The History of England - Vols. 1 to 6 (294 page)

hands, or of associating her with him in the administration.m
Elizabeth, alarmed at the danger which might ensue from the prevalence of this interest in Scotland, sent anew Sir Robert Bowes to Stirling; and accusing d’Aubigney, now created earl of Lenox, of an attachment to the French, warned James against entertaining such suspicious and dangerous connexions.
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The king excused himself, by Sir Alexander Hume his ambassador; and Lenox, finding that the queen had openly declared against him, was farther confirmed in his intention of overturning the English interest, and particularly of ruining Morton, who was regarded as the head of it. That nobleman was arrested in council, accused as an accomplice in the late king’s murder, committed to prison, brought to trial, and condemned to suffer as a traitor. He confessed, that Bothwel had communicated to him the design, had pleaded Mary’s consent, and had desired his concurrence; but he denied, that he himself had ever expressed any approbation of the crime; and in excuse for his concealing it, he alledged the danger of revealing the secret, either to Henry, who had no resolution nor constancy, or to Mary, who appeared to be an accomplice in the murder.
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Sir Thomas Randolph was sent by the queen to intercede in favour of Morton; and that ambassador, not content with discharging this duty of his function, engaged, by his persuasion, the earls of Argyle, Montrose, Angus, Marre, and Glencarne, to enter into a confederacy for protecting, even by force of arms, the life of the prisoner. The more to overawe that nobleman’s enemies, Elizabeth ordered forces to be assembled on the borders of England; but this expedient served only to hasten his sentence and execution.
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Morton died with that constancy and resolution, which had attended him through all the various events of his life; and left a reputation, which was less disputed with regard to abilities than probity and virtue. But this conclusion of the scene happened not till the subsequent year.

Elizabeth was, during this period, extremely anxious on account Spanish affairs.

of every revolution in Scotland; both because that country alone, not being separated from England by sea, and bordering on all the catholic and malcontent counties, afforded her enemies a safe and easy method of attacking her; and because she was sensible, that Mary, thinking herself abandoned by the French monarch, had been engaged by the Guises to have recourse to the powerful protection of Philip, who, though he had not yet come to an open rupture with the queen, was every day, both by the injuries which he committed and suffered, more exasperated against her. That he might retaliate the assistance, which she gave to his rebels in the

Low Countries, he had sent, under the name of the pope,q
a body of seven hundred Spaniards and Italians into Ireland; where the inhabitants, always turbulent, and discontented with the English government, were now more alienated by religious prejudices, and were ready to join every invader. The Spanish general, San Josepho, built a fort in Kerry; and being there besieged by the earl of Ormond, president of Munster, who was soon after joined by lord Gray, the deputy, he made a weak and cowardly defence. After some assaults, feebly sustained, he surrendered at discretion; and Gray, who commanded but a small force, finding himself incumbered with so many prisoners, put all the Spaniards and Italians to the sword without mercy, and PLL v6.0 (generated September, 2011)

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hanged about fifteen hundred of the Irish: A cruelty which gave great displeasure to

Elizabeth.r

When the English ambassador made complaints of this invasion, Sir Francis Drake.

he was answered by like complaints of the piracies committed by Francis Drake, a bold seaman, who had assaulted the Spaniards in the place where they deemed themselves most secure, in the new world. This man, sprung from mean parents in the county of Devon, having acquired considerable riches by depredations made in the isthmus of Panama, and having there gotten a sight of the Pacific ocean, was so stimulated by ambition and avarice, that he scrupled not to employ his whole fortune in a new adventure through those seas, so much unknown at that time to all

the European nations.s
By means of Sir Christopher Hatton, then vice-chamberlain, a great favourite of the queen’s, he obtained her consent and approbation; and he set sail from Plymouth in 1577, with four ships and a pinnace, on board of which were

