1571

HAP XXI were the representatives of two religions and two policies. The Norfolk marriage was likely to be revived among the Peers and pressed upon her consent; the Commons would probably boil over in some fierce stream of anti-Popery, insist on declaring the Queen of Scots incapable of the succession and recognising one of Lord Hertford's children; while both alike. would combine in not undeserved reproaches against herself.

It was no wonder that Elizabeth dreaded the meeting of another Parliament, but an empty treasury made longer delay impossible. The suspension of commerce had ruined the customs. Ireland absorbed annually almost a fourth of the ordinary revenue; and Scotland, and the navy, and the expenses of the Border, and the secret-service money-taking the form chiefly of subsidies to the Prince of Orange and the Huguenots—were making demands upon the exchequer which no economy could meet. The lands of the Northern Earls could not be touched till they were attainted, and in some form or other the Bull of Pope Pius required an answer from the nation.

The Houses were to meet on the 2nd of April. The forty noblemen who were parties to the Ridolfi plot would be in London with their retinues; and the Queen of Scots, who had reason to believe that measures might be introduced unfavourable to herself, and who recollected how Morton, Lindsay, and Ruthven had broken up the Parliament at Edinburgh which was to have attainted Murray, conceived that the same game might be repeated by her present friends with equal success. The Duke of Alva's willingness to assist her would be proportioned to the energy of the English Catholics themselves. The Duke of Norfolk, though released

April

from the Tower, was not to be allowed to take his seat Case XX among the Peers. The great party of which he was the leader was deeply affronted, and their resentment might be utilized to practical effect. The servants and followers of the Lords would be sufficient, if combined, to overcome the utmost resistance which could be offered by the Court; and the Queen of Scots once more endeavoured to spur her languid lover into energy. She recommended him and Arundel to surprise the Queen, seize her and Cecil, and before the opening scatter such of the Commons as had arrived, and so end the Anjou marriage and all other troubles at a single blow. The scheme was perhaps not impracticable. The Court suspected nothing. The Bishop of Ross talked it over with the Catholic leaders. Arundel, Lumley, Worcester, Southampton, Montague, and several others, were ready. Lord Derby's sons had come up with some hundreds of Lancashire gentlemen, and were eager for any desperate enterprise. Young Talbot had arranged a plan for the simultaneous escape of the Queen of Scots; relays of horses were provided, and a ship was in readiness at Liverpool to carry her to the Isle of Man till the struggle in England should be over.2 Nothing, however, could be done without

1 Confession of the Bishop of Ross, Oct. 1571.-MURDIN. Barker's Confession.-Ibid.

2 Several projects had been formed to get her out of Sheffield, so e details of which were discovered by the Earl of Morton on his way back to Scotland. 'She would feign herself ill for two or three days and then be taken down stairs to see the dancing.' She was to dance herself, affect to faint, and be carried to her room. One of her women, dressed like her,

would take her place on the bed,
while she, in the disguise of a page,
would escape from a postern. If
this failed, she was to go hunting,
one of her ladies representing her,
and she again as a page. A Scot
was to come in post with a pretended
commission from Elizabeth to speak
with her. He would address him-
self to the lady, who when he retired
would direct the page to wait upon

him: or

'She should cut her hair, blot her

CHAP XXI Norfolk, and Norfolk was one of those unlucky conspi

1571 April

rators who wait always for a better opportunity. The Bishop of Ross laid the design before him, and showed him the promises of his friends. But the little decision which he possessed was unnerved by the badness of his cause. He knew too well the nature of the woman for whom he was turning traitor, and when he was warming to the striking point, the thought of it froze the blood in his veins.1 'Too dastardly and soft,' as the disappointed Catholics called him, unfit alike for good or ill;' he said he did not like Italian devices;' 'he would attempt nothing till he got answer from the Princes beyond the seas.' 2

