Mary Stuart (35 page)

Elizabeth's triumph on this occasion shattered Mary's last hopes. Once again she realised that her enemy had sold and betrayed her. Having lost her husband, her brother and her subjects, she now lost her child; henceforward she was to stand alone. Her disappointment was only equalled by her disgust. She need consider nobody's feelings for the future! Just as well, perhaps! Since her own child denied her, she would deny him. Since he had nearly bartered away her rights to the crown of Scotland, she would pay the youngster back in his own coin. She accused him of having forgotten the “duty and obligation” he owed her, and threatened to bestow her malediction “and invoke that of heaven on my ungrateful son”; further, she affirmed that, unless James became a convert to the Church of Rome, she would debar him from his rights to the crowns of England and of Scotland. She would rather, “if he perseveres in the heresy of Calvin”, transfer these rights to a foreign prince—to the King of Spain, for instance, should that monarch consent to fight for her freedom and to humiliate the assassin of her best hopes, Queen Elizabeth of England. No longer was her son or her country of importance to her. All she needed now was freedom, liberty to live her own life, once more to be victor in the arena. Even the boldest venture seemed natural to her. One who has lost everything has nothing left to risk.

Year after year anger and embitterment had accumulated within this tortured and humiliated woman; year after year she had hoped and negotiated and compromised and conspired. Her cup was now full, and even overfull. A flame of hatred streamed upward against the torturer, the usurper, the wardress of her imprisonment. No longer was it as one queen against another or as one woman against another that Mary Stuart hurled herself tooth and nail against Elizabeth Tudor. A petty incident brought things to a head. The Countess of Shrewsbury, a confirmed scandal-monger and peculiarly malicious slanderer, declared that Mary Stuart had entered into amorous relationships with the Earl, her husband and Mary's jailer. Such gossip was not meant to be taken seriously, but Elizabeth, who had always been at pains to show up the moral lapses of her rival, quickly seized the opportunity in order to acquaint the continental courts of her cousin's fresh misdemeanour. It was, then, not enough that she should have power taken from her, that she should be deprived of her freedom, that the affection of her son should be alienated from her; now her fair name must be besmirched, and she, who lived like a nun, who dispensed with any form of pleasure or of love, was to be held up before the eyes of the world as an adulteress. Wounded pride made her wrath blaze high. She demanded immediate reparation, and Lady Shrewsbury “upon her knees” denied that there were any grounds for the infamous reports spread abroad against the Queen of Scots. But Mary knew well who was responsible for the speedy extension of the rumours initiated by her jailer's wife; she guessed the secret and malignant joy of her perennial foe at having so luscious a morsel of calumny to serve up to the courts of Europe, and she determined to counter the blow that had been dealt her in the dark by a blow dealt in the open. Impatience had long possessed her soul to exhibit this so-called virgin queen in true colours. She who set herself up as a model of virtue and righteousness would hear the truth at last as between one woman and the other.

Mary, therefore, wrote a letter (to outward seeming a friendly one, but in truth one of the spiciest documents in the English archives) to Elizabeth, narrating in the frankest language the gossip anent the English Queen's private life and morals that was being disseminated by the Countess of Shrewsbury. The ostensible motive was, as I have said, a friendly one; but Mary's real object was to show her “dear sister” how slight were the latter's claims to pose as an exemplar of good morals or as an authority upon ethical standards. Every word in this epistle seems like a fresh blow, whose punch was backed up by despair and hate. All the fearful things one woman can say to another are herein stated; Elizabeth's faults of character are flung vindictively in her face; the most hidden secrets of her womanhood are ruthlessly unveiled. “Bess of Hardwick” had indulged her tongue beyond the limits of the excusable, had declared Elizabeth to be so vain and to hold so exalted an opinion of her own loveliness as to make her hearers believe she must be the Queen of Heaven. Never was she satiated with flattery, continually forcing her ladies into the most absurd exaggerations; her uncontrolled vulgarity was displayed in the way she would, when vexed, mishandle these same gentlewomen and the tiring maids in her suite. She had actually broken the finger of one and had slashed another with a knife on the hand because of some lack of dexterity in the serving of a meal.