164 able sailors.t
He passed into the South Sea by the Straits of Magellan, and attacking the Spaniards, who expected no enemy in those quarters, he took many rich prizes, and prepared to return with the booty, which he had acquired. Apprehensive of being intercepted by the enemy, if he took the same way homewards, by which he had reached the Pacific ocean, he attempted to find a passage by the north of California; and failing in that enterprize, he set sail for the East Indies, and returned safely this year by the Cape of Good Hope. He was the first Englishman who sailed round the Globe; and the first commander in chief: For Magellan, whose ship executed the same adventure, died in his passage. His name became celebrated on account of so bold and fortunate an attempt; but many, apprehending the resentment of the Spaniards, endeavoured to persuade the queen, that it would be more prudent to disavow the enterprize, to punish Drake, and to restore the treasure. But Elizabeth, who admired valour, and who was allured by the prospect of sharing in the booty, determined to countenance that gallant sailor: She conferred on him the honour of knighthood, and accepted of a banquet from him at Deptford, on board the ship, which had atchieved so memorable a voyage. When Philip’s ambassador, Mendoza, exclaimed against Drake’s piracies, she told him, that the Spaniards, by arrogating a right to the whole new world, and excluding thence all other European nations, who should sail thither, even with a view of exercising the most lawful commerce, naturally tempted others to

make a violent irruption into those countries.u
To pacify, however, the catholic monarch, she caused part of the booty to be restored to Pedro Sebura, a Spaniard, who pretended to be agent for the merchants, whom Drake had spoiled. Having learned afterwards, that Philip had seized the money, and had employed part of it against herself in Ireland, part of it in the pay of the prince of Parma’s troops, she determined to make no more restitutions.

There was another cause, which induced the queen to take this 1581.

resolution: She was in such want of money, that she was obliged to assemble a parliament, a measure, which, as she herself openly declared, she never embraced, except when constrained by the necessity of her affairs.

The parliament, besides granting her a supply of one subsidy and 16th Jan. A two fifteenths, enacted some statutes for the security of her parliament.

government, chiefly against the attempts of the catholics.

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reconciled, was declared to be guilty of treason; to say mass was subjected to the penalty of a year’s imprisonment, and a fine of two hundred marks; the being present was punishable by a year’s imprisonment and a fine of a hundred marks: A fine of twenty pounds a-month was imposed on every one who continued, during that time,

absent from church.w
To utter slanderous or seditious words against the queen was punishable, for the first offence, with the pillory and loss of ears; the second offence was declared felony: The writing or printing of such words was felony even on the first offence.
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The puritans prevailed so far as to have farther applications made for

reformation in religion.y
And Paul Wentworth, brother to the member of that name, who had distinguished himself in the preceding session, moved, that the commons, from their own authority, should appoint a general fast and prayers; a motion, to which the house unwarily assented. For this presumption, they were severely reprimanded by a message from the queen, as encroaching on the royal prerogative and supremacy; and they were obliged to submit, and ask forgiveness.
z

The queen and parliament were engaged to pass these severe laws against the catholics, by some late discoveries of the treasonable practices of their priests. When the ancient worship was suppressed, and the reformation introduced into the universities, the king of Spain reflected, that, as some species of literature was necessary for supporting these doctrines and controversies, the Romish communion must decay in England, if no means were found to give erudition to the ecclesiastics; and for this reason, he founded a seminary at Doüay, where the catholics sent their children, chiefly such as were intended for the priesthood, in order to receive the rudiments of their education. The cardinal of Lorraine imitated this example, by erecting a like seminary in his diocese of Rheims; and though Rome was somewhat distant, the pope would not neglect to adorn, by a foundation of the same nature, that capital of orthodoxy. These seminaries, founded with so hostile an intention, sent over every year a colony of priests, who maintained the catholic superstition in its full height of bigotry; and being educated with a view to the crown of martyrdom, were not deterred, either by danger or fatigue, from maintaining and propagating their principles. They infused into all their votaries an extreme hatred against the queen; whom they treated as an usurper, a schismatic, a heretic, a persecutor of the orthodox, and one solemnly and publicly anathematised by the holy father. Sedition, rebellion, sometimes assassination, were the expedients, by which they intended to effect their purposes against her; and the severe restraint, not to say persecution, under which the catholics laboured, made them the more willingly receive, from their ghostly fathers, such violent doctrines.

