The Tudors for Dummies (AvaxHome Download) (32 page)

For how much of this ghastly business anybody

cutioner was going to be using � murderously

stayed conscious or alive is difficult to say. The

sharp knives, saws and axes. Then the victim

crowd loved the spectacle, but Elizabeth was

was hanged with a rope until he passed out, then

so horrified by Babington's execution that she

taken down, revived and his stomach ripped

ordered that the second day's batch (a further

open and his entrails burnt in front of him (this

seven conspirators) should be hanged until they

was the drawing bit). Quartering followed � the

were dead before the rest of it began.

For as long as she could, Elizabeth tried to pretend that cousin Mary was

innocent. Cecil had wanted the woman dead over the Darnley murder (see

Chapter 13) and most Englishmen agreed.

By keeping Mary alive, Elizabeth could have damaged relationships with the

Scots Government and she'd have become the focus for ongoing plots and

rebellions. But the Babington affair left her no choice and so she put Mary on

trial for treason.

Mary stage-managed her trial brilliantly at Fotheringhay Castle in

Northamptonshire (check it out, but it's only a grassy mound today). She

pointed to a chair with the royal coat of arms on it and said, `I am queen by

right of birth and my place should be there.' She'd been a prisoner for 17

years by this point and was wracked with rheumatism. She denied any knowl-

edge of attempts to overthrow Elizabeth, saying, `I have only two or three

years to live and I do not aspire to any public position.'

She was bound to be found guilty, but Elizabeth did some monumental fence-

sitting for nearly three months. Her hesitation was partly due to genuine

compassion, but Elizabeth also knew that signing a death warrant for a fellow

queen was risky. What if someone signed hers one day?

Elizabeth eventually signed (much to the Council's delight) and as soon as

the deed was done everybody ran for cover to avoid the queen's explosive

wrath. She wailed and screamed for days.

Catholics far and wide were outraged by the planned execution, but did

nothing to stop it. Elizabeth was wracked with guilt, but Mary was almost cer-

tainly guilty of treason and politically, the execution of Mary Queen of Scots

made sense. It meant that any later plotters couldn't use Mary as a figure-

head. So on 8 February 1587 Mary went to the block (see the nearby sidebar

`I am resolved to die in this religion' for the gruesome details).

Dealing with Irish Rebellion

Elizabeth followed the advice of most of her ministers who believed that the

infighting between the Irish tribes and chieftains could only be stopped by

military conquest. 240 Part IV: Ending with Elizabeth

`I am resolved to die in this religion'

On the night before her execution Mary lay There was a gasp as her weeping ladies

awake, fully dressed, while her ladies read to removed the veil and dress, to reveal the bright

her from the Bible. At 6 a.m. she got up, said red petticoat � red being the colour of martyr-

her prayers and walked to the Great Hall of dom � underneath. Mary knelt and recited the

Fotheringhay, dressed in black with a long Lord's Prayer in Latin before being blindfolded

transparent veil. Three hundred ladies and and helped down to the block.

gentlemen had crowded in to see her off and

Bigger gasps were to follow. The executioner

the dean of Peterborough tried to bully her into

was a blunderer and took three strokes to get

renouncing her faith. `I have lived in this reli-

the former queen's head off. As her head rolled

gion,' she told him, `and I am resolved to die in

across the floor, her wig fell off � she was com-

this religion.'

pletely bald. And her little lapdog, terrified, ran

out from under her skirts, yelping hysterically.

Tackling the O'Neills

Shane O'Neill played right into the queen's hands by going back on the deal

he made with her (see Chapter 13) and going on the rampage against the

Maguires in Ulster. It took the earl of Sussex's troops four months to bring

him to heel.

The Irish complained about the harshness of Sussex's soldiers and opposed

the English plantations in Leix and Offaly, and by the spring of 1565 O'Neill

was at it again, this time attacking the Macdonnells at Glenshesk. (See

Chapter 2 for a map of Ireland in the Tudor period.)

In the following year O'Neill burned the cathedral in Armagh and attacked

local villages. Elizabeth proclaimed him a traitor and put a price on his head.

To make matters worse, O'Neill tried to make the whole thing an interna-

tional affair, asking Charles IX of France for help against the English.

In November 1565 Henry Sidney, now lord deputy in Ireland, mounted a big

campaign against the rebel would-be earl. Sidney's men lived off the harvest

and destroyed anything they couldn't eat or carry, and English ships from

Bristol trailed them along the Irish coast. Sidney restored Calvagh O'Donnell

to his rightful place in Tyrconnel. And as soon as Sidney had gone, of course,

O'Neill attacked Derry.

But what O'Neill hadn't reckoned on was the fickle nature of his Scots allies.