These items, however, were nothing when compared to other revelations, such as that Elizabeth had a running sore on the leg (a hint that she might have inherited syphilis from her father); that she had lost her youth prematurely, but nevertheless continued to lust after men. That “
infinies foys
”, countless numbers of times, she had gone to bed with Leicester; nor had he been her only paramour; that she sought her pleasure anywhere and everywhere; that she never wanted to lose her freedom to make love and to have her desires satisfied by ever fresh lovers. At night she had been known to slip out of her own bedchamber, wearing nothing more than a nightgown with, maybe, a shawl flung about her for warmth's sake, and creep into the room of some man of her choice; these illicit delights had to be paid for dearly. Mary heaped name upon name, detail upon detail. But the deadliest bolt of all, Elizabeth's bitterest wound to her pride as a woman, about which Ben Jonson blabbed freely in the taverns he frequented, was not spared the English sovereign: “She says, moreover, that indubitably you are not like other women, and it is folly to advance the notion of your marriage with the duc d'Anjou, seeing that such a conjugal union could never be consummated.” There Elizabeth had it plain and flat; her secret was known to all; everyone knew that because of her physical imperfection she could only gratify her lust but never her natural sexual appetite, that she could only play at love but was debarred entirely from wedlock and motherhood. One woman alone had the courage to tell the mightiest of queens this ultimate and terrible truth; one captive woman alone, after twenty years of pent-up hatred, of stifled anger, of imprisoned energies, rallied her forces to deal this ghastly assault upon the heart of her tormentor.

After such an explosion, reconciliation was impossible. The woman who had composed the letter, and the woman who was intended to read it, could no longer breathe the same air or live in the same country. “
Hasta el cuchillo
as the Spaniards say, war to the knife, war to the death—such was the only issue. After more than two decades of double dealing, of obstinate spying and irreconcilable enmity, Mary Stuart and Elizabeth Tudor had brought their historic combat into the light of day. The Counter-Reformation had used every conceivable diplomatic art, but neither side had as yet had recourse to arms. What was to be proudly (and afterwards derisively) styled the “Invincible Armada” was being slowly and laboriously built in Spain. But, despite the inflow of wealth from America, the court of that unhappy land was always short alike of money and of resolution. Philip the Pious resembled John Knox in looking upon the removal of an adversary who adhered to another creed as an act well pleasing to Almighty God. Would it not be cheaper and easier to hire a few bravos who would forthwith rid the world of Elizabeth, the protectress of heresy? The age of Machiavelli and his pupils was not troubled by moral considerations when power was at stake. Here the stakes were colossal—faith against faith, south against north, the admiralty of the world.

When politics are heated white-hot in the furnace of passion, moral and legal scruples are thrown to the winds; no one bothers about honour or decency, and even assassination is glorified. Through the excommunication of Elizabeth in 1570 and of William the Silent in 1580, the two chief enemies of Catholicism had been outlawed by the Roman Church; and after the Pope had expressly approved the Massacre of St Bartholomew, every Catholic was assured that he would be doing a praiseworthy deed if he succeeded in assassinating either of these hereditary foes of the true faith. A vigorous thrust with a dagger, a skilfully aimed pistol bullet, might free Mary Stuart from captivity and place her on the throne at Westminster, with the result that England and the world would be regained for Rome. The Jesuits were busily and secretly going to and fro across the Channel. The Spanish government did not hesitate to avow that the murder of Elizabeth was one of its chief political aims. Mendoza, Spanish ambassador in London, referred frequently in his dispatches to “killing the Queen” as a laudable enterprise. The Duke of Alva, governor of the Netherlands, approved the scheme. Philip II, lord of two continents, drafted with his own hand a plan which he hoped that “God would favour”. Matters were to be decided, not by diplomatic arts, nor by open warfare, but by the assassin's knife. There was not much to choose between England and Spain as to methods. In Madrid, the killing of Elizabeth was decided on in a secret conclave, and was endorsed by the King. In London, Cecil and Walsingham and Leicester were agreed upon making short work of Mary Stuart. There were to be no more hesitations and no more expedients. The account had long been overdue, and its settlement would be marked by a line drawn in blood. The only question was, which would act more promptly, the Reformation or the Counter-Reformation, London or Madrid? Would Mary Stuart sweep Elizabeth Tudor out of her path, or would Elizabeth make an end of Mary?

