When Mary Queen of Scots arrived in
England, without money and even without any other
clothes than those she wore, she wrote to Elizabeth,
representing herself as an innocent and injured piece
of Royalty, and entreating her assistance to oblige
her Scottish subjects to take her back again and obey
her. But, as her character was already known
in England to be a very different one from what she
made it out to be, she was told in answer that she
must first clear herself. Made uneasy by this
condition, Mary, rather than stay in England, would
have gone to Spain, or to France, or would even have
gone back to Scotland. But, as her doing either
would have been likely to trouble England afresh, it
was decided that she should be detained here.
She first came to Carlisle, and, after that, was
moved about from castle to castle, as was considered
necessary; but England she never left again.
After trying very hard to get rid
of the necessity of clearing herself, Mary, advised
by LORD HERRIES, her best friend in England, agreed
to answer the charges against her, if the Scottish
noblemen who made them would attend to maintain them
before such English noblemen as Elizabeth might appoint
for that purpose. Accordingly, such an assembly,
under the name of a conference, met, first at York,
and afterwards at Hampton Court. In its presence
Lord Lennox, Darnley’s father, openly charged
Mary with the murder of his son; and whatever Mary’s
friends may now say or write in her behalf, there
is no doubt that, when her brother Murray produced
against her a casket containing certain guilty letters
and verses which he stated to have passed between
her and Bothwell, she withdrew from the inquiry.
Consequently, it is to be supposed that she was then
considered guilty by those who had the best opportunities
of judging of the truth, and that the feeling which
afterwards arose in her behalf was a very generous
but not a very reasonable one.
However, the DUKE OF NORFOLK, an honourable
but rather weak nobleman, partly because Mary was
captivating, partly because he was ambitious, partly
because he was over-persuaded by artful plotters against
Elizabeth, conceived a strong idea that he would like
to marry the Queen of Scots though he was
a little frightened, too, by the letters in the casket.
This idea being secretly encouraged by some of the
noblemen of Elizabeth’s court, and even by the
favourite Earl of Leicester (because it was objected
to by other favourites who were his rivals), Mary
expressed her approval of it, and the King of France
and the King of Spain are supposed to have done the
same. It was not so quietly planned, though,
but that it came to Elizabeth’s ears, who warned
the Duke ’to be careful what sort of pillow
he was going to lay his head upon.’ He
made a humble reply at the time; but turned sulky
soon afterwards, and, being considered dangerous,
was sent to the Tower.
Thus, from the moment of Mary’s
coming to England she began to be the centre of plots
and miseries.
A rise of the Catholics in the north
was the next of these, and it was only checked by
many executions and much bloodshed. It was followed
by a great conspiracy of the Pope and some of the
Catholic sovereigns of Europe to depose Elizabeth,
place Mary on the throne, and restore the unreformed
religion. It is almost impossible to doubt that
Mary knew and approved of this; and the Pope himself
was so hot in the matter that he issued a bull, in
which he openly called Elizabeth the ‘pretended
Queen’ of England, excommunicated her, and excommunicated
all her subjects who should continue to obey her.
A copy of this miserable paper got into London, and
was found one morning publicly posted on the Bishop
of London’s gate. A great hue and cry
being raised, another copy was found in the chamber
of a student of Lincoln’s Inn, who confessed,
being put upon the rack, that he had received it from
one JOHN FELTON, a rich gentleman who lived across
the Thames, near Southwark. This John Felton,
being put upon the rack too, confessed that he had
posted the placard on the Bishop’s gate.
For this offence he was, within four days, taken to
St. Paul’s Churchyard, and there hanged and quartered.
As to the Pope’s bull, the people by the reformation
having thrown off the Pope, did not care much, you
may suppose, for the Pope’s throwing off them.
It was a mere dirty piece of paper, and not half
so powerful as a street ballad.
On the very day when Felton was brought
to his trial, the poor Duke of Norfolk was released.
It would have been well for him if he had kept away
from the Tower evermore, and from the snares that had
taken him there. But, even while he was in that
dismal place he corresponded with Mary, and as soon
as he was out of it, he began to plot again.
Being discovered in correspondence with the Pope,
with a view to a rising in England which should force
Elizabeth to consent to his marriage with Mary and
to repeal the laws against the Catholics, he was re-committed
to the Tower and brought to trial. He was found
guilty by the unanimous verdict of the Lords who tried
him, and was sentenced to the block.
It is very difficult to make out,
at this distance of time, and between opposite accounts,
whether Elizabeth really was a humane woman, or desired
to appear so, or was fearful of shedding the blood
of people of great name who were popular in the country.
Twice she commanded and countermanded the execution
of this Duke, and it did not take place until five
months after his trial. The scaffold was erected
on Tower Hill, and there he died like a brave man.
