned to obscurity and insignificance for the short
remnant of his days. Sir Thomas Seymour ought to have been consoled by
the share allotted him in this splendid distribution, for the
mortification of having been named a counsellor only, and not an
executor. He was made lord Seymour of Sudley, and soon after, lord
high-admiral--preferments greatly exceeding any expectations which his
birth or his services to the state could properly authorize. But he
measured his claims by his nearness to the king; he compared these
inferior dignities with the state and power usurped by his brother, and
his arrogant spirit disdained as a meanness the thought of resting
satisfied or appeased. Circumstances soon arose which converted this
general feeling of discontent in the mind of Thomas Seymour into a more
rancorous spirit of envy and hostility against his brother, and
gradually involved him in a succession of dark intrigues, which, on
account of the embarrassments and dangers in which they eventually
implicated the princess Elizabeth, it will now become necessary to
unravel. The younger Seymour, still in the prime of life, was endowed in
a striking degree with those graces of person and manner which serve to
captivate the female heart, and his ambition had sought in consequence
to avail itself of a splendid marriage.
It is said that the princess Mary herself was at first the object of his
hopes or wishes: but if this were really the case, she must speedily
have quelled his presumption by the lofty sternness of her repulse; for
it is impossible to discover in the history of his life at what
particular period he could have been occupied with such a design.
Immediately after the death of Henry, he found means to revive with such
energy in the bosom of the queen-dowager, an attachment which she had
entertained for him before her marriage with the king, that she
consented to become his wife with a precipitation highly indecorous and
reprehensible. The connexion proved unfortunate on both sides, and its
first effect was to embroil him with his brother.
The protector, of a temper still weaker than his not very vigorous
understanding, had long allowed himself to be governed both in great and
small concerns by his wife, a woman of little principle and of a
disposition in the highest degree violent, imperious, and insolent.
Nothing could be more insupportable to the spirit of this lady, who
prided herself on her descent from Thomas of Woodstock, and now saw her
husband governing the kingdom with all the prerogatives and almost all
the splendor of royalty, than to find herself compelled to yield
precedency to the wife of his younger brother; and unable to submit
patiently to a mortification from which, after all, there was no escape,
she could not forbear engaging in continual disputes on the subject
with the queen-dowager. Their husbands soon were drawn in to take part
in this senseless quarrel, and a serious difference ensued between them.
The protector and council soon after refused to the lord-admiral certain
grants of land and valuable jewels which he claimed as bequests to his
wife from the late king, and the, perhaps, real injury, thus added to
the slights of which he before complained, gave fresh exasperation to
the pride and turbulence of his character.
Taking advantage of the protector's absence on that campaign in Scotland
which ended with the victory of Pinkey, he formed partisans among the
discontented nobles, won from his brother the affections of the young
king, and believing every thing ripe for an attack on his usurped
authority, he designed to bring forward in the ensuing parliament a
proposal for separating, according to ancient precedent, the office of
guardian of the king's person from that of protector of the realm, and
for conferring upon himself the former. But he discovered too late that
he had greatly miscalculated his forces; his proposal was not even
permitted to come to a hearing. Having rendered himself further
obnoxious to the vengeance of the administration by menaces thrown out
in the rage of disappointment, he saw himself reduced, in order to
escape a committal to the Tower, to make submissions to his brother. An
apparent reconciliation took place; and the admiral was compelled to
change, but not to relinquish, his schemes of ambition.
The princess Elizabeth had been consigned on the death of her father to
the protection and superintendance of the queen-dowager, with whom, at
one or other of her jointure-houses of Chelsea or Hanworth, she usually
made her abode. By this means it happened, that after the queen's
remarriage she found herself domesticated under the roof of the
lord-admiral; and in this situation she had soon the misfortune to
become an object of his marked attention.
What were, at this particular period, Seymour's designs upon the
princess, is uncertain; but it afterwards appeared from the testimony of
eye-witnesses, that neither respect for her exalted rank, nor a sense of
the high responsibility attached to the character of a guardian, with
which circumstances invested him, had proved sufficient to restrain him
from freedoms of behaviour towards her, which no reasonable allowance
for the comparative grossness of the age can reduce within the limits of
propriety or decorum. We learn that, on some occasions at least, she
endeavoured to repel his presumption by such expedients as her youthful
inexperience suggested; but her governess and attendants, gained over or
intimidated, were guilty of a treacherous or cowardly neglect of duty,
and the queen herself appears to have been very deficient in delicacy
and caution till circumstances arose which suddenly excited her
jealousy[10]. A violent scene then took place between the royal
step-mother and step-daughter, which ended, fortunately for the peace
and honor of Elizabeth, in an immediate and final separation.
[Note 10: It seems that on one occasion the queen held the hands of
the princess while the lord-admiral amused himself with cutting her gown
to shreds; and that, on another, she introduced him into the chamber of
Elizabeth before she had left her bed, when a violent romping scene took
place, which was afterwards repeated without the presence of the queen.
Catherine was so unguarded in her own conduct, that the lord-admiral
professed himself jealous of the servant who carried up coals to her
apartment.]
There is no ground whatever to credit the popular rumor that the queen,
who died in childbed soon after this affair, was poisoned by the
admiral; but there is sufficient proof that he was a harsh and jealous
husband; and he did not probably at this juncture regard as unpropitious
on the whole, an event which enabled him to aspire to the hand of
Elizabeth, though other and more intricate designs were at the same time
hatching in his busy brain, to which his state of a widower seemed at
first to oppose some serious obstacles.
Lady Jane Grey, eldest daughter of the marchioness of Dorset, who had
been placed immediately after the two princesses in order of succession,
had also resided in the house of the lord-admiral during the lifetime of
the queen-dowager, and he was anxious still to retain in his hands a
pledge of such importance. To the applications of the marquis and
marchioness for her return, he pleaded that the young lady would be as
secure under the superintendance of his mother, whom he had invited to
reside in his house, as formerly under that of the queen, and that a
mark of the esteem of friends whom he so highly valued, would in this
season of his affliction be doubly precious to him. He caused a secret
agent to insinuate to the weak marquis, that if the lady Jane remained
under his roof, it might eventually be in his power to marry her to the
young king; and finally, as the most satisfactory proof of the sincerity
of his professions of regard, he advanced to this illustrious peer the
sum of five hundred pounds in ready money, requiring no other security
for its repayment than the person of his fair guest, or hostage. Such
eloquence proved irresistible: lady Jane was suffered to remain under
this very singular and improper protection, and report for some time
vibrated between the sister and the cousin of the king as the real
object of the admiral's matrimonial projects. But in his own mind there
appears to have been no hesitation between them. The residence of lady
Jane in his house was no otherwise of importance to him, than as it
contributed to insure to him the support of her father, and as it
enabled him to counteract a favorite scheme of the protector's, or
rather of his duchess's, for marrying her to their eldest son. With
Elizabeth, on the contrary, he certainly aimed at the closest of all
connexions, and he was intent on improving by every means the impression
which his dangerous powers of insinuation had already made on her
inexperienced heart.
Mrs. Ashley, her governess, he had long since secured in his interests;
his next step was to gain one Parry, her cofferer, and through these
agents he proposed to open a direct correspondence with herself. His
designs prospered for some time according to his desires; and though it
seems never to have been exactly known, except to the parties
themselves, what degree of secret intelligence Elizabeth maintained with
her suitor; it cannot be doubted that she betrayed towards him
sentiments sufficiently favorable to render the difficulty of obtaining
that consent of the royal executors which the law required, the
principal obstacle, in his own opinion, to the accomplishment of his
wishes. It was one, however, which appeared absolutely insuperable so
long as his brother continued to preside over the administration with
authority not to be resisted; and despair of gaining his object by fair
and peaceful means, soon suggested to the admiral further measures of a
dark and dangerous character.
By the whole order of nobility the protector, who affected the love of
the commons, was envied and hated; but his brother, on the contrary, had
cultivated their friendship with assiduity and success; and he now took
opportunities of emphatically recommending it to his principal
adherents, the marquis of Northampton (late earl of Essex), the marquis
of Dorset, the earl of Rutland, and others, to go into their counties
and "make all the strength" there which they could. He boasted of the
command of men which he derived from his office of high-admiral;
provided a large quantity of arms for his followers; and gained over the
master of Bristol mint to take measures for supplying him, on any sudden
emergency, with a large sum of money. He likewise opened a secret
correspondence with the young king, and endeavoured by many accusations,
true or false, to render odious the government of his brother. But
happily those turbulent dispositions and inordinate desires which
prompt men to form plots dangerous to the peace and welfare of a
community, are rarely found to co-exist with the sagacity and prudence
necessary to conduct them to a successful issue; and to this remark the
admiral was not destined to afford an exception. Though he ought to have
been perfectly aware that his late attempt had rendered him an object of
the strongest suspicion to his brother, and that he was surrounded by
his spies, such was the violence and presumption of his temper, that he
could not restrain himself from throwing out vaunts and menaces which
served to put his enemies on the track of the most important
discoveries; and in the midst of vain schemes and flattering
anticipations, he was surprised on the sudden by a warrant for his
committal to the Tower. His principal agents were also seized, and
compelled to give evidence before the council. Still the protector
seemed reluctant to proceed to extremities against his brother; but his
own impetuous temper and the ill offices of the earl of Warwick
conspired to urge on his fate.
Far from submitting himself as before to the indulgence of the
protector, and seeking to disarm his indignation by promises and
entreaties, Seymour now stood, as it were, at bay, and boldly demanded a
fair and equal trial,--the birthright of Englishmen. But this was a boon
which it was esteemed on several accounts inexpedient, if not dangerous,
to grant. No overt act of treason could be proved against him:
circumstances might come out which would compromise the young king
himself, whom a strong dislike of the restraint in which he was held by
his elder uncle had thrown pretty decidedly into the party of the
younger. The name of the lady Elizabeth was implicated in the
transaction further than it was delicate to declare. An acquittal, which
the far-extended influence of the lord-admiral over all classes of men
rendered by no means impossible, would probably be the ruin of the
protector;--and in the end it was decided to proceed against him by the
arbitrary and odious method of attainder.
Several of those peers, on whose support he had placed the firmest
reliance, rose voluntarily in their places, and betrayed the designs
which he had confided to them. The depositions before the council were
declared sufficient ground for his condemnation; and in spite of the
opposition of some spirited and upright members of the house of commons,
a sentence was pronounced, in obedience to which, in March 1549, he was
conducted to the scaffold.
The timely removal of this bad and dangerous man, however illegal and
unwarrantable the means by which it was accomplished, deserves to be
regarded as the first of those signal escapes with which the life of
Elizabeth so remarkably abounds. Her attachment for Seymour, certainly
the earliest, was perhaps also the strongest, impression of the tender
kind which her heart was destined to receive; and though there may be a
probability that in this, as in subsequent instances, where her
inclinations seemed most to favor the wishes of her suitors, her
characteristic caution would have interfered to withhold her from an
irrevocable engagement, it might not much longer have been in her power
to recede with honor, or even, if the designs of Seymour had prospered,
with safety.
The original pieces relative to this affair have fortunately been
preserved, and furnish some very remarkable traits of the early
character of Elizabeth, and of the behaviour of those about her.
The confessions of Mrs. Ashley and of Parry before the privy-council,
contain all that is known of the conduct of the admiral towards their
lady during the lifetime of the queen. They seem to cast upon Mrs.
Ashley the double imputation of having suffered such behaviour to pass
before her eyes as she ought not to have endured for a moment, and of
having needlessly disclosed to Parry particulars respecting it which
reflected the utmost disgrace both on herself, the admiral, and her
pupil. Yet we know that Elizabeth, so far from resenting any thing that
Mrs. Ashley had either done or confessed, continued to love and favor
her in the highest degree, and after her accession promoted her husband
to a considerable office:--a circumstance which affords ground for
suspicion that some important secrets were in her possession respecting
later transactions between the princess and Seymour which she had
faithfully kept. It should also be observed in palliation of the
liberties which she accused the admiral of allowing to himself, and the
princess of enduring, that the period of Elizabeth's life to which these
particulars relate was only her fourteenth year.
We are told that she refused permission to the admiral to visit her
after he became a widower, on account of the general report that she was
likely to become his wife; and not the slightest trace was at this time
found of any correspondence between them, though Harrington afterwards
underwent an imprisonment for having delivered to her a letter from the
admiral. Yet it is stated that the partiality of the young princess
betrayed itself by many involuntary tokens to those around her, who were
thus encouraged to entertain her with accounts of the admiral's
attachment, and to inquire whether, if the consent of the council could
be obtained, she would consent to admit his addresses. The admiral is
represented to have proceeded with caution equal to her own. Anxious to
ascertain her sentiments, earnestly desirous to accomplish so splendid
an union, but fully sensible of the inutility as well as danger of a
clandestine connexion, he may be thought rather to have regarded her
hand as the recompense which awaited the success of all his other plans
of ambition, than as the means of obtaining that success; and it seemed
to have been only by distant hints through the agents whom he trusted,
that he had ventured as yet to intimate to her his views and wishes; but
it is probable that much of the truth was by these agents suppressed.
The protector, rather, as it seems, with the desire of criminating his
brother than of clearing the princess, sent sir Robert Tyrwhitt to her
residence at Hatfield, empowered to examine her on the whole matter; and
his letters to his employer inform us of many particulars. When, by the
base expedient of a counterfeit letter, he had brought her to believe
that both Mrs. Ashley and Parry were committed to the Tower, "her grace
was," as he expresses it, "marvellously abashed, and did weep very
tenderly a long time, demanding whether they had confessed any thing or
not." Soon after, sending for him, she related several circumstances
which she said she had forgotten to mention when the master of the
household and master Denny came from the protector to examine her.
"After all this," adds he, "I did require her to consider her honor, and
the peril that might ensue, for she was but a subject; and I further
declared what a woman Mrs. Ashley was, with a long circumstance, saying
that if she would open all things herself, that all the evil and shame
should be ascribed to them, and her youth considered both with the
king's majesty, your grace, and the whole council. But in no way she
will not confess any practice by Mrs. Ashley or the cofferer concerning
my lord-admiral; and yet I do see it in her face that she is guilty, and
do perceive as yet that she will abide the storms or she accuse Mrs.
Ashley.
"Upon sudden news that my lord great-master and master Denny was arrived
at the gate, the cofferer went hastily to his chamber, and said to my
lady his wife, 'I would I had never been born, for I am undone,' and
wrung his hands, and cast away his chain from his neck, and his rings
from his fingers. This is confessed by his own servant, and there is
divers witnesses of the same."
The following day Tyrwhitt writes, that all he has yet gotten from the
princess was by gentle persuasion, whereby he began to grow with her in
credit, "for I do assure your grace she hath a good wit, and nothing is
gotten off her but by great policy."
A few days after, he expresses to the protector his opinion that there
had been some secret promise between the princess, Mrs. Ashley, and the
cofferer, never to confess till death; "and if it be so," he observes,
"it will never be gotten of her but either by the king's majesty or else
by your grace." On another occasion he confirms this idea by stating
that he had tried her with false intelligence of Parry's having
confessed, on which she called him "false wretch," and said that it was
a great matter for him to make such a promise and break it. He notices
the exact agreement between the princess and the other two in all their
statements, but represents it as a proof that "they had set the knot
before." It appears on the whole, that sir Robert with all his pains was
not able to elicit a single fact of decisive importance; but probably
there was somewhat more in the matter than we find acknowledged in a
letter from Elizabeth herself to the protector. She here states, that
she did indeed send her cofferer to speak with the lord-admiral, but on
no other business than to recommend to him one of her chaplains, and to
request him to use his interest that she might have Durham Place for her
town house; that Parry on his return informed her, that the admiral said
she could not have Durham Place, which was wanted for a mint, but
offered her his own house for the time of her being in London; and that
Parry then inquired of her, whether, if the council would consent to her
marrying the admiral, she would herself be willing? That she refused to
answer this question, requiring to know who bade him ask it. He said, No
one; but from the admiral's inquiries what she spent in her house, and
whether she had gotten her patents for certain lands signed, and other
questions of a similar nature, he thought "that he was given that way
rather than otherwise." She explicitly denies that her governess ever
advised her to marry the admiral without the consent of the council; but
relates with great apparent ingenuousness, the hints which Mrs. Ashley
had thrown out of his attachment to her, and the artful attempts which
she had made to discover how her pupil stood affected towards such a
connexion.
The letter concludes with the following wise and spirited assertion of
herself. "Master Tyrwhitt and others have told me, that there goeth
rumours abroad which be greatly both against my honor and honesty,
(which above all things I esteem) which be these; that I am in the
Tower, and with child by my lord admiral. My lord, these are shameful
slanders, for the which, besides the desire I have to see the king's
majesty, I shall most humbly desire your lordship that I may come to the
court after your first determination, that I may show myself there as I
am."
That the cofferer had repeated his visits to the admiral oftener than
was at first acknowledged either by his lady or himself, a confession
afterwards addressed by Elizabeth to the protector seems to show; but
even with this confession Tyrwhitt declares himself unsatisfied.
Parry, in that part of his confession where he relates what passed
between himself and the lord-admiral when he waited upon him by his
lady's command, takes notice of the earnest manner in which the admiral
had urged her endeavouring to procure, by way of exchange, certain crown
lands which had been the queen's, and seem to have been adjacent to his
own, from which, he says, he inferred, that he wanted to have both them
and his lady for himself. He adds, that the admiral said he wished the
princess to go to the duchess of Somerset, and by her means make suit to
the protector for the lands, and for a town house, and "to entertain her
grace for her furtherance." That when he repeated this to her, Elizabeth
would not at first believe that he had said such words, or could wish
her so to do; but on his declaring that it was true, "she seemed to be
angry that she should be driven to make such suits, and said, 'In faith
I will not come there, nor begin to flatter now.'"
Her spirit broke out, according to Tyrwhitt, with still greater
vehemence, on the removal of Mrs. Ashley, whom lady Tyrwhitt succeeded
in her office:--the following is the account which he gives of her
behaviour.
"Pleaseth it your grace to be advertised, that after my wife's repair
hither, she declared to the lady Elizabeth's grace, that she was called
before your grace and the council and had a rebuke, that she had not
taken upon her the office to see her well governed, in the lieu of Mrs.
Ashley. Her answer was, that Mrs. Ashley was her mistress, and that she
had not so demeaned herself that the council should now need to put any
mo mistresses unto her. Whereunto my wife answered, seeing she did allow
Mrs. Ashley to be her mistress, she need not to be ashamed to have any
honest woman to be in that place. She took the matter so heavily that
she wept all that night and lowered all the next day, till she received
your letter; and then she sent for me and asked me whether she was best
to write to you again or not: I said, if she would make answer that she
would follow the effect of your letter, I thought it well done that she
should write; but in the end of the matter I perceived that she was very
loth to have a governor; and to avoid the same, said the world would
note her to be a great offender, having so hastily a governor appointed
her. And all is no more, she fully hopes to recover her old mistress
again. The love she yet beareth her is to be wondered at. I told her, if
she would consider her honor and the sequel thereof, she would,
considering her years, make suit to your grace to have one, rather than
to make delay to be without one one hour. She cannot digest such advice
in no way; but if I should say my phantasy, it were more meet she should
have two than one. She would in any wise write to your grace, wherein I
offered her my advice, which she would in no wise follow, but write her
own phantasy. She beginneth now a little to droop, by reason she heareth
that my lord-admiral's houses be dispersed. And my wife telleth me now,
that she cannot hear him discommended but she is ready to make answer
therein; and so she hath not been accustomed to do, unless Mrs. Ashley
were touched, whereunto she was very ready to make answer vehemently."
&c.[11]
[Note 11: For the original documents relative to this affair see
Burleigh Papers by Haynes, _passim_.]
Parry had probably the same merit of fidelity as Mrs. Ashley; for
though Tyrwhitt says he was found faulty in his accounts, he was not
only continued at this time by his mistress in his office of cofferer,
but raised afterwards to that of comptroller of the royal household,
which he held till his death.
A gentleman of the name of Harrington, then in the admiral's service,
who was much examined respecting his master's intercourse with the
princess, and revealed nothing, was subsequently taken by her into her
own household and highly favored; and so certain did this gentleman, who
was a man of parts, account himself of her tenderness for the memory of
a lover snatched from her by the hand of violence alone, that he
ventured, several years after her accession to the throne, to present
her with a portrait of him, under which was inscribed the following
sonnet.
"Of person rare, strong limbs and manly shape,
By nature framed to serve on sea or land;
In friendship firm in good state or ill hap,
In peace head-wise, in war, skill great, bold hand.
On horse or foot, in peril or in play,
None could excel, though many did essay.
A subject true to king, a servant great,
Friend to God's truth, and foe to Rome's deceit.
Sumptuous abroad for honor of the land,
Temp'rate at home, yet kept great state with stay,
And noble house that fed more mouths with meat
Than some advanced on higher steps to stand;
Yet against nature, reason, and just laws,
His blood was spilt, guiltless, without just cause."
The fall of Seymour, and the disgrace and danger in which she had
herself been involved, afforded to Elizabeth a severe but useful
lesson; and the almost total silence of history respecting her during
the remainder of her brother's reign affords satisfactory indication of
the extreme caution with which she now conducted herself.
This silence, however, is agreeably supplied by documents of a more
private nature, which inform us of her studies, her acquirements, the
disposition of her time, and the bent of her youthful mind.
The Latin letters of her learned preceptor Roger Ascham abound with
anecdotes of a pupil in whose proficiency he justly gloried; and the
particulars interspersed respecting other females of high rank, also
distinguished by the cultivation of classical literature, enhance the
interest of the picture, by affording objects of comparison to the
principal figure, and illustrating the taste, almost the rage, for
learning which pervaded the court of Edward VI.
Writing in 1550 to his friend John Sturmius, the worthy and erudite
rector of the protestant university of Strasburgh, Ascham has the
following passages.
* * * * *
"Never was the nobility of England more lettered than at present. Our
illustrious king Edward in talent, industry, perseverance, and
erudition, surpasses both his own years and the belief of men.... I
doubt not that France will also yield the just praise of learning to the
duke of Suffolk[12] and the rest of that band of noble youths educated
with the king in Greek and Latin literature, who depart for that
country on this very day.
[Note 12: This was the second duke of the name of Brandon, who died
young of the sweating sickness.]
"Numberless honorable ladies of the present time surpass the daughters
of sir Thomas More in every kind of learning. But amongst them all, my
illustrious mistress the lady Elizabeth shines like a star, excelling
them more by the splendor of her virtues and her learning, than by the
glory of her royal birth. In the variety of her commendable qualities, I
am less perplexed to find matter for the highest panegyric than to
circumscribe that panegyric within just bounds. Yet I shall mention
nothing respecting her but what has come under my own observation.
"For two years she pursued the study of Greek and Latin under my
tuition; but the foundations of her knowledge in both languages were
laid by the diligent instruction of William Grindal, my late beloved
friend and seven years my pupil in classical learning at Cambridge. From
this university he was summoned by John Cheke to court, where he soon
after received the appointment of tutor to this lady. After some years,
when through her native genius, aided by the efforts of so excellent a
master, she had made a great progress in learning, and Grindal, by his
merit and the favor of his mistress, might have aspired to high
dignities, he was snatched away by a sudden illness, leaving a greater
miss of himself in the court, than I remember any other to have done
these many years.
"I was appointed to succeed him in his office; and the work which he had
so happily begun, without my assistance indeed, but not without some
counsels of mine, I diligently labored to complete. Now, however,
released from the throng of a court, and restored to the felicity of my
former learned leisure, I enjoy, through the bounty of the king, an
honorable appointment in this university.
"The lady Elizabeth has accomplished her sixteenth year; and so much
solidity of understanding, such courtesy united with dignity, have never
been observed at so early an age. She has the most ardent love of true
religion and of the best kind of literature. The constitution of her
mind is exempt from female weakness, and she is endued with a masculine
power of application. No apprehension can be quicker than her's, no
memory more retentive. French and Italian she speaks like English;
Latin, with fluency, propriety, and judgement; she also spoke Greek with
me, frequently, willingly, and moderately well. Nothing can be more
elegant than her handwriting, whether in the Greek or Roman character.
In music she is very skilful, but does not greatly delight. With respect
to personal decoration, she greatly prefers a simple elegance to show
and splendor, so despising 'the outward adorning of plaiting the hair
and of wearing of gold,' that in the whole manner of her life she rather
resembles Hippolyta than Phaedra.
"She read with me almost the whole of Cicero, and a great part of Livy:
from these two authors, indeed, her knowledge of the Latin language has
been almost exclusively derived. The beginning of the day was always
devoted by her to the New Testament in Greek, after which she read
select orations of Isocrates and the tragedies of Sophocles, which I
judged best adapted to supply her tongue with the purest diction, her
mind with the most excellent precepts, and her exalted station with a
defence against the utmost power of fortune. For her religious
instruction, she drew first from the fountains of Scripture, and
afterwards from St. Cyprian, the 'Common places' of Melancthon, and
similar works which convey pure doctrine in elegant language. In every
kind of writing she easily detected any ill-adapted or far-fetched
expression. She could not bear those feeble imitators of Erasmus who
bind the Latin language in the fetters of miserable proverbs; on the
other hand, she approved a style chaste in its propriety, and beautiful
by perspicuity, and she greatly admired metaphors, when not too violent,
and antitheses when just, and happily opposed. By a diligent attention
to these particulars, her ears became so practised and so nice, that
there was nothing in Greek, Latin, or English, prose or verse, which,
according to its merits or defects, she did not either reject with
disgust, or receive with the highest delight.... Had I more leisure, I
would speak to you at greater length of the king, of the lady Elizabeth,
and of the daughters of the duke of Somerset, whose minds have also been
formed by the best literary instruction. But there are two English
ladies whom I cannot omit to mention; nor would I have you, my Sturmius,
omit them, if you meditate any celebration of your English friends, than
which nothing could be more agreeable to me. One is Jane Grey[13], the
other is Mildred Cecil, who understands and speaks Greek like English,
so that it may be doubted whether she is most happy in the possession of
this surpassing degree of knowledge, or in having had for her preceptor
and father sir Anthony Coke, whose singular erudition caused him to be
joined with John Cheke in the office of tutor to the king, or finally,
in having become the wife of William Cecil, lately appointed secretary
of state; a young man indeed, but mature in wisdom, and so deeply
skilled both in letters and in affairs, and endued with such moderation
in the exercise of public offices, that to him would be awarded by the
consenting voice of Englishmen the four-fold praise attributed to
Pericles by his rival Thucydides--'To know all that is fitting, to be
able to apply what he knows, to be a lover of his country, and superior
to money.'"
[Note 13: This lady is commemorated at greater length in another
place, and therefore a clause is here omitted.]
* * * * *
The learned, excellent, and unfortunate Jane Grey is repeatedly
mentioned by this writer with warm and merited eulogium. He relates to
Sturmius, that in the month of August 1550, taking his journey from
Yorkshire to the court, he had deviated from his course to visit the
family of the marquis of Dorset at his seat of Broadgate in
Leicestershire. Lady Jane was alone at his arrival, the rest of the
family being on a hunting party; and gaining admission to her apartment,
he found her reading by herself the Phaedo of Plato in the original,
which she understood so perfectly as to excite in him extreme wonder;
for she was at this time under fifteen years of age. She also possessed
the power of speaking and writing Greek, and she willingly promised to
address to him a letter in this language. In his English work 'The
Schoolmaster,' referring again to this interview with Jane Grey, Ascham
adds the following curious and affecting particulars. Having asked her
how at her age she could have attained to such perfection both in
philosophy and Greek, "I will tell you," said she, "and tell you a
truth, which perchance you will marvel at. One of the greatest benefits
that ever God gave me is, that he sent me so sharp and severe parents,
and so gentle a schoolmaster. For when I am in presence either of father
or mother, whether I speak, keep silence, sit, stand, or go; eat, drink,
be merry or sad; be sewing, playing, dancing, or doing any thing else, I
must do it, as it were, in such weight, measure, and number, even so
perfectly, as God made the world, or else I am so sharply taunted, so
cruelly threatened, yea presently sometimes with pinches, nips, and bobs
and other ways which I will not name, for the honor I bear them, so
without measure misordered, that I think myself in hell, till time come
that I must go to Mr. Elmer, who teacheth me so gently, so pleasantly,
with such fair allurements to learning, that I think all the time
nothing while I am with him. And when I am called from him I fall on
weeping, because whatsoever else I do but learning, is full of grief,
trouble, fear, and whole misliking unto me. And thus my book hath been
so much my pleasure, and bringeth daily to me more pleasure and more,
that in respect of it, all other pleasures, in very deed, be but trifles
and troubles unto me."
The epistles from which the extracts in the preceding pages are with
some abridgement translated, and which are said to be the first
collection of private letters ever published by any Englishman, were all
written during the year 1550, when Ascham, on some disgust, had quitted
the court and returned to his situation of Greek reader at Cambridge;
and perhaps the eulogiums here bestowed, in epistles which his
correspondent lost no time in committing to the press, were not composed
without the secret hope of their procuring for him a restoration to that
court life which it seems difficult even for the learned to quit without
a sigh. It would be unjust, however, to regard Ascham in the light of a
flatterer; for his praises are in most points corroborated by the
evidence of history, or by other concurring testimonies. His
observations, for instance, on the modest simplicity of Elizabeth's
dress and appearance at this early period of her life, which might be
received with some incredulity by the reader to whom instances are
familiar of her inordinate love of dress at a much more advanced age,
and when the cares of a sovereign ought to have left no room for a
vanity so puerile, receive strong confirmation from another and very
respectable authority.
Dr. Elmer or Aylmer, who was tutor to lady Jane Grey and her sisters,
and became afterwards, during Elizabeth's reign, bishop of London, thus
draws her character when young, in a work entitled "A Harbour for
faithful Subjects." "The king left her rich cloaths and jewels; and I
know it to be true, that in seven years after her father's death, she
never in all that time looked upon that rich attire and precious jewels
but once, and that against her will. And that there never came gold or
stone upon her head, till her sister forced her to lay off her former
soberness, and bear her company in her glittering gayness. And then she
so wore it, as every man might see that her body carried that which her
heart misliked. I am sure that her maidenly apparel which she used in
king Edward's time, made the noblemen's daughters and wives to be
ashamed to be dressed and painted like peacocks; being more moved with
her most virtuous example than with all that ever Paul or Peter wrote
touching that matter. Yea, this I know, that a great man's daughter
(lady Jane Grey) receiving from lady Mary before she was queen good
apparel of tinsel, cloth of gold and velvet, laid on with parchment lace
of gold, when she saw it, said, 'What shall I do with it?' 'Mary,' said
a gentlewoman, 'wear it.' 'Nay,' quoth she, 'that were a shame, to
follow my lady Mary against God's word, and leave my lady Elizabeth
which followeth God's word.' And when all the ladies at the coming of
the Scots queen dowager, Mary of Guise, (she who visited England in
Edward's time,) went with their hair frownsed, curled, and doublecurled,
she altered nothing but kept her old maidenly shamefacedness." This
extract may be regarded as particularly curious, as an exemplification
of the rigid turn of sentiment which prevailed at the court of young
Edward, and of the degree in which Elizabeth conformed herself to it.
There is a print from a portrait of her when young, in which the hair is
without a single ornament and the whole dress remarkably simple.
But to return to Ascham.--The qualifications of this learned man as a
writer of classical Latin recommended him to queen Mary, notwithstanding
his known attachment to the protestant faith, in the capacity of Latin
secretary; and it was in the year 1555, while holding this station, that
he resumed his lessons to his illustrious pupil.
"The lady Elizabeth and I," writes he to Sturmius, "are reading together
in Greek the Orations of AEschines and Demosthenes. She reads before me,
and at first sight she so learnedly comprehends not only the idiom of
the language and the meaning of the orator, but the whole grounds of
contention, the decrees of the people, and the customs and manners of
the Athenians, as you would greatly wonder to hear."
Under the reign of Elizabeth, Ascham retained his post of Latin
secretary, and was admitted to considerable intimacy by his royal
mistress. Addressing Sturmius he says, "I received your last letters on
the 15th of January 1560. Two passages in them, one relative to the
Scotch affairs, the other on the marriage of the queen, induced me to
give them to herself to read. She remarked and graciously acknowledged
in both of them your respectful observance of her. Your judgement in the
affairs of Scotland, as they then stood, she highly approved, and she
loves you for your solicitude respecting us and our concerns. The part
respecting her marriage she read over thrice, as I well remember, and
with somewhat of a gentle smile; but still preserving a modest and
bashful silence.
"Concerning that point indeed, my Sturmius, I have nothing certain to
write to you, nor does any one truly know what to judge. I told you
rightly, in one of my former letters, that in the whole ordinance of her
life she resembled not Phaedra but Hippolyta; for by nature, and not by
the counsels of others, she is thus averse and abstinent from marriage.
When I know any thing for certain, I will write it to you as soon as
possible; in the mean time I have no hopes to give you respecting the
king of Sweden."
In the same letter, after enlarging, somewhat too rhetorically perhaps,
on the praises of the queen and her government, Ascham recurs to his
favorite theme,--her learning; and roundly asserts, that there were not
four men in England, distinguished either in the church or the state,
who understood more Greek than her majesty: and as an instance of her
proficiency in other tongues, he mentions that he was once present at
court when she gave answers at the same time to three ambassadors, the
Imperial, the French, and the Swedish, in Italian, in French, and in
Latin; and all this, fluently, without confusion, and to the purpose.