On 2 June 1567 O'Neill arrived at their camp at Cushendun in County Antrim. Chapter 14: Gunning for Elizabeth 241 He didn't know his hosts were in the pay of the English and a fight broke out. O'Neill was hacked to death and his head, carried to Dublin pickled in a barrel, was placed on a spike on the castle wall.

But nobody imagined that was the end of Irish rebellion.

Stamping out the past Sidney put down another rising in September 1569 by the Fitzgeralds in Munster with his usual ruthless efficiency. But this endless game couldn't go on, and by December 1571 the new president of Munster, Sir John Perrot, laid down some new rules:

Townspeople could no longer wear traditional Gaelic dress � cloaks,

Irish coats or great shirts.

Men must cut their hair and their beards.

Women mustn't wear linen cloth on their heads but must wear hats,

caps or French hoods.

The bards (poets) were to stop singing about Ireland's past � the songs

were un-English and the language barbaric (ironically, six months earlier

John Kearney had published the first ever book printed in Ireland � the

Gaelic Alphabet and Catechism).

The fine for breaking any of these rules was a massive �100.

Proliferating plantations In Chapter 10 we explain that the English were muscling in with plantations in Ireland, and another spurt of plantation building went on in Ulster between 1572 and 1573. Around 100 colonists landed at Strangford Lough under the leadership of Thomas Smith, but yet again this was just papering over the cracks and the earl of Essex, now in the driving seat, clashed with a number of chieftains who were furious at the way their land was being parcelled up.

It was a vicious circle. As soon as rebellions occurred, the English seized the rebels' lands and created plantations, adding to the bitterness and the likeli- hood of further rebellion. 242 Part IV: Ending with Elizabeth

Attempting to liberate Ireland

By 1579 all hell was ready to break loose. The fighting that eventually fol-

lowed is called the Nine Years War, Tyrone's Rebellion or the War for Irish

Independence, depending on whose side you're on.

Gregory XIII wanted Protestantism out of Ireland as much as the English

wanted to control the country, so he backed the Irish by sending a number

of adventurers.

Thomas Stukeley was a maverick and not the right man for Gregory's

job. He set off with 1,000 men and what limited resources the pope could

give him, got side-tracked in Morocco (don't ask!) and was killed there.

James Fitzmaurice had fewer men than Stukeley, but at least he landed

in Ireland in July 1579. A confused revolt broke out in Munster. Six hun-

dred Spanish and Italian troops landing as Fitzmaurice's reinforcements

gave the governor, Lord Grey de Wilton, a headache. He cornered the

rebels on the Dingle Peninsula, and butchered them. Crops were burnt

and animals slaughtered in the kind of killing orgy that burned itself into

Irish folk memory for years to come.

Viscount Boltinglass, hot from Rome, led a rising in Leinster. He won a

skirmish against English troops at Glenmalure in August 1580.

Imposing the peace?

Since 1575 Henry Sidney had been trying to calm down the Irish situation by

replacing protection money, the so-called `coyne and livery', with a tax called

composition. He hoped his change would help in two ways:

The ordinary people would be happy because the new tax was lower

than the coin and livery amount.

Landlords would save money because they could now disband their pri-

vate armies (who'd policed protection) and not have to pay them.

But many, even in the Pale (see Chapter 2 for a breakdown of Irish geog-

raphy), were suspicious of Sidney's reform, and were reluctant to accept

English rule.

During a spectacular piece of fence-sitting, Elizabeth recalled Sidney and her

endless vacillating led to his resignation in September 1578. By the end of

1580, Lord Grey, Sidney's successor, was seeing Catholic conspirators behind

every bush.

On 10 November, English troops under Nicholas Malby out down the rising

by James Fitzgerald with viciousness. Perhaps it was the sight of the pope's

banner on the battlefield at Smerwick that annoyed them. A series of trials

and executions followed � Ireland had never seen such systematic slaughter.

The earl of Kildare was arrested and in Munster the earl of Ormond had his

commission taken away from him. William Nugent, the chief justice for the

Court of Common Pleas, was executed for treason.

Grey's actions � passing out confiscated lands to his cronies � led to the

Council recalling him in July 1582, but the revolts continued.

By November 1583 Gerald Fitzgerald, the earl of Desmond who was the leader

of the Munster rebellion against the English, had been murdered by Daniel

Kelly in Tralee and the violence died down, at least for a while.

John Perrot, the governor from January 1584, could work with the earl of

Ormond and days of peace seemed to lie ahead. But the peace was only

as strong as the English garrisons in Ireland, however. Nothing had been

resolved and the old resentment � of Irishmen versus Irishmen; of Irishmen

versus Englishmen; of `old' English versus `new' English � seethed under

the surface.