He refused to have his eyes bandaged, saying that
he was not at all afraid of death; and he admitted
the justice of his sentence, and was much regretted
by the people.
Although Mary had shrunk at the most
important time from disproving her guilt, she was
very careful never to do anything that would admit
it. All such proposals as were made to her by
Elizabeth for her release, required that admission
in some form or other, and therefore came to nothing.
Moreover, both women being artful and treacherous,
and neither ever trusting the other, it was not likely
that they could ever make an agreement. So,
the Parliament, aggravated by what the Pope had done,
made new and strong laws against the spreading of the
Catholic religion in England, and declared it treason
in any one to say that the Queen and her successors
were not the lawful sovereigns of England. It
would have done more than this, but for Elizabeth’s
moderation.
Since the Reformation, there had come
to be three great sects of religious people or
people who called themselves so in England;
that is to say, those who belonged to the Reformed
Church, those who belonged to the Unreformed Church,
and those who were called the Puritans, because they
said that they wanted to have everything very pure
and plain in all the Church service. These last
were for the most part an uncomfortable people, who
thought it highly meritorious to dress in a hideous
manner, talk through their noses, and oppose all harmless
enjoyments. But they were powerful too, and
very much in earnest, and they were one and all the
determined enemies of the Queen of Scots. The
Protestant feeling in England was further strengthened
by the tremendous cruelties to which Protestants were
exposed in France and in the Netherlands. Scores
of thousands of them were put to death in those countries
with every cruelty that can be imagined, and at last,
in the autumn of the year one thousand five hundred
and seventy-two, one of the greatest barbarities ever
committed in the world took place at Paris.
It is called in history, THE MASSACRE
OF SAINT BARTHOLOMEW, because it took place on Saint
Bartholomew’s Eve. The day fell on Saturday
the twenty-third of August. On that day all
the great leaders of the Protestants (who were there
called HUGUENOTS) were assembled together, for the
purpose, as was represented to them, of doing honour
to the marriage of their chief, the young King of
Navarre, with the sister of CHARLES THE NINTH:
a miserable young King who then occupied the French
throne. This dull creature was made to believe
by his mother and other fierce Catholics about him
that the Huguenots meant to take his life; and he
was persuaded to give secret orders that, on the tolling
of a great bell, they should be fallen upon by an
overpowering force of armed men, and slaughtered wherever
they could be found. When the appointed hour
was close at hand, the stupid wretch, trembling from
head to foot, was taken into a balcony by his mother
to see the atrocious work begun. The moment
the bell tolled, the murderers broke forth. During
all that night and the two next days, they broke into
the houses, fired the houses, shot and stabbed the
Protestants, men, women, and children, and flung their
bodies into the streets. They were shot at in
the streets as they passed along, and their blood
ran down the gutters. Upwards of ten thousand
Protestants were killed in Paris alone; in all France
four or five times that number. To return thanks
to Heaven for these diabolical murders, the Pope and
his train actually went in public procession at Rome,
and as if this were not shame enough for them, they
had a medal struck to commemorate the event.
But, however comfortable the wholesale murders were
to these high authorities, they had not that soothing
effect upon the doll-King. I am happy to state
that he never knew a moment’s peace afterwards;
that he was continually crying out that he saw the
Huguenots covered with blood and wounds falling dead
before him; and that he died within a year, shrieking
and yelling and raving to that degree, that if all
the Popes who had ever lived had been rolled into one,
they would not have afforded His guilty Majesty the
slightest consolation.
When the terrible news of the massacre
arrived in England, it made a powerful impression
indeed upon the people. If they began to run
a little wild against the Catholics at about this
time, this fearful reason for it, coming so soon after
the days of bloody Queen Mary, must be remembered
in their excuse. The Court was not quite so honest
as the people but perhaps it sometimes
is not. It received the French ambassador, with
all the lords and ladies dressed in deep mourning,
and keeping a profound silence. Nevertheless,
a proposal of marriage which he had made to Elizabeth
only two days before the eve of Saint Bartholomew,
on behalf of the Duke of Alençon, the French King’s
brother, a boy of seventeen, still went on; while
on the other hand, in her usual crafty way, the Queen
secretly supplied the Huguenots with money and weapons.
I must say that for a Queen who made
all those fine speeches, of which I have confessed
myself to be rather tired, about living and dying a
Maiden Queen, Elizabeth was ‘going’ to
be married pretty often. Besides always having
some English favourite or other whom she by turns encouraged
and swore at and knocked about for the
maiden Queen was very free with her fists she
held this French Duke off and on through several years.
When he at last came over to England, the marriage
articles were actually drawn up, and it was settled
that the wedding should take place in six weeks.
