CHAP XXII

1571

November

social, political, and religious-had united to stimulate,
and they had invited a foreign Power to assist them in
overthrowing the Queen's Government and the liberties
of their country at a single blow. A scheme of the
same kind had been formed in the past generation by
the Marquis of Exeter, the Nevilles, Lady Salisbury,
and her traitor sons. Elizabeth's father, supported by
the hearty confidence of the people, had called the whole
nation under arms, and had struck the heads of the chief
conspirators from their shoulders before their projects
were matured. The position of the present Government
was far more precarious. The progress of the revolution
had fostered a crop of discontents which then were in
their germ.
The Catholics throughout all Europe had
recovered from the paralysis into which they had been
thrown by the first burst of the Reformation. A
general spirit of disloyalty had penetrated every section
of society: the leaders were arrested, but a sullen
dangerous humour was abroad, in the North especially,
which at any moment might break again into flame;1
and, since Pembroke's death, Elizabeth had no one in
her Council who could be relied on to command in the
field with any general sympathy from the country.
Her ministers were chiefly civilians who had risen from
the ranks with the new order of things. Leicester was
detested and despised, and was half a traitor to boot;
Bedford was in bad health; Bacon was a mere lawyer;
Cecil was infinitely able and infinitely popular with the
Protestants; but he was not a soldier, and by the
Catholics he was as much hated as Cromwell had been.
If it came to blows it might well be doubted whether

1 The people have been put in comfort of a change, and now they stand but looking for one that would say Hisse. These counties are most

apt to evil, as where the practising
Papists have most their conventicles.'
-Thomas Ashton of Shrewsbury to
Burghley, Oct. 23. MSS. Domestic.

men like these could hold their ground against the retainers of the hereditary English chiefs, around whose persons was concentrated the traditional loyalty of centuries. Such men as Norfolk and Arundel were as sovereigns in their own counties. To the Howards and

Fitzalans the Tudors themselves were but the mushroom growth of yesterday; and to attempt to crush treason by force when the leading nobles were at the head of the conspiracy, was only one degree less dangerous than to pass it over unpunished.

Norfolk was the chief offender. Norfolk was the intending husband of the Queen of Scots. Norfolk had given the commission to Ridolfi, and his crime was surrounded with every circumstance of ignominy and dishonour. He, an English nobleman, had pledged his word to his Sovereign, deliberately meaning to break it. Calling himself a Catholic to the Pope, he had sued for a dispensation to conceal his creed the better to betray the Protestants who trusted him. For the fanatic who conceives that he has a duty to God which supersedes his earthly allegiance, some kind of respect is not impossible-but no plea of religion can take the stain out of treachery. Nor among Norfolk's many-sided protestations was it easy to distinguish truth from falsehood. He was a Catholic to the Pope and the King of Spain; while he swore to Elizabeth and Burghley that he would be sooner torn with horses than forsake the faith in which he had been brought up. Which were his real convictions, or whether he possessed any real convictions, remains after all uncertain. With Arundel, Southampton, Lumley, and the Stanleys, both prudence and a natural disinclination to severity induced Elizabeth to pause. Norfolk she determined to bring to trial. A commission was appointed to

CHAP XXII

1571 November

CHAP

XXII

1571 December

revise the evidence against him and draw up his indictment. The exposure of his falsehood would, it might hoped, compel even the unwilling Peers for very shame to admit his guilt.

Meantime there was another ambassador whose complicity came out with no less clearness than that of the Bishop of Ross. Doctor Man had been dismissed with scanty courtesy from Madrid; Sir Henry Cobham had been received by Philip with studied insolence. There was an opportunity for repaying the Spanish Court in kind, and ridding England of a minister whose residence had been one continued plot against the throne. Don Guerau was summoned before the Council. He was told that his practices had been discovered: in the three years which he had been in England he had never ceased to trouble the quiet of the realm; the Queen would no longer endure his presence, and he must be gone without delay.' Don Guerau, savage with disappointment, turned on Burghley, and said he was the cause of all the unkindness between his master and the Queen. But Burghley was now supreme again. The order was coldly repeated, and he was allowed four days to prepare for departure.

There were two sides to the question. The Ambassador, looking back over the history of the same three years, might well believe that the balance of right was in his own and in his master's favour. He knew, better than Elizabeth herself, the reluctance with which the King of Spain had accepted the quarrel which had been forced upon him, and the earnestness with which he had resisted the importunities of the Court of Rome and his own subjects. His coasts had been plundered, his commerce destroyed, his colonies outraged by English

1 Words to be said to the Spanish Ambassador, Dec. 14.-MSS. Spain.

desperadoes, in whose adventures the Queen herself was an interested shareholder. The seizure of his treasure at Plymouth and Southampton was an act of piracy on a gigantic scale, committed by the Government itself. The English harbours had been the home of the Dutch privateer fleet; ships built in England, armed in England, and manned by Englishmen, had held the Channel under the flag of the Prince of Orange; and if Alva attempted to interfere with them they were sheltered by English batteries. Their plunder was sold openly in the markets, the royal purveyors being occasional purchasers; and Dover had been made a second Algiers, where Spanish gentlemen had been set up in chains for public auction. The King of Spain might have held himself free in equity from all obligations to a Government which set at nought the usages of civilised nations; and Don Guerau could have seen no sin in endeavouring to bring into power the old nobility, the hereditary friends of the House of Burgundy. The legitimate remedy however was open war, and Philip and his councillors had stained their honour and their cause by preferring the assassin's dagger. To the same ill resource the Ambassador, now at his last extremity, applied himself. The mine which had been dug and loaded so carefully had been discovered and harmlessly sprung; the excommunicated Queen, the insolent Burghley, the heretics, and the buccaneers, had once more triumphed; Norfolk was to be tried for his life; the experienced Spaniard could not hope that the Queen of Scots would be spared; he was himself ordered away in disgrace, yet one bold stroke might repair everything. Cecil-the false, lowborn, but most dexterous Cecil; the arrogant islander who believed that England united might defy the power of the whole

CHAP XXII

1571 December

CHAP XXII

1571 December

world' Cecil was the soul of Elizabeth's government: were Cecil gone all might yet be saved.

In times of civil commotion there are never wanting persons who, under the influence of vanity, are ready for the most desperate enterprises. There were present in London, and known to the Spanish Ambassador, two young gentlemen from Norwich named Berney and Mather, who, after drifting about Europe in various services, had come to England to take part in the rebellion. Kenelm Berney had gone abroad to escape justice for some previous murder. Mather had been secretary successively to Sir Henry Norris and to Sir N. Throgmorton in France. His father was a merchant in good circumstances: he had himself glittered about Courts, pushing himself by all ways into notoriety, and with such a hunger for what he called fame that, as one of his brother secretaries said of him, he could content himself with nothing less than shaking a kingdom.' 2 On a smaller scale he resembled Thomas Stukely, and like Stukely had thought of Ireland as a field for his ambition, when the Ridolfi conspiracy came in his way and gave him the opportunity for which he was looking.

Being Berney's fellow-townsman, and knowing him to be ready with his hand, he sent for him from France, and the two friends were looking about them for some means of employing their talents. Like the rest of the Catholics, they bewailed the misfortune