A short epistle from queen Elizabeth to Sturmius, which is inserted in
this collection, appears to refer to that of Sturmius which Ascham
answers above. She addresses him as her beloved friend, expresses in the
handsomest terms her sense of the attachment towards herself and her
country evinced by so eminent a cultivator of genuine learning and true
religion, and promises that her acknowledgements shall not be confined
to words alone; but for a further explanation of her intentions she
refers him to the bearer; consequently we have no data for estimating
the actual pecuniary value of these warm expressions of royal favor and
friendship. But we have good proof, unfortunately, that no munificent
act of Elizabeth's ever interposed to rescue her zealous and admiring
preceptor from the embarrassments into which he was plunged, probably
indeed by his own imprudent habits, but certainly by no faults which
ought to have deprived him of his just claims on the purse of a mistress
whom, he had served with so much ability, and with such distinguished
advantage to herself. The other learned females of this age whom Ascham
has complimented by addressing them in Latin epistles, are, Anne
countess of Pembroke, sister of queen Catherine Parr; a young lady of
the name of Vaughan; Jane Grey; and Mrs. Clark, a grand-daughter of sir
Thomas More, by his favorite daughter Mrs. Roper. In his letter to this
last lady, written during the reign of Mary, after congratulating her on
her cultivation, amid the luxury and dissipation of a court, of studies
worthy the descendant of a man whose high qualities had ennobled England
in the estimation of foreign nations, he proceeds to mention, that he is
the person whom, several years ago, her excellent mother had requested
to undertake the instruction of all her children in Greek and Latin
literature. At that time, he says, no offer could tempt him to quit his
learned retirement at Cambridge, and he was reluctantly compelled to
decline the proposal; but being now once more established at court, he
freely offers to a lady whose accomplishments he so much admires, any
assistance in her laudable pursuits which it may be in his power to
afford.
A few more scattered notices may be collected relative to this period of
the life of Elizabeth. Her talents, her vivacity, her proficiency in
those classical studies to which he was himself addicted, and especially
the attachment which she manifested to the reformed religion, endeared
her exceedingly to the young king her brother, who was wont to call
her,--perhaps with reference to the sobriety of dress and manners by
which she was then distinguished,--his sweet sister Temperance. On her
part his affection was met by every demonstration of sisterly
tenderness, joined to those delicate attentions and respectful
observances which his rank required.
It was probably about 1550 that she addressed to him the following
letter on his having desired her picture, which affords perhaps the most
favorable specimen extant of her youthful style.
* * * * *
"Like as the rich man that daily gathereth riches to riches, and to one
bag of money layeth a great sort till it come to infinite: so methinks
your majesty, not being sufficed with so many benefits and gentleness
shewed to me afore this time, doth now increase them in asking and
desiring where you may bid and command; requiring a thing not worthy the
desiring for itself, but made worthy for your highness' request. My
picture I mean: in which, if the inward good mind toward your grace
might as well be declared, as the outward face and countenance shall be
seen, I would not have tarried the commandment but prevented it, nor
have been the last to grant but the first to offer it. For the face I
grant I might well blush to offer, but the mind I shall never be
ashamed to present. But though from the grace of the picture the colors
may fade by time, may give by weather, may be spited by chance; yet the
other, nor time with her swift wings shall overtake, nor the misty
clouds with their lowering may darken, nor chance with her slippery foot
may overthrow.
"Of this also yet the proof could not be great, because the occasions
have been so small; notwithstanding, as a dog hath a day, so may I
perchance have time to declare it in deeds, which now I do write them
but in words. And further, I shall humbly beseech your majesty, that
when you shall look on my picture, you will witsafe to think, that as
you have but the outward shadow of the body afore you, so my inward mind
wisheth that the body itself were oftener in your presence. Howbeit
because both my so being I think could do your majesty little pleasure,
though myself great good; and again, because I see not as yet the time
agreeing thereunto, I shall learn to follow this saying of Horace,
'_Feras, non culpes, quod vitari non potest_.' And thus I will
(troubling your majesty I fear) end with my most humble thanks;
beseeching God long to preserve you to his honor, to your comfort, to
the realms profit, and to my joy.
(From Hatfield this 15th day of May.)
Your majesty's most humble sister and servant
ELIZABETH."
* * * * *
An exact memorialist[14] has preserved an instance of the high
consideration now enjoyed by Elizabeth in the following passage, which
is further curious as an instance of the state which she already assumed
in her public appearances. "March 17th (1551). The lady Elizabeth, the
king's sister, rode through London unto St. James's, the king's palace,
with a great company of lords, knights, and gentlemen; and after her a
great company of ladies and gentlemen on horseback, about two hundred.
On the 19th she came from St. James's through the park to the court; the
way from the park gate unto the court spread with fine sand. She was
attended with a very honorable confluence of noble and worshipful
persons of both sexes, and received with much ceremony at the court
gate."
[Note 14: Strype.]
The ensuing letter, however, seems to intimate that there were those
about the young king who envied her these tokens of favor and credit,
and were sometimes but too successful in estranging her from the royal
presence, and perhaps in exciting prejudices against her:--It is
unfortunately without date of year.
* * * * *
"The princess Elizabeth to king Edward VI.
"Like as a shipman in stormy weather plucks down the sails tarrying for
better wind, so did I, most noble king, in my unfortunate chance a
Thursday pluck down the high sails of my joy and comfort; and do trust
one day, that as troublesome waves have repulsed me backward, so a
gentle wind will bring me forward to my haven. Two chief occasions moved
me much and grieved me greatly: the one, for that I doubted your
majesty's health; the other, because for all my long tarrying, I went
without that I came for. Of the first I am relieved in a part, both that
I understood of your health, and also that your majesty's lodging is far
from my lord marques' chamber: of my other grief I am not eased; but the
best is, that whatsoever other folks will suspect, I intend not to fear
your grace's good will, which as I know that I never deserved to faint,
so I trust will still stick by me. For if your grace's advice that I
should return, (whose will is a commandment) had not been, I would not
have made the half of my way the end of my journey.
"And thus as one desirous to hear of your majesty's health, though
unfortunate to see it, I shall pray God to preserve you. (From Hatfield
this present Saturday.)
"Your majesty's humble sister to commandment,
"ELIZABETH."
* * * * *
CHAPTER V.
1549 TO 1553.
Decline of the protector's authority.--He is imprisoned--accused of
misdemeanors--loses his office--is liberated--reconciled with Dudley,
who succeeds to his authority.--Dudley pushes on the reformation.--The
celebration of mass prohibited.--Princess Mary persecuted.--The emperor
attempts to get her out of the kingdom, but without success--interferes
openly in her behalf.--Effect of persecution on the mind of
Mary.--Marriage proposed for Elizabeth with the prince of Denmark.--She
declines it.--King betrothed to a princess of France.--Sweating
sickness.--Death of the duke of Suffolk.--Dudley procures that title for
the marquis of Dorset, and the dukedom of Northumberland for
himself.--Particulars of the last earl of Northumberland.--Trial,
conviction, and death of the duke of Somerset.--Christmas festivities of
the young king.--Account of George Ferrers master of the king's
pastimes, and his works.--Views of Northumberland.--Decline of the
king's health.--Scheme of Northumberland for lady Jane Grey's
succession.--Three marriages contrived by him for this purpose.--He
procures a settlement of the crown on the lady Jane.--Subserviency of
the council.--Death of Edward concealed by Northumberland.--The
princesses narrowly escape falling into his hands.--Courageous conduct
of Elizabeth.--Northumberland deserted by the council and the
army.--Jane Grey imprisoned.--Northumberland arrested.--Mary mounts the
throne.
It was to little purpose that the protector had stained his hands with
the blood of his brother, for the exemption thus purchased from one
kind of fear or danger, was attended by a degree of public odium which
could not fail to render feeble and tottering an authority based, like
his, on plain and open usurpation.
Other causes conspired to undermine his credit and prepare his
overthrow. The hatred of the great nobles, which he augmented by a
somewhat too ostentatious patronage of the lower classes against the
rich and powerful, continually pursued and watched the opportunity to
ruin him. Financial difficulties pressed upon him, occasioned in great
measure by the wars with France and Scotland which he had carried on, in
pursuance of Henry's design of compelling the Scotch to marry their
young queen to his son. An object which had finally been frustrated,
notwithstanding the vigilance of the English fleet, by the safe arrival
of Mary in France, and her solemn betrothment to the dauphin. The great
and glorious work of religious reformation, though followed by Somerset,
under the guidance of Cranmer, with a moderation and prudence which
reflect the highest honor on both, could not be brought to perfection
without exciting the rancorous hostility of thousands, whom various
motives and interests attached to the cause of ancient superstition; and
the abolition, by authority, of the mass, and the destruction of images
and crucifixes, had given birth to serious disturbances in different
parts of the country. The want and oppression under which the lower
orders groaned,--and which they attributed partly to the suppression of
the monasteries to which they had been accustomed to resort for the
supply of their necessities, partly to a general inclosure bill
extremely cruel and arbitrary in its provisions,--excited commotions
still more violent and alarming. In order to suppress the insurrection
in Norfolk, headed by Kett, it had at length been found necessary to
send thither a large body of troops under the earl of Warwick, who had
acquired a very formidable degree of celebrity by the courage and
conduct which he exhibited in bringing this difficult enterprise to a
successful termination.
A party was now formed in the council, of which Warwick, Southampton,
Arundel, and St. John, were the chiefs; and strong resolutions were
entered into against the assumed authority of the protector. This
unfortunate man, whom an inconsiderate ambition, fostered by
circumstances favorable to its success, had pushed forward into a
station equally above his talents and his birth, was now found destitute
of all the resources of courage and genius which might yet have
retrieved his authority and his credit. He suffered himself to be
surprised into acts indicative of weakness and dismay, which soon robbed
him of his remaining partisans, and gave to his enemies all the
advantage which they desired.
His committal to the Tower on several charges, of which his assumption
of the whole authority of the state was the principal, soon followed. A
short time after he was deprived of his high office, which was nominally
vested in six members of the council, but really in the earl of Warwick,
whose private ambition seems to have been the main-spring of the whole
intrigue, and who thus became, almost without a struggle, undisputed
master of the king and kingdom.
That poorness of spirit which had sunk the duke of Somerset into
insignificance, saved him at present from further mischief. In the
beginning of the ensuing year, 1550, having on his knees confessed
himself guilty of all the matters laid to his charge, without
reservation or exception, and humbly submitted himself to the king's
mercy, he was condemned in a heavy fine, on remission of which by the
king he was liberated. Soon after, by the special favor of his royal
nephew, he was readmitted into the council; and a reconciliation was
mediated for him with Warwick, cemented by a marriage between one of his
daughters and the son and heir of this aspiring leader.
The catholic party, which had flattered itself that the earl of Warwick,
from gratitude for the support which some of its leaders had afforded
him, and perhaps also from principle, no less than from opposition to
the duke of Somerset, would be led to embrace its defence, was now
destined to deplore its disappointment.
Determined to rule alone, he soon shook off his able but too aspiring
colleague, the earl of Southampton, and disgraced, by the imposition of
a fine for some alleged embezzlement of public money, the earl of
Arundel, also a known assertor of the ancient faith, finally, having
observed how closely the principles of protestantism, which Edward had
derived from instructors equally learned and zealous, had interwoven
themselves with the whole texture and fabric of his mind, he resolved
to merit the lasting attachment of the royal minor by assisting him to
complete the overthrow of popery in England.
A confession of faith was now drawn up by commissioners appointed for
the purpose, and various alterations were made in the Liturgy, which had
already been translated into the vulgar tongue for church use. Tests
were imposed, which Gardiner, Bonner, and several others of the bishops
felt themselves called upon by conscience, or a regard to their own
reputation, to decline subscribing, even at the price of deprivation;
and prodigious devastations were made by the courtiers on the property
of the church. To perform or assist at the performance of the mass was
also rendered highly penal. But no dread of legal animadversion was
capable of deterring the lady Mary from the observance of this essential
rite of her religion; and finding herself and her household exposed to
serious inconveniences on account of their infraction of the new
statute, she applied for protection to her potent kinsman the emperor
Charles V., who is said to have undertaken her rescue by means which
could scarcely have failed to involve him in a war with England. By his
orders, or connivance, certain ships were prepared in the ports of
Flanders, manned and armed for an attempt to carry off the princess
either by stealth or open force, and land her at Antwerp. In furtherance
of the design, several of her gentlemen had already taken their
departure for that city, and Flemish light vessels were observed to keep
watch on the English coast. But by these appearances the apprehensions
of the council were awakened, and a sudden journey of the princess from
Hunsdon in Hertfordshire towards Norfolk, for which she was unable to
assign a satisfactory reason, served as strong confirmation of their
suspicions.
A violent alarm was immediately sounded through the nation, of foreign
invasion designed to co-operate with seditions at home; bodies of troops
were dispatched to protect different points of the coast; and several
ships of war were equipped for sea; while a communication on the subject
was made by the council to the nobility throughout the kingdom, in terms
calculated to awaken indignation against the persecuted princess, and
all who were suspected, justly or unjustly, of regarding her cause with
favor. A few extracts from this paper will exhibit the fierce and
jealous spirit of that administration of which Dudley formed the soul.
"So it is, that the lady Mary, not many days past, removed from Newhall
in Essex to her house of Hunsdon in Hertfordshire, the cause whereof,
although we knew not, yet did we rather think it likely that her grace
would have come to have seen his majesty; but now upon Tuesday last, she
hath suddenly, without knowledge given either to us here or to the
country there, and without any cause in the world by us to her given,
taken her journey from Hunsdon towards Norfolk" &c. "This her doing we
be sorry for, both for the evil opinion the king's majesty our master
may conceive thereby of her, and for that by the same doth appear
manifestly the malicious rancour of such as provoke her thus to breed
and stir up, as much as in her and them lieth, occasion of disorder and
unquiet in the realm" &c. "It is not unknown to us but some near about
the said lady Mary have very lately in the night seasons had privy
conferences with the emperor's embassador here being, which councils can
no wise tend to the weal of the king's majesty our master or his realm,
nor to the nobility of this realm. And whatsoever the lady Mary shall
upon instigation of these forward practices further do, like to these
her strange beginnings, we doubt not but your lordship will provide that
her proceedings shall not move any disobedience or disorder--The effect
whereof if her counsellors should procure, as it must be to her grace,
and to all other good Englishmen therein seduced, damnable, so shall it
be most hurtful to the good subjects of the country" &c.[15]
[Note 15: Burleigh Papers by Haynes.]
Thus did the fears, the policy, or the party-spirit, of the members of
the council lead them to magnify the peril of the nation from the
enterprises of a young and defenceless female, whose best friend was a
foreign prince, whose person was completely within their power, and who,
at this period of her life "more sinned against than sinning," was not
even suspected of any other design than that of withdrawing herself from
a country in which she was no longer allowed to worship God according to
her conscience. Some slight tumults in Essex and Kent, in which she was
not even charged with any participation, were speedily suppressed; and
after some conference with the chancellor and secretary Petre, Mary
obeyed a summons to attend them to the court, where she was now to be
detained for greater security.
On her arrival she received a reprimand from the council for her
obstinacy respecting the mass, with an injunction to instruct herself,
by reading, in the grounds of protestant belief. To this she replied,
with the inflexible resolution of her character, that as to protestant
books, she thanked God that she never had read any, and never intended
so to do; that for her religion she was ready to lay down her life, and
only feared that she might not be found worthy to become its martyr. One
of her chaplains was soon after thrown into prison; and further
severities seemed to await her, when a message from the emperor,
menacing the country with war in case she should be debarred from the
free exercise of her religion, taught the council the expediency of
relaxing a little the sternness of their intolerance. But the scruples
of the zealous young king on this head could not be brought to yield to
reasons of state, till he had "advised with the archbishop of Canterbury
and the bishops of London and Rochester, who gave their opinion that to
give license to sin was sin, but to connive at sin might be allowed in
case it were neither long, nor without hope of reformation[16]."
[Note 16: Hayward's Life of Edward VI.]
By this prudent and humane but somewhat jesuitical decision this
perplexing affair was set at rest for the present; and during the small
remainder of her brother's reign, a negative kind of persecution,
consisting in disfavor, obloquy, and neglect, was all, apparently, that
the lady Mary was called upon to undergo. But she had already endured
enough to sour her temper, to aggravate with feelings of personal
animosity her systematic abhorrence of what she deemed impious heresy,
and to bind to her heart by fresh and stronger ties that cherished
faith, in defence of which she was proudly conscious of having struggled
and suffered with a lofty and unyielding intrepidity.
In order to counterbalance the threatened hostility of Spain, and impose
an additional check on the catholic party at home, it was now judged
expedient for the king to strengthen himself by an alliance with
Christian III. king of Denmark; an able and enlightened prince, who in
the early part of his reign had opposed with vigor the aggressions of
the emperor Charles V. on the independence of the north of Europe, and
more recently had acquired the respect of the whole protestant body by
establishing the reformation in his dominions. An agent was accordingly
dispatched with a secret commission to sound the inclinations of the
court of Copenhagen towards a marriage between the prince-royal and the
lady Elizabeth.
That this negotiation proved fruitless, was apparently owing to the
reluctance to the connexion manifested by Elizabeth; of whom it is
observable, that she never could be prevailed upon to afford the
smallest encouragement to the addresses of any foreign prince whilst
she herself was still a subject; well aware that to accept of an
alliance which would carry her out of the kingdom, was to hazard the
loss of her succession to the English crown, a splendid reversion never
absent from her aspiring thoughts.
Disappointed in this design, Edward lost no time in pledging his own
hand to the infant daughter of Henry II. of France, which contract he
did not live to complete.
The splendid French embassy which arrived in England during the year
1550 to make arrangements respecting the dower of the princess, and to
confer on her intended spouse the order of St. Michael, was received
with high honors, but found the court-festivities damped by a visitation
of that strange and terrific malady the sweating sickness.
This pestilence, first brought into the island by the foreign
mercenaries who composed the army of the earl of Richmond, afterwards
Henry VII., now made its appearance for the fourth and last time in our
annals. It seized principally, it is said, on males, on such as were in
the prime of their age, and rather on the higher than the lower classes:
within the space of twenty-four hours the fate of the sufferer was
decided for life or death. Its ravages were prodigious; and the general
consternation was augmented by a superstitious idea which went forth,
that Englishmen alone, were the destined victims of this mysterious
minister of fate, which tracked their steps, with the malice and
sagacity of an evil spirit, into every distant country of the earth
whither they might have wandered, whilst it left unassailed all
foreigners in their own.
Two of the king's servants died of this disease, and he in consequence
removed to Hampton Court in haste and with very few attendants. The duke
of Suffolk and his brother, students at Cambridge, were seized with it
at the same time, sleeping in the same bed, and expired within two hours
of each other. They were the children of Charles Brandon by his last
wife, who was in her own right baroness Willoughby of Eresby. This lady
had already made herself conspicuous by that earnest profession of the
protestant faith for which, in the reign of Mary, she underwent many
perils and a long exile. She was a munificent patroness of the learned
and zealous divines of her own persuasion, whether natives or
foreigners; and the untimely loss of these illustrious youths, who seem
to have inherited both her religious principles and her love of letters,
was publicly bewailed by the principal members of the university.
But by the earl of Warwick the melancholy event was rendered doubly
conducive to the purposes of his ambition. In the first place it enabled
him to bind to his interests the marquis of Dorset married to the
half-sister of the young duke of Suffolk, by procuring a renewal of the
ducal title in his behalf, and next authorized him by a kind of
precedent to claim for himself the same exalted dignity.
The circumstances attending Dudley's elevation to the ducal rank are
worthy of particular notice, as connected with a melancholy part of the
story of that old and illustrious family of the Percies, celebrated
through so many ages of English history.
The last of this house who had borne the title of earl of Northumberland
was that ardent and favored suitor of Anne Boleyn, who was compelled by
his father to renounce his pretensions to her hand in deference to the
wishes of a royal competitor.
The disappointment and the injury impressed themselves in indelible
characters on the heart of Percy: in common with the object of his
attachment, he retained against Wolsey, whom he believed to have been
actively instrumental in fostering the king's passion, a deep
resentment, which is said to have rendered peculiarly acceptable to him
the duty afterwards imposed upon him, of arresting that celebrated
minister in order to his being brought to his trial. For the lady to
whom a barbarous exertion of parental authority had compelled him to
give his hand, while his whole heart was devoted to another, he also
conceived an aversion rather to be lamented than wondered at.
Unfortunately, she brought him no living offspring; and after a few
years he separated himself from her to indulge his melancholy alone and
without molestation. In this manner he spun out a suffering existence,
oppressed with sickness of mind and body, disengaged from public life,
and neglectful of his own embarrassed affairs, till the fatal
catastrophe of his brother, brought to the scaffold in 1537 for his
share in the popish rebellion under Aske. By this event, and the
attainder of sir Thomas Percy's children which followed, the earl saw
himself deprived of the only consolation which remained to him,--that of
transmitting to the posterity of a brother whom he loved, the titles and
estates derived to him through a long and splendid ancestry. As a last
resource, he bequeathed all his land to the king, in the hope, which was
not finally frustrated, that a return of royal favor might one day
restore them to the representatives of the Percies.
This done, he yielded his weary spirit on the last day of the same month
which had seen the fatal catastrophe of his misguided brother.
From this time the title had remained dormant, till the earl of Warwick,
untouched by commiseration or respect for the misfortunes of so great a
house, cut off for the present all chance of its restoration, by causing
the young monarch whom he governed to confer upon himself the whole of
the Percy estates, with the new dignity of duke of Northumberland; an
honor undeserved and ill-acquired, which no son of his was ever
permitted to inherit.
But the soaring ambition of Dudley regarded even these splendid
acquisitions of wealth and dignity only as steps to that summit of power
and dominion which he was resolved by all means and at all hazards to
attain; and his next measure was to procure the removal of the only man
capable in any degree of obstructing his further progress. This was the
late protector, by whom some relics of authority were still retained.
At the instigation of Northumberland, a law was passed making it felony
to conspire against the life of a privy-counsellor; and by various
insidious modes of provocation, he was soon enabled to bring within the
danger of this new act an enemy who was rash, little sagacious, by no
means scrupulous, and surrounded with violent or treacherous advisers.
On October 16th 1551, Somerset and several of his relations and
dependants, and on the following day his haughty duchess with certain of
her favorites, were committed to the Tower, charged with treason and
felony. The duke, being put upon his trial, so clearly disproved most of
the accusations brought against him that the peers acquitted him of
treason; but the evidence of his having entertained designs against the
lives of the duke of Northumberland, the marquis of Northampton, and the
earl of Pembroke, appeared so conclusive to his judges,--among whom
these three noblemen themselves did not blush to take their seats,--that
he was found guilty of the felony.
After his condemnation, Somerset acknowledged with contrition that he
had once mentioned to certain persons an intention of assassinating
these lords; but he protested that he had never taken any measures for
carrying this wicked purpose into execution. However this might be, no
act of violence had been committed, and it was hoped by many and
expected by more, that the royal mercy might yet be extended to preserve
his life: but Northumberland spared no efforts to incense the king
against his unhappy uncle; he also contrived by a course of amusements
and festivities to divert him from serious thought; and on January 21st
1552, to the great regret of the common people and the dismay of the
protestant party, the duke of Somerset underwent the fatal stroke on
Tower-hill.
During the whole interval between the condemnation and death of his
uncle, the king, as we are informed, had been entertained by the nobles
of his court with "stately masques, brave challenges at tilt and at
barriers, and whatsoever exercises or disports they could conjecture to
be pleasing to him. Then also he first began to _keep hall_[17], and the
Christmas-time was passed over with banquetings, plays, and much variety
of mirth[18]."
[Note 17: To keep hall, was to keep "open household with frank
resort to court."]
[Note 18: Hayward's Life of Edward VI.]
We learn that it was an ancient custom, not only with the kings of
England but with noblemen and "great housekeepers who used liberal
feasting in that season," to appoint for the twelve days of the
Christmas festival a lord of misrule, whose office it was to provide
diversions for their numerous guests. Of what nature these
entertainments might be we are not exactly informed; they probably
comprised some rude attempts at dramatic representation: but the taste
of an age rapidly advancing in literature and general refinement,
evidently began to disdain the flat and coarse buffooneries which had
formed the solace of its barbarous predecessors; and it was determined
that devices of superior elegance and ingenuity should distinguish the
festivities of the new court of Edward. Accordingly, George Ferrers, a
gentleman regularly educated at Oxford, and a member of the society of
Lincoln's inn, was chosen to preside over the "merry disports;" "who,"
says Holinshed, "being of better credit and estimation than commonly his
predecessors had been before, received all his commissions and warrants
by the name of master of the king's pastimes. Which gentleman so well
supplied his office, both in show of sundry sights and devices of rare
inventions, and in act of divers interludes and matters of pastime
played by persons, as not only satisfied the common sort, but also were
very well liked and allowed by the council, and other of skill in the
like pastimes; but best of all by the young king himself, as appeared by
his princely liberality in rewarding that service."
"On Monday the fourth day of January," pursues our chronicler, whose
circumstantial detail is sometimes picturesque and amusing, "the said
lord of merry disports came by water to London, and landing at the Tower
wharf entered the Tower, then rode through Tower-street, where he was
received by Vause, lord of misrule to John Mainard, one of the sheriffs
of London, and so conducted through the city with a great company of
young lords and gentlemen to the house of sir George Burne lord-mayor,
where he with the chief of his company dined, and after had a great
banquet, and at his departure the lord-mayor gave him a standing cup
with a cover of silver and gilt, of the value of ten pounds, for a
reward, and also set a hogshead of wine and a barrel of beer at his
gate, for his train that followed him. The residue of his gentlemen and
servants dined at other aldermen's houses and with the sheriffs, and
then departed to the Tower wharf again, and so to the court by water, to
the great commendation of the mayor and aldermen, and highly accepted,
of the king and council."
From this time Ferrers became "a composer almost by profession of
occasional interludes for the diversion of the court[19]." None of these
productions of his have come down to posterity; but their author is
still known to the student of early English poetry, as one of the
contributors to an extensive work entitled "The Mirror for Magistrates,"
which will be mentioned hereafter in speaking of the works of Thomas
Sackville lord Buckhurst. The legends combined in this collection, which
came from the pen of Ferrers, are not distinguished by any high flights
of poetic fancy, nor by a versification extremely correct or melodious.
Their merit is that of narrating after the chronicles, facts in English
history, in a style clear, natural, and energetic, with an intermixture
of political reflections conceived in a spirit of wisdom and moderation,
highly honorable to the author, and well adapted to counteract the
turbulent spirit of an age in which the ambition of the high and the
discontent of the low were alike apt to break forth into outrages
destructive of the public tranquillity.
[Note 19: See Warton's History of English Poetry, vol. iii. p. 213
et seq.]
Happy would it have been for England in more ages than one, had the
sentiment of the following humble stanza been indelibly inscribed on
the hearts of children.
"Some haply here will move a further doubt,
And as for York's part allege an elder right:
O brainless heads that so run in and out!
When length of time a state hath firmly pight,
And good accord hath put all strife to flight,
Were it not better such titles still to sleep
Than all a realm about the trial weep?"
This estimable writer had been a member of parliament in the time of
Henry VIII., and was imprisoned by that despot in 1542, very probably
without any just cause. He about the same time translated into English
the great charter of Englishmen which had become a dead letter through
the tyranny of the Tudors; and he rendered the same public service
respecting several important statutes which existed only in Latin or
Norman French; proofs of a free and courageous spirit extremely rare in
that servile age!
Ferrers lived far into the reign of Elizabeth, finishing his career at
Flamstead in his native county of Herts in 1579.
From the pleasing contemplation of a life devoted to those honorable
arts by which society is cultivated, enlightened and adorned, we must
now return to tread with Northumberland the maze of dark and crooked
politics. By many a bold and many a crafty step this adept in his art
had wound his way to the highest rank of nobility attainable by a
subject, and to a station of eminence and command scarcely compatible
with that character. But no sooner had he reached it, than a sudden
cloud lowered over the splendid prospect stretched around him, and
threatened to snatch it for ever from his sight. The youthful monarch in
whom, or over whom, he reigned, was seized with a lingering disease
which soon put on appearances indicative of a fatal termination. Under
Mary, the next heir, safety with insignificance was the utmost that
could be hoped by the man who had taken a principal and conspicuous part
in every act of harshness towards herself, and every demonstration of
hostility towards the faith which she cherished, and against whom, when
he should be no longer protected by the power which he wielded, so many
lawless and rapacious acts were ready to rise up in judgement.
One scheme alone suggested itself for the preservation of his authority:
it was dangerous, almost desperate; but loss of power was more dreaded
by Dudley than any degree of hazard to others or himself; and he
resolved at all adventures to make the attempt.
By means of the new honors which he had caused to be conferred on the
marquis of Dorset, now duke of Suffolk, he engaged this weak and
inconsiderate man to give his eldest daughter, the lady Jane Grey, in
marriage to his fourth son Guildford Dudley. At the same time he
procured an union between her sister, the lady Catherine, and the eldest
son of his able but mean-spirited and time-serving associate, the earl
of Pembroke; and a third between his own daughter Catherine and lord
Hastings, son of the earl of Huntingdon by the eldest daughter and
co-heir of Henry Pole lord Montacute; in whom the claims of the line of
Clarence now vested.
These nuptials were all celebrated on one day, and with an ostentation
of magnificence and festivity which the people exclaimed against as
highly indecorous in the present dangerous state of the king's health.
But it was not on _their_ good will that Northumberland founded his
hopes, and their clamors were braved or disregarded.
His next measure was to prevail upon the dying king to dispose of the
crown by will in favor of the lady Jane. The animosity against his
sister Mary, to which their equal bigotry in opposite modes of faith had
given birth in the mind of Edward, would naturally induce him to lend a
willing ear to such specious arguments as might be produced in
justification of her exclusion: but that he could be brought with equal
facility to disinherit also Elizabeth, a sister whom he loved, a
princess judged in all respects worthy of a crown, and one with whose
religious profession he had every reason to be perfectly satisfied,
appears an indication of a character equally cold and feeble. Much
allowance, however, may be made for the extreme youth of Edward; the
weakness of his sinking frame; his affection for the pious and amiable
Jane, his near relation and the frequent companion of his childhood; and
above all, for the importunities, the artifices, of the practised
intriguers by whom his dying couch was surrounded.
The partisans of Northumberland did not fail to urge, that if one of the
princesses were set aside on account of the nullification of her
mother's marriage, the same ground of exclusion was valid against the
other. If, on the contrary, the testamentary dispositions of the late
king were to be adhered to, the lady Mary must necessarily precede her
sister, and the cause of religious reformation was lost, perhaps for
ever.
With regard to the other claimants who might still be interposed between
Jane and the English throne, it was pretended that the Scottish branch
of the royal family was put out of the question by that clause of
Henry's will which placed the Suffolk line next in order to his own
immediate descendants; as if an instrument which was set aside as to
several of its most important provisions was necessarily to be held
binding in all the rest. Even admitting this, the duchess of Suffolk
herself stood before her daughter in order of succession; but a
renunciation obtained from this lady by the authority of Northumberland,
not only of her own title but of that of any future son who might be
born to her, was supposed to obviate this objection.
The right of the king, even if he had attained the age of majority, to
dispose of the crown by will without the concurrence of parliament, was
absolutely denied by the first law authorities: but the power and
violence of Northumberland overruled all objections, and in the end the
new settlement received the signature of all the privy council, and the
whole bench of judges, with the exception of justice Hales, and perhaps
of Cecil, then secretary of state, who afterwards affirmed that he put
his name to this instrument only as a witness to the signature of the
king. Cranmer resisted for some time, but was at length won to
compliance by the tears and entreaties of Edward.
Notwithstanding this general concurrence, it is probable that very few
of the council either expected or desired that this act should be
sanctioned by the acquiescence of the nation: they signed it merely as a
protection from the present effects of the anger of Northumberland, whom
most of them hated as well as feared; each privately hoping that he
should find opportunity to disavow the act of the body in time to obtain
the forgiveness of Mary, should her cause be found finally to prevail.
The selfish meanness and political profligacy of such a conduct it is
needless to stigmatize; but this was not the age of public virtue in
England.
A just detestation of the character of Northumberland had rendered very
prevalent an idea, that the constitution of the king was undermined by
slow poisons of his administering; and it was significantly remarked,
that his health had begun to decline from the period of lord Robert
Dudley's being placed about him as gentleman of the bed-chamber.
Nothing, however, could be more destitute both of truth and probability
than such a suspicion. Besides the satisfactory evidence that Edward's
disease was a pulmonary consumption, such as no poison could produce, it
has been well remarked, that if Northumberland were a sound politician,
there could be no man in England more sincerely desirous, for his own
sake, of the continuance of the life and reign of this young prince. By
a change he had every thing to lose, and nothing to gain. Several
circumstances tend also to show that the fatal event, hastened by the
treatment of a female empiric to whom the royal patient had been very
improperly confided, came upon Northumberland at last somewhat by
surprise, and compelled him to act with a precipitation injurious to his
designs. Several preparatory steps were yet wanting; in particular the
important one of securing the persons of the two princesses: but this
omission it seemed still possible to supply; and he ordered the death of
the king to be carefully concealed, while he wrote letters in his name
requiring the immediate attendance of his sisters on his person. With
Mary the stratagem had nearly succeeded: she had reached Hoddesdon on
her journey to London, when secret intelligence of the truth, conveyed
to her by the earl of Arundel, caused her to change her course. It was
probably a similar intimation from some friendly hand, Cecil's perhaps,
which caused Elizabeth to disobey the summons, and remain tranquil at
one of her houses in Hertfordshire.
Here she was soon after waited upon by messengers from Northumberland,
who apprized her of the accession of the lady Jane, and proposed to her
to resign her own title in consideration of a sum of money, and certain
lands which should be assigned her. But Elizabeth wisely and
courageously replied, that her elder sister was first to be agreed with,
during whose lifetime she, for her part, could claim no right at all.
And determined to make common cause with Mary against their common
enemies, she equipped with all speed a body of a thousand horse, at the
head of which she went forth to meet her sister on her approach to
London.
The event quickly proved that she had taken the right part. Though the
council manifested their present subserviency to Northumberland by
proclaiming queen Jane in the metropolis, and by issuing in her name a
summons to Mary to lay aside her pretensions to the crown, this leader
was too well practised in the arts of courts, to be the dupe of their
hollow professions of attachment to a cause unsupported, as he soon
perceived, by the favor of the people.
The march of Northumberland at the head of a small body of troops to
resist the forces levied by Mary in Norfolk and Suffolk, was the signal
for the defection of a great majority of the council. They broke from
the kind of honorable custody in the Tower in which, from a well-founded
distrust of their intentions, Northumberland had hitherto held them; and
ordering Mary to be proclaimed in London, they caused the hapless Jane,
after a nominal reign of ten days, to be detained as a prisoner in that
fortress which she had entered as a sovereign.