“T
HE MATTER MUST COME TO AN END.”
Such was the incisive formula in which one of Elizabeth's ministers of state impatiently summarised the sentiment that prevailed throughout England. Nothing is harder for an individual or a nation to bear than long-continued uncertainty. The assassination of the other great protagonist of the Reformation, William the Silent, who was killed by a Roman Catholic fanatic in June 1584, showed England plainly enough that the poniard had already been sharpened for the heart of Queen Elizabeth. It was a known fact that one conspiracy followed close upon another. The general feeling, therefore, was that the moment had come to make an end of the imprisoned Scottish Queen who laid claim to the throne of England as well, and who was the centre of innumerable conspiracies. The evil must be cut at the roots. In September 1584, the Protestant section of the English nobility and gentry drew up a Bond of Association pledging all good citizens to slay without scruple any conspirator who plotted against the Queen. Furthermore, “pretenders to the throne in whose favour these men conspired” were “to be deprived of all rights as claimants to the succession”, and were to be held personally responsible for such plots. Next the Bond of Association was confirmed by a statute (27 Elizabeth, 1585) entitled
An Act for the Security of the Queen's Royal Person, and the Continuance of the Realm of Peace.
Everyone who participated in an attack upon the Queen or who merely sanctioned it became liable to the death penalty. It was further decided that everyone accused of entering into a conspiracy against the Queen should be tried by a jury of twenty-four persons appointed by the crown.

This gave Mary Stuart plain notice of two facts—first of all, that her royal rank would no longer protect her from a public trial; secondly, that even a successful attempt on Elizabeth's life would bring her no advantage, but would cost her her own head. This was like the last flourish of trumpets which demands a surrender of an obstinate fortress before the final assault. If there were any further hesitation, no quarter would be given. Ambiguities between Elizabeth Tudor and Mary Stuart were over and done with. There was to be no more shilly-shallying.

There were other signs that the days of a courteous interchange of letters and of amiable hypocrisies were over, that the last round in the long struggle had opened, that there was to be no more consideration shown, that war to the knife had been declared. The English court decided, in view of the unceasing conspiracies against Elizabeth, that Mary Stuart should be more strictly guarded in future. Shrewsbury, being too much of a gentleman to be a good jailer, was “released” from his office. In very truth Shrewsbury thanked Elizabeth on his knees for having restored him to freedom after fifteen years of a jailership that had made him a prisoner as well as Mary. He was replaced in his guardianship by Sir Amyas Paulet, a fanatical Protestant. Now Mary Stuart could, without exaggeration, speak of having been reduced to “servitude”, for her friendly guardian had been replaced by an inexorable jailer.

Amyas Paulet, a hard-bitten Puritan, one of the excessively “just” who model their behaviour upon the Old Testament worthies but who cannot be pleasing to a good God, made no secret of his determination that thenceforward Mary Stuart's life was to be as uncomfortable as possible. The task of making himself disagreeable, of robbing her of the small favours Shrewsbury had granted her, was a delight to Paulet. He wrote to Elizabeth saying that he expected no mercy should Mary escape from his custody, since such an escape would be possible only through gross negligence on his part. With the cold and clear systematism of one who regards himself as a slave to “duty”, he contemplated the guardianship of Mary Stuart and the making it impossible for her to do any harm as a task assigned to him by God. He had no other ambition than to be an exemplary jailer. He was a new Cato, whom no temptation could lead astray, and no inner promptings of tenderness would ever induce him to modify his harshness. The ailing and weary woman was not, in his eyes, a princess who deserved compassion for her misfortunes, but merely his Queen's archenemy, who must be treated as Antichrist personified. As for her illness, he wrote cynically: “The indisposition of this Queen's body, and the great infirmity of her legs, which is so desperate as herself doth not hope of any recovery, is no small advantage to her keeper, who shall not need to stand in great fear of her running away, if he can foresee that she be not taken from him by force.” He fulfilled his task with a malicious delight in his own efficiency, entering his observations of the captive night after night in a manuscript book. Even though history has made us acquainted with more cruel, violent and unjust jailers than Paulet, there is scarce a record of any who was as well able as he to take pleasure in his detestable duties.

