Life of Elizabeth I (37 page)

According to Elizabeth, her cousin had bombarded her 'with frequent letters, tears and messages', promising 'She would never seek nor use any means to be helped but by us, nor would attempt anything in our realm but by our advice.' Instead, she had intrigued behind Elizabeth's back to marry Norfolk. Contrary to what Mary's supporters had been spreading about, Elizabeth had 'never thought' of naming Mary as her successor. She was 'right sorry, yea, half ashamed, to have been thus misused by her, whom we have so benefited by saving of her life'. Norris should emphasise that Mary's complaints about the conditions she was held under were simply untrue.

In November, having learned of Norfolk's fate and received a promise of Spanish aid, the northern earls mobilised their rebel forces, numbering over 2500 men, and marched southwards, sacking Durham Cathedral and moving on towards their ultimate goal, Tutbury, where Mary Stuart was held - 'her whom the world believed to be the hidden 
cause of these troubles'. Elizabeth shared this view, and for the first time gave serious consideration to her councillors' exhortations that Mary be executed. She even allowed them to draw up a death warrant to be used if her cousin was discovered to be behind the rebellion, or in the event of its appearing likely to succeed.

There were simultaneous smaller risings in other northern districts. On 25 November, at the Queen's command, Mary was removed to Coventry in the Protestant Midlands, and the Earl of Huntingdon was appointed to assist Shrewsbury, who was ill, in his task of guarding her. All ports were closed and the militia placed on alert. Windsor was prepared for a siege.

Realising they had no hope of reaching Mary at Coventry, the rebel earls lost heart, for her liberation had been central to their plans. By 20 December the rising had collapsed, and the rebels were fleeing in all directions in order to escape the avenging royal army, 28,000 strong, sent northwards, under the command of Sussex at Elizabeth's order. Sussex pursued the leaders, Northumberland and Westmorland to the Scottish border, whence they escaped into Scotland. 'The vermin are fled to foreign cover,' observed Cecil on Christmas Day.

During the rising Elizabeth had displayed to the world a cool, fearless front, remaining at Windsor with Pembroke, now restored to favour and deputed to guard her in the event of a foreign invasion, and Leicester, who could lend her moral support. Her cousin, Lord Hunsdon, had been sent north to provide military backing to Sussex. When the rebels retreated and the danger was past, Leicester went home to Kenilworth for Christmas.

Perhaps the most worrying aspect of the Northern Rising had been Philip's willingness to support it, which demonstrated just how hostile he had become towards Elizabeth. He had also instructed Alva to send Mary Stuart 10,000 ducats. Urged on by Cecil, Elizabeth determined to show her subjects that any rebellion against her authority would be punished with the utmost severity. 'You are to proceed thereunto, for the terror of others, with expedition,' she commanded Sussex. 'Spare no offenders. We are in nothing moved to spare them.'

The Earl wasted no time in rounding up the lesser rebels and making an example of them. Reprisals were unusually savage, and no village was to be without at least one execution, 'the bodies to remain till they fall to pieces where they hang'. By 4 February 1570, between 600 and 750 commoners had been hanged and two hundred gentry had been deprived of their estates and goods, which were distributed to loyal noblemen; the Queen, however, thought it unfair that those who had helped to plan the revolt had escaped with their lives, while lesser men suffered the ultimate penalty.

Norfolk was degraded from the Order of the Garter, his achievements being removed from his stall at Windsor and, as custom demanded, kicked into the moat. From his prison cell, the Duke wrote to the Queen: 'Now I see how unpleasant this matter of the Scots Queen is to Your Majesty, I never intend to deal further herein.'

As for the ringleaders, Westmorland fled into exile in Flanders with the Countess of Northumberland, who deserved, according to Elizabeth, to be burnt at the stake for her involvement in the rebellion. The Earl of Northumberland managed to evade capture for several months, but in August 1570 he was captured by the Scots, handed over to the English, and put to death in York. Plans to execute Mary Stuart were quietly abandoned.