Not a hand was raised, not a drop of blood was shed, in defence of this
pageant raised by the ambition of Dudley. Deserted by his partisans, his
soldiers and himself, the guilty wretch sought, as a last feeble
resource, to make a merit of being the first man to throw up his cap in
the market-place of Cambridge, and cry "God save queen Mary!" But on
the following day the earl of Arundel, whom he had disgraced, and who
hated him, though a little before he had professed that he could wish to
spend his blood at his feet, came and arrested him in her majesty's
name, and Mary, proceeding to London, seated herself without opposition
on the throne of her ancestors.
CHAPTER VI.
1553 AND 1554.
Mary affects attachment to Elizabeth.--Short duration of her
kindness.--Earl of Devonshire liberated from the Tower.--His
character.--He rejects the love of Mary--shows partiality to
Elizabeth.--Anger of Mary.--Elizabeth retires from court.--Queen's
proposed marriage unpopular.--Character of sir T. Wyat.--His
rebellion.--Earl of Devonshire remanded to the Tower.--Elizabeth
summoned to court--is detained by illness.--Wyat taken--is said to
accuse Elizabeth.--She is brought prisoner to the court--examined by the
council--dismissed--brought again to court--re-examined--committed to
the Tower.--Particulars of her behaviour.--Influence of Mary's
government on various eminent characters.--Reinstatement of the duke of
Norfolk in honor and office.--His retirement and death.--Liberation from
the Tower of Tonstal.--His character and after fortunes.--Of Gardiner
and Bonner.--Their views and characters.--Of the duchess of Somerset and
the marchioness of Exeter.--Imprisonment of the Dudleys--of several
protestant bishops--of judge Hales.--His sufferings and
death.--Characters and fortunes of sir John Cheke, sir Anthony Cook, Dr.
Cox, and other protestant exiles.
The conduct of Elizabeth during the late alarming crisis, earned for her
from Mary, during the first days of her reign, some demonstration of
sisterly affection. She caused her to bear her company in her public
entry into London; kindly detained her for a time near her own person;
and seemed to have consigned for ever to an equitable oblivion all the
mortifications and heartburnings of which the child of Anne Boleyn had
been the innocent occasion to her in times past, and under circumstances
which could never more return.
In the splendid procession which attended her majesty from the Tower to
Whitehall previously to her coronation on October 1st 1553, the royal
chariot, sumptuously covered with cloth of tissue and drawn by six
horses with trappings of the same material, was immediately followed by
another, likewise drawn by six horses and covered with cloth of silver,
in which sat the princess Elizabeth and the lady Anne of Cleves, who
took place in this ceremony as the adopted sister of Henry VIII.
But notwithstanding these fair appearances, the rancorous feelings of
Mary's heart with respect to her sister were only repressed or
disguised, not eradicated; and it was not long before a new subject of
jealousy caused them to revive in all their pristine energy.
Amongst the state prisoners committed to the Tower by Henry VIII., whose
liberation his executors had resisted during the whole reign of Edward,
but whom it was Mary's first act of royalty to release and reinstate in
their offices or honors, was Edward Courtney, son of the unfortunate
marquis of Exeter. From the age of fourteen to that of six-and-twenty,
this victim of tyranny had been doomed to expiate in a captivity which
threatened to be perpetual, the involuntary offence of inheriting
through an attainted father the blood of the fourth Edward. To the
surprise and admiration of the court, he now issued forth a comely and
accomplished gentleman; deeply versed in the literature of the age;
skilled in music, and still more so in the art of painting, which had
formed the chief solace of his long seclusion; and graced with that
polished elegance of manners, the result, in most who possess it, of
early intercourse with the world and an assiduous imitation of the best
examples, but to a few of her favorites the free gift of nature herself.
To all his prepossessing qualities was superadded that deep romantic
kind of interest with which sufferings, long, unmerited, and
extraordinary, never fail to invest a youthful sufferer.
What wonder that Courtney speedily became the favorite of the
nation!--what wonder that even the severe bosom of Mary herself was
touched with tenderness! With the eager zeal of the sentiment just
awakened in her heart, she hastened to restore to her too amiable
kinsman the title of earl of Devonshire, long hereditary in the
illustrious house of Courtney, to which she added the whole of those
patrimonial estates which the forfeiture of his father had vested in the
crown. She went further; she lent a propitious ear to the whispered
suggestion of her people, still secretly partial to the house of York,
that an English prince of the blood was most worthy to share the throne
of an English queen. It is even affirmed that hints were designedly
thrown out to the young man himself of the impression which he had made
upon her heart. But Courtney generously disdained, as it appears, to
barter his affections for a crown. The youth, the talents, the graces
of Elizabeth had inspired him with a preference which he was either
unwilling or unable to conceal; Mary was left to vent her disappointment
in resentment against the ill-fated object of her preference, and in
every demonstration of a malignant jealousy towards her innocent and
unprotected rival.
By the first act of a parliament summoned immediately after the
coronation, Mary's birth had been pronounced legitimate, the marriage of
her father and mother valid, and their divorce null and void. A stigma
was thus unavoidably cast on the offspring of Henry's second marriage;
and no sooner had Elizabeth incurred the displeasure of her sister, than
she was made to feel how far the consequences of this new declaration of
the legislature might be made to extend. Notwithstanding the unrevoked
succession act which rendered her next heir to the crown, she was
forbidden to take place of the countess of Lenox, or the duchess of
Suffolk, in the presence-chamber, and her friends were discountenanced
or affronted obviously on her account. Her merit, her accomplishments,
her insinuating manners, which attracted to her the admiration and
attendance of the young nobility, and the favor of the nation, were so
many crimes in the eyes of a sovereign who already began to feel her own
unpopularity; and Elizabeth, who was not of a spirit to endure public
and unmerited slights with tameness, found it at once the most dignified
and the safest course, to seek, before the end of the year, the peaceful
retirement of her house of Ashridge in Buckinghamshire. It was however
made a condition of the leave of absence from court which she was
obliged to solicit, that she should take with her sir Thomas Pope and
sir John Gage, who were placed about her as inspectors and
superintendants of her conduct, under the name of officers of her
household.
The marriage of Mary to Philip of Spain was now openly talked of. It was
generally and justly unpopular: the protestant party, whom the measures
of the queen had already filled with apprehensions, saw, in her desire
of connecting herself yet more closely with the most bigoted royal
family of Europe, a confirmation of their worst forebodings; and the
tyranny of the Tudors had not yet so entirely crushed the spirit of
Englishmen as to render them tamely acquiescent in the prospect of their
country's becoming a province to Spain, subject to the sway of that
detested people whose rapacity, and violence, and unexampled cruelty,
had filled both hemispheres with groans and execrations.
The house of commons petitioned the queen against marrying a foreign
prince: she replied by dissolving them in anger; and all hope of putting
a stop to the connexion by legal means being thus precluded, measures of
a more dangerous character began to be resorted to.
Sir Thomas Wyat of Allingham Castle in Kent, son of the poet, wit, and
courtier of that name, had hitherto been distinguished by a zealous
loyalty; and he is said to have been also a catholic. Though allied in
blood to the Dudleys, not only had he refused to Northumberland his
concurrence in the nomination of Jane Grey, but, without waiting a
moment to see which party would prevail, he had proclaimed queen Mary in
the market-place at Maidstone, for which instance of attachment he had
received her thanks[20]. But Wyat had been employed during several years
of his life in embassies to Spain; and the intimate acquaintance which
he had thus acquired of the principles and practices of its court,
filled him with such horror of their introduction into his native
country, that, preferring patriotism to loyalty where their claims
appeared incompatible, he incited his neighbours and friends to
insurrection.
[Note 20: See Carte's History of England.]
In the same cause sir Peter Carew, and sir Gawen his uncle, endeavoured
to raise the West, but with small success; and the attempts made by the
duke of Suffolk, lately pardoned and liberated, to arm his tenantry and
retainers in Warwickshire and Leicestershire, proved still more futile.
Notwithstanding however this want of co-operation, Wyat's rebellion wore
for some time a very formidable appearance. The London trained-bands
sent out to oppose him, went over to him in a body under Bret, their
captain; the guards, almost the only regular troops in the kingdom, were
chiefly protestants, and therefore little trusted by the queen; and it
was known that the inhabitants of the metropolis, for which he was in
full march, were in their hearts inclined to his cause.
It was pretty well ascertained that the earl of Devonshire had received
an invitation to join the western insurgents; and though he appeared to
have rejected the proposal, he was arbitrarily remanded to his ancient
abode in the Tower.
Elizabeth was naturally regarded under all these circumstances of alarm
with extreme jealousy and suspicion. It was well known that her present
compliance with the religion of the court was merely prudential; that
she was the only hope of the protestant party, a party equally
formidable by zeal and by numbers, and which it was resolved to crush;
it was more than suspected, that though Wyat himself still professed an
inviolable fidelity to the person of the reigning sovereign, and
strenuously declared the Spanish match to be the sole grievance against
which he had taken arms, many of his partisans had been led by their
religious zeal to entertain the further view of dethroning the queen, in
favor of her sister, whom they desired to marry to the earl of
Devonshire. It was not proved that the princess herself had given any
encouragement to these designs; but sir James Croft, an adherent of
Wyat's, had lately visited Ashridge, and held conferences with some of
her attendants; and it had since been rumored that she was projecting a
removal to her manor of Donnington castle in Berkshire, on the south
side of the Thames, where nothing but a day's march through an open
country would be interposed between her residence and the station of the
Kentish rebels.
Policy seemed now to dictate the precaution of securing her person; and
the queen addressed to her accordingly the following letter.
* * * * *
"Right dear and entirely beloved sister,
"We greet you well: And whereas certain evil-disposed persons, minding
more the satisfaction of their own malicious and seditious minds than
their duty of allegiance towards us, have of late foully spread divers
lewd and untrue rumours; and by that means and other devilish practises
do travail to induce our good and loving subjects to an unnatural
rebellion against God, us, and the tranquillity of our realm: We,
tendering the surety of your person, which might chance to be in some
peril if any sudden tumult should arise where you now be, or about
Donnington, whither, as we understand, you are minded shortly to remove,
do therefore think expedient you should put yourself in good readiness,
with all convenient speed, to make your repair hither to us. Which we
pray you fail not to do: Assuring you, that as you may most safely
remain here, so shall you be most heartily welcome to us. And of your
mind herein we pray you to return answer by this messenger.
"Given under our signet at our manor of St. James's the 26th of January
in the 1st year of our reign.
"Your loving sister,
"MARY, the queen."
* * * * *
This summons found Elizabeth confined to her bed by sickness; and her
officers sent a formal statement of the fact to the privy-council,
praying that the delay of her appearance at court might not, under such
circumstances, be misconstrued either with respect to her or to
themselves. Monsieur de Noailles, the French ambassador, in some papers
of his, calls this "a favorable illness" to Elizabeth, "since," adds
he, "it seems likely to save Mary from the crime of putting her sister
to death by violence." And true it is, that by detaining her in the
country till the insurrection was effectually suppressed, it preserved
her from any sudden act of cruelty which the violence of the alarm might
have prompted: but other and perhaps greater dangers still awaited her.
A few days after the date of the foregoing letter, Wyat entered
Westminster, but with a force very inadequate to his undertaking: he was
repulsed in an attack on the palace; and afterwards, finding the gates
of London closed against him and seeing his followers slain, taken, or
flying in all directions, he voluntarily surrendered himself to one of
the queen's officers and was conveyed to the Tower. It was immediately
given out, that he had made a full discovery of his accomplices, and
named amongst them the princess and the earl of Devonshire; and on this
pretext, for it was probably no more, three gentlemen were sent,
attended by a troop horse, with peremptory orders to bring Elizabeth
back with them to London.
They reached her abode at ten o'clock at night, and bursting into her
sick chamber, in spite of the remonstrances of her ladies, abruptly
informed her of their errand. Affrighted at the summons, she declared
however her entire willingness to wait upon the queen her sister, to
whom she warmly protested her loyal attachment; but she appealed to
their own observation for the reality of her sickness, and her utter
inability to quit her chamber. The gentlemen pleaded, on the other
side, the urgency of their commission, and said that they had brought
the queen's litter for her conveyance. Two physicians were then called
in, who gave it as their opinion that she might be removed without
danger to her life; and on the morrow her journey commenced.
The departure of Elizabeth from Ashridge was attended by the tears and
passionate lamentations of her afflicted household, who naturally
anticipated from such beginnings the worst that could befal her. So
extreme was her sickness, aggravated doubtless by terror and dejection,
that even these stern conductors found themselves obliged to allow her
no less than four nights' rest in a journey of only twenty-nine miles.
Between Highgate and London her spirits were cheered by the appearance
of a number of gentlemen who rode out to meet her, as a public testimony
of their sympathy and attachment; and as she proceeded, the general
feeling was further manifested by crowds of people lining the waysides,
who flocked anxiously about her litter, weeping and bewailing her aloud.
A manuscript chronicle of the time describes her passage on this
occasion through Smithfield and Fleet-street, in a litter open on both
sides, with a hundred "velvet coats" after her, and a hundred others "in
coats of fine red guarded with velvet;" and with this train she passed
through the queen's garden to the court.
This open countenancing of the princess by a formidable party in the
capital itself, seems to have disconcerted the plans of Mary and her
advisers; and they contented themselves for the present with detaining
her in a kind of honorable custody at Whitehall. Here she underwent a
strict examination by the privy-council respecting Wyat's insurrection,
and the rising in the West under Carew; but she steadfastly protested
her innocence and ignorance of all such designs; and nothing coming out
against her, in about a fortnight she was dismissed, and suffered to
return to her own house. Her troubles, however, were as yet only
beginning. Sir William St. Low, one of her officers, was apprehended as
an adherent of Wyat's; and this leader himself, who had been respited
for the purpose of working on his love of life, and leading him to
betray his confederates, was still reported to accuse the princess. An
idle story was officiously circulated, of his having conveyed to her in
a bracelet the whole scheme of his plot; and on March 15th she was again
taken into custody and brought to Hampton-court.
Soon after her arrival, it was finally announced to her by a deputation
of the council, not without strong expressions of concern from several
of the members, that her majesty had determined on her committal to the
Tower till the matter could be further investigated. Bishop Gardiner,
now a principal counsellor, and two others, came soon after, and,
dismissing the princess's attendants, supplied their place with some of
the queen's, and set a guard round the palace for that night. The next
day, the earl of Sussex and another lord were sent to announce to her
that a barge was in readiness for her immediate conveyance to the Tower.
She entreated first to be permitted to write to the queen; and the earl
of Sussex assenting, in spite of the angry opposition of his companion,
whose name is concealed by the tenderness of his contemporaries, and
undertaking to be himself the bearer of her letter, she took the
opportunity to repeat her protestations of innocence and loyalty,
concluding, with an extraordinary vehemence of asseveration, in these
words: "As for that traitor Wyat, he might peradventure write me a
letter; but on my faith I never received any from him. And as for the
copy of my letter to the French king, I pray God confound me eternally,
if ever I sent him word, message, token, or letter, by any means." With
respect to the last clause of this disavowal, it may be fit to observe,
that there is indeed no proof that Elizabeth ever returned any answer to
the letters or messages of the French king; but that it seems a
well-authenticated fact, that during some period of her adversity Henry
II. made her the offer of an asylum in France. The circumstance of the
dauphin's being betrothed to the queen of Scots, who claimed to precede
Elizabeth in the order of succession, renders the motive of this
invitation somewhat suspicious; at all events, it was one which she was
never tempted to accept.
Her letter did not obtain for the princess what she sought,--an
interview with her sister; and the next day, being Palm Sunday, strict
orders were issued for all people to attend the churches and carry their
palms; and in the mean time she was privately removed to the Tower,
attended by the earl of Sussex and the other lord, three of her own
ladies, three of the queen's, and some of her officers. Several
characteristic traits of her behaviour have been preserved. On reaching
her melancholy place of destination, she long refused to land at
Traitor's gate; and when the uncourteous nobleman declared "that she
should not choose," offering her however, at the same time, his cloak to
protect her from the rain, she retained enough of her high spirit to put
it from her "with a good dash." As she set her foot on the ill-omened
stairs, she said, "Here landeth as true a subject, being a prisoner, as
ever landed at these stairs; and before thee, O God! I speak it, having
no other friends but thee alone."
On seeing a number of warders and other attendants drawn out in order,
she asked, "What meaneth this?" Some one answered that it was customary
on receiving a prisoner. "If it be," said she, "I beseech you that for
my cause they may be dismissed." Immediately the poor men kneeled down
and prayed God to preserve her; for which action they all lost their
places the next day.
Going a little further, she sat down on a stone to rest herself; and the
lieutenant urging her to rise and come in out of the cold and wet, she
answered, "Better sitting here than in a worse place, for God knoweth
whither you bring me." On hearing these words her gentleman-usher wept,
for which she reproved him; telling him he ought rather to be her
comforter, especially since she knew her own truth to be such, that no
man should have cause to weep for her. Then rising, she entered the
prison, and its gloomy doors were locked and bolted on her. Shocked and
dismayed, but still resisting the weakness of unavailing lamentation,
she called for her book, and devoutly prayed that she might build her
house upon the rock.
Meanwhile her conductors retired to concert measures for keeping her
securely; and her firm friend, the earl of Sussex, did not neglect the
occasion of reminding all whom it might concern, that the king their
master's daughter was to be treated in no other manner than they might
be able to justify, whatever should happen hereafter; and that they were
to take heed to do nothing but what their commission would bear out. To
this the others cordially assented; and having performed their office,
the two lords departed.
Having now conducted the heroine of the protestant party to the dismal
abode which she was destined for a time to occupy, it will be proper to
revert to the period of Mary's accession.
Little more than eight months had yet elapsed from the death of Edward;
but this short interval had sufficed to change the whole face of the
English court; to alter the most important relations of the country with
foreign states; and to restore in great measure the ancient religion,
which it had been the grand object of the former reign finally and
totally to overthrow. It is the business of the historian to record the
series of public measures by which this calamitous revolution was
accomplished: the humbler but not uninteresting task, of tracing its
effects on the fortunes of eminent individuals, belongs to the compiler
of memoirs, and forms an appropriate accompaniment to the relation of
the perils, sufferings and obloquy, through which the heiress of the
English crown passed on safely to the accomplishment of her high
destinies.
The liberation of the state-prisoners confined in the Tower,--an act of
grace usual on the accession of a prince,--was one which the causes of
detention of the greater part of them rendered it peculiarly gratifying
to Mary to perform. The enemies of Henry's or of Edward's government she
regarded with reason as her friends and partisans, and the adherents,
open or concealed, of that church establishment which was to be forced
back on the reluctant consciences of the nation.
The most illustrious of the captives was that aged duke of Norfolk whom
the tyrant Henry had condemned to die without a crime, and who had been
suffered to languish in confinement during the whole reign of Edward;
chiefly, it is probable, because the forfeiture of his vast estates
afforded a welcome supply to the exhausted treasury of the young king;
though the extensive influence of this nobleman, and the attachment for
the old religion which he was believed to cherish, had served as
plausible pretexts for his detention. His high birth, his hereditary
authority, his religious predilections, were so many titles of merit in
the eyes of the new queen, who was also desirous of profiting by his
abilities and long experience in all affairs civil and military. Without
waiting for the concurrence of parliament, she declared by her own
authority his attainder irregular and null, restored to him such of his
lands as remained vested in the crown, and proceeded to reinstate him in
offices and honors. On August 10th he took his seat at the
council-board of the eighth English monarch whose reign he had survived
to witness; on the same day he was solemnly reinvested with the garter,
of which he had been deprived on his attainder; and a few days after, he
sat as lord-high-steward on the trial of that very duke of
Northumberland to whom, not long before, his friends and adherents had
been unsuccessful suitors for his own liberation.
There is extant a remarkable order of council, dated August 27th of this
year, "for a letter to be written to the countess of Surry to send up to
Mountjoy Place in London her youngest son, and the rest of her children,
by the earl of Surry, where they shall be received by the duke of
Norfolk their grandfather[21]." It may be conjectured that these young
people were thus authoritatively consigned to the guardianship of the
duke, for the purpose of correcting the protestant predilections in
which they had been educated; and the circumstance seems also to
indicate, what indeed might be well imagined, that little harmony or
intercourse subsisted between this nobleman and a daughter-in-law whom
he had formerly sought to deprive of her husband in order to form for
him a new and more advantageous connexion.
[Note 21: See Burleigh Papers by Haynes.]
The eldest son of the earl of Surry, now in the seventeenth year of his
age, was honored with the title of his father; and he began his
distinguished though unfortunate career by performing, as deputy to the
duke of Norfolk, the office of earl-marshal at the queen's coronation.
On the first alarm of Wyat's rebellion, the veteran duke was summoned to
march out against him; but his measures, which otherwise promised
success, were completely foiled by the desertion of the London bands to
the insurgents; and the last military expedition of his life was
destined to conclude with a hasty and ignominious flight. He soon after
withdrew entirely from the fatigues of public life, and after all the
vicissitudes of court and camp, palace and prison, with which the lapse
of eighty eventful years had rendered him acquainted, calmly breathed
his last at his own castle of Framlingham in September 1554.
Three deprived bishops were released from the Tower, and restored with
honor to their sees. These were, Tonstal of Durham, Gardiner of
Winchester, and Bonner of London. Tonstal, many of whose younger years
had been spent in diplomatic missions, was distinguished in Europe by
his erudition, which had gained him the friendship and correspondence of
Erasmus; he was also mild, charitable, and of unblemished morals.
Attached by principle to the faith of his forefathers, but loth either
to incur personal hazard, or to sacrifice the almost princely emoluments
of the see of Durham, he had contented himself with regularly opposing
in the house of lords all the ecclesiastical innovations of Edward's
reign, and as regularly giving them his concurrence when once
established. It was not, therefore, professedly on a religious account
that he had suffered deprivation and imprisonment, but on an obscure
charge of having participated in some traitorous or rebellious design: a
charge brought against him, in the opinion of most, falsely, and
through the corrupt procurement of Northumberland, to whose project of
erecting the bishopric of Durham into a county palatine for himself, the
deprivation of Tonstal, and the abolition of the see by act of
parliament, were indispensable preliminaries. This meek and amiable
prelate returned to the exercise of his high functions, without a wish
of revenging on the protestants, in their adversity, the painful acts of
disingenuousness which their late ascendency had forced upon him. During
the whole of Mary's reign, no person is recorded to have suffered for
religion within the limits of his diocess. The mercy which he had shown,
he afterwards most deservedly experienced. Refusing, on the accession of
Elizabeth, to preserve his mitre by a repetition of compliances of which
so many recent examples of conscientious suffering in men of both
persuasions must have rendered him ashamed, he suffered a second
deprivation; but his person was only committed to the honorable custody
of archbishop Parker. By this learned and munificent prelate the
acquirements and virtues of Tonstal were duly appretiated and esteemed.
He found at Lambeth a retirement suited to his age, his tastes, his
favorite pursuits; by the arguments of his friendly host he was brought
to renounce several of the grosser corruptions of popery; and dying in
the year 1560, an honorable monument was erected by the primate to his
memory.
With views and sentiments how opposite did Gardiner and Bonner resume
the crosier! A deep-rooted conviction of the truth and vital importance
of the religious opinions which he defends, supplies to the persecutor
the only apology of which his foolish and atrocious barbarity admits;
and to men naturally mild and candid, we feel a consolation in allowing
it in all its force;--but by no particle of such indulgence should
Bonner or Gardiner be permitted to benefit. It would be credulity, not
candor, to yield to either of these bad men the character of sincere,
though over zealous, religionists. True it is that they had subjected
themselves to the loss of their bishoprics, and to a severe
imprisonment, by a refusal to give in their renunciation of certain
doctrines of the Romish church; but they had previously gone much
further in compliance than conscience would allow to any real catholic;
and they appear to have stopped short in this career only because they
perceived in the council such a determination to strip them, under one
pretext or another, of all their preferments, as manifestly rendered
further compliance useless. Both of them had policy enough to restrain
them, under such circumstances, from degrading their characters
gratuitously, and depriving themselves of the merit of having suffered
for a faith which might soon become again predominant. They received
their due reward in the favor of Mary, who recognised them with joy as
the fit instruments of all her bloody and tyrannical designs, to which
Gardiner supplied the crafty and contriving head, Bonner the vigorous
and unsparing arm.
The proud wife of the protector Somerset,--who had been imprisoned, but
never brought to trial, as an accomplice in her husband's plots,--was
now dismissed to a safe insignificance. The marchioness of Exeter,
against whom, in Henry's reign, an attainder had passed too iniquitous
for even him to carry into effect, was also rescued from her long
captivity, and indemnified for the loss of her property by some valuable
grants from the new confiscations of the Dudleys and their adherents.
The only state prisoner to whom the door was not opened on this occasion
was Geffrey Pole, that base betrayer of his brother and his friends by
whose evidence lord Montacute and the marquis of Exeter had been brought
to an untimely end. It is some satisfaction to know, that the
commutation of death for perpetual imprisonment was all the favor which
this wretch obtained from Henry; that neither Edward nor Mary broke his
bonds; and that, as far as appears, his punishment ended only with his
miserable existence.
Not long, however, were these dismal abodes suffered to remain
unpeopled. The failure of the criminal enterprise of Northumberland
first filled the Tower with the associates, or victims, of his guilt.
Nearly the whole of the Dudley family were its tenants for a longer or
shorter time; and it was another remarkable coincidence of their
destinies, which Elizabeth in the after days of her power and glory
might have pleasure in recalling to her favorite Leicester, that during
the whole of her captivity in this fortress he also was included in the
number of its melancholy inmates.
The places of Tonstal, Gardiner, and Bonner, were soon after supplied by
the more zealous of Edward's bishops, Holgate, Coverdale, Ridley, and
Hooper; and it was not long before the vehement Latimer and even the
cautious Cranmer were added to their suffering brethren.
The queen made no difficulty of pardoning and receiving into favor those
noblemen and others, members of the privy-council, whom a base dread of
the resentment of Northumberland had driven into compliance with his
measures in favor of Jane Grey; wisely considering, perhaps, that the
men who had submitted to be the instruments of his violent and illegal
proceedings, would feel little hesitation in lending their concurrence
to hers also. On this principle, the marquis of Winchester and the earls
of Arundel and Pembroke were employed and distinguished; the last of
these experienced courtiers making expiation for his past errors, by
causing his son, lord Herbert, to divorce the lady Catherine Grey, to
whom it had so lately suited his political views to unite him.
Sir James Hales on the contrary, that conscientious and upright judge,
who alone, of all the privy-counsellors and crown-lawyers, had persisted
in refusing his signature to the act by which Mary was disinherited of
the crown, found himself unrewarded and even discountenanced. The queen
well knew, what probably the judge was not inclined to deny, that it was
attachment, not to her person, but to the constitution of his country,
which had prompted his resistance to that violation of the legal order
of succession; and had it even been otherwise, she would have regarded
all her obligations to him as effectually cancelled by his zealous
adherence to the church establishment of the preceding reign. For
daring to urge upon the grand juries whom he addressed in his circuit,
the execution of some of Edward's laws in matter of religion, yet
unrepealed, judge Hales was soon after thrown into prison. He endured
with constancy the sufferings of a long and rigorous confinement,
aggravated by the threats and ill-treatment of a cruel jailor. At length
some persons in authority were sent to propound to him terms of release.
It is suspected that they extorted from him some concessions on the
point of religion; for immediately after their departure, retiring to
his cell, in a fit of despair he stabbed himself with his knife in
different parts of the body, and was only withheld by the sudden
entrance of his servant from inflicting a mortal wound. Bishop Gardiner
had the barbarity to insult over the agony or distraction of a noble
spirit overthrown by persecution; he even converted his solitary act
into a general reflection against protestantism, which he called "the
doctrine of desperation." Some time after, Hales obtained his
enlargement on payment of an arbitrary fine of six thousand pounds. But
he did not with his liberty recover his peace of mind; and after
struggling for a few months with an unconquerable melancholy, he sought
and found its final cure in the waters of a pond in his garden.
No blood except of principals, was shed by Mary on account of the
proclamation of Jane Grey; but she visited with lower degrees of
punishment, secretly proportioned to the zeal which they had displayed
in the reformation of religion, several of the more eminent partisans
of this "meek usurper." The three tutors of king Edward, sir Anthony
Cook, sir John Cheke and Dr. Cox, were sufficiently implicated in this
affair to warrant their imprisonment for some time on suspicion; and all
were eager, on their release, to shelter themselves from the approaching
storm by flight.
Cheke, after confiscation of his estate, obtained permission to travel
for a given time on the continent. Strasburgh was selected by Cook for
his place of exile. The wise moderation of character by which this
excellent person was distinguished, seems to have preserved him from
taking any part in the angry contentions of protestant with protestant,
exile with exile, by which the refugees of Strasburgh and Frankfort
scandalized their brethren and afforded matter of triumph to the church
of Rome. On the accession of Elizabeth he returned with alacrity to
re-occupy and embellish the modest mansion of his forefathers, and
"through the loopholes of retreat" to view with honest exultation the
high career of public fortune run by his two illustrious sons-in-law,
Nicholas Bacon and William Cecil.
The enlightened views of society taken by sir Anthony led him to extend
to his daughters the noblest privileges of the other sex, those which
concern the early and systematic acquisition of solid knowledge. Through
his admirable instructions their minds were stored with learning,
strengthened with principles, and formed to habits of reasoning and
observation, which rendered them the worthy partners of great statesmen,
who knew and felt their value. The fame, too, of these distinguished
females has reflected back additional lustre on the character of a
father, who was wont to say to them in the noble confidence of
unblemished integrity, "My life is your portion, my example your
inheritance."
Dr. Cox was quite another manner of man. Repairing first to Strasburgh,
where the English exiles had formed themselves into a congregation using
the liturgy of the church of England, he went thence to Frankfort,
another city of refuge to his countrymen at this period; where the
intolerance of his zeal against such as more inclined to the form of
worship instituted by the Genevan reformer, embarked him in a violent
quarrel with John Knox, against whom, on pretext of his having libelled
the emperor, he found means to kindle the resentment of the magistrates,
who compelled him to quit the city. After this disgraceful victory over
a brother reformer smarting under the same scourge of persecution with
himself, he returned to Strasburgh, where he more laudably employed
himself in establishing a kind of English university.
His zeal for the church of England, his sufferings in the cause, and his
services to learning, obtained for him from Elizabeth the bishopric of
Ely; but neither party enjoyed from this appointment all the
satisfaction which might have been anticipated. The courage, perhaps the
self opinion, of Dr. Cox, engaged him on several occasions in opposition
to the measures of the queen; and his narrow and persecuting spirit
involved him in perpetual disputes and animosities, which rendered the
close of a long life turbulent and unhappy, and took from his learning
and gray hairs their due reverence. The rapacity of the courtiers, who
obtained grant after grant of the lands belonging to his bishopric, was
another fruitful source to him of vexation; and he had actually tendered
the resignation of his see on very humiliating terms, when death came to
his relief in the year 1581, the eighty-second of his age.
If in this and a few other instances, the polemical zeal natural to men
who had sacrificed their worldly all for the sake of religion, was
observed to degenerate among the refugees into personal quarrels
disgraceful to themselves and injurious to their noble cause, it ought
on the other hand to be observed, that some of the firmest and most
affectionate friendships of the age were formed amongst these companions
in adversity; and that by many who attained under Elizabeth the highest
preferments and distinctions, the title of fellow-exile never ceased to
be regarded as the most sacred and endearing bond of brotherhood.
Other opportunities will arise of commemorating some of the more eminent
of the clergy who renounced their country during the persecutions of
Mary; but respecting the laity, it may here be remarked, that with the
exception of Catherine duchess-dowager of Suffolk, not a single person
of quality was found in this list of conscientious sufferers; though one
peer, probably the earl of Bedford, underwent imprisonment on a
religious account at home. Of the higher gentry, however, there were
considerable numbers who either went and established themselves in the
protestant cities of Germany, or passed away the time in travelling.
Sir Francis Knowles, whose lady was niece to Anne Boleyn, took the
former part, residing with his eldest son at Frankfort; Walsingham
adopted the latter. With the views of a future minister of state, he
visited in succession the principal courts of Europe, where he employed
his diligence and sagacity in laying the foundations of that intimate
knowledge of their policy and resources by which he afterwards rendered
his services so important to his queen and country.
CHAPTER VII.
1554 AND 1555.
Arrival of Wyat and his associates at the Tower.--Savage treatment of
them.--Further instances of Mary's severity.--Duke of Suffolk
beheaded.--Death of lady Jane Grey--of Wyat, who clears Elizabeth of all
share in his designs.--Trial of Throgmorton.--Bill for the exclusion of
Elizabeth thrown out.--Parliament protects her rights--is
dissolved.--Rigorous confinement of Elizabeth in the Tower.--She is
removed under guard of Beddingfield--carried to Richmond--offered
liberty with the hand of the duke of Savoy--refuses--is carried
to Ricot, thence prisoner to Woodstock.--Anecdotes of her
behaviour.--Cruelty of Gardiner towards her attendants.--Verses by
Harrington.--Marriage of the queen.--Alarms of the protestants.--Arrival
of cardinal Pole.--Popery restored.--Persecution begun.--King Philip
procures the liberation of state prisoners.--Earl of Devon travels into
Italy--dies.--Obligation of Elizabeth to Philip discussed.--She is
invited to court--keeps her Christmas there--returns to Woodstock--is
brought again to court by Philip's intercession.--Gardiner urges her to
make submissions, but in vain.--She is brought to the queen--permitted
to reside without guards at one of the royal seats--finally settled at
Hatfield.--Character of sir Thomas Pope.--Notice of the
Harringtons.--Philip quits England.--Death of Gardiner.
It is now proper to return to circumstances more closely connected with
the situation of Elizabeth at this eventful period of her life.
Two or three weeks before her arrival in the Tower, Wyat with some of
his principal adherents had been carried thither. Towards these unhappy
persons, none of those decencies of behaviour were observed which the
sex and rank of Elizabeth had commanded from the ministers of her
sister's severity; and Holinshed's circumstantial narrative of the
circumstances attending their committal, may be cited as an instructive
example of the fierce and brutal manners of the age.