His first step was to cut the hidden threads by means of which Mary Stuart had still been able to communicate with the outer world. Her prison house was surrounded by sentries, whose cordon was kept intact by day and by night. The domestic staff, which had hitherto passed freely in and out, and had been able to transmit oral and written messages, had their leave stopped. No member of Mary's court could go abroad without a special permit, and must then be accompanied by a soldier. Mary was forbidden to continue the bestowal of alms upon the poor of the neighbourhood, Paulet perspicaciously recognising that this pious practice made the recipients ready to smuggle information. The regulations were tightened day by day. Parcels of laundry, of books—whatever passed in or out—were scrutinised as closely as baggage is at a modern custom house, and in this way the possibility of secret correspondence was cut off. Nau and Curie, Mary's secretaries, sat twiddling their thumbs, for their occupation was gone. They had no letters either to write or to decipher. Neither from London nor from Scotland nor from Rome nor from Madrid did news trickle through bringing hope to Mary in her loneliness. Soon Paulet deprived her of her last enjoyment. Her sixteen horses ate their heads off in Sheffield since she was forbidden the chase or even a ride to breathe the fresh air. Terribly narrowed were the bounds of her existence under Sir Amyas Paulet's “guardianship”, so that she was at length indisputably imprisoned, and felt as if she were already in her coffin.

It might have been more creditable to Elizabeth had she chosen a less strict jailer for her sister the Queen. Still, as far as seeing to Elizabeth's immunity from the risk of assassination was concerned, one cannot but recognise that no more trusty watchdog could have been chosen than this cold-blooded Calvinist. Paulet admirably discharged the duty of isolating Mary Stuart from the world. Within a few months she began to feel as if she were kept under a bell glass. Not a word, not a letter, from outside reached her. Elizabeth had every reason to be satisfied with the new jailer, and expressed her most heartfelt thanks to Paulet for all he was doing. “If you knew, my dear Amyas, how much indebted I feel to you for your unparalleled care, how thankfully I recognise the flawlessness of your arrangements, how I approve your wise orders and safe measures in the performance of a task so dangerous and difficult, it would lighten your cares and rejoice your heart.”

Strangely enough, however, Elizabeth's ministers of state, Cecil and Walsingham, were to begin with by no means pleased with the “precise fellow”, Sir Amyas Paulet, for his pains. The complete severance of Mary Stuart from her secret correspondence with foreign parts ran counter to their wishes. It did not suit them at all that the Scottish Queen should be deprived of every chance for carrying on conspiracies, or that Paulet, by establishing a cordon round her, was guarding her against the consequences of her own incaution. What Cecil and Walsingham wanted was, not an innocent Mary Stuart, but a guilty one; they wanted her, whom they regarded as the perpetual cause of unrest and plotting in England, to continue her plots until she could be caught in her own net. Their main desire was that “the matter should come to an end”; they looked forward to the trial, condemnation and execution of Mary Stuart.

In their view, the only way of safeguarding Elizabeth was to make an end of her adversary; and since Sir Amyas Paulet, by the rigorous methods he adopted, had rendered it impossible for Mary to initiate any further plots, a plot must be instigated by provocative agents, and the prisoner induced to take part in it. What Cecil and Walsingham required was a conspiracy against Elizabeth, and plain proof that Mary Stuart was involved in it.

As a matter of fact, a plot to kill Elizabeth was ready to their hands. The plot was, so to say, a permanent one. Philip of Spain had established on the continent an anti-English conspiratorial centre; in Paris resided Morgan, Mary Stuart's confidential agent, supplied with funds from Spain, his business being to carry on unceasing machinations against England and Elizabeth. Here more and more young enthusiasts were enlisted. Through the intermediation of the Spanish and French ambassadors, links were maintained between the malcontent Catholic nobility in England and the chancelleries of the Counter-Reformation. But an important point had escaped Morgan's notice, namely that Walsingham, one of the ablest and most unscrupulous directors of provocative agents that ever existed, had planted upon Morgan some of his own spies under the guise of devout Catholics, so that the very messengers whom Morgan placed most confidence in were really in Walsingham's pay. What was planned on behalf of Mary Stuart was betrayed to England, time after time, before any steps had been taken to put the scheme into execution. Now, at the close of the year 1585, when the scaffold was still dripping with the blood of those who were executed for the part they had played in the latest conspiracy, the English authorities became aware that fresh action was about to be taken for the assassination of Elizabeth. Walsingham had a full and accurate list of the names of the Catholic nobles in England who had assured Morgan of their willingness to support any move to put Mary Stuart upon the throne. Walsingham need merely give a sign, and a liberal use of the rack would enable him to fill the gaps in his knowledge.