Handling Parliament

In Tudor times Parliament comprised the House of Commons and the House

of Lords, and it met in Westminster Hall in London and represented the top

end of society.

The Lords was the senior house and was made up of:

Peers of the realm (whose titles had been granted by the monarch)

Bishops

The Commons had two types of seat:

Borough seats, held by burgesses (citizens) of towns big enough to be

allowed them

County seats, held by knights of the shire (county) � usually two per

county.

By the start of the Tudor period many knights and gentlemen bought bor-

ough seats from the burgesses who were struggling to afford them (the cost

of attending Parliament was huge), and so only cities like York, Norwich and

London were represented by people who actually lived there. 244 Part IV: Ending with Elizabeth

By 1560:

Most MPs had legal training, status and knew what they were talking

about. (Even today, no direct training for the job of MP exists. It must be

the only job in the country today for which no skills qualifications exist

at all, scary, or what?)

Parliament made laws (as Nicholas Bacon said) `for uniting of the people

of this realm into a uniform order of religion to the honour and glory of

God, the establishment of his Church and the tranquillity of the realm'.

Parliament voted for cash to be given to the Government by raising taxa-

tion to pay for wars, the upkeep of the navy and so on.

The members of the Commons regarded themselves with a new confi-

dence � they believed that they spoke for the whole country. This last

was hot air, of course. The Lords only represented themselves and the

Commons only represented their own (gentleman) class. The middle

class and poor weren't given a look in and the only woman in govern-

ment was the queen.

One problem for Parliament was that it didn't meet often � only 13 sessions

(never more than ten weeks long) in a 44-year reign isn't very much. So mem-

bers of Parliament had to make their views known when the moment pre-

sented itself. And because the queen alone could call Parliament and could

also suspend and dismiss it, MPs' hands were tied.

Sparking religious fervour

The Commons was always more Protestant than Elizabeth and it welcomed

her Bill of Uniformity, drafted by the Council, in 1559. The 1559 Parliament

had been concerned with the Church Bill and paying for the war against

France, but the one in 1563 was all about religion. Several exiles had now

returned from Europe (see Chapter 13) and a mood of reform was in the air.

An increasing number of MPs were extreme Protestants (they came to be

known as Puritans) who wanted the Church to be changed still further and

were disappointed that Elizabeth didn't share their view. The Parliament of

1571 tried to make sure that the queen's religious settlement was strictly

enforced, but Elizabeth torpedoed attempts by William Strickland to bring in

a new prayer book because she didn't approve.

In the 1570s and 1580s three campaigns were going on in the Commons:

Anti-Catholicism reached its height. Plots against the queen, the arrival

of Campion's Jesuit mission (see `Rooting out Gregory's Jesuits', earlier

in this chapter) and the ever-growing threat from Spain (see Chapter 15)

meant that everybody was on their guard. Chapter 14: Gunning for Elizabeth 245

The push for the execution of Mary Queen of Scots was clearly tied in

with anti-Catholicism.

A small minority worked for a complete overhaul of Church government.

Parliament got heavy with Catholics:

In 1571 anyone bringing papal bulls into the country was a traitor and

could expect to be executed.

In 1581 anyone not attending Church of England services got a crippling

fine of �20 a month.

In 1585 anyone joining the Catholic Church as a priest would be hanged

and Jesuits in England had 40 days to get out or face the consequences.

In 1593 non-churchgoers (Recusants) had their freedoms curtailed.

They were spied on and the only way some of them coped was to go to

Anglican services and let their wives carry on in the old faith in secret,

explaining to the Almighty their husband's predicament.

Controlling the MPs Members of Parliament believed their purpose was to discuss the big issues of the day � religion, plots, foreign policy. Elizabeth and the Council saw Parliament as a milk cow for cash and a means to get backing for their poli- cies in law.

The next two monarchs in English history � James I and his son Charles � handled their parliaments so badly that it led to civil war and Charles I's execution. So how did Elizabeth avoid all that?

She turned the full Tudor charm on MPs, sending them home to spend

the Christmas of 1584 with their families, returning their thanks to her

`ten thousand thousand fold'. In 1593 (a particularly difficult Commons

session) she assured her MPs that nobody could have loved and appre-

ciated them more than she did � except, she added to get the old-stagers

on side, her father.

She intervened to hold up various bills and suggested changes to them.

She used the royal veto, chucking out bills she didn't like.

She had troublesome MPs arrested. In 1576 Peter Wentworth, MP for

Barnstaple in Devon, complained no freedom of speech existed in the

Commons because the queen might object to MPs discussing certain

topics. Wentworth was kicked out and cooled his heels in the Tower for

a month.