"Sir Philip Denny received them at the bulwark, and as Wyat passed by,
he said, 'Go, traitor, there was never such a traitor in England.' To
whom sir Thomas Wyat turned and said, 'I am no traitor; I would thou
shouldest well know that thou art more traitor than I; it is not the
point of an honest man to call me so.' And so went forth. When he came
to the Tower gate, sir Thomas Bridges lieutenant took in through the
wicket first Mantell, and said; 'Ah thou traitor! what hast thou and thy
company wrought?' But he, holding down his head, said nothing. Then came
Thomas Knevet, whom master Chamberlain, gentleman-porter of the Tower,
took in. Then came Alexander Bret, (captain of the white coats,) whom
sir Thomas Pope took by the bosom, saying, 'O traitor! how couldst thou
find in thy heart to work such a villainy as to take wages, and being
trusted over a band of men, to fall to her enemies, returning against
her in battle?' Bret answered, 'Yea, I have offended in that case.' Then
came Thomas Cobham, whom sir Thomas Poins took in, and said; 'Alas,
master Cobham, what wind headed you to work such treason?' And he
answered, 'O sir! I was seduced.' Then came sir Thomas Wyat, whom sir
Thomas Bridges took by the collar, and said; 'O thou villain! how
couldst thou find in thy heart to work such detestable treason to the
queen's majesty, who gave thee thy life and living once already,
although thou didst before this time bear arms in the field against
her?[22]... If it were not (saith he) but that the law must pass upon
thee, I would stick thee through with my dagger.' To the which Wyat,
holding his arms under his sides and looking grievously with a grim look
upon the lieutenant, said, 'It is no mastery now;' and so passed on."
[Note 22: It is plain that Wyat is here accused of having taken arms
for Jane Grey; but most wrongfully, if Carte's account of him is to be
credited, which there seems no reason to disbelieve.]
Other circumstances attending the suppression of this rebellion mark
with equal force the stern and vindictive spirit of Mary's government,
and the remaining barbarity of English customs. The inhabitants of
London being for the most part protestants and well affected, as the
defection of their trained bands had proved, to the cause of Wyat, it
was thought expedient to admonish them of the fruits of rebellion by the
gibbeting of about sixty of his followers in the most public parts of
the city. Neither were the bodies suffered to be removed till the public
entry of king Philip after the royal nuptials; on which festal occasion
the streets were cleared of these noisome objects which had disgraced
them for nearly half a year.
Some hundreds of the meaner rebels, to whom the queen was pleased to
extend her mercy, were ordered to appear before her bound two-and-two
together, with halters about their necks; and kneeling before her in
this guise, they received her _gracious_ pardon of all offences; but no
general amnesty was ever granted.
That the rash attempt of the duke of Suffolk should have been visited
upon himself by capital punishment, is neither to be wondered at nor
censured; but it was a foul act of cruelty to make this the pretext for
taking away the lives of a youthful pair entirely innocent of this last
design, and forgiven, as it was fondly hoped, for the almost involuntary
part which they had taken in a former and more criminal enterprise. But
religious bigotry and political jealousy, each perhaps sufficient for
the effect, combined in this instance to urge on the relentless temper
of Mary; and the lady Jane Grey and Guildford Dudley her husband were
ordered to prepare for the execution of the sentence which had remained
suspended over them.
Every thinking mind must have been shocked at the vengeance taken on
Guildford Dudley,--a youth too insignificant, it might be thought, to
call forth the animadversion of the most apprehensive government, and
guilty of nothing but having accepted, in obedience to his father's
pleasure, the hand of Jane Grey. But the fate of this distinguished lady
herself was calculated to awaken stronger feelings. The fortitude, the
piety, the genuine humility and contrition evinced by her in the last
scene of an unsullied life, furnished the best evidence of her
guiltlessness even of a wish to resume the sceptre which paternal
authority had once forced on her reluctant grasp; and few could witness
the piteous spectacle of her violent and untimely end, without a thrill
of indignant horror, and secret imprecations against the barbarity of
her unnatural kinswoman.
The earl of Devonshire was still detained in the Tower on Wyat's
information, as was pretended, and on other indications of guilt, all of
which were proved in the end equally fallacious: and at the time of
Elizabeth's removal hither this state-prison was thronged with captives
of minor importance implicated in the designs of Wyat. These were
assiduously plied on one hand with offers of liberty and reward, and
subjected on the other to the most rigorous treatment, the closest
interrogatories, and one of them even to the rack, in the hope of
eliciting from them some evidence which might reconcile to Mary's
conscience, or color to the nation, the death or perpetual imprisonment
of a sister whom she feared and hated.
To have brought her to criminate herself would have been better still;
and no pains were spared for this purpose. A few days after her
committal, Gardiner and other privy-councillors came to examine her
respecting the conversation which she had held with sir James Croft
touching her removal to Donnington Castle. She said, after some
recollection, that she had indeed such a place, but that she never
occupied it in her life, and she did not remember that any one had moved
her so to do. Then, "to enforce the matter," they brought forth sir
James Croft, and Gardiner demanded what she had to say to that man? She
answered that she had little to say to him or to the rest that were in
the Tower. "But, my lords," said she, "you do examine every mean
prisoner of me, wherein methinks you do me great injury. If they have
done evil and offended the queen's majesty, let them answer to it
accordingly. I beseech you, my lords, join not me in this sort with any
of these offenders. And concerning my going to Donnington Castle, I do
remember that master Hobby and mine officers and you sir James Croft had
such talk;--but what is that to the purpose, my lords, but that I may go
to mine own houses at all times?" The earl of Arundel kneeling down
said, "Your grace sayeth true, and certainly we are very sorry that we
have troubled you about so vain matter." She then said, "My lords, you
do sift me very narrowly; but I am well assured you shall not do more to
me than God hath appointed, and so God forgive you all."
Before their departure sir James Croft kneeled down before her,
declaring that he was sorry to see the day in which he should be brought
as a witness against her grace. But he added, that he had been
"marvellously tossed and examined touching her grace;" and ended by
protesting his innocence of the crime laid to his charge[23].
[Note 23: Fox's narrative in Holinshed.]
Wyat was at length, on April 11th, brought to his death; when he
confounded all the hopes and expectations of Elizabeth's enemies, by
strenuously and publicly asserting her entire innocence of any
participation in his designs.
Sir Nicholas Throgmorton was brought to the bar immediately afterwards.
His trial at length, as it has come down to us in Holinshed's Chronicle,
is one of the most interesting documents of that nature extant. He was
esteemed "a deep conspirator, whose post was thought to be at London as
a factor, to give intelligence as well to them in the West, as to Wyat
and the rest in Kent. It was believed that he gave notice to Wyat to
come forward with his power, and that the Londoners would be ready to
take his part. And that he sent a post to sir Peter Carew also, to
advance with as much speed as might be, and to bring his forces with
him.
"He was said moreover to be the man that excited the earl of Devon to go
down into the West, and that sir James Croft and he had many times
consulted about the whole matter[24]."
[Note 24: Strype's Ecclesiastical Memorials.]
To these political offences, sir Nicholas added religious principles
still more heinous in the eyes of Mary. He, with two other gentlemen of
his family, had been of the number of those who attended to the stake
that noble martyr Anne Askew, burned for heresy in the latter end of
Henry's reign; when they were bid to take care of their lives, for they
were all marked men. Since the accession of Mary also he had "bemoaned
to his friend sir Edward Warner, late lieutenant of the Tower, his own
estate and the tyranny of the times, extending upon divers honest
persons for religion, and wished it were lawful for all of each
religion to live safely according to their conscience. For the law
_ex-officio_ he said would be intolerable, and the clergy discipline now
might rather be resembled to the Turkish tyranny than the teaching of
the Christian religion. Which words he was not afraid at his trial
openly to acknowledge that he had said to the said Warner[25]."
[Note 25: Strype's Ecclesiastical Memorials.]
The prosecution was conducted with all the iniquity which the corrupt
practice of that age admitted. Not only was the prisoner debarred the
assistance of counsel on his trial, he was even refused the privilege of
calling a single witness in his favor. He defended himself however under
all these disadvantages, with surprising skill, boldness and presence of
mind; and he retorted with becoming spirit the brutal taunts of the
crown lawyers and judges, who disgraced themselves on the occasion by
all the excesses of an unprincipled servility. Fortunately for
Throgmorton, the additional clauses to the treason laws added under
Henry VIII. had been abolished under his successor and were not yet
re-enacted. Only the clear and equitable statute of Edward III. remained
therefore in force; and the lawyers were reduced to endeavour at such an
explanation of it as should comprehend a kind of constructive treason.
"If," said they, "it be proved that the prisoner was connected with
Wyat, and of his counsel, the overt acts of Wyat are to be taken as his,
and visited accordingly." But besides that no participation with Wyat
after he had taken up arms, was proved upon Throgmorton, the jury were
moved by his solemn protest against so unwarrantable a principle as that
the overt acts of one man might be charged as overt acts upon another.
They acquitted him therefore with little hesitation, to the
inexpressible disappointment and indignation of the queen and her
ministers, who then possessed the power of making their displeasure on
such an occasion deeply felt. The jury were immediately committed to
custody, and eight of them, who refused to confess themselves in fault,
were further imprisoned for several months and heavily fined.
The acquitted person himself, in defiance of all law and justice, was
remanded to the Tower, and did not regain his liberty till the
commencement of the following year, when the intercession of king Philip
obtained the liberation of almost all the prisoners there detained.
Throgmorton, like all the others called in question for the late
insurrections, was closely questioned respecting Elizabeth and the earl
of Devon; "and very fain," we are told, "the privy-councillors employed
in this work would have got out of him something against them. For when
at Throgmorton's trial, his writing containing his confession was read
in open court, he prayed the queen's serjeant that was reading it to
read further, 'that hereafter,' said he, 'whatsoever become of me, my
words may not be perverted and abused to the hurt of some others, and
especially against the great personages of whom I have been sundry
times, as appears by my answers, examined. For I perceive the net was
not cast only for little fishes but for great ones[26]."
[Note 26: Strype's Memorials.]
This generous concern for the safety of Elizabeth in the midst of his
own perils appears not to have been lost upon her; and under the ensuing
reign we shall have the satisfaction of seeing the abilities of sir
Nicholas displayed in other scenes and under happier auspices.
All manifestations of popular favor towards those whom the court had
proscribed and sought to ruin, were at this juncture visited with the
extreme of arbitrary severity. Two merchants of London, for words
injurious to the queen, but principally for having affirmed that Wyat at
his death had cleared the lady Elizabeth and the earl of Devonshire,
were set in the pillory, to which their ears were fastened with large
nails.
It was in fact an object of great importance to the catholic party to
keep up the opinion, so industriously inculcated, of the princess being
implicated in the late disturbances; since it was only on this false
pretext that she could be detained close prisoner in the Tower while a
fatal stroke was aimed against her rights and interests.
Gardiner, now chancellor and prime minister, the most inveterate of
Elizabeth's enemies and the most devoted partisan of the Spanish
interest, thinking that all was subdued to the wishes of the court,
brought before the new parliament a bill for declaring the princess
illegitimate and incapable of succeeding:--it was indignantly rejected,
however, by a great majority; but the failure only admonished him to
renew the attack in a more indirect and covert manner. Accordingly, the
articles of the marriage treaty between Mary and the prince of Spain,
artfully drawn with great seeming advantage to England, had no sooner
received the assent of the two houses, than he proposed a law for
conferring upon the queen the same power enjoyed by her father; that of
naming a successor. But neither could this be obtained from a house of
commons attached for the most part to the protestant cause and the
person of the rightful heir, and justly apprehensive of the extinction
of their few remaining privileges under the yoke of a detested foreign
tyrant. Nobody doubted that it was the purpose of the queen, in default
of immediate issue of her own, to bequeath the crown to her husband,
whose descent from a daughter of John of Gaunt had been already much
insisted on by his adherents. The bill was therefore thrown out; and the
alarm excited by its introduction had caused the house to pass several
spirited resolutions, one of which declared that her majesty should
reign as a sole queen without any participation of her authority, while
the rest guarded in various points against the anticipated encroachments
of Philip, when Mary thought good to put a stop to the further
discussion of the subject by a prorogation of parliament.
After these manifold disappointments, the court party was compelled to
give up, with whatever reluctance, its deep-laid plots against the
unoffending princess. Her own prudence had protected her life; and the
independent spirit of a house of commons conscious of speaking the sense
of the nation guarantied her succession. One only resource remained to
Gardiner and his faction:--they judged that a long-continued absence,
while it gradually loosened her hold upon the affections of the people,
would afford many facilities for injuring or supplanting her; and it was
determined soon to provide for her a kind of honorable banishment.
The confinement of the princess in the Tower had purposely been rendered
as irksome and comfortless as possible. It was not till after a month's
close imprisonment, by which her health had suffered severely, that she
obtained, after many difficulties, permission to walk in the royal
apartments; and this under the constant inspection of the constable of
the Tower and the lord-chamberlain, with the attendance of three of the
queen's women; the windows also being shut, and she not permitted to
look out at them. Afterwards she had liberty to walk in a small garden,
the gates and doors being carefully closed; and the prisoners whose
rooms looked into it being at such times closely watched by their
keepers, to prevent the interchange of any word or sign with the
princess. Even a child of five years old belonging to some inferior
officer in the Tower, who was wont to cheer her by his daily visits, and
to bring her flowers, was suspected of being employed as a messenger
between her and the earl of Devonshire; and notwithstanding the innocent
simplicity of his answers to the lord-chamberlain by whom he was
strictly examined, was ordered to visit her no more. The next day the
child peeped in through a hole of the door as she walked in the garden,
crying out, "Mistress, I can bring you no more flowers!" for which, it
seems, his father was severely chidden and ordered to keep his boy out
of the way.
From the beginning of her imprisonment orders had been given that the
princess should have mass regularly said in her apartment. It is
probable that Elizabeth did not feel any great repugnance to this
rite:--however this might be, she at least expressed none; and by this
compliance deprived her sister of all pretext for persecuting her on a
religious ground. But some of her household were found less submissive
on this head, and she had the mortification of seeing Mrs. Sands, one of
her ladies, carried forcibly away from her under an accusation of heresy
and her place supplied by another.
All these severities failed however of their intended effect: neither
sufferings nor menaces could bring the princess to acknowledge herself
guilty of offending even in thought against her sovereign and sister;
and as the dying asseverations of Wyat had fully acquitted her in the
eyes of the country, it became evident that her detention in the Tower
could not much longer be persisted in. Yet the habitual jealousy of
Mary's government, and the apparent danger of furnishing a head to the
protestants rendered desperate by her cruelties, forbade the entire
liberation of the princess; and it was resolved to adopt as a middle
course the expedient sanctioned by many examples in that age, of
committing her to the care of certain persons who should be answerable
for her safe keeping, either in their own houses, or at some one of the
royal seats. Lord Williams of Thame, and sir Henry Beddingfield captain
of the guard, were accordingly joined in commission for the execution of
this delicate and important trust.
The unfortunate prisoner conceived neither hope nor comfort from this
approaching change in her situation, nor probably was it designed that
she should; for intimidation seems still to have formed an essential
feature in the policy of her relentless enemies. Sir Henry Beddingfield
entered the Tower at the head of a hundred of his men; and Elizabeth,
struck with the unexpected sight, could not forbear inquiring with
dismay, whether the lady Jane's scaffold were removed? On being informed
that it was, she received some comfort, but this was not of long
duration; for soon a frightful rumor reached her, that she was to be
carried away by this captain and his soldiers no one knew whither. She
sent immediately for lord Chandos, constable of the Tower, whose
humanity and courtesy had led him to soften as much as possible the
hardships of her situation, though at the hazard of incurring the
indignation of the court; and closely questioning him, he at length
plainly told her that there was no help for it, orders were given, and
she must be consigned to Beddingfield's care to be carried, as he
believed, to Woodstock. Anxious and alarmed, she now asked of her
attendants what kind of man this Beddingfield was; and whether, if the
murdering of her were secretly committed to him, his conscience would
allow him to see it executed? None about her could give a satisfactory
answer, for he was a stranger to them all; but they bade her trust in
God that such wickedness should not be perpetrated against her.
At length, on May 19th, after a close imprisonment of three months, she
was brought out of the Tower under the conduct of Beddingfield and his
troop; and on the evening of the same day found herself at Richmond
Palace, where her sister then kept her court. She was still treated in
all respects like a captive: the manners of Beddingfield were harsh and
insolent; and such terror did she conceive from the appearances around
her, that sending for her gentleman-usher, she desired him and the rest
of her officers to pray for her; "For this night," said she, "I think to
die." The gentleman, much affected by her distress, encouraged her as
well as he was able: then going down to lord Williams, who was walking
with Beddingfield, he called him aside and implored him to tell him
sincerely, whether any mischief were designed against his mistress that
night or no; "that he and his men might take such part as God should
please to appoint." "For certainly," added this faithful servant, "we
will rather die than she should secretly and innocently miscarry."
"Marry, God forbid," answered Williams, "that any such wicked purpose
should be wrought; and rather than it should be so, I with my men are
ready to die at her feet also."
In the midst of her gloomy apprehensions, the princess was surprised by
an offer from the highest quarter, of immediate liberty on condition of
her accepting the hand of the duke of Savoy in marriage.
Oppressed, persecuted, and a prisoner, sequestered from every friend and
counsellor, guarded day and night by soldiers, and in hourly dread of
some attempt upon her life, it must have been confidently expected that
the young princess would embrace as a most joyful and fortunate
deliverance this unhoped-for proposal; and by few women, certainly,
under all the circumstances, would such expectations have been
frustrated. But the firm mind of Elizabeth was not thus to be shaken,
nor her penetration deceived. She saw that it was banishment which was
held out to her in the guise of marriage; she knew that it was her
reversion of an independent English crown which she was required to
barter for the matrimonial coronet of a foreign dukedom; and she felt
the proposal as what in truth it was;--an injury in disguise.
Fortunately for herself and her country, she had the magnanimity to
disdain the purchase of present ease and safety at a price so
disproportionate; and returning to the overture a modest but decided
negative, she prepared herself to endure with patience and resolution
the worst that her enraged and baffled enemies might dare against her.
No sooner was her refusal of the offered marriage made known, than
orders were given for her immediate removal into Oxfordshire. On
crossing the river at Richmond on this melancholy journey, she descried
on the other side "certain of her poor servants," who had been
restrained from giving their attendance during her imprisonment, and
were anxiously desirous of seeing her again. "Go to them," said she to
one of her men, "and say these words from me, _Tanquam ovis_" (Like a
sheep to the slaughter).
As she travelled on horseback the journey occupied four days, and the
slowness of her progress gave opportunity for some striking displays of
popular feeling. In one place, numbers of people were seen standing by
the way-side who presented to her various little gifts; for which
Beddingfield did not scruple, in his anger, to call them traitors and
rebels. The bells were every where rung as she passed through the
villages, in token of joy for her liberation; but the people were soon
admonished that she was still a prisoner and in disgrace, by the orders
of Beddingfield to set the ringers in the stocks.
On the third evening she arrived at Ricot, the house of lord Williams,
where its owner, gracefully sinking the character of a watchful
superintendant in that of a host who felt himself honored by her visit,
introduced her to a large circle of nobility and gentry whom he had
invited to bid her welcome. The severe or suspicious temper of
Beddingfield took violent umbrage at the sight of such an assemblage: he
caused his soldiers to keep strict watch; insisted that none of the
guests should be permitted to pass the night in the house; and asked
lord Williams if he were aware of the consequences of thus entertaining
the queen's prisoner? But he made answer, that he well knew what he did,
and that "her grace might and should in his house be merry."
Intelligence however had no sooner reached the court of the reception
afforded to the princess at Ricot, than directions arrived for her
immediate removal to Woodstock. Here, under the harsher inspection of
Beddingfield, she found herself once more a prisoner. No visitant was
permitted to approach; the doors were closed upon her as in the Tower;
and a military guard again kept watch around the walls both day and
night.
We possess many particulars relative to the captivity of Elizabeth at
Woodstock. In some of them we may recognise that spirit of exaggeration
which the anxious sympathy excited by her sufferings at the time, and
the unbounded adulation paid to her afterwards, were certain to produce;
others bear all the characters of truth and nature.
It is certain that her present residence, though less painful and
especially less opprobrious than imprisonment in the Tower, was yet a
state of rigorous constraint and jealous inspection, in which she was
haunted with cares and fears which robbed her youth of its bloom and
vivacity, and her constitution of its vigor. On June 8th such was the
state of her health that two physicians were sent from the court who
remained for several days in attendance on her. On their return, they
performed for their patient the friendly office of making a favorable
report of her behaviour and of the dutiful humility of her sentiments
towards her majesty, which was received, we are told, with more
complacency by Mary than by her bishops. Soon after, she was advised by
some friend to make her peace with the queen by submissions and
acknowledgements, which, with her usual constancy, she absolutely
refused, though apparently the only terms on which she could hope for
liberty.
Under such circumstances we may give easy belief to the touching
anecdote, that "she, hearing upon a time out of her garden at Woodstock,
a milkmaid singing pleasantly, wished herself a milkmaid too; saying
that her case was better, and her life merrier than hers."
The instances related of the severity and insolence of sir Henry
Beddingfield are to be received with more distrust. We are told, that
observing a chair of state prepared for the princess in an upper chamber
at lord Williams's house, he seized upon it for himself and insolently
ordered his boots to be pulled off in that apartment. Yet we learn from
the same authority that afterwards at Woodstock, when she seems to have
been in his sole custody, Elizabeth having called him her jailor, on
observing him lock the gate of the garden while she was walking in it,
he fell on his knees and entreated her grace not to give him that name,
for he was appointed to be one of her officers. It has also been
asserted, that on her accession to the throne she dismissed him from her
presence with the speech, that she prayed God to forgive him, as she
did, and that when she had a prisoner whom she would have straitly kept
and hardly used, she would send for him. But if she ever used to him
words like these, it must have been in jest; for it is known from the
best authority, that Beddingfield was frequently at the court of
Elizabeth, and that she once visited him on a progress. If there is any
truth in the stories told of persons of suspicious appearance lurking
about the walls of the palace, who sought to gain admittance for the
purpose of taking away her life, the exact vigilance of her keeper, by
which all access was barred, might more deserve her thanks than her
reproaches.
During the period that the princess was thus industriously secluded from
conversation with any but the few attendants who had been allowed to
remain about her person, her correspondence was not less watchfully
restricted. We are told, that when, after urgent application to the
council, she had at length been permitted to write to the queen,
Beddingfield looked over her as she wrote, took the paper into his own
keeping when she paused, and brought it back to her when she chose to
resume her task.
Yet could not his utmost precaution entirely cut off her communications
with the large and zealous party who rested upon her all their hopes of
better times for themselves or for the country. Through the medium of a
visitor to one of her ladies, she received the satisfactory assurance
that none of the prisoners for Wyat's business had been brought to utter
any thing by which she could be endangered. Perhaps it was with
immediate reference to this intelligence that she wrote with a diamond
on her window the homely but expressive distich,
"Much suspected by me
Nothing proved can be,
Quoth Elizabeth prisoner."
But these secret intelligencers were not always fortunate enough to
escape detection, of which the consequences were rendered very grievous
through the arbitrary severity of Mary's government, and the peculiar
malice exercised by Gardiner against the adherents of the princess.
Sir John Harrington, son to the gentleman of the same name formerly
mentioned as a follower of admiral Seymour, thus, in his _Brief View of
the Church_, sums up the character of this celebrated bishop of
Winchester, with reference to this part of his conduct.
"Lastly, the plots he laid to entrap the lady Elizabeth, and his
terrible hard usage of all her followers, I cannot yet scarce think of
with charity, nor write of with patience. My father, for only carrying a
letter to the lady Elizabeth, and professing to wish her well, he kept
in the Tower twelve months, and made him spend a thousand pounds ere he
could be free of that trouble. My mother, that then served the lady
Elizabeth, he caused to be sequestered from her as an heretic, insomuch
that her own father durst not take her into his house, but she was glad
to sojourn with one Mr. Topcliff; so as I may say in some sort, this
bishop persecuted me before I was born."
In the twelfth month of his imprisonment, this unfortunate Harrington,
having previously sent to the bishop many letters and petitions for
liberty without effect, had the courage to address to him a "Sonnet,"
which his son has cited as "no ill verse for those unrefined times;" a
modest commendation of lines so spirited, which the taste of the more
modern reader, however fastidious, need not hesitate to confirm.
TO BISHOP GARDINER.
1.
"At least withdraw your cruelty,
Or force the time to work your will;
It is too much extremity
To keep me pent in prison still,
Free from all fault, void of all cause,
Without all right, against all laws.
How can you do more cruel spite
Than proffer wrong and promise right?
Nor can accuse, nor will acquight.
2.
Eleven months past and longer space
I have abode your dev'lish drifts,
While you have sought both man and place,
And set your snares, with all your shifts,
The faultless foot to wrap in wile
With any guilt, by any guile:
And now you see that will not be,
How can you thus for shame agree
To keep him bound you should set free?
3.
Your chance was once as mine is now,
To keep this hold against your will,
And then you sware you well know how,
Though now you swerve, I know how ill.
But thus this world his course doth pass,
The priest forgets a clerk he was,
And you that have cried justice still,
And now have justice at your will,
Wrest justice wrong against all skill.
4.
But why do I thus coldly plain
As if it were my cause alone?
When cause doth each man so constrain
As England through hath cause to moan,
To see your bloody search of such
As all the earth can no way touch.
And better were that all your kind
Like hounds in hell with shame were shrined,
Than you add might unto your mind.
5.
But as the stone that strikes the wall
Sometimes bounds back on th' hurler's head,
So your foul fetch, to your foul fall
May turn, and 'noy the breast that bred.
And then, such measure as you gave
Of right and justice look to have,
If good or ill, if short or long;
If false or true, if right or wrong;
And thus, till then, I end my song."
Such were the trials and sufferings which exercised the fortitude of
Elizabeth and her faithful followers during her deplorable abode at
Woodstock. Mary, meanwhile, was rapt in fond anticipations of the
felicity of her married life with a prince for whom, on the sight of his
picture, she is said to have conceived the most violent passion. The
more strongly her people expressed their aversion and dread of the
Spanish match, the more vehemently did she show herself bent on its
conclusion; and having succeeded in suppressing by force the formidable
rebellion to which the first report of such an union had given birth,
she judged it unnecessary to employ any of those arts of popularity to
which her disposition was naturally adverse, for conciliating to herself
or her destined spouse the good will of her subjects. After many delays
which severely tried her temper, the arrival of the prince of Spain at
Southampton was announced to the expecting queen, who went as far as
Winchester to meet him, in which city Gardiner blessed their nuptials on
July the 27th, 1554.
The royal pair passed in state through London a few days after, and the
city exhibited by command the outward tokens of rejoicing customary in
that age. Bonfires were kindled in the open places, tables spread in the
streets at which all passers-by might freely regale themselves with
liquor: every parish sent forth its procession singing _Te Deum_; the
fine cross in Cheapside was beautified and newly gilt, and pageants were
set up in the principal streets. But there was little gladness of heart
among the people; and one of these festal devices gave occasion to a
manifestation of the dispositions of the court respecting religion,
which filled the citizens with grief and horror. A large picture had
been hung over the conduit in Gracechurch street representing the nine
Worthies, and among them king Henry VIII. made his appearance, according
to former draughts of him, holding in his hand a book on which was
inscribed "_Verbum Dei_." This accompaniment gave so much offence, that
Gardiner sent for the painter; and after chiding him severely, ordered
that a pair of gloves should be substituted for the bible.
Religion had already been restored to the state in which it remained at
the death of Henry; but this was by no means sufficient to satisfy the
conscience of the queen, which required the entire restoration in all
its parts, of the ancient church-establishment. It had been, in fact,
one of the first acts of her reign to forward to Rome a respectful
embassy which conveyed to the sovereign pontiff her recognition of the
supremacy of the holy see, and a petition that he would be pleased to
invest with the character of his legate for England Cardinal Pole,--that
earnest champion of her own legitimacy and the church's unity, who had
been for so many years the object of her father's bitterest animosity.
Mary's precipitate zeal had received some check in this instance from
the worldly policy of the emperor Charles V., who, either entertaining
some jealousy of the influence of Pole with the queen, or at least
judging it fit to secure the great point of his son's marriage before
the patience of the people of England should be proved by the arrival of
a papal legate, had impeded the journey of the cardinal by a detention
of several weeks in his court at Brussels. But no sooner was Philip in
secure possession of his bride, than Pole was suffered to proceed on his
mission. The parliament, which met early in November 1554, reversed the
attainder which had laid him under sentence of death, and on the 24th of
the same month he was received at court with great solemnity, and with
every demonstration of affection on the part of his royal cousin.
From this period the cause of popery proceeded triumphantly: a reign of
terror commenced; and the government gained fresh strength and courage
by every exertion of the tyrannic power which it had assumed. After the
married clergy had been reduced to give up either their wives or their
benefices, and the protestant bishops deprived, and many of them
imprisoned, without exciting any popular commotion in their behalf, the
court became emboldened to propose in parliament a solemn reconciliation
of the country to the papal see. A house of commons more obsequious than
the former acceded to the motion, and on November 29th the legate
formally absolved the nation from all ecclesiastical censures, and
readmitted it within the pale of the church.
The ancient statutes against heretics were next revived; and the violent
counsels of Gardiner proving more acceptable to the queen than the
milder ones of Pole, a furious persecution was immediately set on foot.
Bishops Hooper and Rogers were the first victims; Saunders and Taylor,
two eminent divines, succeeded; upon all of whom Gardiner pronounced
sentence in person; after which he resigned to Bonner, his more brutal
but not more merciless colleague, the inglorious task of dragging forth
to punishment the heretics of inferior note and humbler station. In the
midst however of his barbarous proceedings, of which London was the
principal theatre, the bench of bishops thought proper in solemn
assembly to declare that they had no part in such severities; and
Philip, who shrank from the odium of the very deeds most grateful to his
savage soul, caused a Spanish friar his confessor to preach before him
in praise of toleration, and to show that Christians could bring no
warrant from Scripture for shedding the blood of their brethren on
account of religious differences. But justly apprehensive that so
extraordinary a declaration of opinion from such a person might not of
itself suffice to establish in the minds of the English that character
of lenity and moderation which he found it his interest to acquire, he
determined to add some few deeds to words.
About the close of the year 1554, sir Nicholas Throgmorton, Robert
Dudley, and all the other prisoners on account of the usurpation of Jane
Grey or the insurrection of Wyat, were liberated, at the intercession,
as was publicly declared, of king Philip; and he soon after employed his
good offices in the cause of two personages still more interesting to
the feelings of the nation,--the princess Elizabeth and the earl of
Devonshire.
It is worth while to estimate the value of these boasted acts of
generosity. With regard to Courtney it may be sufficient to observe,
that a close investigation of facts had proved him to have been grateful
for the liberation extended to him by Mary on her accession, and averse
from all schemes for disturbing her government, and that the queen's
marriage had served to banish from her mind some former grounds of
displeasure against him. Nothing but an union with Elizabeth could at
this time have rendered him formidable; and it was easy to guard
effectually against the accomplishment of any such design, without the
odious measure of detaining the earl in perpetual imprisonment at
Fotheringay Castle, whither he had been already removed from the Tower.
After all, it was but the shadow of liberty which he was permitted to
enjoy; and he found himself so beset with spies and suspicion, that a
very few months after his release he requested and obtained the royal
license to travel. Proceeding into Italy, he shortly after ended at
Padua his blameless and unfortunate career. Popular fame attributed his
early death to poison administered by the Imperialists, but probably, as
in a multitude of similar cases, on no sufficient authority.
As to Elizabeth, certain writers have ascribed Philip's protection of
her at this juncture to the following deduction of consequences;--that
if she were taken off, and if the queen should die childless, England
would become the inheritance of the queen of Scots, now betrothed to the
dauphin, and thus go to augment the power of France, already the most
formidable rival of the Spanish monarchy. Admitting however that such a
calculation of remote contingencies might not be too refined to act upon
the politic brain of Philip, it is yet plainly absurd to suppose that
the life or death of Elizabeth was at this time at all the matter in
question. Secret assassination does not appear to have been so much as
dreamed of, and Mary and her council, even supposing them to have been
sufficiently wicked, were certainly not audacious enough to think of
bringing to the scaffold, without form of trial, without even a
plausible accusation, the immediate heiress of the crown, and the hope
and favorite of the nation. The only question must now have been, what
degree of liberty it would be advisable to allow her; and a due
consideration of the facts, that she had already been removed from the
Tower, and that after her second release, (that, namely, from
Woodstock), she was never, to the end of the reign, permitted to reside
in a house of her own without an inspector of her conduct, will reduce
within very moderate limits the vaunted claims of Philip to her lasting
gratitude.
The project of marrying the princess to the duke of Savoy had doubtless
originated with the Spanish court; and it was still persisted in by
Philip, from the double motive of providing for the head of the
protestant party in England a kind of honorable exile, and of attaching
to himself by the gift of her hand, a young prince whom he favored and
destined to high employments in his service. But as severity had already
been tried in vain to bring Elizabeth to compliance on this point, it
seems now to have been determined to make experiment of opposite
measures. The duke of Savoy, who had attended Philip to England, was
still in the country; and as he was in the prime of life and a man of
merit and talents, it appeared not unreasonable to hope that a personal
interview might incline the princess to lend a more propitious ear to
his suit. To this consideration then we are probably to ascribe the
invitation which admitted Elizabeth to share in the festivals of a
Christmas celebrated by Philip and Mary at Hampton Court with great
magnificence, and which must have been that of the year 1554, because
this is well known to have been the only one passed by the Spanish
prince in England.
A contemporary chronicle still preserved amongst the MSS of the British
Museum, furnishes several particulars of her entertainment. On Christmas
eve, the great hall of the palace being illuminated with a thousand
lamps artificially disposed, the king and queen supped in it; the
princess being seated at the same table, next to the cloth of estate.