Walsingham's technique, however, was more subtle, more far-sighted, and more perfidious. Of course, if he wished, he could nip the conspiracy in the bud. It would not suit his purposes, however, merely to send a few noblemen to the block or to have some of the lesser conspirators hanged, drawn and quartered. What would be the use of cutting off five or six heads of the hydra of this unceasing conspiracy if, next morning, two new heads would have taken the place of each? “Carthage must be destroyed” was Cecil's and Walsingham's motto; they were determined to make an end of Mary Stuart; and for this purpose no minor conspiracy would suffice. They would need to prove the existence of widespread activities in favour of the imprisoned Queen of Scots. Instead, therefore, of stifling Babington's plot in the germ, Walsingham secretly encouraged it; manuring it with good wishes, supplying it with funds, furthering it by assumed indifference. Thanks to his skill as director of provocative agents, what had at first been no more than an amateurish conspiracy of a few country gentlefolk against Elizabeth, developed into the famous Walsingham plot for ridding the world of Mary Stuart.

There must be three stages in the affair if Mary Stuart was to be slain in due form of law. First of all, the conspirators must be induced to commit themselves to a scheme for Elizabeth's assassination. Secondly, it was necessary that they should acquaint Mary Stuart of their intention. Thirdly (and this was the most difficult requisite), Mary herself must be persuaded to approve the plan, by a document in her own handwriting. Her complicity and her guilt must be proved up to the hilt, for Elizabeth would be dishonoured if Mary were put to death in default of the desired proof. Rather than that, manufacture evidence of Mary's guilt! Rather than that, cunningly press into her hand a dagger with which she could slay herself.

The work of the English official conspirators against Mary Stuart began by a mitigation of the rigorousness of her imprisonment. Walsingham, it would seem, did not find much difficulty in persuading Sir Amyas Paulet, the pious Puritan, that, instead of maintaining so strict a cordon round Mary as to make it impossible for her to initiate or participate in any conspiracies, it would be better to entangle the royal prisoner in a plot. Anyhow, Paulet modified his treatment of Mary in accordance with the scheme of the English general staff. One day this man, who had hitherto been so inexorable a jailer, came to see Mary and told her, in the most friendly terms, that it had been decided to remove her from Tutbury to Chartley. Mary, little guessing the machinations of her enemies, could not conceal her delight. Tutbury was a gloomy stronghold, more like a prison than a castle; Chartley, on the other hand, was a pleasant place enough, with the added advantage that in the neighbourhood lived Catholic families friendly to her, and from whom she might expect aid. At Chartley she would be able to go out riding once more if her health allowed it, and there perhaps she would have a chance of getting news from her relatives and friends across the seas, a chance (with courage and skill) of regaining what she would prize most of all—her liberty.

Behold, one morning, Mary Stuart was astonished. She could scarcely believe her eyes. As if by magic, Sir Amyas Paulet's encirclement had been broken through. A cipher dispatch came to hand, the first she had received for months. How clever of her friends to have at length found means for outwitting her inexorable jailer! What an unexpected delight! She was no longer cut off from the world, but would again be kept informed of the plans that were being made to set her free. Nevertheless, some instinct warned her to be cautious, and in her reply to Morgan she advised him: “Keep yourself from meddling with anything that might redound to your hurt, or increase the suspicion already conceived against you in these parts, being sure that you are able to clear yourself of all dealings for my service hithertill.” But this mood of suspicion did not last long. It was dispelled when she learnt by what clever artifices her friends (really they were her intended assassins) would keep up communications with her. Every week a barrel of beer was sent from Burton for the Queen's servants, and her friends persuaded the drayman to let them replace the bung of the barrel with a corked tube in which letters could be concealed. Thenceforward communications were carried on with the regularity of a postal service. Week after week “the honest man”, as the drayman was styled in the correspondence, brought his barrel of beer to the castle; once it was safely in the cellar, Mary's butler removed the corked tube which carried the incoming letter, while last week's empty barrel, in like manner, conveyed an outgoing letter. The honest man, it need hardly be said, was well paid for his services.