Yet no sooner had one northern rising been quelled, than another erupted, led by the powerful Lord Dacre, who was resentful of the erosion of his territorial influence in the north. This was ferociously suppressed within a week by Lord Hunsdon, who was afterwards warmly congratulated by the Queen upon his victory: 'I doubt much, my Harry', [she wrote], 'whether the victory given me more joyed me, or that you were by God appointed the instrument of my glory, and I assure you, for my country's good, the first might suffice, but for my heart's contentation, the second more pleased me. Your loving kinswoman, Elizabeth R.'

Elizabeth's position was now very much stronger, and in a happier frame of mind on 23 January 1570, she opened the Royal Exchange in London, built by Sir Thomas Gresham as a central trading place for the City's merchants and bankers. John Stow recorded: 'The Queen's Majesty, attended with her nobility, came from her house on the Strand, called Somerset House, and entered the City by Temple Bar, through Fleet Street, Cheapside, and so by the north side of the bourse [Exchange], through Threadneedle Street, to Sir Thomas Gresham's in Bishopsgate Street, where she dined. After dinner, Her Majesty, returning through Cornhill, entered the bourse on the south side, and after she had visited every part thereof above the ground, she caused the same bourse by an herald and trumpet to be proclaimed the Royal Exchange.'

On that same day, the Regent Moray was assassinated at Linlithgow by rival lords who feared he had ambitions to be king. When Elizabeth heard the news she shut herself in her chamber to contemplate the awful prospect of political turmoil north of the border. There was indeed chaos in Scotland, with William Maitland forming a faction dedicated to restoring Queen Mary. When news of this reached England, Mary rejoiced and tried to contact her son, James VI, but Elizabeth took steps 
to prevent her from doing so, realising that the majority of the Scots did not want their Queen back.

However, the kings of France and Spain were demanding that she seize this opportunity to restore Mary to the Scottish throne. In view of Mary's involvement in the recent plots and risings, Elizabeth would only consider it on the tightest conditions, the chief of which was Mary's long-desired ratification of the Treaty of Edinburgh.

The continuing problem of the Queen of Scots was greatly exacerbated when, on 25 February 1570, Pope Pills V, inspired by outdated reports of the Northern Rising, impulsively published a bull,
'Regnans in Excelsis',
excommunicating Elizabeth, 'the pretended Queen of England, the serpent of wickedness'. The bull deprived her of her kingdom, absolved all true Catholics from their allegiance to her, and extended the anathema to all who continued to support her. This was effectively an incitement to Elizabeth's subjects and to foreign princes to rise against her in what would amount to a holy crusade. It also actively encouraged Mary Stuart's supporters to set her up in Elizabeth's place. Most sinister of all, it subverted the loyalty of Elizabeth's Catholic subjects and made every one of them a potential traitor to be regarded with suspicion. From now on, each one of them would face an agonising choice of loyalties, for it would no longer be possible to compromise on matters of conscience.

This led, in turn, to the hardening of attitudes on the part of English Protestants, who became more patriotic and ever more protective towards their Queen, their zealous loyalty prompting them to press increasingly for Mary Stuart's execution and for tougher laws against Catholics. The bull's ultimate effect was to turn Catholicism into a political rather than a religious issue in England, and because of this it failed in its purpose. Most English people ignored it; a man who nailed it to the door of the Bishop of London's palace in St Paul's Churchyard was arrested, tortured and executed. In the north, where the bull might once have been well received, Catholic power had been effectively crushed.

Nor did the great Catholic monarchies of Spain and France hasten to invade England. On the contrary, both Philip II and Charles IX angrily condemned the Pope for taking such hasty action without consulting them first. Elizabeth herself announced defiantly that no ship of Peter would ever enter any of her ports; otherwise she was dismissive, and the mainly Protestant Londoners echoed her feelings when they described it as 'a vain crack of words that made a noise only'.

Elizabeth had a concept of Church and State as equal partners in one body politic, and considered it her duty as sovereign to deal with all matters affecting that body politic on a political basis. After the bull, her 
policy was to treat Catholic intrigues as treason, or crimes against the state, rather than as heresy. Those Catholics who were condemned were not to be considered as martyrs for their faith, but traitors to their country.

The Queen had never demonstrated any personal animosity towards Catholics in general. So long as they conformed outwardly, she was not interested in their private beliefs. Only when those beliefs led to conspiracy would she invoke the law.