The Queen was then so bent upon it, that she prosecuted
a poor Puritan named STUBBS, and a poor bookseller
named PAGE, for writing and publishing a pamphlet
against it. Their right hands were chopped off
for this crime; and poor Stubbs more loyal
than I should have been myself under the circumstances immediately
pulled off his hat with his left hand, and cried,
‘God save the Queen!’ Stubbs was cruelly
treated; for the marriage never took place after all,
though the Queen pledged herself to the Duke with
a ring from her own finger. He went away, no
better than he came, when the courtship had lasted
some ten years altogether; and he died a couple of
years afterwards, mourned by Elizabeth, who appears
to have been really fond of him. It is not much
to her credit, for he was a bad enough member of a
bad family.
To return to the Catholics.
There arose two orders of priests, who were very busy
in England, and who were much dreaded. These
were the JESUITS (who were everywhere in all sorts
of disguises), and the SEMINARY PRIESTS. The
people had a great horror of the first, because they
were known to have taught that murder was lawful if
it were done with an object of which they approved;
and they had a great horror of the second, because
they came to teach the old religion, and to be the
successors of ‘Queen Mary’s priests,’
as those yet lingering in England were called, when
they should die out. The severest laws were made
against them, and were most unmercifully executed.
Those who sheltered them in their houses often suffered
heavily for what was an act of humanity; and the rack,
that cruel torture which tore men’s limbs asunder,
was constantly kept going. What these unhappy
men confessed, or what was ever confessed by any one
under that agony, must always be received with great
doubt, as it is certain that people have frequently
owned to the most absurd and impossible crimes to
escape such dreadful suffering. But I cannot
doubt it to have been proved by papers, that there
were many plots, both among the Jesuits, and with
France, and with Scotland, and with Spain, for the
destruction of Queen Elizabeth, for the placing of
Mary on the throne, and for the revival of the old
religion.
If the English people were too ready
to believe in plots, there were, as I have said, good
reasons for it. When the massacre of Saint Bartholomew
was yet fresh in their recollection, a great Protestant
Dutch hero, the PRINCE OF ORANGE, was shot by an assassin,
who confessed that he had been kept and trained for
the purpose in a college of Jesuits. The Dutch,
in this surprise and distress, offered to make Elizabeth
their sovereign, but she declined the honour, and
sent them a small army instead, under the command
of the Earl of Leicester, who, although a capital Court
favourite, was not much of a general. He did
so little in Holland, that his campaign there would
probably have been forgotten, but for its occasioning
the death of one of the best writers, the best knights,
and the best gentlemen, of that or any age.
This was SIR PHILIP SIDNEY, who was wounded by a musket
ball in the thigh as he mounted a fresh horse, after
having had his own killed under him. He had to
ride back wounded, a long distance, and was very faint
with fatigue and loss of blood, when some water, for
which he had eagerly asked, was handed to him.
But he was so good and gentle even then, that seeing
a poor badly wounded common soldier lying on the ground,
looking at the water with longing eyes, he said, ‘Thy
necessity is greater than mine,’ and gave it
up to him. This touching action of a noble heart
is perhaps as well known as any incident in history is
as famous far and wide as the blood-stained Tower of
London, with its axe, and block, and murders out of
number. So delightful is an act of true humanity,
and so glad are mankind to remember it.
At home, intelligence of plots began
to thicken every day. I suppose the people never
did live under such continual terrors as those by which
they were possessed now, of Catholic risings, and
burnings, and poisonings, and I don’t know what.
Still, we must always remember that they lived near
and close to awful realities of that kind, and that
with their experience it was not difficult to believe
in any enormity. The government had the same
fear, and did not take the best means of discovering
the truth for, besides torturing the suspected,
it employed paid spies, who will always lie for their
own profit. It even made some of the conspiracies
it brought to light, by sending false letters to disaffected
people, inviting them to join in pretended plots, which
they too readily did.
But, one great real plot was at length
discovered, and it ended the career of Mary, Queen
of Scots. A seminary priest named BALLARD, and
a Spanish soldier named SAVAGE, set on and encouraged
by certain French priests, imparted a design to one
ANTONY BABINGTON a gentleman of fortune
in Derbyshire, who had been for some time a secret
agent of Mary’s for murdering the
Queen. Babington then confided the scheme to
some other Catholic gentlemen who were his friends,
and they joined in it heartily. They were vain,
weak-headed young men, ridiculously confident, and
preposterously proud of their plan; for they got a
gimcrack painting made, of the six choice spirits
who were to murder Elizabeth, with Babington in an
attitude for the centre figure. Two of their
number, however, one of whom was a priest, kept Elizabeth’s
wisest minister, SIR FRANCIS WALSINGHAM, acquainted
with the whole project from the first. The conspirators
were completely deceived to the final point, when Babington
gave Savage, because he was shabby, a ring from his
finger, and some money from his purse, wherewith to
buy himself new clothes in which to kill the Queen.