After supper she was served with a perfumed napkin and a plate of
"comfects" by lord Paget, but retired to her ladies before the revels,
masking, and disguisings began. On St. Stephen's day she heard mattins
in the queen's closet adjoining to the chapel, where she was attired in
a robe of white satin, strung all over with large pearls; and on
December the 29th she sat with their majesties and the nobility at a
grand spectacle of justing, when two hundred spears were broken by
combatants of whom half were accoutered in the Almaine and half in the
Spanish fashion.
How soon the princess again exchanged the splendors of a court for the
melancholy monotony of Woodstock does not appear from this document, nor
from any other with which I am acquainted; but several circumstances
make it clear that we ought to place about this period an incident
recorded by Holinshed, and vaguely stated to have occurred soon after
"the stir of Wyat" and the troubles of Elizabeth for that cause. A
servant of the princess's had summoned a person before the magistrates
for having mentioned his lady by the contumelious appellation of a
_jill_, and having made use of other disparaging language respecting
her. Was it to be endured, asked the accuser, that a low fellow like
this should speak of her grace thus insolently, when the greatest
personages in the land treated her with every mark of respect? He added,
"I saw yesterday in the court that my lord cardinal Pole, meeting her in
the chamber of presence, kneeled down on his knee and kissed her hand;
and I saw also, that king Philip meeting her made her such obeisance
that his knee touched the ground."
If this story be correct, which is not indeed vouched by the chronicler,
but which seems to bear internal evidence of genuineness, it will go far
to prove that the situation of Elizabeth during her abode at Woodstock
was by no means that opprobrious captivity which it has usually been
represented. She visited the court, it appears, occasionally, perhaps
frequently; and was greeted in public by the king himself with every
demonstration of civility and respect;--demonstrations which, whether
accompanied or not by the corresponding sentiments, would surely suffice
to protect her from all harsh or insolent treatment on the part of those
to whom the immediate superintendance of her actions was committed.
Her enemies however were still numerous and powerful; and it is certain
that she found no advocate in the heart of her sister. That able, but
thoroughly profligate politician lord Paget, notwithstanding his serving
the princess with "comfects," is reported to have said, that the queen
would never have peace in the country till her head were smitten off;
and Gardiner never ceased to look upon her with an evil eye. Lord
Williams, it seems, had made suit that he might be permitted to take her
from Woodstock to his own home, giving large bail for her safe keeping;
and as he was a known catholic and much in favor, it was supposed at
first that his petition would be heard; but by some secret influence the
mind of Mary was indisposed to the granting of this indulgence and the
proposal was dropped. But the Spanish counsellors who attended their
prince never ceased, we are told, to persuade him "that the like honor
he should never obtain as he should in delivering the lady Elizabeth"
out of her confinement: and Philip, who was now labouring earnestly at
the design, which he had entertained ever since his marriage, of
procuring himself to be crowned king of England, was himself aware of
the necessity of previously softening the prejudices of the nation by
some act of conspicuous popularity: he renewed therefore his
solicitations on this point with a zeal which rendered them effectual.
The moment indeed was favorable;--Mary, who now believed herself far
advanced in pregnancy, was too happy in her hopes to remain inflexible
to the entreaties of her husband; and the privy-council, in their
sanguine expectations of an heir, viewed the princess as less than
formerly an object of political jealousy. And thus, by a contrariety of
cause and effect by no means rare in the complicated system of human
affairs, Elizabeth became indebted for present tranquillity and
comparative freedom to the concurrence of projects and expectations the
most fatal to all her hopes of future greatness.
About the end of April, 1555, the princess took at length her final
departure from Woodstock, and proceeded,--but still under the escort of
Beddingfield and his men,--to Hampton Court. At Colnbrook she was met by
her own gentlemen and yeomen to the number of sixty, "much," says John
Fox, "to all their comforts, which had not seen her of long season
before, notwithstanding they were immediately commanded in the queen's
name to depart the town, and she not suffered once to speak to them."
The next day she reached Hampton Court, and was ushered into the
prince's lodgings; but the doors were closed upon her and guarded as at
Woodstock, and it was a fortnight, according to the martyrologist,
before any one had recourse to her.
At the end of this time she was solaced by a visit from lord William
Howard, son of the old duke of Norfolk, and first-cousin to her mother,
who "very honorably used her," and through whom she requested to speak
to some of the privy-council. Several of its members waited upon her in
consequence, and Gardiner among the rest, who "humbled himself before
her with all humility," but nevertheless seized the opportunity to urge
her once more to make submission to the queen, as a necessary
preliminary to the obtaining of her favor. Elizabeth, with that firmness
and wisdom which had never, in her severest trials, forsaken her,
declared that rather than do so, she would lie in prison all the days of
her life; adding, that she craved no mercy at her majesty's hand, but
rather the law, if ever she did offend her in thought, word, or deed.
"And besides this," said she, "in yielding I should speak against
myself, and confess myself an offender, by occasion of which the king
and queen might ever after conceive of me an ill opinion; and it were
better for me to lie in prison for the truth, than to be abroad and
suspected of my prince." The councillors now departed, promising to
deliver her message to the queen. The next day Gardiner waited upon her
again and told her that her majesty "marvelled she would so stoutly
carry herself, denying to have offended; so that it should seem the
queen had wrongfully imprisoned her grace:" and that she must tell
another tale ere she had her liberty. The lady Elizabeth declared she
would stand to her former resolution, for she would never belie herself.
"Then," said the bishop, "your grace hath the 'vantage of me and the
other councillors for your long and wrong imprisonment." She took God to
witness that she sought no 'vantage against them for their so dealing
with her. Gardiner and the rest then kneeled, desiring that all might be
forgotten, and so departed; she being locked up again.
About a week after the failure of this last effort of her crafty enemy
to extort some concession which might afterwards be employed to
criminate her or justify himself, she received a sudden summons from the
queen, and was conducted by torch-light to the royal apartments.
Mary received her in her chamber, to which she had now confined herself
in expectation of that joyful event which was destined never to arrive.
The princess on entering kneeled down, and protested herself a true and
loyal subject, adding, that she did not doubt that her majesty would one
day find her to be such, whatever different report had gone of her. The
queen expressed at first some dissatisfaction at her still persisting so
strongly in her assertions of innocence, thinking that she might take
occasion to inveigh against her imprisonment as the act of injustice and
oppression which in truth it was; but on her sister's replying in a
submissive manner, that it was her business to bear what the queen was
pleased to inflict and that she should make no complaints, she appears
to have been appeased. Fox's account however is, that they parted with
few comfortable words of the queen in English, but what she said in
Spanish was not known: that it was thought that king Philip was there
behind a cloth, and not seen, and that he showed himself "a very friend"
in this business. From other accounts we learn, that Elizabeth scrupled
not the attempt to ingratiate herself with Mary at this interview by
requesting that her majesty would be pleased to send her some catholic
tractates for confirmation of her faith and to counteract the doctrines
which she had imbibed from the works of the reformers. Mary showed
herself somewhat distrustful of her professions on this point, but
dismissed her at length with tokens of kindness. She put upon her
finger, as a pledge of amity, a ring worth seven hundred
crowns;--mentioned that sir Thomas Pope was again appointed to reside
with her, and observing that he was already well known to her sister
commended him as a person whose prudence, humanity, and other estimable
qualities, were calculated to render her new situation perfectly
agreeable.
To what place the princess was first conveyed from this audience does
not appear, but it must have been to one of the royal seats in the
neighbourhood of London, to several of which she was successively
removed during some time; after which she was permitted to establish
herself permanently at the palace of Hatfield in Hertfordshire.
From this auspicious interview the termination of her prisoner-state may
be dated. Henceforth she was released from the formidable parade of
guards and keepers; no doors were closed, no locks were turned upon her;
and though her place of residence was still prescribed, and could not,
apparently, be changed by her at pleasure, she was treated in all
respects as at home and mistress of her actions.
Sir Thomas Pope was a man of worth and a gentleman; and such were the
tenderness and discretion with which he exercised the delicate trust
reposed in him, that the princess must soon have learned to regard him
in the light of a real friend. It is not a little remarkable at the same
time, that the person selected by Mary to receive so distinguished a
proof of her confidence, should have made his first appearance in public
life as the active assistant of Cromwel in the great work of the
destruction of monasteries; and that from grants of abbey lands, which
the queen esteemed it sacrilege to touch, he had derived the whole of
that wealth of which he was now employing a considerable portion in the
foundation of Trinity college Oxford.
But sir Thomas Pope, even in the execution of the arbitrary and
rapacious mandates of Henry, had been advantageously distinguished
amongst his colleagues by the qualities of mildness and integrity; and
the circumstance of his having obtained a seat at the council-board of
Mary from the very commencement of her reign, proves him to have
acquired some peculiar merits in her eyes. Certain it is, however, that
a furious zeal, whether real or pretended, for the Romish faith, was not
amongst his courtly arts; for though strictly enjoined to watch over the
due performance and attendance of mass in the family of the princess, he
connived at her retaining about her person many servants who were
earnest protestants.
This circumstance unfortunately reached the vigilant ears of Gardiner;
and it was to a last expiring effort of his indefatigable malice that
Elizabeth owed the mortification of seeing two gentlemen from the queen
arrive at Lamer, a house in Hertfordshire which she then occupied, who
carried away her favorite Mrs. Ashley and three of her maids of honor,
and lodged them in the Tower.
Isabella Markham, afterwards the wife of that sir John Harrington whose
sufferings in the princess's service have been already adverted to, was
doubtless one of these unfortunate ladies. Elizabeth, highly to her
honor, never dismissed from remembrance the claims of such as had been
faithful to her in her adversity; she distinguished this worthy pair by
many tokens of her royal favor; stood godfather to their son, and
admitted him from his tenderest youth to a degree of affectionate
intimacy little inferior to that in which she indulged the best beloved
of her own relations.
In the beginning of September 1555 king Philip, mortified by the refusal
of his coronation, in which the parliament with steady patriotism
persisted; disappointed in his hopes of an heir; and disgusted by the
fondness and the jealousy of a spouse devoid of every attraction
personal and mental, quitted England for the continent, and deigned not
to revisit it during a year and a half. Elizabeth might regret his
absence, as depriving her of the personal attentions of a powerful
protector; but late events had so firmly established her as next heir to
the crown, that she was now perfectly secure against the recurrence of
any attempt to degrade her from her proper station; and her
reconciliation with the queen, whether cordial or not, obtained for her
occasional admission to the courtly circle.
A few days after the king's departure we find it mentioned that "the
queen's grace, the lady Elizabeth, and all the court, did fast from
flesh to qualify them to take the Pope's jubilee and pardon granted to
all out of his abundant clemency[27];" a trait which makes it probable
that Mary was now in the habit of exacting her sister's attendance at
court, for the purpose of witnessing with her own eyes her punctual
observance of the rites of that church to which she still believed her a
reluctant conformist.
[Note 27: Strype's Ecclesiastical Memorials.]
A few weeks afterwards, the death of her capital enemy, Gardiner,
removed the worst of the ill instruments who had interposed to aggravate
the suspicions of the queen, and there is reason to believe that the
princess found in various ways the beneficial effects of this event.
CHAPTER VIII.
1555 TO 1558.
Elizabeth applies herself to classical literature.--Its neglected
state.--Progress of English poetry.--Account of Sackville and his
works.--Plan of his Mirror for Magistrates.--Extracts.--Notice of the
contributors to this collection.--Its popularity and literary
merits.--Entertainment given to Elizabeth by sir Thomas Pope.--Dudley
Ashton's attempt.--Elizabeth acknowledged innocent of his designs.--Her
letter to the queen.--She returns to London--quits it in some disgrace
after again refusing the duke of Savoy.--Violence of Philip respecting
this match.--Mary protects her sister.--Festivities at Hatfield,
Enfield, and Richmond.--King of Sweden's addresses to Elizabeth
rejected.--Letter of sir T. Pope respecting her dislike of
marriage.--Proceedings of the ecclesiastical commission.--Cruel
treatment of sir John Cheke.--General decay of national
prosperity.--Loss of Calais.--Death of Mary.
Notwithstanding the late fortunate change in her situation, Elizabeth
must have entertained an anxious sense of its remaining difficulties, if
not dangers; and the prudent circumspection of her character again, as
in the latter years of her brother, dictated the expediency of shrouding
herself in all the obscurity compatible with her rank and expectations.
To literature, the never failing resource of its votaries, she turned
again for solace and occupation; and claiming the assistance which
Ascham was proud and happy to afford her, she resumed the diligent
perusal of the Greek and Latin classics.
The concerns of the college of which sir Thomas Pope was the founder
likewise engaged a portion of her thoughts; and this gentleman, in a
letter to a friend, mentions that the lady Elizabeth, whom he served,
and who was "not only gracious but right learned," often asked him of
the course which he had devised for his scholars.
Classical literature was now daily declining from the eminence on which
the two preceding sovereigns had labored to place it. The destruction of
monastic institutions, and the dispersion of libraries, with the
impoverishment of public schools and colleges through the rapacity of
Edward's courtiers, had inflicted far deeper injury on the cause of
learning than the studious example of the young monarch and his chosen
companions was able to compensate. The persecuting spirit of Mary, by
driving into exile or suspending from the exercise of their functions
the able and enlightened professors of the protestant doctrine, had
robbed the church and the universities of their brightest luminaries;
and it was not under the auspices of her fierce and ignorant bigotry
that the cultivators of the elegant and humanizing arts would seek
encouragement or protection. Gardiner indeed, where particular
prejudices did not interfere, was inclined to favor the learned; and
Ascham owed to him the place of Latin secretary. Cardinal Pole also,
himself a scholar, was desirous to support, as much as present
circumstances would permit, his ancient character of a patron of
scholars, and he earnestly pleaded with sir Thomas Pope to provide for
the teaching of Greek as well as Latin in his college; but sir Thomas
persisted in his opinion that a Latin professorship was sufficient,
considering the general decay of erudition in the country, which had
caused an almost total cessation of the study of the Greek language.
It was in the department of English poetry alone that any perceptible
advance was effected or prepared during this deplorable aera; and it was
to the vigorous genius of one man, whose vivid personifications of
abstract beings were then quite unrivalled, and have since been rarely
excelled in our language, and whose clear, copious, and forcible style
of poetic narrative interested all readers, and inspired a whole school
of writers who worked upon his model, that this advance is chiefly to be
attributed. This benefactor to our literature was Thomas Sackville, son
of sir Richard Sackville, an eminent member of queen Mary's council, and
second-cousin to the lady Elizabeth by his paternal grandmother, who was
a Boleyn. The time of his birth is doubtful, some placing it in 1536,
others as early as 1527. He studied first at Oxford and afterwards at
Cambridge, distinguishing himself at both universities by the vivacity
of his parts and the excellence of his compositions both in verse and
prose. According to the custom of that age, which required that an
English gentleman should acquaint himself intimately with the laws of
his country before he took a seat amongst her legislators, he next
entered himself of the Inner Temple, and about the last year of Mary's
reign he served in parliament. But at this early period of life poetry
had more charms for Sackville than law or politics; and following the
bent of his genius, he first produced "Gorboduc," confessedly the
earliest specimen of regular tragedy in our language; but which will be
noticed with more propriety when we reach the period of its
representation before queen Elizabeth. He then, about the year 1557 as
is supposed, laid the plan of an extensive work to be called "A Mirror
for Magistrates;" of which the design is thus unfolded in a highly
poetical "Induction."
The poet wandering forth on a winter's evening, and taking occasion from
the various objects which "told the cruel season," to muse on the
melancholy changes of human affairs, and especially on the reverses
incident to greatness, suddenly encounters a "piteous wight," clad all
in black, who was weeping, sighing, and wringing her hands, in such
lamentable guise, that
"----never man did see
A wight but half so woe-begone as she."
Struck with grief and horror at the view, he earnestly requires her to
"unwrap" her woes, and inform him who and whence she is, since her
anguish, if not relieved, must soon put an end to her life. She answers,
"Sorrow am I, in endless torments pained
Among the furies in th' infernal lake:"
from these dismal regions she is come, she says, to bemoan the luckless
lot of those
"Whom Fortune in this maze of misery,
Of wretched chance most woful Mirrors chose:"
and she ends by inviting him to accompany her in her return:
"Come, come, quoth she, and see what I shall show,
Come hear the plaining and the bitter bale
Of worthy men by Fortune's overthrow:
Come thou and see them ruing all in row.
They were but shades that erst in mind thou rolled,
Come, come with me, thine eyes shall then behold."
He accepts the invitation, having first done homage to Sorrow as to a
goddess, since she had been able to read his thought. The scenery and
personages are now chiefly copied from the sixth book of the AEneid; but
with the addition of many highly picturesque and original touches.
The companions enter, hand in hand, a gloomy wood, through which Sorrow
only could have found the way.
"But lo, while thus amid the desert dark
We passed on with steps and pace unmeet,
A rumbling roar, confused with howl and bark
Of dogs, shook all the ground beneath our feet,
And struck the din within our ears so deep,
As half distraught unto the ground I fell;
Besought return, and not to visit hell."
His guide however encourages him, and they proceed by the "lothly lake"
Avernus,
"In dreadful fear amid the dreadful place."
"And first within the porch and jaws of hell
Sat deep Remorse of Conscience, all besprent
With tears; and to herself oft would she tell
Her wretchedness, and cursing never stent
To sob and sigh: but ever thus lament
With thoughtful care, as she that all in vain
Should wear and waste continually in pain.
Her eyes, unsteadfast rolling here and there,
Whirled on each place as place that vengeance brought,
So was her mind continually in fear,
Tossed and tormented with tedious thought
Of those detested crimes that she had wrought:
With dreadful cheer and looks thrown to the sky,
Longing for death, and yet she could not die.
Next saw we Dread, all trembling how he shook
With foot uncertain proffered here and there,
Benumbed of speech, and with a ghastly look
Searched every place, all pale and dead with fear,
His cap borne up with staring of his hair." &c.
All the other allegorical personages named, and only named, by Virgil,
as well as a few additional ones, are pourtrayed in succession, and with
the same strength and fullness of delineation; but with the exception of
War, who appears in the attributes of Mars, they are represented simply
as _examples_ of Old age, Malady, &c., not as the _agents_ by whom these
evils are inflicted upon others. Cerberus and Charon occur in their
appropriate offices, but the monstrous forms Gorgon, Chimaera, &c., are
judiciously suppressed; and the poet is speedily conducted to the banks
of that "main broad flood"
"Which parts the gladsome fields from place of woe."
"With Sorrow for my guide, as there I stood,
A troop of men the most in arms bedight,
In tumult clustered 'bout both sides the flood:
'Mongst whom, who were ordained t' eternal night,
Or who to blissful peace and sweet delight,
I wot not well, it seemed that they were all
Such as by death's untimely stroke did fall."
Sorrow acquaints him that these are all illustrious examples of the
reverses which he was lately deploring, who will themselves relate to
him their misfortunes; and that he must afterwards
"Recount the same to Kesar, king and peer."
The first whom he sees advancing towards him from the throng of ghosts
is Henry duke of Buckingham, put to death under Richard III.: and his
"Legend," or story, is unfortunately the only one which its author ever
found leisure to complete; the favor of his illustrious kinswoman on her
accession causing him to sink the poet in the courtier, the ambassador,
and finally the minister of state. But he had already done enough to
earn himself a lasting name amongst the improvers of poetry in England.
In tragedy he gave the first regular model; in personification he
advanced far beyond all his predecessors, and furnished a prototype to
that master of allegory, Spenser. A greater than Spenser has also been
indebted to him; as will be evident, I think, to all who compare the
description of the figures on the shield of war in his Induction, and
especially those of them which relate to the siege of Troy, with the
exquisitely rich and vivid description of a picture on that subject in
Shakespeare's early poem on Tarquin and Lucretia.
The legend of the duke of Buckingham is composed in a style rich, free
and forcible; the examples brought from ancient history, of the
suspicion and inward wretchedness to which tyrants have ever been a
prey, and afterwards, of the instability of popular favor, might in this
age be accounted tedious and pedantic; they are however pertinent, well
recited, and doubtless possessed the charm of novelty with respect to
the majority of contemporary readers. The curses which the unhappy duke
pours forth against the dependent who had betrayed him, may almost
compare, in the energy and inventiveness of malice, with those of
Shakespeare's queen Margaret; but they lose their effect by being thrown
into the form of monologue and ascribed to a departed spirit, whose
agonies of grief and rage in reciting his own death have something in
them bordering on the burlesque.
The mind of Sackville was deeply fraught, as we have seen, with classic
stores; and at a time when England possessed as yet no complete
translation of Virgil, he might justly regard it as a considerable
service to the cause of national taste to transplant into our vernacular
poetry some scattered flowers from his rich garden of poetic sweets.
Thus he has embellished his legend with an imitation or rather
paraphrase of the celebrated description of night in the fourth book of
the AEneid. The lines well merit transcription.
"Midnight was come, when ev'ry vital thing
With sweet sound sleep their weary limbs did rest;
The beasts were still, the little birds that sing
Now sweetly slept besides their mother's breast,
The old and all were shrowded in their nest;
The waters calm, the cruel seas did cease;
The woods, the fields, and all things held their peace.
The golden stars were whirled amid their race,
And on the earth did laugh with twinkling light,
When each thing nestled in his resting place
Forgat day's pain with pleasure of the night:
The hare had not the greedy hounds in sight;
The fearful deer had not the dogs in doubt,
The partridge dreamt not of the falcon's foot.
The ugly bear now minded not the stake,
Nor how the cruel mastives do him tear;
The stag lay still unroused from the brake;
The foamy boar feared not the hunter's spear:
All things were still in desert, bush and breer.
With quiet heart now from their travails ceast
Soundly they slept in midst of all their rest."
The allusion to bear-bating in the concluding stanza may offend the
delicacy of a modern reader; but let it be remembered that in the days
of Mary, and even of Elizabeth, this amusement was accounted "sport for
ladies."
The "Mirror for Magistrates" was not lost to the world by the desertion
of Sackville from the service of the muses; for a similar or rather
perhaps the same design was entertained, and soon after carried into
execution, by other and able though certainly inferior hands.
During the reign of Mary,--but whether before or after the composition
of Sackville's Induction does not appear,--a certain printer, having
communicated to several "worshipful and honorable persons" his
intention of republishing Lydgate's translation in verse of Boccacio's
"Fall of Princes," was by them advised to procure a continuation of the
work, chiefly in English examples; and he applied in consequence to
Baldwyne, an ecclesiastic and graduate of Oxford. Baldwyne declined to
embark alone in so vast a design, and one, as he thought, so little
likely to prove profitable; but seven other contemporary poets, of whom
George Ferrers has already been mentioned as one, having promised their
assistance, he consented to assume the editorship of the work. The
general frame agreed upon by these associates was that employed in the
original work of Boccacio, who feigned, that a party of friends being
assembled, it was determined that each of them should contribute to the
pleasure of the company by personating some illustrious and unfortunate
character, and relating his adventures in the first person. A
contrivance so tame and meagre compared with the descent to the regions
of the dead sketched with so much spirit by Sackville, that it must have
preceded, in all probability, their knowledge at least of his
performance. The first part of the work, almost entirely by Baldwyne,
was written, and partly printed, in Mary's time, but its publication was
prevented by the interference of the lord-chancellor,--a trait of the
mean and cowardly jealousy of the administration, which speaks volumes.
In the first year of Elizabeth lord Stafford, an enlightened patron of
letters, procured a licence for its appearance. A second part soon
followed, in which Sackville's Induction and Legend were inserted. The
success of this collection was prodigious; edition after edition was
given to the public under the inspection of different poetical revisers,
by each of whom copious additions were made to the original work. Its
favor and reputation continued during all the reign of Elizabeth, and
far into that of James; for Mr. Warton tells us that in Chapman's
"May-day," printed in 1611, "a gentleman of the most elegant taste for
reading and highly accomplished in the current books of the times, is
called 'one that has read Marcus Aurelius, Gesta Romanorum, and the
Mirror of Magistrates.'[28]"
[Note 28: History of English Poetry, vol. iii.]
The greater part of the contributors to this work were lawyers; an order
of men who, in most ages and nations, have accounted it a part of
professional duty to stand in opposition to popular seditions on one
hand, and to the violent and illegal exertion of arbitrary power on the
other. Accordingly, many of the legends are made to exemplify the evils
of both these excesses; and though, in more places than one, the
unlawfulness, on any provocation, of lifting a hand against "the Lord's
anointed" is in strong terms asserted, the deposition of tyrants is
often recorded with applause; and no mercy is shown to the corrupt judge
or minister who wrests law and justice in compliance with the wicked
will of his prince.
The newly published chronicles of the wars of York and Lancaster by
Hall, a writer who made some approach to the character of a genuine
historian, furnished facts to the first composers of the Mirror; the
later ones might draw also from Holinshed and Stow. There is some
probability that the idea of forming plays on English history was
suggested to Shakespeare by the earlier of these legends; and it is
certain that his plays, in their turn, furnished some of their brightest
ornaments of sentiment and diction to the legends added by later
editors.
To a modern reader, the greater part of these once admired pieces will
appear trite, prosaic, and tedious; but an uncultivated age--like the
children and the common people of all ages--is most attracted and
impressed by that mode of narration which leaves the least to be
supplied by the imagination of the hearer or reader; and when this
collection of history in verse is compared, not with the finished labors
of a Hume or a Robertson, but with the prolix and vulgar narratives of
the chroniclers, the admiration and delight with which it was received
will no longer surprise.
One circumstance more respecting a work so important by the quantity of
historical knowledge which it diffused among the mass of readers, and
the influence which it exerted over the public mind during half a
century, deserves to be here adverted to. Baldwyne and his
fellow-laborers began their series from the Norman conquest, and the
same starting-point had been judiciously chosen by Sackville; but the
fabulous history of Geffrey of Monmouth still found such powerful
advocates in national vanity, ignorance and credulity, that succeeding
editors found it convenient to embellish their work with moral examples
drawn from his fictitious series of British kings before the invasion of
the Romans. Accordingly they have brought forward a long line of
worthies, beginning with king Albanact, son of Brute the Trojan, and
ending with Cadwallader the last king of the Britons, scarcely one of
whom, excepting the renowned prince Arthur, is known even by name to the
present race of students in English history; though amongst poetical
readers, the immortal verse of Spenser preserves some recollection that
such characters once were fabled. In return for this superfluity, our
Saxon line of kings is passed over with very little notice, only three
legends, and those of very obscure personages, being interposed between
Cadwallader and king Harold. The descent of the royal race of Britain
from the Trojans was at this period more than an article of poetical
faith; it was maintained, or rather taken for granted, by the gravest
and most learned writers. One Kelston, who dedicated a versified
chronicle of the Brutes to Edward VI., went further still, and traced up
the pedigree of his majesty through two-and-thirty generations, to
Osiris king of Egypt. Troynovant, the name said to have been given to
London by Brute its founder, was frequently employed in verse. A song
addressed to Elizabeth entitles her the "beauteous queen of second
Troy;" and in describing the pageants which celebrated her entrance into
the provincial capitals which she visited in her progresses, it will
frequently be necessary to introduce to the reader personages of the
ancient race of this fabled conqueror of our island, who claimed for
his direct ancestor,--but whether in the third or fourth degree authors
differ,--no less a hero than the pious AEneas himself.
But to return to the personal circumstances of Elizabeth.
The public and splendid celebration of the festivals of the church was
the least reprehensible of the measures employed by Mary for restoring
the ascendancy of her religion over the minds of her subjects. She had
been profuse in her donations of sacred vestments and ornaments to the
churches and the monasteries, of which she had restored several; and
these gaudy trappings of a ceremonial worship were exhibited, rather
indeed to the scandal than the edification of a dejected people, in
frequent processions conducted with the utmost solemnity and
magnificence. Court entertainments always accompanied these devotional
ceremonies, and Elizabeth seems by assisting at the latter to have
purchased admission to the former. The Christmas festivities in which
she shared have already been described in the words of a contemporary
chronicler; and from the same source we derive the following account of
the "antique pageantries" with which another season of rejoicing was
celebrated for her recreation, by the munificence of the indulgent
superintendent of her conduct and affairs. "In Shrove-tide 1556, sir
Thomas Pope made for the lady Elizabeth, all at his own costs, a great
and rich masking in the great hall at Hatfield, where the pageants were
marvellously furnished. There were there twelve minstrels anticly
disguised; with forty six or more gentlemen and ladies, many of them
knights or nobles, and ladies of honor, apparelled in crimson sattin,
embroidered upon with wreaths of gold, and garnished with borders of
hanging pearl. And the devise of a castle of cloth of gold, set with
pomegranates about the battlements, with shields of knights hanging
therefrom; and six knights in rich harness tourneyed. At night the
cupboard in the hall was of twelve stages mainly furnished with garnish
of gold and silver vessul, and a banquet of seventy dishes, and after a
voidee of spices and suttleties with thirty six spice-plates; all at the
charges of sir Thomas Pope. And the next day the play of Holophernes.
But the queen percase misliked these folleries as by her letters to sir
Thomas it did appear; and so their disguisings ceased[29]."
[Note 29: See Nichols's "Progresses," vol. i. p. 19.]
A circumstance soon afterwards occurred calculated to recall past
dangers to the mind of the princess, and perhaps to disturb her with
apprehensions of their recurrence.
Dudley Ashton, formerly a partisan of Wyat, had escaped into France,
after the defeat and capture of his leader, whence he was still plotting
the overthrow of Mary's government. By the connivance or assistance of
that court, now on the brink of war with England, he was at length
enabled to send over one Cleberry, a condemned person, whom he
instructed to counterfeit the earl of Devonshire, and endeavour to raise
the country in his cause. Letters and proclamations were at the same
time dispersed by Ashton, in which the name of Elizabeth was employed
without scruple. The party had even the slanderous audacity to pretend,
that between Courtney and the heiress of the crown the closest of all
intimacies, if not an actual marriage, subsisted; and the matter went so
far that at Ipswich, one of the strong holds of protestantism, Cleberry
proclaimed the earl of Devonshire and the princess, king and queen. But
the times were past when any advantage could be taken of this
circumstance against Elizabeth, whose perfect innocence was well known
to the government; and the council immediately wrote in handsome terms
to sir Thomas Pope, directing him to acquaint her, in whatever manner he
should judge best, with the abominable falsehoods circulated respecting
her. A few days after, the queen herself wrote also to her sister in
terms fitted to assure her of perfect safety. The princess replied, says
Strype, "in a well penned letter," "utterly detesting and disclaiming
all concern in the enterprise, and declaiming against the actors in it."
Of the epistle thus commended, a single paragraph will probably be
esteemed a sufficient specimen.... "And among earthly things I chiefly
wish this one; that there were as good surgeons for making anatomies of
hearts, that might show my thoughts to your majesty, as there are expert
physicians of the bodies, able to express the inward griefs of their
maladies to the patient. For then I doubt not, but know well, that
whatsoever others should suggest by malice, yet your majesty should be
sure by knowledge; so that the more such misty clouds offuscate the
clear light of my truth, the more my tried thoughts should glister to
the dimming of their hidden malice." &c. It must be confessed that this
erudite princess had not perfectly succeeded in transplanting into her
own language the epistolary graces of her favorite Cicero;--but to how
many much superior classical scholars might a similar remark be applied!
The frustration of Mary's hope of becoming a mother, her subsequent ill
state of health, and the resolute refusal of the parliament to permit
the coronation of her husband, who had quitted England in disgust to
attend his affairs on the continent, conferred, in spite of all the
efforts of the catholic party, a daily augmenting importance on
Elizabeth. When therefore in November 1556 she had come in state to
Somerset Place, her town-residence, to take up her abode for the winter,
a kind of court was immediately formed around her; and she might hope to
be richly indemnified for any late anxieties or privations, by the
brilliant festivities, the respectful observances, and the still more
welcome flatteries, of which she found herself the distinguished
object:--But disappointment awaited her.
She had been invited to court for the purpose of receiving a second and
more solemn offer of the hand of the duke of Savoy, whose suit was
enforced by the king her brother-in-law with the whole weight of his
influence or authority. This alliance had been the subject of earnest
correspondence between Philip and the English council; the Imperial
ambassadors were waiting in England for her answer; and the
disappointment of the high-raised hopes of the royal party, by her
reiteration of a decided negative, was followed by her quitting London
in a kind of disgrace early in the month of December.
But Philip would not suffer the business to end here. Indignant at the
resistance opposed by the princess to his measures, he seems to have
urged the queen to interfere in a manner authoritative enough to compel
obedience; but, by a remarkable exchange of characters, Mary now
appeared as the protectress of her sister from the violence of Philip.
In a letter still preserved, she tells him, that unless the consent of
parliament were first obtained, she fears that the accomplishment of the
marriage would fail to procure for him the advantages which he expected;
but that, however this might be, her conscience would not allow her to
press the matter further. That the friar Alphonso, Philip's confessor,
whom he had sent to argue the point with her, had entirely failed of
convincing her; that in fact she could not comprehend the drift of his
arguments. Philip, it is manifest, must already have made use of very
harsh language towards the queen respecting her conduct in this affair,
for she deprecates his further displeasure in very abject terms; but yet
persists in her resolution with laudable firmness. Her husband was so
far, however, from yielding with a good grace a point on which he had
certainly no right to dictate either to Mary or to her sister, that soon
afterwards he sent into England the duchesses of Parma and Lorrain for
the purpose of conducting the princess into Flanders:--but this step was
ill-judged. His coldness and neglect had by this time nearly
extinguished the fond passion of the queen, who is said to have torn his
picture in a fit of rage, on report of some disrespectful language which
he had used concerning her since his departure for the continent.
Resentment and jealousy now divided her gloomy soul; and Philip's
behaviour, on which she had doubtless her spies, caused her to regard
the duchess of Lorrain as the usurper of his heart. The extraordinary
circumstances of pomp and parade with which this lady, notwithstanding
the smallness of her revenues, now appeared in England, confirmed and
aggravated her most painful suspicions; and so far from favoring the
suit urged by such an ambassadress, Mary became more than ever
determined on thwarting it. She would not permit the duchesses to pay
the princess a single visit at Hatfield; and her reception gave them so
little encouragement to persevere, that they speedily returned to report
their failure to him who sent them.