These seminaries were all of them under the direction of the jesuits, a new order of regular priests erected in Europe, when the court of Rome perceived, that the lazy monks and beggarly friars, who sufficed in times of ignorance, were no longer able to defend the ramparts of the church, assailed on every side, and that the inquisitive spirit of the age required a society more active and more learned, to oppose its dangerous progress. These men, as they stood foremost in the contest against the protestants, drew on them the extreme animosity of that whole sect; and by assuming a superiority over the other more numerous and more ancient orders of their own communion, were even exposed to the envy of their brethren: So that it is no wonder, if the blame, to which their principles and conduct might be exposed, has, in many PLL v6.0 (generated September, 2011)

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instances, been much exaggerated. This reproach, however, they must bear from posterity, that, by the very nature of their institution, they were engaged to pervert learning, the only effectual remedy against superstition, into a nourishment of that infirmity; and as their erudition was chiefly of the ecclesiastical and scholastic kind (though a few members have cultivated polite literature), they were only the more enabled, by that acquisition, to refine away the plainest dictates of morality, and to erect a regular system of casuistry, by which prevarication, perjury, and every crime, when it served their ghostly purposes, might be justified and defended.

The jesuits, as devoted servants to the court of Rome, exalted the prerogative of the sovereign pontiff above all earthly power; and by maintaining his authority of deposing kings, set no bounds, either to his spiritual or temporal jurisdiction. This doctrine became so prevalent among the zealous catholics in England, that the excommunication, fulminated against Elizabeth, excited many scruples of a singular kind, to which it behoved the holy father to provide a remedy. The bull of Pius, in absolving the subjects from their oaths of allegiance, commanded them to resist the queen’s usurpation; and many Romanists were apprehensive, that, by this clause, they were obliged in conscience, even though no favourable opportunity offered, to rebel against her, and that no dangers or difficulties could free them from this indispensable duty. But Parsons and Campion, two jesuits, were sent over with a mitigation and explanation of the doctrine; and they taught their disciples, that though the bull was for ever binding on Elizabeth and her partizans, it did not oblige the catholics to obedience, except when the sovereign pontiff should think proper, by a new

summons, to require it.a
Campion was afterwards detected in treasonable practices; and being put to the rack, and confessing his guilt, he was publicly executed. His execution was ordered at the very time when the duke of Anjou was in England, and prosecuted, with the greatest appearance of success, his marriage with the queen; and this severity was probably intended to appease her protestant subjects, and to satisfy them, that, whatever measures she might pursue, she never would depart from the principles of the reformation.

The duke of Alençon, now created duke of Anjou, had never Negociations of

entirely dropped his pretensions to Elizabeth; and that princess, marriage with the

though her suitor was near twenty-five years younger than duke of Anjou.

herself, and had no knowledge of her person, but by pictures or descriptions, was still pleased with the image, which his addresses afforded her, of love and tenderness. The duke, in order to forward his suit, besides employing his brother’s ambassador, sent over Simier, an agent of his own; an artful man, of an agreeable conversation, who soon remarking the queen’s humour, amused her with gay discourse, and instead of serious political reasonings, which, he found, only awakened her ambition, and hurt his master’s interests, he introduced every moment all the topics of passion and of gallantry. The pleasure, which she found in this man’s company, soon produced a familiarity between them; and amidst the greatest hurry of business, her most confidential ministers had not such ready access to her, as had Simier, who, on pretence of negociation, entertained her with accounts of the tender attachment borne her by the duke of Anjou. The earl of Leicester, who had never before been alarmed with any courtship payed her, and who always trusted, that her love of dominion would prevail over her inclination to marriage, began to apprehend, PLL v6.0 (generated September, 2011)