It was at this time that Cecil began organising an efficient espionage network that could detect conspirators, for there was a minority of English Catholics who were prepared to risk death for their loyalty to the Pope and for the woman they believed to be their true queen. These people referred to Mary as 'the Queen' and to Elizabeth as 'the Usurper', and believed it their duty to depose her.

In late April, Elizabeth's Council warned her that, if she forced Mary's restoration in Scotland, she would never feel safe in her kingdom, but the Queen refused to listen, having been threatened with war by the French if she did not keep her word. Soon afterwards, she sent Mary a list of stringent conditions that must be agreed to before she would consider helping her to regain her throne. Not only had Mary to ratify the Treaty of Edinburgh, but she also had to send her son James to England as a hostage for her good behaviour. Cecil warned the Queen that she was endangering her own person, but this provoked such a violent storm of tears and temper that the Secretary backed off. Sir Nicholas Bacon faced a similar tantrum when he insisted that it would be madness to contemplate freeing Mary. These outbursts appear, however, to have been staged for the benefit of the French ambassador.

Throughout the summer, to placate the French, Elizabeth maintained that she was working for Mary's restoration, when in fact she was employing her usual delaying tactics to keep Mary safely under lock and key. No one could guess her true feelings on the matter. When Leicester suggested that Mary be restored with only limited powers, the Queen accused him of being too friendly towards the Queen of Scots, whereupon he left court in a temper. But the spat was soon over, and he was back and reconciled with Elizabeth within days.

The Queen's irritability was exacerbated by the appearance of what was probably a varicose ulcer on her leg. It did not heal and she suffered a good deal of pain, but still insisted that she would go on progress as usual. Meanwhile her courtiers had to put up with her sulks and uncertain temper.

In June, as a token of goodwill, Mary sent Elizabeth a bureau with a lock engraved with a cipher used by the two Queens in the years before Mary's abdication. Fingering it, Elizabeth sighed, 'Would God that all 
things were in the same state they were in when this cipher was made betwixt us.' It was October before Mary agreed to Elizabeth's terms.

On 12 July, Lennox, Elizabeth's favoured candidate, was appointed Regent of Scotland until such time as his grandson the King came of age. The new Regent wasted no time in hanging the Catholic Archbishop Hamilton for complicity in the murder of Darnley, thus provoking more bitter feuds between the noble factions. Meanwhile, Elizabeth kept Lady Lennox at the English court as a hostage for Lennox's loyalty to herself.

Early in August, Cecil and Leicester managed to persuade the Queen that Norfolk, who was popular with the people and had been foolish rather than malicious in his offence, be taken from the Tower - where plague was rife - and placed under house arrest, on condition that he solemnly undertook never again to involve himself in the Queen of Scots's affairs. Norfolk promised, and was duly moved to his London mansion, the Charterhouse, near Smithfield.

Mary Stuart's presence in England and the recent plots and conspiracies against the Crown had lent urgency to the argument that Elizabeth should marry and produce an heir as soon as possible. The birth of a Protestant successor would go a long way towards neutralising Mary's claims, especially if the child were a son. Without that child, Elizabeth stood alone, unguarded against foreign invaders, traitors at home, and the constant fear of assassination. If she died childless, there would be no bar to Mary's succession, and all that Elizabeth had worked for would be overthrown.

Which was why, in August, although she was still 'as disgusted with marriage as ever', Elizabeth sent an envoy to the Emperor to try and revive the Habsburg marriage project. The Archduke was still single, but made it clear that he was no longer interested, and the Queen pretended indignation at his rejection of her. Shortly afterwards he married a Bavarian princess, and in later life became a fanatical persecutor of heretics until his death in 1590.

Then, in September, a new proposal of marriage arrived, this time from Charles IX's brother and heir, the nineteen-year-old Henry, Duke of Anjou. Charles and Catherine de' Medici hoped, by this project, to unite England and France in a defensive alliance against Spain. Elizabeth was interested, if only for the political advantages and much-needed friendship that prolonged negotiations with France could bring her, and Cecil began drawing up lists of the 'commodities' to be gained from the union, putting out feelers as to how serious the French were about it. To this end, he sent the fiercely Protestant Sir Francis Walsingham to Paris to act as Elizabeth's envoy.