These circumstances seem to have produced a cordiality of feeling and
frequency of intercourse between the sisters which had never before
existed. In February 1557 the princess arrived with a great retinue at
Somerset Place, and went thence to wait upon the queen at Whitehall; and
when the spring was somewhat further advanced, her majesty honored her
by returning the visit at Hatfield. The royal guest was, of course, to
be entertained with every species of courtly and elegant delight; and
accordingly, on the morning after her arrival, she and the princess,
after attending mass, went to witness a grand exhibition of
_bear-bating_, "with which their highnesses were right well content." In
the evening the chamber was adorned with a sumptuous suit of tapestry,
called, but from what circumstance does not appear, "the hangings of
Antioch." After supper a play was represented by the choristers of St.
Paul's, then the most applauded actors in London; and after it was over,
one of the children accompanied with his voice the performance of the
princess on the virginals.
Sir Thomas Pope could now without offence gratify his lady with another
show, devised by him in that spirit of romantic magnificence equally
agreeable to the taste of the age and the temper of Elizabeth herself.
She was invited to repair to Enfield Chase to take the amusement of
hunting the hart. Twelve ladies in white satin attended her on their
"ambling palfreys," and twenty yeomen clad in green. At the entrance of
the forest she was met by fifty archers in scarlet boots and yellow
caps, armed with gilded bows, one of whom presented to her a
silver-headed arrow winged with peacock's feathers. The splendid show
concluded, according to the established laws of the chase, by the
offering of the knife to the princess, as first lady on the field; and
her _taking 'say_ of the buck with her own fair and royal hand.
During the summer of the same year the queen was pleased to invite her
sister to an entertainment at Richmond, of which we have received some
rather interesting particulars. The princess was brought from Somerset
Place in the queen's barge, which was richly hung with garlands of
artificial flowers and covered with a canopy of green sarcenet, wrought
with branches of eglantine in embroidery and powdered with blossoms of
gold. In the barge she was accompanied by sir Thomas Pope and four
ladies of her chamber. Six boats attended filled with her retinue,
habited in russet damask and blue embroidered satin, tasseled and
spangled with silver; their bonnets cloth of silver with green feathers.
The queen received her in a sumptuous pavilion in the labyrinth of the
gardens. This pavilion, which was of cloth of gold and purple velvet,
was made in the form of a castle, probably in allusion to the kingdom of
Castile; its sides were divided in compartments, which bore alternately
the fleur de lis in silver, and the pomegranate, the bearing of Granada,
in gold. A sumptuous banquet was here served up to the royal ladies, in
which there was introduced a pomegranate-tree in confectionary work,
bearing the arms of Spain:--so offensively glaring was the preference
given by Mary to the country of her husband and of her maternal ancestry
over that of which she was a native and in her own right queen! There
was no masking or dancing, but a great number of minstrels performed.
The princess returned to Somerset Place the same evening, and the next
day to Hatfield.
The addresses of a new suitor soon after furnished Elizabeth with an
occasion of gratifying the queen by fresh demonstrations of respect and
duty. The king of Sweden was earnestly desirous of obtaining for Eric
his eldest son the hand of a lady whose reversionary prospects, added to
her merit and accomplishments, rendered her without dispute the first
match in Europe. He had denied his son's request to be permitted to
visit her in person, fearing that those violences of temper and
eccentricities of conduct of which this ill-fated prince had already
given strong indications, might injure his cause in the judgement of so
discerning a princess. The business was therefore to be transacted
through the Swedish ambassador; but he was directed by his sovereign to
make his application by a message to Elizabeth herself, in which the
queen and council were not for the present to participate. The princess
took hold of this circumstance as a convenient pretext for rejecting a
proposal which she felt no disposition to encourage; and she declared
that she could never listen to any overtures of this nature which had
not first received the sanction of her majesty. The ambassador pleaded
in answer, that as a gentleman his master had judged it becoming that
his first application should be made to herself; but that should he be
so happy as to obtain her concurrence, he would then, as a king, make
his demand in form to the queen her sister. The princess replied, that
if it were to depend on herself, a single life would ever be her choice;
and she finally dismissed the suit with a negative.
On receiving some hint of this transaction, Mary sent for sir Thomas
Pope, and having learned from him all the particulars, she directed him
to express to her sister her high approbation of her proper and dutiful
conduct on this occasion; and also to make himself acquainted with her
sentiments on the subject of matrimony in general. He soon after
transmitted to her majesty all the information she could desire, in the
following letter:
"First after I had declared to her grace how well the queen's majesty
liked of her prudent and honorable answer made to the same messenger; I
then opened unto her grace the effects of the said messenger's credence;
which after her grace had heard, I said, the queen's highness had sent
me to her grace, not only to declare the same, but also to understand
how her grace liked the said motion. Whereunto, after a little pause
taken, her grace answered in form following: 'Master Pope, I require
you, after my most humble commendations to the queen's majesty, to
render unto the same like thanks that it pleased her highness, of her
goodness, to conceive so well of my answer made to the same messenger;
and herewithal, of her princely consideration, with such speed to
command you by your letters to signify the same unto me: who before
remained wonderfully perplexed, fearing that her majesty might mistake
the same: for which her goodness, I acknowledge myself bound to honor,
serve, love, and obey her highness during my life. Requiring you also to
say unto her majesty, that in the king my brother's time there was
offered me a very honorable marriage, or two; and ambassadors sent to
treat with me touching the same; whereupon I made my humble suit unto
his highness, as some of honor yet living can be testimonies, that it
would like the same to give me leave, with his grace's favor, to remain
in that estate I was, which of all others best liked me, or pleased me.
And, in good faith, I pray you say unto her highness, I am even at this
present of the same mind, and so intend to continue, with her majesty's
favor: and assuring her highness I so well like this estate, as I
persuade myself there is not any kind of life comparable unto it. And as
concerning my liking the said motion made by the said messenger, I
beseech you say unto her majesty, that to my remembrance I never heard
of his master before this time; and that I so well like both the message
and the messenger, as I shall most humbly pray God upon my knees, that
from henceforth I never hear of the one nor the other: assure you that
if he should eftsoons repair unto me, I would forbear to speak to him.
And were there nothing else to move me to mislike the motion, other than
that his master would attempt the same without making the queen's
majesty privy thereunto, it were cause sufficient.'
"And when her grace had thus ended, I was so bold as of myself to say
unto her grace, her pardon first required, that I thought few or none
would believe but that her grace could be right well contented to marry;
so that there were some honorable marriage offered her by the queen's
highness, or by her majesty's assent. Whereunto her grace answered,
'What I shall do hereafter I know not; but I assure you, upon my truth
and fidelity, and as God be merciful unto me, I am not at this time
otherwise minded than I have declared unto you; no, though I were
offered the greatest prince in all Europe.' And yet percase, the queen's
majesty may conceive this rather to proceed of a maidenly
shamefacedness, than upon any such certain determination[30]."
[Note 30: The hint of "some honorable marriage" in the above letter,
has been supposed to refer to the duke of Savoy; but if the date
inscribed upon the copy which is found among the Harleian MSS. be
correct (April 26th 1558), this could not well be; since the queen,
early in the preceding year, had declined to interfere further in his
behalf.]
This letter appears to have been the last transaction which occurred
between Mary and Elizabeth: from it, and from the whole of the notices
relative to the situation of the latter thrown together in the preceding
pages, it may be collected, that during the three last years of her
sister's reign,--the period, namely, of her residence at Hatfield,--she
had few privations, and no personal hardships to endure: but for
individuals whom she esteemed, for principles to which her conscience
secretly inclined, for her country which she truly loved, her
apprehensions must have been continually excited, and too often
justified by events the most cruel and disastrous.
The reestablishment, by solemn acts of the legislature, of the Romish
ritual and the papal authority, though attended with the entire
prohibition of all protestant worship, was not sufficient for the
bigotry of Mary. Aware that the new doctrines still found harbour in the
bosoms of her subjects, she sought to drag them by her violence from
this last asylum; for to her, as to all tyrants, it appeared both
desirable and possible to subject the liberty of thinking to the
regulation and control of human laws.
By virtue of her authority as head of the English church,--a title
which the murmurs of her parliament had compelled her against her
conscience to resume after laying it aside for some time,--she issued an
ecclesiastical commission, which wanted nothing of the Spanish
inquisition but the name. The commissioners were empowered to call
before them the leading men in every parish of the kingdom, and to
compel them to bind themselves by oath to give information against such
of their neighbours as, by abstaining from attendance at church or other
symptoms of disaffection to the present order of things, afforded room
to doubt the soundness of their belief. Articles of faith were then
offered to the suspected persons for their signature, and on their
simple refusal they were handed over to the civil power, and fire and
faggot awaited them. By this barbarous species of punishment, about two
hundred and eighty persons are stated to have perished during the reign
of Mary; but, to the disgrace of the learned, the rich, and the noble,
these martyrs, with the exception of a few distinguished ecclesiastics,
were almost all from the middling or lower, some from the very lowest
classes of society.
Amongst these glorious sufferers, therefore, the princess could have few
personal friends to regret; but in the much larger number of the
disgraced, the suspected, the imprisoned, the fugitive, she saw the
greater part of the public characters, whether statesmen or divines, on
whose support and attachment she had learned to place reliance.
The extraordinary cruelties exercised upon sir John Cheke, who whilst he
held the post of preceptor to her brother had also assisted in her own
education, must have been viewed by Elizabeth with strong emotion of
indignation and grief.
It has been already mentioned, that after his release from imprisonment
incurred in the cause of lady Jane Grey,--a release, by the way, which
was purchased by the sacrifice of his landed property and all his
appointments,--this learned and estimable person obtained permission to
travel for a limited period. This was regarded as a special favor; for
it was one of Mary's earliest acts of tyranny to prohibit the escape of
her destined victims, and it was only by joining themselves to the
foreign congregations of the reformed, who had license to depart the
kingdom, or by eluding with much hazard the vigilance of the officers by
whom the seaports were watched, that any of her protestant subjects had
been enabled to secure liberty of conscience in a voluntary exile. It is
a little remarkable that Rome should have been Cheke's first city of
pilgrimage; but classical associations in this instance overcame the
force of protestant antipathies. He took the opportunity however of
visiting Basil in his way, where an English congregation was
established, and where he had the pleasure of introducing himself to
several learned characters, once perhaps the chosen associates of
Erasmus.
In the beginning of 1556 he had reached Strasburgh, for it was thence
that he addressed a letter to his dear friend and brother-in-law sir
William Cecil, who appears to have made some compliances with the times
which alarmed and grieved him. It is in a strain of the most
affectionate earnestness that he entreats him to hold fast his faith,
and "to take heed how he did in the least warp or strain his conscience
by any compliance for his worldly security." But such exhortations,
however salutary in themselves, did not come with the best grace from
those who had found in flight a refuge from the terrors of that
persecution which was raging in all its fierceness before the eyes of
such of their unfortunate brethren as had found themselves necessitated
to abide the fiery trial. A remark by no means foreign to the case
before us! Sir John Cheke's leave of absence seems now to have expired;
and it was probably with the design of making interest for its renewal
that he privately repaired, soon after the date of his letter, to
Brussels, on a visit to his two learned friends, lord Paget and sir John
Mason, then residing in that city as Mary's ambassadors. These men were
recent converts, or more likely conformists, to the court religion; and
Paget's furious councils against Elizabeth have been already mentioned.
It is to be hoped that they did not add to the guilt of self-interested
compliances in matters of faith the blacker crime of a barbarous act of
perfidy against a former associate and brother-protestant who had
scarcely ceased to be their guest;--but certain it is, that on some
secret intimation of his having entered his territories, king Philip
issued special orders for the seizure of Cheke. On his return, between
Brussels and Antwerp, the unhappy man, with sir Peter Carew his
companion, was apprehended by a provost-marshal, bound hand and foot,
thrown into a cart, and so conveyed on board a vessel sailing for
England. He is said to have been brought to the Tower muffled, according
to an odious practice of Spanish despotism introduced into the country
during the reign of Mary. Under the terror of such a surprise the awful
alternative "Comply or burn" was laid before him. Human frailty under
these trying circumstances prevailed; and in an evil hour this champion
of light and learning was tempted to subscribe his false assent to the
doctrine of the real presence and the whole list of Romish articles.
This was but the beginning of humiliations: he was now required to
pronounce two ample recantations, one before the queen in person, the
other before cardinal Pole, who also imposed upon him various acts of
penance. Even this did not immediately procure his liberation from
prison; and while he was obliged in public to applaud the mercy of his
enemies in terms of the most abject submission, he bewailed in private,
with abundance of bitter tears, their cruelty, and still more his own
criminal compliance. The savage zealots knew not how to set bounds to
their triumph over a man whom learning and acknowledged talents and
honorable employments had rendered so considerable.
Even when at length he was set free, and flattered himself that he had
drained to the dregs his cup of bitterness, he discovered that the
masterpiece of barbarity, the refinement of insult, was yet in store. He
was required, as evidence of the sincerity of his conversion and a token
of his complete restoration to royal favor, to take his seat on the
bench by the side of the savage Bonner, and assist at the condemnation
of his brother-protestants. The unhappy man did not refuse,--so
thoroughly was his spirit subdued within him,--but it broke his heart;
and retiring at last to the house of an old and learned friend, whose
door was opened to him in Christian charity, he there ended within a few
months, his miserable life, a prey to shame, remorse and melancholy. A
sadder tale the annals of persecution do not furnish, or one more
humbling to the pride and confidence of human virtue. Many have failed
under lighter trials; few have expiated a failure by sufferings so
severe. How often must this victim of a wounded spirit have dwelt with
envy, amid his slower torments, on the brief agonies and lasting crown
of a courageous martyrdom!
It is happily not possible for a kingdom to flourish under the crushing
weight of such a tyranny as that of Mary. The retreat of the foreign
protestants had robbed the country of hundreds of industrious and
skilful artificers; the arbitrary exactions of the queen impoverished
and discouraged the trading classes, against whom they principally
operated; tumults and insurrections were frequent, and afforded a
pretext for the introduction of Spanish troops; the treasury was
exhausted in efforts for maintaining the power of the sovereign,
restoring the church to opulence and splendor, and re-edifying the
fallen monasteries. To add to these evils, a foreign marriage rendered
both the queen and country subservient to the interested or ambitious
projects of the Spanish sovereign. For his sake a needless war was
declared against France, which, after draining entirely an already
failing treasury, ended in the loss of Calais, the last remaining trophy
of the victories by which the Edwards and the Henrys had humbled in the
dust the pride and power of France.
This last stroke completed the dejection of the nation; and Mary
herself, who was by no means destitute of sensibility where the honor of
her crown was concerned, sunk into an incurable melancholy. "When I
die," said she to her attendants who sought to discover the cause of her
despondency, "Calais will be found at my heart."
The unfeeling desertion of her husband, the consciousness of having
incurred the hatred of her subjects, the unprosperous state of her
affairs, and the well founded apprehension that her successor would once
more overthrow the whole edifice of papal power which she had labored
with such indefatigable ardor to restore, may each be supposed to have
infused its own drop of bitterness into the soul of this unhappy
princess. The long and severe mortifications of her youth, while they
soured her temper, had also undermined her constitution, and contributed
to bring upon her a premature old age; dropsical symptoms began to
appear, and after a lingering illness of nearly half a year she sunk
into the grave on the 17th day of November 1558, in the forty-fourth
year of her age.
CHAPTER IX.
1558 AND 1559.
General joy on the accession of Elizabeth.--Views of the nobility--of
the middling and lower classes.--Flattery with which she is
addressed.--Descriptions of her person.--Her first privy-council.--Parry
and Cecil brought into office.--Notices of each.--Death of cardinal
Pole.--The queen enters London--passes to the Tower.--Lord Robert Dudley
her master of the horse.--Notices respecting him.--The queen's treatment
of her relations.--The Howard family.--Sir Richard Sackville.--Henry
Cary.--The last, created lord Hunsdon.--Preparations in London against
the queen's coronation.--Splendid costume of the age.--She passes by
water from Westminster to the Tower.--The procession described.--Her
passage through the city.--Pageants exhibited.--The bishops refuse to
crown her.--Bishop of Carlisle prevailed on.--Religious sentiments of
the queen.--Prohibition of preaching--of theatrical exhibitions.
Never perhaps was the accession of any prince the subject of such keen
and lively interest to a whole people as that of Elizabeth.
Both in the religious establishments and political relations of the
country, the most important changes were anticipated; changes in which
the humblest individual found himself concerned, and to which a vast
majority of the nation looked forward with hope and joy.
With the courtiers and great nobles, whose mutability of faith had so
happily corresponded with every ecclesiastical vicissitude of the last
three reigns, political and personal considerations may well be supposed
to have held the first place; and though the old religion might still be
endeared to them by many cherished associations and by early prejudice,
there were few among them who did not regard the liberation of the
country from Spanish influence as ample compensation for the probable
restoration of the religious establishment of Henry or of Edward.
Besides, there was scarcely an individual belonging to these classes who
had not in some manner partaken of the plunder of the church, and whom
the avowed principles of Mary had not disquieted with apprehensions that
some plan of compulsory restitution would sooner or later be attempted
by an union of royal and papal authority.
With the middling and lower classes religious views and feelings were
predominant The doctrines of the new and better system of faith and
worship had now become more precious and important than ever in the eyes
of its adherents from the hardships which many of them had encountered
for its sake, and from the interest which each disciple vindicated to
himself in the glory and merit of the holy martyrs whose triumphant exit
they had witnessed. With all the fervor of pious gratitude they offered
up their thanksgivings for the signal deliverance by which their prayers
had been answered. The bloody tyranny of Mary was at an end; and though
the known conformity of Elizabeth to Romish rites might apparently give
room for doubts and suspicions, it should seem that neither catholics
nor protestants were willing to believe that the daughter of Anne
Boleyn could in her heart be a papist. Under this impression the
citizens of London, who spoke the sense of their own class throughout
the kingdom, welcomed the new queen as a protectress sent by Heaven
itself: but even in the first transports of their joy, and amid the
pompous pageantries by which their loyal congratulations were expressed,
they took care to intimate, in a manner not to be misunderstood, their
hopes and expectations on the great concern now nearest to their hearts.
Prudence confined within their own bosoms the regrets and murmurs of the
popish clergy; submission and a simulated loyalty were at present
obviously their only policy: thus not a whisper breathed abroad but of
joy and gratulation and happy presage of the days to come.
The sex, the youth, the accomplishments, the graces, the past
misfortunes of the princess, all served to heighten the interest with
which she was beheld: the age of chivalry had not yet expired; and in
spite of the late unfortunate experience of a female reign, the romantic
image of a maiden queen dazzled all eyes, subdued all hearts, inflamed
the imaginations of the brave and courtly youth with visions of love and
glory, exalted into a passionate homage the principle of loyalty, and
urged adulation to the very brink of idolatry.
The fulsome compliments on her beauty which Elizabeth, almost to the
latest period of her life, not only permitted but required and delighted
in, have been adverted to by all the writers who have made her reign and
character their theme: and those of the number whom admiration and pity
of the fair queen of Scots have rendered hostile to her memory, have
taken a malicious pleasure in exaggerating the extravagance of this
weakness, by denying her, even in her freshest years, all pretensions to
those personal charms by which her rival was so eminently,
distinguished. Others however have been more favorable, and probably
more just, to her on this point; and it would be an injury to her memory
to withhold from the reader the following portraitures which authorize
us to form a pleasing as well as majestic image of this illustrious
female at the period of her accession and at the age of five-and-twenty.
"She was a lady of great beauty, of decent stature, and of an excellent
shape. In her youth she was adorned with a more than usual maiden
modesty; her skin was of pure white, and her hair of a yellow colour;
her eyes were beautiful and lively. In short, her whole body was well
made, and her face was adorned with a wonderful and sweet beauty and
majesty. This beauty lasted till her middle age, though it
declined[31]." &c.
[Note 31: Bohun's "Character of Queen Elizabeth."]
"She was of personage tall, of hair and complexion fair, and therewith
well favored, but high-nosed; of limbs and feature neat, and, which
added to the lustre of those exterior graces, of stately and majestic
comportment; participating in this more of her father than her mother,
who was of an inferior allay, plausible, or, as the French hath it, more
debonaire and affable, virtues which might suit well with majesty, and
which descending as hereditary to the daughter, did render her of a more
sweeter temper and endeared her more to the love and liking of her
people, who gave her the name and fame of a most gracious and popular
prince[32]."
[Note 32: Naunton's "Fragmenta Regalia."]
The death of Mary was announced to the two houses, which were then
sitting, by Heath bishop of Ely, the lord-chancellor. In both
assemblies, after the decorum of a short pause, the notification was
followed by joyful shouts of "God save queen Elizabeth! long and happily
may she reign!" and with great alacrity the members issued out to
proclaim the new sovereign before the palace in Westminster and again at
the great cross in Cheapside.
The Londoners knew not how to contain their joy on this happy
occasion:--the bells of all the churches were set ringing, bonfires were
kindled, and tables were spread in the streets according to the
bountiful and hospitable custom of that day, "where was plentiful
eating, drinking, and making merry." On the following Sunday _Te Deum_
was sung in the churches; probably an unexampled, however merited,
expression of disrespect to the memory of the former sovereign.
Elizabeth received the news of her own accession at Hatfield. We are not
told that she affected any great concern for the loss of her sister,
much less did any unbecoming sign of exultation escape her; but,
"falling on her knees, after a good time of respiration she uttered this
verse of the Psalms; _A Domino factum est istud, et est mirabile oculis
nostris_[33]: which to this day we find on the stamp of her gold; with
this on her silver, _Posui Deum adjutorem meum_[34]."[35]
[Note 33: It is the Lord's doing, it is marvellous in our eyes.]
[Note 34: I have chosen God for my helper.]
[Note 35: "Fragmenta Regalia."]
Several noblemen of the late queen's council now repairing to her, she
held at Hatfield on November the 20th her first privy-council; at which
she declared sir Thomas Parry comptroller of her household, sir Edward
Rogers captain of the guard, and sir William Cecil principal secretary
of state, all three being at the same time admitted to the
council-board. From these appointments, the first of her reign, some
presages might be drawn of her future government favorable to her own
character and correspondent to the wishes of her people.
Parry was the person who had filled for many years the office of her
cofferer, who was perfectly in the secret of whatever confidential
intercourse she might formerly have held with the lord-admiral, and
whose fidelity to her in that business had stood firm against all the
threats of the protector and council, and the artifices of those by whom
his examination had been conducted. That mindfulness of former services,
of which the advancement of this man formed by no means a solitary
instance in the conduct of Elizabeth, appeared the more commendable in
her, because she accompanied it with a generous oblivion of the many
slights and injuries to which her defenceless and persecuted condition
had so long exposed her from others.
The merit of Cecil was already in part known to the public; and his
promotion to an office of such importance was a happy omen for the
protestant cause, his attachment to which had been judged the sole
impediment to his advancement under the late reign to situations of
power and trust corresponding with the opinion entertained of his
integrity and political wisdom. A brief retrospect of the scenes of
public life in which he had already been an actor will best explain the
character and sentiments of this eminent person, destined to wield for
more than forty years with unparalleled skill and felicity, under a
mistress who knew his value, the energies of the English state.
Born, in 1520, the son of the master of the royal wardrobe, Cecil early
engaged the notice of Henry VIII. by the fame of a religious dispute
which he had held in Latin with two popish priests attached to the Irish
chieftain O'Neal. A place in reversion freely bestowed on him by the
king at once rewarded the zeal of the young polemic, and encouraged him
to desert the profession of the law, in which he had embarked, for the
political career.
His marriage with the sister of sir John Cheke strengthened his interest
at court by procuring him an introduction to the earl of Hertford, and
early in the reign of Edward this powerful patronage obtained for him
the office of secretary of state. In the first disgrace of the protector
he lost his place, and was for a short time a prisoner in the Tower; but
his compliant conduct soon restored him to favor: he scrupled not to
draw the articles of impeachment against the protector; and
Northumberland, finding him both able in business and highly acceptable
to the young monarch, procured, or permitted, his reinstatement in
office in September 1550.
Cecil, however, was both too wary and too honest to regard himself as
pledged to the support of Northumberland's inordinate schemes of
ambition; and scarcely any public man of the day, attached to the
protestant cause, escaped better in the affair of lady Jane Grey. It is
true that one writer accuses him of having drawn all the papers in her
favor: but this appears to be, in part at least, either a mistake or a
calumny; and it seems, on the contrary, that he refused to
Northumberland some services of this nature. It has been already
mentioned that his name appeared with those of the other
privy-councillors to Edward's settlement of the crown; and his plea of
having signed it merely as a witness to the king's signature, deserves
to be regarded as a kind of subterfuge. But he was early in paying his
respects to Mary, and he took advantage of the graciousness with which
she received his explanations to obtain a general pardon, which
protected him from all personal danger. He lost however his place of
secretary, which some have affirmed that he might have retained by
further compliances in religion. This however is the more doubtful,
because it cannot be questioned that he must have yielded a good deal on
this point, without which he neither could nor would have made one of a
deputation sent to conduct to England cardinal Pole the papal legate,
nor probably would he have been joined in commission with the cardinal
and other persons sent to treat of a peace with France.
But admitting, as we must, that this eminent statesman was far from
aspiring to the praise of a confessor, he will still be found to deserve
high commendation for the zeal and courage with which, as a member of
parliament, he defended the interests of his oppressed and suffering
fellow-protestants. At considerable hazard to himself, he opposed with
great freedom of speech a bill for confiscating the property of exiles
for religion; and he appears to have escaped committal to the Tower on
this account, solely by the presence of mind which he exhibited before
the council and the friendship of some of its members.
He is known to have maintained a secret and intimate correspondence with
Elizabeth during the time of her adversity, and to have assisted her on
various trying occasions with his salutary counsels; and nothing could
be more interesting than to trace the origin and progress of that
confidential relation between these eminent and in many respects
congenial characters, which after a long course of years was only
terminated by the hand of death;--but materials for this purpose are
unfortunately wanting.
The letters on both sides were probably sacrificed by the parties
themselves to the caution which their situation required; and among the
published extracts from the Burleigh papers, only a single document is
found relative to the connexion subsisting between them during the reign
of Mary. This is a short and uninteresting letter addressed to Cecil by
sir Thomas Benger, one of the princess's officers, in which, after some
mention of accounts, not now intelligible, he promises that he and sir
Thomas Parry will move the princess to grant his correspondent's
request, which is not particularized, and assures him that as his coming
thither would be thankfully received, so he wishes that all the friends
of the princess entertained the same sense of that matter as he does.
The letter seems to point at some official concern of Cecil in the
affairs of Elizabeth. It is dated October 24th 1556.
The private character of Cecil was in every respect exemplary, and his
disposition truly amiable. His second marriage with one of the learned
daughters of sir Anthony Cook conferred upon him that exalted species of
domestic happiness which a sympathy in mental endowments can alone
bestow; whilst it had the further advantage of connecting him with the
excellent man her father, with sir Nicholas Bacon and sir Thomas Hobby,
the husbands of two of her sisters, and generally with the wisest and
most conscientious supporters of the protestant interest. This great
minister was honorably distinguished through life by an ardor and
constancy of friendship rare in all classes of men, but esteemed
peculiarly so in those whose lives are occupied amid the heartless
ceremonial of courts and the political intrigues of princes. His
attachments, as they never degenerated into the weakness of favoritism,
were as much a source of benefit to his country as of enjoyment to
himself; for his friends were those of virtue and the state. And there
were few among the more estimable public men of this reign who were not
indebted either for their first introduction to the notice of Elizabeth,
their continuance in her favor, or their restoration to it when
undeservedly lost, to the generous patronage or powerful intercession of
Cecil.
On appointing him a member of her council, the queen addressed her
secretary in the following gracious words:
"I give you this charge, that you shall be of my privy-council, and
content yourself to take pains for me and my realm. This judgement I
have of you, that you will not be corrupted with any gift, and that you
will be faithful to the state, and that, without respect of my private
will, you will give me that counsel that you think best: And that if you
shall know any thing necessary to be declared to me of secrecy, you
shall show it to myself only, and assure yourself I will not fail to
keep taciturnity therein. And therefore herewith I charge you[36]."
[Note 36: "Nugae Antiquae."]
Cardinal Pole was not doomed to be an eye-witness of the relapse of the
nation into what he must have regarded as heresy of the most aggravated
nature; he expired a few hours after his royal kinswoman: and Elizabeth,
with due consideration for the illustrious ancestry, the learning, the
moderation, and the blameless manners of the man, authorized his
honorable interment at Canterbury among the archbishops his
predecessors, with the attendance of two bishops, his ancient friends
and the faithful companions of his long exile.
On November 23d the queen set forward for her capital, attended by a
train of about a thousand nobles, knights, gentlemen, and ladies, and
took up her abode for the present at the dissolved monastery of the
Chartreux, or Charterhouse, then the residence of lord North; a splendid
pile which offered ample accommodation for a royal retinue. Her next
remove, in compliance with ancient custom, was to the Tower. On this
occasion all the streets from the Charterhouse were spread with fine
gravel; singers and musicians were stationed by the way, and a vast
concourse of people freely lent their joyful and admiring acclamations,
as preceded by her heralds and great officers, and richly attired in
purple velvet, she passed along mounted on her palfrey, and returning
the salutations of the humblest of her subjects with graceful and
winning affability.
With what vivid and what affecting impressions of the vicissitudes
attending on the great must she have passed again within the antique
walls of that fortress once her dungeon, now her palace! She had entered
it by the Traitor's gate, a terrified and defenceless prisoner, smarting
under many wrongs, hopeless of deliverance, and apprehending nothing
less than an ignominious death. She had quitted it, still a captive,
under the guard of armed men, to be conducted she knew not whither. She
returned to it in all the pomp of royalty, surrounded by the ministers
of her power, ushered by the applauses of her people; the cherished
object of every eye, the idol of every heart.
Devotion alone could supply becoming language to the emotions which
swelled her bosom; and no sooner had she reached the royal apartments,
than falling on her knees she returned humble and fervent thanks to that
Providence which had brought her in safety, like Daniel from the den of
lions, to behold this day of exaltation.
Elizabeth was attended on her passage to the Tower by one who like
herself returned with honor to that place of his former captivity; but
not, like herself, with a mind disciplined by adversity to receive with
moderation and wisdom "the good vicissitude of joy." This person was
lord Robert Dudley, whom the queen had thus early encouraged to aspire
to her future favors by appointing him to the office of master of the
horse.
We are totally uninformed of the circumstances which had recommended to
her peculiar patronage this bad son of a bad father; whose enterprises,
if successful, would have disinherited of a kingdom Elizabeth herself no
less than Mary. But it is remarkable, that even under the reign of the
latter, the surviving members of the Dudley family had been able to
recover in great measure from the effects of their late signal reverses.
Lord Robert, soon after his release from the Tower, contrived to make
himself so acceptable to king Philip by his courtier-like attentions,
and to Mary by his diligence in posting backwards and forwards to bring
her intelligence of her husband during his long visits to the continent,
that he earned from the latter several marks of favor. Two of his
brothers fought, and one fell, in the battle of St. Quintin's; and
immediately afterwards the duchess their mother found means, through
some Spanish interests and connexions, to procure the restoration in
blood of all her surviving children. The appointment of Robert to the
place of master of the ordnance soon followed; so that even before the
accession of Elizabeth he might be regarded as a rising man in the
state. His personal graces and elegant accomplishments are on all hands
acknowledged to have been sufficiently striking to dazzle the eyes and
charm the heart of a young princess of a lively imagination and absolute
mistress of her own actions. The circumstance of his being already
married, blinded her perhaps to the nature of her sentiments towards
him, or at least it was regarded by her as a sufficient sanction in the
eyes of the public for those manifestations of favor and esteem with
which she was pleased to honor him. But whether the affection which she
entertained for him best deserved the name of friendship or a still
tenderer one, seems after all a question of too subtile and obscure a
nature for sober discussion; though in a French "_cour d'amour_" it
might have furnished pleas and counterpleas of exquisite ingenuity,
prodigious sentimental interest, and length interminable. What is
unfortunately too certain is, that he was a favorite, and in the common
judgement of the court, of the nation, and of posterity, an unworthy
one; but calumny and prejudice alone have dared to attack the
reputation of the queen.
Elizabeth had no propensity to exalt immoderately her relations by the
mother's side;--for she neither loved nor honored that mother's memory;
but several of the number may be mentioned, whose merits towards
herself, or whose qualifications for the public service, justly entitled
them to share in her distribution of offices and honors, and whom she
always treated with distinction. The whole illustrious family of the
Howards were her relations; and in the first year of her reign she
conferred on the duke of Norfolk, her second-cousin, the order of the
garter. Her great-uncle lord William Howard, created baron of Effingham
by Mary, was continued by her in the high office of lord-chamberlain,
and soon after appointed one of the commissioners for concluding a peace
with France. Lord Thomas Howard, her mother's first-cousin, who had
treated her with distinguished respect and kindness on her arrival at
Hampton Court from Woodstock, and had the further merit of being
indulgent to protestants during the persecutions of Mary, received from
her the title of viscount Bindon, and continued much in her favor to the
end of his days.
Sir Richard Sackville, also her mother's first-cousin, had filled
different fiscal offices under the three last reigns; he was a man of
abilities, and derived from a long line of ancestors great estates and
extensive influence in the county of Sussex. The people, who marked his
growing wealth, and to whom he was perhaps officially obnoxious,
nicknamed him Fill-sack: in Mary's time he was a catholic, a
privy-councillor, and chancellor of the court of Augmentations; under
her successor he changed the first designation and retained the two
last, which he probably valued more. He is chiefly memorable as the
father of Sackville the poet, afterwards lord Buckhurst and progenitor
of the dukes of Dorset.
Sir Francis Knolles, whose lady was one of the queen's nearest
kinswomen, was deservedly called to the privy-council on his return from
his voluntary banishment for conscience' sake; his sons gained
considerable influence in the court of Elizabeth; his daughter, the
mother of Essex, and afterwards the wife of Leicester, was for various
reasons long an object of the queen's particular aversion.