Walsingham, having then full evidence against the
whole band, and two letters of Mary’s besides,
resolved to seize them. Suspecting something
wrong, they stole out of the city, one by one, and
hid themselves in St. John’s Wood, and other
places which really were hiding places then; but they
were all taken, and all executed. When they
were seized, a gentleman was sent from Court to inform
Mary of the fact, and of her being involved in the
discovery. Her friends have complained that
she was kept in very hard and severe custody.
It does not appear very likely, for she was going
out a hunting that very morning.
Queen Elizabeth had been warned long
ago, by one in France who had good information of
what was secretly doing, that in holding Mary alive,
she held ‘the wolf who would devour her.’
The Bishop of London had, more lately, given the
Queen’s favourite minister the advice in writing,
‘forthwith to cut off the Scottish Queen’s
head.’ The question now was, what to do
with her? The Earl of Leicester wrote a little
note home from Holland, recommending that she should
be quietly poisoned; that noble favourite having accustomed
his mind, it is possible, to remedies of that nature.
His black advice, however, was disregarded, and she
was brought to trial at Fotheringay Castle in Northamptonshire,
before a tribunal of forty, composed of both religions.
There, and in the Star Chamber at Westminster, the
trial lasted a fortnight. She defended herself
with great ability, but could only deny the confessions
that had been made by Babington and others; could
only call her own letters, produced against her by
her own secretaries, forgeries; and, in short, could
only deny everything. She was found guilty,
and declared to have incurred the penalty of death.
The Parliament met, approved the sentence, and prayed
the Queen to have it executed. The Queen replied
that she requested them to consider whether no means
could be found of saving Mary’s life without
endangering her own. The Parliament rejoined,
No; and the citizens illuminated their houses and
lighted bonfires, in token of their joy that all these
plots and troubles were to be ended by the death of
the Queen of Scots.
She, feeling sure that her time was
now come, wrote a letter to the Queen of England,
making three entreaties; first, that she might be buried
in France; secondly, that she might not be executed
in secret, but before her servants and some others;
thirdly, that after her death, her servants should
not be molested, but should be suffered to go home
with the legacies she left them. It was an affecting
letter, and Elizabeth shed tears over it, but sent
no answer. Then came a special ambassador from
France, and another from Scotland, to intercede for
Mary’s life; and then the nation began to clamour,
more and more, for her death.
What the real feelings or intentions
of Elizabeth were, can never be known now; but I strongly
suspect her of only wishing one thing more than Mary’s
death, and that was to keep free of the blame of it.
On the first of February, one thousand five hundred
and eighty-seven, Lord Burleigh having drawn out the
warrant for the execution, the Queen sent to the secretary
DAVISON to bring it to her, that she might sign it:
which she did. Next day, when Davison told her
it was sealed, she angrily asked him why such haste
was necessary? Next day but one, she joked about
it, and swore a little. Again, next day but
one, she seemed to complain that it was not yet done,
but still she would not be plain with those about
her. So, on the seventh, the Earls of Kent and
Shrewsbury, with the Sheriff of Northamptonshire,
came with the warrant to Fotheringay, to tell the
Queen of Scots to prepare for death.
When those messengers of ill omen
were gone, Mary made a frugal supper, drank to her
servants, read over her will, went to bed, slept for
some hours, and then arose and passed the remainder
of the night saying prayers. In the morning
she dressed herself in her best clothes; and, at eight
o’clock when the sheriff came for her to her
chapel, took leave of her servants who were there
assembled praying with her, and went down-stairs,
carrying a Bible in one hand and a crucifix in the
other. Two of her women and four of her men
were allowed to be present in the hall; where a low
scaffold, only two feet from the ground, was erected
and covered with black; and where the executioner
from the Tower, and his assistant, stood, dressed
in black velvet. The hall was full of people.
While the sentence was being read she sat upon a stool;
and, when it was finished, she again denied her guilt,
as she had done before. The Earl of Kent and
the Dean of Peterborough, in their Protestant zeal,
made some very unnecessary speeches to her; to which
she replied that she died in the Catholic religion,
and they need not trouble themselves about that matter.
When her head and neck were uncovered by the executioners,
she said that she had not been used to be undressed
by such hands, or before so much company. Finally,
one of her women fastened a cloth over her face, and
she laid her neck upon the block, and repeated more
than once in Latin, ‘Into thy hands, O Lord,
I commend my spirit!’ Some say her head was
struck off in two blows, some say in three. However
that be, when it was held up, streaming with blood,
the real hair beneath the false hair she had long
worn was seen to be as grey as that of a woman of
seventy, though she was at that time only in her forty-sixth
year. All her beauty was gone.
But she was beautiful enough to her
little dog, who cowered under her dress, frightened,
when she went upon the scaffold, and who lay down
beside her headless body when all her earthly sorrows
were over.