Thus the occasion passed, and Parliament opened in peace, the Protestant party being strengthened in the Upper House by the presence of the Queen's cousin, lately created Lord Buckhurst, and, far more important, of Cecil, whose long services had been rewarded, on the 25th of February, by the Barony of Burghley. Including these two, there were now sixtyone Peers upon the list, besides Westmoreland and Morley, who were in Flanders, and the Earl of Northumberland, who was at Lochleven. Of the sixty-one, Lord Cumberland and Lord Bath were under age. Norfolk was not allowed to sit, and to compensate for his absence Hertford was excluded also. Lord Derby

face and body with filth as though
she was a turnbroach of the kitchen,
and so convey herself forth on foot
to some place where horses should
be provided for her.'-Morton to Cecil,
April 7.-MSS QUEEN OF Scots.

I confess that I, waiting on my
Lord and master, did hear his Grace
say that upon examination of the

matter of the murder, it did appear that the Queen of Scots was guilty and privy to the murder of the Lord Darnley, her late husband.'-Barker's Confession. MURDIN, p. 134.

4 Confession of the Bishop of Ross, Oct. 1571.-MURDIN. Barker's Confession.-Ibid.

was ill and could not come up, and Shrewsbury could CHAP XXI not leave his charge. Eight others were absent for 1571 various reasons, and seven of the twenty-two Bishops. April 2 The Upper House was therefore composed of sixty-two members in all. The Bishops were to a man under Cecil's direction, and their united vote, including the proxies, could always be depended upon. Seven of the absent Peers gave their proxies to Leicester, and Leicester would not go over to the Catholics till he saw that they were certain to succeed. So far, therefore, the prospects of the Government were favourable. Lord Arundel, with the Ridolfi revolution in front of him, was unlikely to try the experiment, under such circumstances, of a Parliamentary conflict.

The proceedings commenced, as usual, with a speech from the Lord Keeper. It was long, but contained little beyond an encomium on the Queen's Government, and an intimation that, through the raging Romanist rebels,' the Queen had incurred extraordinary expenses in defence of the kingdom, and required money. She had reduced her personal outlay, cutting off all needless luxuries and extravagancies, to avoid being a burden to her people; but the peace of the realm had been disturbed both at home and in Ireland. The malice of the time obliged her to keep a fleet upon the seas for the protection of commerce. The state of parties in Scotland required the presence of a large force upon the Border, and with the utmost economy she was unable to meet the demands upon her. This, with two short paragraphs on a revision of the laws, was all, in substance, which Bacon said. The succession, the excommunication, the Queen's marriagethe subjects which really occupied all men's mindswere passed over in silence. A reform in the discipline

CHAP XXI of the Church was admitted to be necessary, but a wish was pointedly expressed that it should be left to April 2 the Bishops.

1571

Had the Parliament confined themselves to the programme thus marked out for them, the Session would have passed over quietly. So long as no attempt was made to cut the Queen of Scots off from the succession, the Peers would have been content to wait to assert her claims after the arrival of Alva; and the Commons were intended to restrict themselves to voting the supplies.

The Commons, however, were in no humour to be thus easily managed. The ultra Protestants proved to be in an enormous majority. The rebellion of the North, and the general necessity of things, had developed largely and freely the Puritan spirit of the towns; and the Catholic reaction in the country districts, the loose administration of the laws, and the notoriously Romanizing tendencies of the Peers and country families, acted as a challenge to the fiercer of the Reformers to try their strength with them. For ten years past there had been an earnest desire in the Reforming leaders to inflict the Thirty-nine Articles both on clergy and laity as a test of doctrine, to reform the Prayer-book, and impose on England generally the Genevan discipline. As a step in this direction, on the first day on which the Houses met for business, a Bill was introduced to compel all persons, of whatever degree, not only to attend service on Sundays at church, but to be present twice a-year at the Communion.

The tongues of men, finding themselves unloosed at last, ran over at once with a violence unprecedented in House of Commons history. Complaints burst out of the laxity with which the laws against Papists had