But of all her relations, the one who had deserved most at her hands was
Henry Carey, brother to lady Knolles, and son to Mary Boleyn, her
majesty's aunt. This gentleman had expended several thousand pounds of
his own patrimony in her service and relief during the time of her
imprisonment, and she liberally requited his friendship at her first
creation of peers, by conferring upon him, with the title of baron
Hunsdon, the royal residence of that name, with its surrounding park and
several beneficial leases of crown lands. He was afterwards joined in
various commissions and offices of trust: but his remuneration was, on
the whole, by no means exorbitant; for he was not rapacious, and
consequently not importunate; and the queen, in the employments which
she assigned him, seemed rather to consult her own advantage and that of
her country, by availing herself of the abilities of a diligent and
faithful servant, than to please herself by granting rewards to an
affectionate and generous kinsman. In fact, lord Hunsdon was skilled as
little in the ceremonious and sentimental gallantry which she required
from her courtiers, as in the circumspect and winding policy which she
approved in her statesmen. "As he lived in a ruffling time," says
Naunton, "so he loved sword and buckler men, and such as our fathers
wont to call men of their hands, of which sort he had many brave
gentlemen that followed him; yet not taken for a popular or dangerous
person." Though extremely choleric, he was honest, and not at all
malicious. It was said of him that "his Latin and his dissimulation were
both alike," equally bad, and that "his custom in swearing and obscenity
in speech made him seem a worse Christian than he was."
Fuller relates of him the following characteristic anecdote. "Once, one
Mr. Colt chanced to meet him coming from Hunsdon to London, in the
equipage of a lord of those days. The lord, on some former grudge, gave
him a box on the ear: Colt presently returned the principal with
interest; and thereupon his servants drawing their swords, swarmed about
him. 'You rogues,' said my lord, 'may not I and my neighbour change a
blow but you must interpose?' Thus the quarrel was begun and ended in
the same minute[37]."
[Note 37: "Worthies" in Herts.]
The queen's attachment to such of her family as she was pleased to
honor with her notice, was probably the more constant because there was
nothing in it of excess or of blindness:--even Leicester in the height
of his favor felt that he must hold sacred their claims to her regard:
according to Naunton's phrase, he used to say of Sackville and Hunsdon,
"that they were of the tribe of Dan, and were Noli me tangere's."
After a few days spent in the Tower, Elizabeth passed by water to
Somerset Place; and thence, about a fortnight after, when the funeral of
her predecessor was over, to the palace of Westminster, where she kept
her Christmas.
Busy preparation was now making in her good city of London against the
solemn day of her passage in state from the Tower to her coronation at
Westminster. The usages and sentiments of that age conferred upon these
public ceremonials a character of earnest and dignified importance now
lost; and on this memorable occasion, when the mingled sense of
deliverance received and of future favor to be conciliated had opened
the hearts of all men, it was resolved to lavish in honor of the new
sovereign every possible demonstration of loyal affection, and every
known device of festal magnificence.
The costume of the age was splendid. Gowns of velvet or satin, richly
trimmed with silk, furs, or gold lace, costly gold chains, and caps or
hoods of rich materials adorned with feathers or ouches, decorated on
all occasions of display the persons not of nobles or courtiers alone,
but of their crowds of retainers and higher menials, and even of the
plain substantial citizens. Female attire was proportionally sumptuous.
Hangings, of cloth, of silk, of velvet, cloth of gold or silver, or
"needlework sublime," clothed on days of family-festivity the _upper
chamber_[38] of every house of respectable appearance; these on public
festivals were suspended from the balconies, and uniting with the
banners and pennons floating overhead, gave to the streets almost the
appearance of a suit of long and gayly-dressed saloons. Every
circumstance thus conspired to render the public entry of queen
Elizabeth the most gorgeous and at the same time the most interesting
spectacle of the kind ever exhibited in the English metropolis.
[Note 38: As long as that style of domestic architecture prevailed
in which every story was made to project considerably beyond the one
beneath it, the upper room, from its superior size and lightsomeness,
appears to have been that dedicated to the entertainment of guests.]
Her majesty was first to be conducted from her palace in Westminster to
the royal apartments in the Tower; and a splendid water procession was
appointed for the purpose. At this period, when the streets were narrow
and ill-paved, the roads bad, and the luxury of close carriages unknown,
the Thames was the great thoroughfare of the metropolis. The old palace
of Westminster, as well as those of Richmond and Greenwich, the favorite
summer residences of the Tudor princes, stood on its banks, and the
court passed from one to the other in barges. The nobility were
beginning to occupy with their mansions and gardens the space between
the Strand and the water, and it had become a reigning folly amongst
them to vie with each other in the splendor of their barges and of the
liveries of the rowers, who were all distinguished by the crests or
badges of their lords.
The corporation and trading companies of London possessed, as now, their
state-barges enriched with carved and gilded figures and "decked and
trimmed with targets and banners of their misteries."
On the 12th of January 1559 these were all drawn forth in grand array;
and to enliven the pomp, "the bachelor's barge of the lord-mayor's
company, to wit the mercers, had their barge with a _foist_ trimmed with
three tops and artillery aboard, gallantly appointed to wait upon them,
shooting off lustily as they went, with great and pleasant melody of
instruments, which played in most sweet and heavenly manner." In this
state they rowed up to Westminster and attended her majesty with the
royal barges back to the Tower.
Her passage through the city took place two days after.
She issued forth drawn in a sumptuous chariot, preceded by trumpeters
and heralds in their coat-armour and "most honorably accompanied as well
with gentlemen, barons, and other the nobility of this realm, as also
with a notable train of goodly and beautiful ladies, richly appointed."
The ladies were on horseback, and both they and the lords were habited
in crimson velvet, with which their horses were also trapped. Let it be
remarked by the way, that the retinue of fair equestrians constantly
attendant on the person of the maiden queen in all her public
appearances, was a circumstance of prodigious effect; the gorgeousness
of royal pomp was thus heightened, and at the same time rendered more
amiable and attractive by the alliance of grace and beauty; and a
romantic kind of charm, comparable to that which seizes the imagination
in the splendid fictions of chivalry, was cast over the heartless parade
of courtly ceremonial.
It was a very different spirit, however, from that of romance or of
knight-errantry which inspired the bosoms of the citizens whose
acclamations now rent the air on her approach. They beheld in the
princess whom they welcomed the daughter of that Henry who had redeemed
the land from papal tyranny and extortion; the sister of that young and
godly Edward,--the Josiah of English story,--whose pious hand had reared
again the altars of pure and primitive religion; and they had bodied
forth for her instruction and admonition, in a series of solemn
pageants, the maxims by which they hoped to see her equal or surpass
these deep-felt merits of her predecessors.
These pageants were erections placed across the principal streets in the
manner of triumphal arches: illustrative sentences in English and Latin
were inscribed upon them; and a child was stationed in each, who
explained to the queen in English verse the meaning of the whole. The
first was of three stories, and represented by living figures: first,
Henry VII. and his royal spouse Elizabeth of York, from whom her majesty
derived her name; secondly, Henry VIII. and Anne Boleyn; and lastly, her
majesty in person; all in royal robes. The verses described the
felicity of that union of the houses to which she owed her existence,
and of concord in general. The second pageant was styled "The seat of
worthy governance," on the summit of which sat another representative of
the queen; beneath were the cardinal virtues trampling under their feet
the opposite vices, among whom Ignorance and Superstition were not
forgotten. The third exhibited the eight Beatitudes, all ascribed with
some ingenuity of application to her majesty. The fourth ventured upon a
more trying topic: its opposite sides represented in lively contrast the
images of a decayed and of a flourishing commonwealth; and from a cave
below issued Time leading forth his daughter Truth, who held in her hand
an English bible, which she offered to the queen's acceptance. Elizabeth
received the volume, and reverently pressing it with both hands to her
heart and to her lips, declared aloud, amid the tears and grateful
benedictions of her people, that she thanked the city more for that gift
than for all the cost they had bestowed upon her, and that she would
often read over that book. The last pageant exhibited "a seemly and mete
personage, richly apparelled in parliament robes, with a sceptre in her
hand, over whose head was written 'Deborah, the judge and restorer of
the house of Israel.'"
To render more palatable these grave moralities, the recorder of London,
approaching her majesty's chariot near the further end of Cheapside,
where ended the long array of the city companies, which had lined the
streets all the way from Fenchurch, presented her with a splendid and
ample purse, containing one thousand marks in gold. The queen graciously
received it with both hands, and answered his harangue "marvellous
pithily."
To crown the whole, those two griesly personages vulgarly called Gog and
Magog, but described by the learned as Gogmagog the Albion and Corineus
the Briton, deserted on this memorable day that accustomed station in
Guildhall where they appear as the tutelary genii of the city, and were
seen rearing up their stately height on each side of Temple-bar. With
joined hands they supported above the gate a copy of Latin verses, in
which they obligingly expounded to her majesty the sense of all the
pageants which had been offered to her view, concluding with compliments
and felicitations suitable to the happy occasion. The queen, in few but
cordial words, thanked the citizens for all their cost and pains,
assured them that she would "stand their good queen," and passed the
gate amid a thunder of applause.
Elizabeth possessed in a higher degree than any other English prince who
ever reigned, the innocent and honest arts of popularity; and the
following traits of her behaviour on this day are recorded by our
chroniclers with affectionate delight. "'Yonder is an ancient citizen,'
said one of the knights attending on her person, 'which weepeth and
turneth his face backward: How may it be interpreted? that he doth so
for sorrow or for gladness?' With a just and pleasing confidence, the
queen replied, 'I warrant you it is for gladness,'" "How many nosegays
did her grace receive at poor women's hands! How many times staid she
her chariot when she saw any simple body offer to speak to her grace! A
branch of rosemary given her grace with a supplication by a poor woman
about Fleet-bridge was seen in her chariot till her grace came to
Westminster[39]."
[Note 39: Holinshed's Chronicles.]
The reader may here be reminded, that five-and-twenty years before, when
the mother of this queen passed through London to her coronation, the
pageants exhibited derived their personages and allusions chiefly from
pagan mythology or classical fiction. But all was now changed; the
earnestness of religious controversy in Edward's time, and the fury of
persecution since, had put to flight Apollo, the Muses, and the Graces:
Learning indeed had kept her station and her honors, but she had lent
her lamp to other studies, and whether in the tongue of ancient Rome or
modern England, Elizabeth was hailed in Christian strains, and as the
sovereign of a Christian country. A people filled with earnest zeal in
the best of causes implored her to free them once again from popery; to
overthrow the tyranny of error and of superstition; to establish gospel
truth; and to accept at their hands, as the standard of her faith and
the rule of her conduct, that holy book of which they regarded the free
and undisturbed possession as their brightest privilege.
How tame, how puerile, in the midst of sentiments serious and profound
as these, would have appeared the intrusion of classical imagery,
however graceful in itself or ingenious in its application! Frigid must
have been the spectator who could even have remarked its absence, while
shouts of patriotic ardor and of religious joy were bursting from the
lips of the whole assembled population.
The august ceremonies of the coronation, which took place on the
following day, merit no particular description; regulated in every thing
by ancient custom, they afforded little scope for that display of
popular sentiment which had given so intense an interest to the
procession of the day before. Great perplexity was occasioned by the
refusal of the whole bench of bishops to perform the coronation service;
but at length, to the displeasure of his brethren, Ogelthorp bishop of
Carlisle suffered himself to be gained over, and the rite was duly
celebrated. This refractoriness of the episcopal order was wisely
overlooked for the present by the new government; but it proceeded no
doubt from the principle, that, the marriage of Henry VIII. with
Catherine of Arragon having been declared lawful and valid, the child of
Anne Boleyn must be regarded as illegitimate and incapable of the
succession. The compliance of Ogelthorp could indeed be censured by the
other bishops on no other ground than their disallowance of the title of
the sovereign; in the office itself, as he performed it, there was
nothing to which the most rigid catholic could object, for the ancient
ritual is said to have been followed without the slightest modification.
This circumstance has been adduced among others, to show that it was
rather by the political necessities of her situation, than by her
private judgement and conscience in religious matters, that Elizabeth
was impelled finally to abjure the Roman catholic system, and to declare
herself the general protectress of the protestant cause.
Probably, had she found herself free to follow entirely the dictates of
her own inclinations, she would have established in the church of which
she found herself the head, a kind of middle scheme like that devised by
her father, for whose authority she was impressed with the highest
veneration. To the end of her days she could never be reconciled to
married bishops; indeed with respect to the clergy generally, a
sagacious writer of her own time observes, that "_caeteris paribus_, and
sometimes _imparibus_ too, she preferred the single man before the
married[40]."
[Note 40: Harrington's "Brief View."]
She would allow no one "to speak irreverently of the sacrament of the
altar;" that is, to enter into discussions respecting the real presence;
she enjoined the like respectful silence concerning the intercession of
saints; and we learn that one Patch, who had been Wolsey's fool, and had
contrived, like some others, to keep in favor through all the changes of
four successive reigns, was employed by sir Francis Knolles to break
down a crucifix which she still retained in her private chapel to the
scandal of all good protestants.
A remarkable incident soon served to intimate the coolness and caution
with which it was her intention to proceed in re-establishing the
maxims of the reformers. Lord Bacon thus relates the anecdote: "Queen
Elizabeth on the morrow of her coronation (it being the custom to
release prisoners at the inauguration of a prince) went to the chapel;
and in the great chamber one of her courtiers, who was well known to
her, either out of his own motion, or by the instigation of a wiser man,
presented her with a petition, and before a great number of courtiers
besought her with a loud voice that now this good time there might be
four or five more principal prisoners released: these were the four
evangelists, and the apostle St. Paul, who had been long shut up in an
unknown tongue, as it were in prison; so as they could not converse with
the common people. The queen answered very gravely, that it was best
first to inquire of themselves whether they would be released or
not[41]."
[Note 41: Bacon's "Apophthegms."]
It was not long, however, ere this happy deliverance was fully effected.
Before her coronation, Elizabeth had taken the important step of
authorizing the reading of the liturgy in English; but she forbade
preaching on controverted topics generally, and all preaching at Paul's
Cross in particular, till the completion of that revision of the service
used in the time of Edward VI. which she had intrusted to Parker
archbishop-elect of Canterbury, with several of her wisest counsellors.
It was the zeal of the ministers lately returned from exile, many of
whom had imbibed at Geneva or Zurich ideas of a primitive simplicity in
Christian worship widely remote from the views and sentiments of the
queen, which gave occasion to this prohibition. The learning, the piety,
the past sufferings of the men gave them great power over the minds and
opinions of the people, who ran in crowds to listen to their sermons;
and Elizabeth began already to apprehend that the hierarchy which she
desired to establish would stand as much in need of protection from the
disciples of Calvin and Zwingle on one hand, as from the adherents of
popery on the other.
There is good reason to believe, that a royal proclamation issued some
time after, by which all manner of plays and interludes were forbidden
to be represented till after the ensuing hallowmass, was dictated by
similar reasons of state with the prohibition of popular and unlicensed
preaching.
From the earliest beginnings of the reformation under Henry VIII. the
stage had come in aid of the pulpit; not, according to the practice of
its purer ages, as the "teacher best of moral wisdom, with delight
received," but as the vehicle of religious controversy, and not seldom
of polemical scurrility. Several times already had this dangerous
novelty attracted the jealous eyes of authority, and measures had in
vain been taken for its suppression.
In 1542 Henry added to an edict for the destruction of Tyndale's English
bible, with all the controversial works on both sides of which it had
been the fertile parent, an injunction that "the kingdom should be
purged and cleansed of all religious plays, interludes, rhymes, ballads,
and songs, which are equally pestiferous and noisome to the peace of
the church." During the reign of Edward, when the papists had availed
themselves of the license of the theatre to attack Cranmer and the
protector, a similar prohibition was issued against all dramatic
performances, as tending to the growth of "disquiet, division, tumults
and uproars." Mary's privy-council, on the other hand, found it
necessary to address a remonstrance to the president of the North,
respecting certain players, servants to sir Francis Lake, who had gone
about the country representing pieces in ridicule of the king and queen
and the formalities of the mass; and the design of the proclamation of
Elizabeth was rendered evident by a solemn enactment of heavy penalties
against such as should abuse the Common-prayer in any interludes, songs,
or rhymes[42].
[Note 42: Warton's "History of English Poetry," vol. iii. p. 202 _et
seq._]
CHAPTER X.
1559.
Meeting of parliament.--Prudent counsel of sir N. Bacon.--Act
declaratory of the queen's title.--Her answer to an address praying her
to marry.--Philip II. offers her his hand.--Motives of her
refusal.--Proposes to her the archduke Charles.--The king of Sweden
renews his addresses by the duke of Finland.--Honorable reception of the
duke.--Addresses of the duke of Holstein.--The duke of Norfolk, lord R.
Dudley, the marquis of Northampton, the earl of Rutland, made knights of
the garter.--Notices of the two last.--Queen visits the earl of
Pembroke.--His life and character.--Arrival and entertainment of a
French embassy.--Review of the London trained-bands.--Tilt in Greenwich
park.--Band of gentlemen-pensioners.--Royal progress to Dartford, Cobham
Hall, Eltham, and Nonsuch.--The earl of Arundel entertains her at the
latter place.--Obsequies for the king of France.--Death of Frances
duchess of Suffolk.--Sumptuary law respecting apparel.--Fashions of
dress.--Law against witchcraft.
In the parliament which met in January 1559, two matters personally
interesting to the queen were agitated; her title to the crown, and her
marriage; and both were disposed of in a manner calculated to afford a
just presage of the maxims by which the whole tenor of her future life
and reign was to be guided. By the eminently prudent and judicious
counsels of sir Nicholas Bacon keeper of the seals, she omitted to
require of parliament the repeal of those acts of her father's reign
which had declared his marriage with her mother null, and herself
illegitimate; and reposing on the acknowledged maxim of law, that the
crown once worn takes away all defects in blood, she contented herself
with an act declaratory in general terms of her right of succession.
Thus the whole perplexing subject of her mother's character and conduct
was consigned to an oblivion equally safe and decent; and the memory of
her father, which, in spite of all his acts of violence and injustice,
was popular in the nation and respected by herself, was saved from the
stigma which the vindication of Anne Boleyn must have impressed
indelibly upon it.
On the other topic she explained herself with an earnest sincerity which
might have freed her from all further importunity in any concern less
interesting to the wishes of her people. To a deputation from the house
of commons with an address, "the special matter whereof was to move her
grace to marriage," after a gracious reception, she delivered an answer
in which the following passages are remarkable.
"...From my years of understanding, sith I first had consideration of my
life, to be born a servitor of almighty God, I happily chose this kind
of life, in the which I yet live; which I assure you for mine own part
hath hitherto best contented myself, and I trust hath been most
acceptable unto God. From the which, if either ambition of high estate,
offered to me in marriage by the pleasure and appointment of my prince,
whereof I have some records in this presence (as you our treasurer well
know); or if eschewing the danger of mine enemies, or the avoiding of
the peril of death, whose messenger, or rather a continual watchman, the
prince's indignation, was no little time daily before mine eyes, (by
whose means although I know, or justly may suspect, yet I will not now
utter, or if the whole cause were in my sister herself, I will not now
burden her therewith, because I will not charge the dead): if any of
these, I say, could have drawn or dissuaded me from this kind of life, I
had not now remained in this estate wherein you see me; but so constant
have I always continued in this determination, although my youth and
words may seem to some hardly to agree together; yet it is most true
that at this day I stand free from any other meaning that either I have
had in times past, or have at this present."
After a somewhat haughty assurance that she takes the recommendation of
the parliament in good part, because it contains no limitation of place
or person, which she should have regarded as great presumption in them,
"whose duties are to obey," and "not to require them that may command;"
having declared that should she change her resolution, she will choose
one for her husband who shall, if possible, be as careful for the realm
as herself, she thus concludes: "And in the end, this shall be for me
sufficient, that a marble stone shall declare, that a queen, having
reigned such a time, lived and died a virgin."
One matrimonial proposal her majesty had already received, and that at
once the most splendid and the least suitable which Europe could afford.
Philip of Spain, loth to relinquish his hold upon England, but long
since aware of the impracticability of establishing any claims of his
own in opposition to the title of Elizabeth, now sought to reign by her;
and to the formal announcement which she conveyed to him of the death of
his late wife, accompanied with expressions of her anxiety to preserve
his friendship, he had replied by an offer of his hand.
The objections to this union were so peculiarly forcible, and so obvious
to every eye, that it appears at first view almost incredible that the
proposal should have been made, as it yet undoubtedly was, seriously and
with strong expectations of success. But Philip, himself a politician,
believed Elizabeth to be one also; and he flattered himself that he
should be able to point out such advantages in the connexion as might
over-balance in her mind any scruples of patriotism, of feeling, or of
conscience. She stood alone, the last of her father's house, unsupported
at home by the authority of a powerful royal family, or abroad by great
alliances. The queen of Scots, whom few of the subjects of Elizabeth
denied to be next heir to the crown, and whose claim was by most of the
catholics held preferable to her own, was married to the dauphin of
France, consequently her title would be upheld by the whole force of
that country, with which, as well as with Scotland, Elizabeth at her
accession had found the nation involved in an unsuccessful war. The loss
of Calais, the decay of trade, the failure of the exchequer, and the
recent visitations of famine and pestilence, had infected the minds of
the English with despondency, and paralysed all their efforts.
In religion they were confessedly a divided people; but it is probable
that Philip, misled by his own zeal and that of the catholic clergy,
confidently anticipated the extirpation of heresy and the final triumph
of the papal system, if the measures of _salutary rigor_ which had
distinguished the reign of Mary should be persisted in by her successor;
and that he actually supposed the majority of the nation to be at this
time sincerely and cordially catholic. In offering therefore his hand to
Elizabeth, he seemed to lend her that powerful aid against her foreign
foe and rival without which her possession of the throne could not be
secure, and that support against domestic faction without which it could
not be tranquil. He readily undertook to procure from the pope the
necessary dispensation for the marriage, which he was certain would be
granted with alacrity; and before the answer of Elizabeth could reach
him, he had actually dispatched envoys to Rome for this purpose.
A princess, in fact, of a character less firm and less sagacious than
Elizabeth, might have found in these seeming benefits temptations not to
be resisted; the splendor of Philip's rank and power would have dazzled
and overawed, the difficulties of her own situation would have
affrighted her, and between ambition and alarm she would probably have
thrown herself into the arms, and abandoned her country to the mercy, of
a gloomy, calculating, relentless tyrant.
But Elizabeth was neither to be deceived nor intimidated. She well knew
how odious this very marriage had rendered her unhappy sister; she
understood and sympathized in the religious sentiments of the great
mass of her subjects; she felt too all the pride, as well as the
felicity, of independence; and looking around with a cheerful confidence
on a people who adored her, she formed at once the patriotic resolution
to wear her English diadem by the suffrage of the English nation alone,
unindebted to the protection and free from the participation of any
brother-monarch living, even of him who held the highest place among the
potentates of Europe.
Her best and wisest counsellors applauded her decision, but they
unanimously advised that no means consistent with the rejection of his
suit should be omitted, by which the friendship of the king of Spain
might be preserved and cultivated. Expedients were accordingly found,
without actually encouraging his hopes, for protracting the negotiation
till a peace was concluded with France and with Scotland, and finally of
declining the marriage without a breach of amity. Yet the duke de Feria,
the Spanish ambassador, had not failed to represent to the queen, that
as the addresses of his master were founded on personal acquaintance and
high admiration of her charms and merit, a negative could not be
returned without wounding equally his pride and his feelings. Philip,
however, soon consoled himself for this disappointment by taking to wife
the daughter of the king of France; and before the end of the year we
find him recommending to Elizabeth as a husband his cousin the archduke
Charles, son of the emperor Ferdinand. The overture was at this time
declined by the queen without hesitation; but some time afterwards,
circumstances arose which caused the negotiation to be resumed with
prospect of success, and the pretensions and qualifications of the
Austrian prince became, as we shall see, an object of serious
discussion.
Eric, who had now ascended the throne of Sweden, sent his brother the
duke of Finland to plead once more with the English princess in his
behalf; and the king of Denmark, unwilling that his neighbour should
bear off without a contest so glorious a prize, lost no time in sending
forth on the same high adventure his nephew the duke of Holstein. It is
more than probable that Shakespear, in his description of the wooers of
all countries who contend for the possession of the fair and wealthy
Portia[43], satirically alludes to several of these royal suitors, whose
departure would often be accounted by his sovereign "a gentle ridance,"
since she might well exclaim with the Italian heiress, "while we shut
the gate on one wooer, another knocks at the door."
[Note 43: See "The Merchant of Venice."]
The duke of Finland was received with high honors. The earl of Oxford
and lord Robert Dudley repaired to him at Colchester and conducted him
into London. At the corner of Gracechurch-street he was received by the
marquis of Northampton and lord Ambrose Dudley, attended by many
gentlemen, and, what seems remarkable, by ladies also; and thence,
followed by a great troop of gentlemen in gold chains and yeomen of the
guard, he proceeded to the bishop of Winchester's palace in Southwark,
"which was hung with rich cloth of arras, and wrought with gold and
silver and silks. And there he remained."
On the last circumstance it may be remarked, that it appears at this
time to have been the invariable custom for ambassadors and other royal
visitants to be lodged at some private house, where they were
entertained, nominally perhaps at the expense of the sovereign, but
really to the great cost as well as inconvenience of the selected host.
The practice discovers a kind of feudal right of ownership still claimed
by the prince in the mansions of his barons, some of which indeed were
royal castles or manor-houses and held perhaps under peculiar
obligations: at the same time it gives us a magnificent idea of the size
and accommodation of these mansions and of the style of house-keeping
used in them. It further intimates that an habitual distrust of these
foreign guests caused it to be regarded as a point of prudence to place
them under the secret inspection of some native of approved loyalty and
discretion. Prisoners of state, as well as ambassadors and royal
strangers, were thus committed to the private custody of peers or
bishops.
The duke of Holstein on his arrival was lodged at Somerset Place, of
which the queen had granted the use to lord Hunsdon. He came, it seems,
with sanguine expectations of success in his suit; but the royal fair
one deemed it sufficient to acknowledge his pains by an honorable
reception, the order of the garter, and the grant of a yearly pension.
Meantime the queen herself, with equal assiduity and better success than
awaited these princely wooers, was applying her cares to gain the
affections of her subjects of every class, and if possible of both
religious denominations.
On her young kinsman the duke of Norfolk, the first peer of the realm by
rank, property, and great alliances, and the most popular by his known
attachment to the protestant faith, she now conferred the distinction of
the garter, decorating with it at the same time the marquis of
Northampton, the earl of Rutland, and lord Robert Dudley.
The marquis, a brother of queen Catherine Parr, whom he resembled in the
turn of his religious opinions, had been for these opinions a great
sufferer under the last reign. On pretext of his adherence to the cause
of Jane Grey, in which he had certainly not partaken more deeply than
many others who found nothing but favor in the sight of Mary, he was
attainted of high treason, and though his life was spared, his estates
were forfeited and he had remained ever since in disgrace and suspicion.
A divorce which he had obtained from an unfaithful wife under the
ecclesiastical law of Henry VIII. was also called in question, and an
after marriage which he had contracted declared null, but it appears to
have been confirmed under Elizabeth. He was accounted a modest and
upright character, endowed with no great talents for military command,
in which he had been unsuccessful, nor yet for civil business; but
distinguished by a fine taste in music and poetry, which formed his
chief delight. From the new sovereign substantial benefits as well as
flattering distinctions awaited him, being reinstated by her in the
possession of his confiscated estates and appointed a privy-councillor.
Henry second earl of Rutland of the surname of Manners, was the
representative of a knightly family seated during many generations at
Ettal in Northumberland, and known in border history amongst the
stoutest champions on the English side. But Ettal, a place of strength,
was more than once laid in ruins, and the lands devastated and rendered
"nothing worth," by incursions of the Scots; and though successive kings
rewarded the services and compensated the losses of these valiant
knights, by grants of land and appointments to honorable offices in the
north, it was many an age before they attained to such a degree of
wealth as would enable them to appear with distinction amongst the great
families of the kingdom. At length sir Robert Manners, high sheriff of
Northumberland, having recommended himself to the favor of the
king-making Warwick and of Richard duke of Gloucester, was fortunate
enough by a judicious marriage with the daughter of lord Roos, heiress
of the Tiptofts earls of Worcester, to add the noble castle and fertile
vale of Belvoir to the battered towers and wasted fields of his paternal
inheritance.
A second splendid alliance completed the aggrandizement of the house of
Manners. The son of sir Robert, bearing in right of his mother the title
of lord Roos, and knighted by the earl of Surry for his distinguished
bravery in the Scottish wars, was honored with the hand of Anne sole
heiress of sir Thomas St. Leger by the duchess-dowager of Exeter, a
sister of king Edward IV. The heir of this marriage, in consideration
of his maternal ancestry, was advanced by Henry VIII. to the title of
earl of Rutland, never borne but by princes of the blood. His successor,
whom the queen was pleased to honor on this occasion, had suffered a
short imprisonment in the cause of Jane Grey, but was afterwards
intrusted by Mary with a military command. Under Elizabeth he was lord
lieutenant of the counties of Nottingham and Rutland, and one of the
commissioners for enforcing the oath of supremacy on all persons in
offices of trust or profit suspected of adherence to the old religion.
He died in 1563.
Of lord Robert Dudley it is only necessary here to observe, that his
favor with the queen became daily more apparent, and began to give fears
and jealousies to her best friends and wisest counsellors.
The hearts of the common people, as this wise princess well knew, were
easily and cheaply to be won by gratifying their eyes with the frequent
view of her royal person, and she neglected no opportunity of offering
herself, all smiles and affability, to their ready acclamations.
On one occasion she passed publicly through the city to visit the mint
and inspect the new coinage, which she had the great merit of restoring
to its just standard from the extremely depreciated state to which it
had been brought by the successive encroachments of her immediate
predecessors. Another time she visited the dissolved priory of St. Mary
Spittle in Bishopsgate-street, which was noted for its pulpit-cross,
where, on set days, the lord-mayor and aldermen attended to hear
sermons. It is conjectured that the queen went thither for the same
purpose; but if this were the case, her equipage was somewhat whimsical.
She was attended, as Stow informs us, by a thousand men in harness with
shirts of mail and corselets and morice-pikes, and ten great pieces
carried through the city unto the court, with drums and trumpets
sounding, and two morice dancings, and in a cart two white bears.
Having supped one afternoon with the earl of Pembroke at Baynard's
castle in Thames-street, she afterwards took boat and was rowed up and
down the river, "hundreds of boats and barges rowing about her, and
thousands of people thronging at the water side to look upon her
majesty; rejoicing to see her, and partaking of the music and sights
upon the Thames."
This peer was the offspring of a base-born son of William Herbert earl
of Pembroke, and coming early to court to push his fortune, became an
esquire of the body to Henry VIII. Soon ingratiating himself with this
monarch, he obtained from his customary profusion towards his favorites,
several offices in Wales and enormous grants of abbey-lands in some of
the southern counties. In the year 1554, the 37th of his age, we find
him considerable enough to procure the king's license "to retain thirty
persons at his will and pleasure, over and above such persons as
attended on him, and to give them his livery, badges, and cognizance."
The king's marriage with Catherine Parr, his wife's sister, increased
his consequence, and Henry on his death-bed appointed him one of his
executors and a member of the young king's council. He was actively
useful in the beginning of Edward's reign in keeping down commotions in
Wales and suppressing some which had arisen in Wiltshire and
Somersetshire. This service obtained for him the office of master of the
horse; and that more important service which he afterwards performed at
the head of one thousand Welshmen, with whom he took the field against
the Cornish rebels, was rewarded by the garter, the presidency of the
council for Wales, and a valuable wardship. He figured next as commander
of part of the forces in Picardy and governor of Calais, and found
himself strong enough to claim of the feeble protector as his reward the
titles of baron Herbert and earl of Pembroke, become extinct by the
failure of legitimate heirs. As soon as his sagacity prognosticated the
fall of Somerset, he judiciously attached himself to the rising fortunes
of Northumberland. With this aspiring leader it was an object of prime
importance to purchase the support of a nobleman who now appeared at the
head of three hundred retainers, and whose authority in Wales and the
southern counties was equal, or superior, to the hereditary influence of
the most powerful and ancient houses. To engage him therefore the more
firmly in his interest, Northumberland proposed a marriage between
Pembroke's son lord Herbert and lady Catherine Grey, which was
solemnized at the same time with that between lord Guildford Dudley and
the lady Jane her eldest sister.
But no ties of friendship or alliance could permanently engage Pembroke
on the losing side; and though he concurred in the first measures of the
privy-council in behalf of lady Jane's title, it was he who devised a
pretext for extricating its members from the Tower, where Northumberland
had detained them in order to secure their fidelity, and, assembling
them in Baynard's castle, procured their concurrence in the proclamation
of Mary. By this act he secured the favor of the new queen, whom he
further propitiated by compelling his son to repudiate the innocent and
ill-fated lady Catherine, whose birth caused her to be regarded at court
with jealous eyes. Mary soon confided to him the charge of effectually
suppressing Wyat's rebellion, and afterwards constituted him her
captain-general beyond the seas, in which capacity he commanded the
English forces at the battle of St. Quintin's. Such was the respect
entertained for his experience and capacity, that Elizabeth admitted him
to her privy-council immediately after her accession, and as a still
higher mark of her confidence named him,--with the marquis of
Northampton, the earl of Bedford, and lord John Grey, leading men of the
protestant party,--to assist at the meetings of divines and men of
learning by whom the religious establishment of the country was to be
settled. He was likewise appointed a commissioner for administering the
oath of supremacy. In short, he retained to his death, which occurred in
1570, in the 63d year of his age, the same high station among the
confidential servants of the crown which he had held unmoved through all
the mutations of the eventful period of his public life.
Naunton, in his "Fragmenta Regalia," speaking of Paulet marquis of
Winchester and lord-treasurer, who, he says, had then served four
princes "in as various and changeable season that well I may say,
neither time nor age hath yielded the like precedent," thus proceeds:
"This man being noted to grow high in her" (queen Elizabeth's) "favor,
as his place and experience required, was questioned by an intimate
friend of his, how he stood up for thirty years together amidst the
changes and reigns of so many chancellors and great personages. 'Why,'
quoth the marquis, 'ortus sum ex salice, non ex quercu.' (By being a
willow and not an oak). And truly the old man hath taught them all,
especially William earl of Pembroke, for they two were ever of the
king's religion, and over-zealous professors. Of these it is said, that
both younger brothers, yet of noble houses, they spent what was left
them and came on trust to the court; where, upon the bare stock of their
wits, they began to traffic for themselves, and prospered so well, that
they got, spent, and left, more than any subjects from the Norman
conquest to their own times: whereunto it hath been prettily replied,
that they lived in a time of dissolution.--Of any of the former reign,
it is said that these two lived and died chiefly in the queen's favor."
Among the means employed by Pembroke for preserving the good graces of
the new queen, the obvious one of paying court to her prime favorite
Robert Dudley was not neglected; and lord Herbert, whose first marriage
had been contracted in compliance with the views of the father, now
formed a third in obedience to the wishes of the son. The lady to whom
he was thus united by motives in which inclination had probably no share
on either side, was the niece of Dudley and sister of sir Philip Sidney,
one of the most accomplished women of her age, celebrated during her
life by the wits and poets whom she patronized, and preserved in the
memory of posterity by an epitaph from the pen of Ben Jonson which will
not be forgotten whilst English poetry remains.
The arrival of ambassadors of high rank from France, on occasion of the
peace recently concluded with that country, afforded the queen an
opportunity of displaying all the magnificence of her court; and their
entertainment has furnished for the curious inquirer in later times some
amusing traits of the half-barbarous manners of the age. The duke de
Montmorenci, the head of the embassy, was lodged at the bishop of
London's, and the houses of the dean and canons of St. Paul's were
entirely filled with his numerous retinue. The gorgeousness of the
ambassador's dress was thought remarkable even in those gorgeous times.
The day after their arrival they were conducted in state to court, where
they supped with the queen, and afterwards partook of a "goodly
banquet," with all manner of entertainment till midnight. The next day
her majesty gave them a sumptuous dinner, followed by a baiting of bulls
and bears. "The queen's grace herself" stood with them in a gallery,
looking on the pastime, till six o'clock, when they returned by water to
sup with the bishop their host. On the following day they were
conducted to the Paris Garden, then a favorite place of amusement on the
Surry side of the Thames, and there regaled with another exhibition of
bull and bear baiting. Two days afterwards they departed, "taking their
barge towards Gravesend," highly delighted, it is to be hoped, with the
elegant taste of the English in public diversions, and carrying with
them a number of mastiffs, given them to hunt wolves in their own
country.
But notwithstanding all outward shows of amity with France, Elizabeth
had great cause to apprehend that the pretensions of the queen of Scots
and her husband the dauphin, who had openly assumed the royal arms of
England, might soon reinvolve her in hostilities with that country and
with Scotland; and it consequently became a point of policy with her to
animate by means of military spectacles, graced with her royal presence
and encouragement, the warlike preparations of her subjects. She was now
established for a time in her favorite summer-palace of Greenwich, and
the London companies were ordered to make a muster of their men at arms
in the adjoining park.
The employment of fire-arms had not as yet consigned to disuse either
the defensive armour or the weapons of offence of the middle ages; and
the military arrays of that time amused the eye of the spectator with a
rich variety of accoutrement far more picturesque in its details, and
probably more striking even in its general effect, than that magnificent
uniformity which, at a modern review, dazzles but soon satiates the
sight.
Of the fourteen hundred men whom the metropolis sent forth on this
occasion, eight hundred, armed in fine corselets, bore the long Moorish
pike; two hundred were halberdiers wearing a different kind of armour,
called Almain rivets; and the gunners, or musketeers, were equipped in
shirts of mail, with morions or steel caps. Her majesty, surrounded by a
splendid court, beheld all their evolutions from a gallery over the park
gate, and finally dismissed them, confirmed in loyalty and valor by
praises, thanks, and smiles of graciousness.
A few days afterwards the queen's pensioners were appointed "to run with
the spear," and this chivalrous exhibition was accompanied with such
circumstances of romantic decoration as peculiarly delighted the fancy
of Elizabeth. She caused to be erected for her in Greenwich park a
banqueting-house "made with fir poles and decked with birch branches and
all manner of flowers both of the field and the garden, as roses,
julyflowers, lavender, marygolds, and all manner of strewing-herbs and
rushes." Tents were also set up for her household, and a place was
prepared for the tilters. After the exercises were over, the queen gave
a supper in the banqueting-house, succeeded by a masque, and that by a
splendid banquet. "And then followed great casting of fire and shooting
of guns till midnight."
This band of gentlemen pensioners, the boast and ornament of the court
of Elizabeth, was probably the most splendid establishment of the kind
in Europe. It was entirely composed of the flower of the nobility and
gentry, and to be admitted to serve in its ranks was during the whole of
the reign regarded as a distinction worthy the ambition of young men of
the highest families and most brilliant prospects. Sir John Holles,
afterwards earl of Clare, was accustomed to say, that while he was a
pensioner to queen Elizabeth, he did not know _a worse man_ in the whole
band than himself; yet he was then in possession of an inheritance of
four thousand a year. "It was the constant custom of that queen,"
pursues the earl's biographer, "to call out of all counties of the
kingdom, the gentlemen of the greatest hopes and the best fortunes and
families, and with them to fill the more honorable rooms of her
household servants, by which she honored them, obliged their kindred and
alliance, and fortified herself[44]."
[Note 44: Collins's "Historical Collections."]
On this point of policy it deserves to be remarked, that however it
might strengthen the personal influence of the sovereign to enroll
amongst the menial servants of the crown gentlemen of influence and
property, it is chiefly perhaps to this practice that we ought to impute
that baseness of servility which infected, with scarcely one honorable
exception, the public characters of the reign of Elizabeth.
On July 17th the queen set out on the first of those royal _progresses_
which form so striking a feature in the domestic history of her reign.
In them, as in most of the recreations in which she at any time indulged
herself, Elizabeth sought to unite political utilities with the
gratification of her taste for magnificence, and especially for
admiration. It has also been surmised, that she was not inattentive to
the savings occasioned to her privy purse by maintaining her household
for several weeks in every year at the expense of her nobles, or of the
towns through which she passed; and it must be admitted that more than
one disgraceful instance might be pointed out, of a great man obliged to
purchase the continuance or restoration of her favor by soliciting the
almost ruinous honor of a royal visit. On the whole, however, her
deportment on these occasions warrants the conclusion, that an earnest
and constant desire of popularity was her principal motive for
persevering to the latest period of her life to encounter the fatigue of
these frequent journeys, and of the acts of public representation which
they imposed upon her.
"In her progress," says an acute and lively delineator of her character,
"she was most easy to be approached; private persons and magistrates,
men and women, country-people and children, came joyfully and without
any fear to wait upon her and see her. Her ears were then open to the
complaints of the afflicted and of those that had been any way injured.
She would not suffer the meanest of her people to be shut out from the
places where she resided, but the greatest and the least were then in a
manner levelled. She took with her own hand, and read with the greatest
goodness, the petitions of the meanest rustics. And she would frequently
assure them that she would take a particular care of their affairs, and
she would ever be as good as her word. She was never seen angry with
the most unseasonable or uncourtly approach; she was never offended with
the most impudent or importunate petitioner. Nor was there any thing in
the whole course of her reign that more won the hearts of the people
than this her wonderful facility, condescension, and the sweetness and
pleasantness with which she entertained all that came to her[45]."
[Note 45: Bohun's "Character of Queen Elizabeth."]
The first stage of the queen's progress was to Dartford in Kent, where
Henry VIII., whose profusion in the article of royal residences was
extreme, had fitted up a dissolved priory as a palace for himself and
his successors. Elizabeth kept this mansion in her own hands during the
whole of her reign, and once more, after an interval of several years,
is recorded to have passed two days under its roof. James I. granted it
to the earl of Salisbury: the lords Darcy were afterwards its owners.
The embattled gatehouse with an adjoining wing, all that remains in
habitable condition, are at the present time occupied as a farm house;
while foundations of walls running along the neighbouring fields to a
considerable distance, alone attest the magnitude, and leave to be
imagined the splendor, of the ancient edifice. Such is at this day the
common fate of the castles of our ancient barons, the mansions of our
nobles of a following age, and the palaces of the Plantagenets, the
Tudors, and the Stuarts!
From Dartford she proceeded to Cobham Hall,--an exception to the general
rule,--for this venerable mansion is at present the noble seat of the
earl of Darnley; and though the centre has been rebuilt in a more modern
style, the wings remain untouched, and in one of them the apartment
occupied by the queen on this visit is still pointed out to the
stranger. She was here sumptuously entertained by William lord Cobham, a
nobleman who enjoyed a considerable share of her favor, and who, after
acquitting himself to her satisfaction in an embassy to the
Low-Countries, was rewarded with the garter and the place of a
privy-councillor. He was however a person of no conspicuous ability, and
his wealth and his loyalty appear to have been his principal titles of
merit.
Eltham was her next stage; an ancient palace frequently commemorated in
the history of our early kings as the scene of rude magnificence and
boundless hospitality. In 1270 Henry III. kept a grand Christmas at
Ealdham palace,--so it was then called. A son of Edward II. was named
John of Eltham, from its being the place of his birth.
Edward III. twice held his parliament in its capacious hall. It was
repaired at great cost by Edward IV., who made it a frequent place of
residence; but Henry VIII. began to neglect it for Greenwich, and
Elizabeth was the last sovereign by whom it was visited.
Its hall, 100 feet in length, with a beautifully carved roof resembling
that of Westminster-hall and windows adorned with all the elegance of
gothic tracery, is still in being, and admirably serves the purposes of
a barn and granary.
Elizabeth soon quitted this seat of antique grandeur to contemplate the
gay magnificence of Nonsuch, regarded as the triumph of her father's
taste and the masterpiece of all the decorative arts. This stately
edifice, of which not a vestige now remains, was situated near Ewel in
Surry, and commanded from its lofty turrets extensive views of the
surrounding country.
It was built round two courts, an outer and an inner one, both very
spacious; and the entrance to each was by a square gatehouse highly
ornamented, embattled, and having turrets at the four corners. These
gatehouses were of stone, as was the lower story of the palace itself;
but the upper one was of wood, "richly adorned and set forth and
garnished with variety of statues, pictures, and other antic forms of
excellent art and workmanship, and of no small cost:" all which
ornaments, it seems, were made of _rye dough_. In modern language the
"pictures" would probably be called basso-relievos. From the eastern and
western angles of the inner court rose two slender turrets five stories
high, with lanthorns on the top, which were leaded and surrounded with
wooden balustrades. These towers of observation, from which the two
parks attached to the palace and a wide expanse of champaign country
beyond might be surveyed as in a map, were celebrated as the peculiar
boast of Nonsuch.
Henry was prevented by death from beholding the completion of this gaudy
structure, and queen Mary had it in contemplation to pull it down to
save further charges; but the earl of Arundel, "for the love and honor
he bare to his old master," purchased the place, and finished it
according to the original design. It was to this splendid nobleman that
the visit of the queen was paid. He received her with the utmost
magnificence. On Sunday night a banquet, a mask, and a concert were the
entertainments: the next day she witnessed a course from a standing made
for her in the park, and "the children of Paul's" performed a play;
after which a costly banquet was served up in gilt dishes. On her
majesty's departure her noble host further presented her with a cupboard
of plate. The earl of Arundel was wealthy, munificent, and one of the
finest courtiers of his day: but it must not be imagined that even by
him such extraordinary cost and pains would have been lavished upon his
illustrious guest as a pure and simple homage of that sentimental
loyalty which feels its utmost efforts overpaid by their acceptance. He
looked in fact to a high and splendid recompense,--one which as yet
perhaps he dared not name, but which the sagacity of his royal mistress
would, as he flattered himself, be neither tardy nor reluctant to
divine.
The death of Henry II. of France, which occurred during the summer of
this year, gave occasion to a splendid ceremony in St. Paul's cathedral,
which was rendered remarkable by some circumstances connected with the
late change of religion. This was the performance of his obsequies, then
a customary tribute among the princes of Europe to the memory of each
other; which Elizabeth therefore would by no means omit, though the
custom was so intimately connected with doctrines and practices
characteristic of the Romish church, that it was difficult to divest it,
in the judgement of a protestant people, of the character of a
superstitious observance. A hearse magnificently adorned with the
banners and scutcheons of the deceased was placed in the church; a great
train of lords and gentlemen attended as mourners; and all the
ceremonies of a real funeral were duly performed, not excepting the
offering at the altar of money, originally designed, without doubt, for
the purchase of masses for the dead. The herald, however, was ordered to
substitute other words in place of the ancient request to all present to
pray for the soul of the departed; and several reformations were made in
the service, and in the communion with which this stately piece of
pageantry concluded.
In the month of December was interred with much ceremony in Westminster
Abbey Frances duchess-dowager of Suffolk, grandaughter to Henry VII.
After the tragical catastrophe of her misguided husband and of lady Jane
Grey her eldest daughter, the duchess was suffered to remain in
unmolested privacy, and she had since rendered herself utterly
insignificant, not to say contemptible, by an obscure marriage with one
Stoke, a young man who was her master of the horse. There is a
tradition, that on Elizabeth's exclaiming with surprise and indignation
when the news of this connexion reached her ears, "What, hath she
married her horse keeper?" Cecil replied, "Yes, madam, and she says
your majesty would like to do so too;" lord Robert Dudley then filling
the office of master of the horse to the queen.
The impolicy or inutility of sumptuary laws was not in this age
acknowledged. A proclamation therefore was issued in October 1559 to
check that prevalent excess in apparel which was felt as a serious evil
at this period, when the manufactures of England were in so rude a state
that almost every article for the use of the higher classes was imported
from Flanders, France, or Italy, in exchange for the raw commodities of
the country, or perhaps for money.
The invectives of divines, in various ages of the Christian church, have
placed upon lasting record some transient follies which would otherwise
have sunk into oblivion, and the sermons of bishop Pilkington, a warm
polemic of this time, may be quoted as a kind of commentary on the
proclamation. He reproves "fine-fingered rufflers, with their sables
about their necks, corked slippers, trimmed buskins, and warm
mittons."--"These tender Parnels," he says, "must have one gown for the
day, another for the night; one long, another short; one for winter,
another for summer. One furred through, another but faced: one for the
work-day, another for the holiday. One of this color, another of that.
One of cloth, another of silk, or damask. Change of apparel; one afore
dinner, another at after: one of Spanish fashion, another of Turkey. And
to be brief, never content with enough, but always devising new fashions
and strange. Yea a ruffian will have more in his ruff and his hose than
he should spend in a year. He which ought to go in a russet coat,
spends as much on apparel for him and his wife, as his father would have
kept a good house with."
The costly furs here mentioned had probably become fashionable since a
direct intercourse had been opened in the last reign with Russia, from
which country ambassadors had arrived, whose barbaric splendor
astonished the eyes of the good people of London. The affectation of
wearing by turns the costume of all the nations of Europe, with which
the queen herself was not a little infected, may be traced partly to the
practice of importing articles of dress from those nations, and that of
employing foreign tailors in preference to native ones, and partly to
the taste for travelling, which since the revival of letters had become
laudably prevalent among the young nobility and gentry of England. That
more in proportion was expended on the elegant luxuries of dress, and
less on the coarser indulgences of the table, ought rather to have been
considered as a desirable approach to refinement of manners than a
legitimate subject of censure.
An act of parliament was passed in this year subjecting the use of
enchantment and witchcraft to the pains of felony. The malcontent
catholics, it seems, were accused of employing practices of this nature;
their predictions of her majesty's death had given uneasiness to
government by encouraging plots against her government; and it was
feared, "by many good and sober men," that these dealers in the black
art might even bewitch the queen herself. That it was the learned bishop
Jewel who had led the way in inspiring these superstitious terrors, to
which religious animosities lent additional violence, may fairly be
inferred from the following passage of a discourse which was delivered
by him in the queen's presence the year before.... "Witches and
sorcerers within these last few years are marvellously increased within
your grace's realm. These eyes have seen most evident and manifest marks
of their wickedness. Your grace's subjects pine away even unto the
death; their color fadeth, their flesh rotteth, their speech is
benumbed, their senses are bereft. Wherefore your poor subjects' most
humble petition to your highness is, that the laws touching such
malefactors may be put in due execution. For the shoal of them is great,
their doing horrible, their malice intolerable, the examples most
miserable. And I pray God they never practise further than upon the
subject."
CHAPTER XI.
1560.
Successful campaign in Scotland.--Embassy of viscount Montacute to
Spain--of sir T. Chaloner to the Emperor.--Account of Chaloner.--Letter
of his respecting Dudley and the queen.--Dudley loses his
wife.--Mysterious manner of her death.--Suspicion cast upon her
husband.--Dudley and several other courtiers aspire to the hand of their
sovereign.--Tournaments in her honor.--Impresses.--Sir W.
Pickering.--Rivalry of Arundel and Dudley.
The accession of Francis II., husband to the queen of Scots, to the
French throne had renewed the dangers of Elizabeth from the hostility of
France and of Scotland; and in the politic resolution of removing from
her own territory to that of her enemies the seat of a war which she saw
to be inevitable, she levied a strong army and sent it under the command
of the duke of Norfolk and lord Grey de Wilton to the frontiers of
Scotland. She also entered into a close connexion with the protestant
party in that country, who were already in arms against the queen-regent
and her French auxiliaries. Success attended this well-planned
expedition, and at the end of a single campaign Elizabeth was able to
terminate the war by the treaty of Edinburgh; a convention the terms of
which were such as effectually to secure her from all fear of future
molestation in this quarter.
During the period of these hostilities, however, her situation was an
anxious one. It was greatly to be feared that the emperor and the king
of Spain, forgetting in their zeal for the catholic church the habitual
enmity of the house of Austria against that of Bourbon, would make
common cause with France against a sovereign who now stood forth the
avowed protectress of protestantism; and such a combination of the great
powers of Europe, seconded by a large catholic party at home, England
was by no means in a condition to withstand. By skilful negotiation it
seemed possible to avert these evils; and Elizabeth, by her selection of
diplomatic agents on this important occasion, gave striking evidence of
her superior judgement.
To plead her cause with the king of Spain, she dispatched Anthony Browne
viscount Montacute; a nobleman who, to the general recommendation of
wisdom and experience in public affairs, added the peculiar one, for
this service, of a zealous attachment to the Romish faith, proved by his
determined opposition in the house of lords to the bill of uniformity
lately carried by a great majority. The explanations and arguments of
the viscount prevailed so far with Philip, that he ordered his
ambassador at Rome to oppose the endeavours of the French court to
prevail on the pope to fulminate his ecclesiastical censures against
Elizabeth. It was found impracticable, however, to bring him to terms of
cordial amity with a heretic sovereign whose principles he both detested
and dreaded; and by returning, some time after, the decorations of the
order of the garter, he distinctly intimated to the queen, that motives
of policy alone restrained him from becoming her open enemy.
For ambassador to the emperor she made choice, at the recommendation
probably of Cecil, of his relation and beloved friend sir Thomas
Chaloner the elder, a statesman, a soldier, and a man of letters; and in
these three characters, so rarely united, one of the distinguished
ornaments of his age. He was born in 1515 of a good family in Wales,
and, being early sent to Cambridge, became known as a very elegant Latin
poet, and generally as a young man of the most promising talents. After
a short residence at court, his merit caused him to be selected to
attend into Germany sir Henry Knevet the English ambassador, with a view
to his qualifying himself for future diplomatic employment. At the court
of Charles V. he was received with extraordinary favor; and after
waiting upon that monarch, in several of his journeys, he was at length
induced, by admiration of his character, to accompany him as a volunteer
in his rash expedition against Algiers. He was shipwrecked in the storm
which almost destroyed the fleet, and only escaped drowning by catching
in his mouth, as he was struggling with the waves, a cable, by which he
was drawn up into a ship with the loss of several of his teeth.
Returning home, he was made clerk of the council, which office he held
during the remainder of Henry's reign. Early in the next he was
distinguished by the protector, and, having signalized his valor in the
battle of Pinkey, was knighted by him on the field. The fall of his
patron put a stop to his advancement; but he solaced himself under this
reverse by the cultivation of literature, and of friendship with such
men as Cook, Smith, Cheke, and Cecil. The strictness of his protestant
principles rendered his situation under the reign of Mary both
disagreeable and hazardous, and he generously added to its perils by his
strenuous exertions in behalf of the unfortunate Cheke; but the services
which he had rendered in Edward's time to many of the oppressed
catholics now interested their gratitude in his protection, and were
thus the means of preserving him unhurt for better times.
Soon after his return from his embassy to the emperor Ferdinand, we find
him engaged in a very perplexing and disagreeable mission to the
unfriendly court of Philip II., where the mortifications which he
encountered, joined to the insalubrity of the climate, so impaired his
health that he found himself obliged to solicit his recall, which he did
in an Ovidian elegy addressed to the queen. The petition of the poet was
granted, but too late; he sunk under a lingering malady in October 1565,
a few months after his return.
The poignant grief of Cecil for his loss found its best alleviation in
the exemplary performance of all the duties of surviving friendship. He
officiated as chief mourner at his funeral, and superintended with
solicitude truly paternal the education of his son, Thomas Chaloner the
younger, afterwards a distinguished character. By his encouragement, the
Latin poems of his friend, chiefly consisting of epitaphs and panegyrics
on his most celebrated contemporaries, were collected and published;
and it was under his patronage, and prefaced by a Latin poem from his
pen in praise of the author, that a new and complete edition appeared of
the principal work of this accomplished person;--a tractate "on the
right ordering of the English republic," also in Latin.
Sir Thomas Chaloner was the first ambassador named by Elizabeth; a
distinction of which he proved himself highly deserving. Wisdom and
integrity he was already known to possess; and in his negotiations with
the imperial court, where it was his business to draw the bonds of amity
as close as should be found practicable without pledging his mistress to
the acceptance of the hand of the archduke Charles, he also manifested a
degree of skill and dexterity which drew forth the warmest commendations
from Elizabeth herself. His conduct, she said, had far exceeded all her
expectations of his prudence and abilities.
This testimony may be allowed to give additional weight to his opinion
on a point of great delicacy in the personal conduct of her majesty, as
well as on some more general questions of policy, expressed in a
postscript to one of his official letters to secretary Cecil. The
letter, it should be observed, was written near the close of the year
1559, when the favor of the queen to Dudley had first become a subject
of general remark, and before all hopes were lost of her finally closing
with the proposals of the archduke.
"I assure you, sir, these folks are broad-mouthed where I spake of one
too much in favor, as they esteem. I think ye guess whom they named; if
ye do not, I will upon my next letters write further. To tell you what
I conceive; as I count the slander most false, so a young princess
cannot be too wary what countenance or familiar demonstration she
maketh, more to one than another. I judge no man's service in the realm
worth the entertainment with such a tale of obloquy, or occasion of
speech to such men as of evil will are ready to find faults. This delay
of ripe time for marriage, besides the loss of the realm (for without
posterity of her highness what hope is left unto us?) ministereth matter
to these leud tongues to descant upon, and breedeth contempt. I would I
had but one hour's talk with you. Think if I trusted not your good
nature, I would not write thus much; which nevertheless I humbly pray
you to reserve as written to yourself.
"Consider how ye deal now in the emperor's matter: much dependeth on it.
Here they hang in expectation as men desirous it should go forward, but
yet they have small hope: In mine opinion (be it said to you only) the
affinity is great and honorable: The amity necessary to stop and cool
many enterprises. Ye need not fear his greatness should overrule you; he
is not a Philip, but better for us than a Philip. Let the time work for
Scotland as God will, for sure the French, I believe, shall never long
enjoy them: and when we be stronger and more ready, we may proceed with
that, that is yet unripe. The time itself will work, when our great
neighbours fall out next. In the mean time settle we things begun; and
let us arm and fortify our frontiers." &c.[46]
[Note 46: "Burleigh Papers," by Haynes, p. 212.]
Sufficient evidence remains that the sentiments of Cecil respecting the
queen's behaviour to Dudley coincided with those of his friend, and that
fears for her reputation gave additional urgency about this period to
those pleadings in favor of matrimony which her council were doomed to
press upon her attention so often and so much in vain. But a
circumstance occurred soon after which totally changed the nature of
their apprehensions respecting her future conduct, and rendered her
anticipated choice of a husband no longer an object of hope and joy, but
of general dissatisfaction and alarm.
Just when the whispered scandal of the court had apprized him how
obvious to all beholders the partiality of his sovereign had
become,--just when her rejection of the proposals of so many foreign
princes had confirmed the suspicion that her heart had given itself at
home,--just, in short, when every thing conspired to sanction hopes
which under any other circumstances would have appeared no less
visionary than presumptuous,--at the very juncture most favorable to his
ambition, but most perilous to his reputation, lord Robert Dudley lost
his wife, and by a fate equally sudden and mysterious.
This unfortunate lady had been sent by her husband, under the conduct of
sir Richard Verney, one of his retainers,--but for what reason or under
what pretext does not appear,--to Cumnor House in Berkshire, a solitary
mansion inhabited by Anthony Foster, also a dependent of Dudley's and
bound to him by particular obligations. Here she soon after met with her
death; and Verney and Foster, who appear to have been alone in the
house with her, gave out that it happened by an accidental fall down
stairs. But this account, from various causes, gained so little credit
in the neighbourhood, that reports of the most sinister import were
quickly propagated. These discourses soon reached the ears of Thomas
Lever, a prebendary of Coventry and a very conscientious person, who
immediately addressed to the secretaries of state an earnest letter,
still extant, beseeching them to cause strict inquiry to be made into
the case, as it was commonly believed that the lady had been murdered:
but he mentioned no particular grounds of this belief, and it cannot now
be ascertained whether any steps were taken in consequence of his
application. If there were, they certainly produced no satisfactory
explanation of the circumstance; for not only the popular voice, which
was ever hostile to Dudley, continued to accuse him as the contriver of
her fate, but Cecil himself, in a memorandum drawn up some years after
of reasons against the queen's making him her husband, mentions among
other objections, "that he is infamed by the death of his wife."
Whether the thorough investigation of this matter was evaded by the
artifices of Dudley, or whether his enemies, finding it impracticable to
bring the crime home to him, found it more advisable voluntarily to drop
the inquiry, certain it is, that the queen was never brought in any
manner to take cognisance of the affair, and that the credit of Dudley
continued as high with her as ever. But in the opinion of the country
the favorite passed ever after for a dark designer, capable of
perpetrating any secret villainy in furtherance of his designs, and
skilful enough to conceal his atrocity under a cloak of artifice and
hypocrisy impervious to the partial eyes of his royal mistress, though
penetrated by all the world besides. This idea of his character caused
him afterwards to be accused of practising against the lives of several
other persons who were observed to perish opportunely for his purposes.
Each of these charges will be particularly examined in its proper place;
but it ought here to be observed, that not one of them appears to be
supported by so many circumstances of probability as the first; and even
in support of this, no direct evidence has ever been adduced.
Under all the circumstances of his situation, Dudley could not venture
as yet openly to declare himself the suitor of his sovereign; but she
doubtless knew how to interpret both the vehemence of his opposition to
the pretensions of the archduke, and the equal vehemence with which
those pretensions were supported by an opposite party in her council, of
which the earl of Sussex was the head.
Few could yet be persuaded that the avowed determination of the queen in
favor of the single state would prove unalterable: most therefore who
observed her averseness to a foreign connexion believed that she was
secretly meditating to honor with her hand some subject of her own, who
could never have a separate interest from that of his country, and whose
gratitude for the splendid distinction would secure to her the
possession of his lasting attachment.
This idea long served to animate the assiduities of her nobles and
courtiers, and two or three besides Dudley were bold enough to publish
their pretensions. Secret hopes or wishes were cherished in the bosoms
of others; and it thus became a fashion to accost her in language where
the passionate homage of the lover mingled with the base adulation of
the menial. Her personal vanity, triumphant over her good sense and her
perceptions of regal dignity, forbade her to discourage a style of
address equally disgraceful to those who employed and to her who
permitted it; and it was this unfortunate habit of receiving, and at
length requiring, a species of flattery which became every year more
grossly preposterous, which depraved by degrees her taste, infected her
whole disposition, and frequently lent to the wisest sovereign of Europe
the disgusting affectation of a heroine of French romance.
Tilts and tournaments were still the favorite amusements of all the
courts of Europe; and it was in these splendid exhibitions that the
rival courtiers of Elizabeth found the happiest occasions of displaying
their magnificence, giving proof of their courage and agility, and at
the same time insinuating, by a variety of ingenious devices, their
hopes and fears, their amorous pains, and their profound devotedness to
her service.
In the purer ages of chivalry, no other cognisances on shields were
adopted, either in war or in these games which were its image, than the
armorial bearings which each warrior had derived from his ancestors, or
solemnly received at the hands of the heralds before he entered on his
first campaign. But as the spirit of the original institution declined,
and the French fashion of gallantry began to be engrafted upon it, an
innovation had taken place in this matter, which is thus commemorated
and deplored by the worthy Camden, Clarencieux king-at-arms, who treats
the subject with a minuteness and solemnity truly professional.
"Whoever," says he, "would note the manners of our progenitors,--in
wearing their coat-armour over their harness, and bearing their arms in
their shields, their banners and pennons, and in what formal manner they
were made bannerets, and had license to rear their banner of arms, which
they presented rolled up, unto the prince, who unfolded and re-delivered
it with happy wishes; I doubt not but he will judge that our ancestors
were as valiant and gallant as they have been since they left off their
arms and used the colors and curtains of their mistress' bed instead of
them." The same author afterwards observes, that these fopperies, as
well as the adoption of _impresses_, first prevailed in the expedition
of Charles VIII. against Naples in 1494, and that it was about the
beginning of the reign of Henry VIII. that the English wits first
thought of imitating the French and Italians in the invention of these
devices.
An _impress_, it seems, was an emblematical device assumed at the will
of the bearer, and illustrated by a suitable motto; whereas the coat of
arms had either no motto, or none appropriate. Of this nature therefore
was the representation of an English archer, with the words "Cui adhaereo
praeest" (He prevails to whom I adhere), used by Henry VIII. at his
meeting with Charles and Francis.
Elizabeth delighted in these whimsical inventions. Camden says that she
"used upon different occasions so many heroical devices as would require
a volume," but most commonly a sieve without a word. Her favorite mottos
were "Video taceo" (I see and am silent), and "Semper eadem" (Always the
same). Thus patronized, the use of impresses became general. Scarcely a
public character of that age, whether statesman, courtier, scholar, or
soldier, was unprovided with some distinction of this nature; and at
tournaments in particular, the combatants all vied with each other in
the invention of occasional devices, sometimes quaintly, sometimes
elegantly, expressive of their situation or sentiments, and for the most
part conveying some allusion at once gallant and loyal.
It may be worth while to cite a few of the most remarkable of these out
of a considerable number preserved by Camden. The prevalence amongst
them of astronomical emblems is worthy of observation, as indicative of
that general belief of the age in the delusions of judicial astrology,
which rendered its terms familiar alike to the learned, the great, and
the fair.
A dial with the sun setting, "Occasu desines esse" (Thy being ceases
with its setting). The sun shining on a bush, "Si deseris pereo"
(Forsake me, and I perish). The sun reflecting his rays from the bearer,
"Quousque avertes" (How long wilt thou avert thy face)? Venus in a
cloud, "Salva me, Domina" (Mistress, save me). The letter I, "Omnia ex
uno" (All things from one). A fallow field, "At quando messis" (When
will be the harvest)? The full moon in heaven, "Quid sine te coelum"
(What is heaven without thee)? Cynthia, it should be observed, was a
favorite fancy-name of the queen's; she was also designated occasionally
by that of Astraea, whence the following devices. A man hovering in the
air, "Feror ad Astraeam" (I am borne to Astraea). The zodiac with Virgo
rising, "Jam redit et Virgo" (The Maid returns); and a zodiac with no
characters but those of Leo and Virgo, "His ego praesidiis" (With these
to friend). A star, "Mihi vita Spica Virginis" (My life is in Spica
Virginis)--a star in the left hand of Virgo so called: here the allusion
was probably double; to the queen, and to the horoscope of the bearer.
The twelve houses of heaven with neither sign nor planet therein,
"Dispone" (Dispose). A white shield, "Fatum inscribat Eliza" (Eliza
writes my fate). An eye in a heart, "Vulnus alo" (I feed the wound). A
ship sinking and the rainbow appearing, "Quid tu si pereo" (To what
avail if I perish)? As the rainbow is an emblem seen in several
portraits of the queen, this device probably reproaches some tardy and
ineffectual token of her favor. The sun shining on a withered tree which
blooms again, "His radiis rediviva viresco" (These rays revive me). A
pair of scales, fire in one, smoke in the other, "Ponderare errare" (To
weigh is to err).
At one tilt were borne all the following devices, which Camden
particularly recommends to the notice and interpretation of the reader.
Many flies about a candle, "Sic splendidiora petuntur" ("Thus brighter
things are sought). Drops falling into a fire, "Tamen non extinguenda"
(Yet not to be extinguished). The sun, partly clouded over, casting its
rays upon a star, "Tantum quantum" (As much as is vouchsafed). A folded
letter, "Lege et relege"[47] (Read and reread).
[Note 47: See Camden's "Remains."]
It would have increased our interest in these very significant
impresses, if our author could have informed us who were the respective
bearers. Perhaps conjecture would not err in ascribing one of the most
expressive to sir William Pickering, a gentleman whose name has been
handed down to posterity as an avowed pretender to the royal marriage.
That a person illustrious neither by rank nor ancestry, and so little
known to fame that no other mention of him occurs in the history of the
age, should ever have been named amongst the suitors of his sovereign,
is a circumstance which must excite more curiosity than the scanty
biographical records of the time will be found capable of satisfying. A
single paragraph of Camden's Annals seems to contain nearly all that can
now be learned of a man once so remarkable.
"Nor were lovers wanting at home, who deluded themselv |
