Elizabeth I's Secret Lover

by Robert Stedall

  The immediate objective was a combined sea and land operation to relieve Sluis. This was of far less importance to the Dutch than to the English, who wanted to prevent its use for embarking an invasion force across the North Sea. The Dutch lacked any will to take risks. Although an immediate ship-borne attack on Parma’s defences might have provided an element of surprise, Maurice of Nassau, in joint command of the fleet, refused to authorise it until land-based forces were positioned. Furthermore, the Dutch pilots, who were needed to guide the fleet though the sandbars in the Scheldt estuary, refused to commit themselves until tide and weather were ideal. Robert resorted to a plan to make a naval assault on the Spanish headquarters at Cadzand. This required flat-bottomed boats, but Justin of Nassau refused to approve their use without States General approval. The land-based attack under Pelham with 4,000 foot and 400 horse was to march along the coast from Ostend, but a broken causeway at Blankenberge prevented any further advance. Although he received instructions with his raw English levies to take Blankenberge, which guarded the rear of Parma’s supply chain from Bruges, it was protected by a large detachment of Spanish veterans. Pelham had no choice but to withdraw to Ostend without a shot being fired. From here his men were transported to Sluis by sea and Robert insisted on a frontal attack. With the narrow winding waterways making this difficult, Robert manoeuvred a fireship to engulf a floating bridge that Parma had created across the river, but Parma simply detached the bridge at its centre allowing the fire ship to pass through and burn out harmlessly beyond. Although Robert exhorted the pilots to sail through the gap before Parma could re-join the bridge, they refused to cooperate, fearful of running into a narrow channel without room to manoeuvre. While Robert fumed, Parma reattached the two sides of his bridge and the opportunity was lost.

  No further effort was made to relieve Sluis, which surrendered on honourable terms on 4 August after a fearful bombardment. Parma was so impressed with Williams’s handling of its defence that he was offered a role in Spanish forces fighting against the Turks, but Williams turned this down. Parma was greatly relieved at the cessation of hostilities. He had lost 700 men with many more having been wounded. With the campaign season over, he needed a breathing space. He continued his ineffectual peace negotiations with Elizabeth, who was blaming the Dutch for the loss of Sluis and could see no reason to provide them with further support. The breach between the allied forces was now too wide to bridge. On 10 November, the States General failed to accept Robert’s continuing authority, despite support for him from Calvinist extremists. He was anxious to leave, but when Elizabeth recalled him, no Dutch dignitaries attended his departure. She was still showing him great affection, and Essex reported that ‘there was not a lady in the land that should more desire the news of your return than herself’.62 Nevertheless, she was still demanding a proper account of his expenditure and again refused further supplies until the completion of a satisfactory audit. Soldiers cheated by their captains remained in the direst straits. Thirty of them besieged Greenwich Palace, and Burghley opened a fund to enable them to return to their homes. Elizabeth called two of them before the Privy Council, which established that their captains had been paid in full. On 17 December, the Council sent a notice to the Lords Lieutenant of each county, that if soldiers provided manifest proof that they remained unpaid, they should appeal to the courts for settlement.

  Elizabeth still hoped to avoid a Spanish invasion by reaching a peace settlement. Nevertheless, Burghley and Walsingham had warned her that Parma’s only interest was to crush the Netherlands before attacking England. This was true. Philip II was advising Parma not to wait for his Armada, but to cross the Channel with all the forces at his disposal, after which the Armada would deliver reinforcements. Parma was indignant and, on 21 December 1587, gave the Spanish King ‘an unvarnished account of the enormous difficulties to be overcome’.63 He was blockaded into Antwerp and Sluis and was having to dig a canal to the open sea. Although he had flat-bottomed boats for a landing, he could not deploy them without the Armada’s protection.

  English morale was considerably brightened by the exploits of Drake, who had led the first of two lightning raids onto the coast of Spain. The Queen told him that if he succeeded, ‘she would applaud him to the very echo’,64 but if he fell into Spanish hands, she could do nothing to save him. In the first of these, in November 1585, he had sacked Vigo and Santiago, commandeering supplies, before flying across the Atlantic to sack the cities of San Domingo and Cartagena in January 1586. He returned ‘to thrill the nation with confidence’.65 Nevertheless, such derring-do lost Elizabeth any hope of being able to deny her aggressive intentions towards Spain. Parma had already assembled a list of England’s heretics, naming ‘the principal devils’66 as Robert, Ambrose, Huntingdon, Burghley, Bedford, Hunsdon, Hatton and Walsingham.

  Chapter 26 The Execution of Mary Queen of Scots

  Almost all members of the Council, including Robert, had held the view that Elizabeth’s safety and the protection of the English Reformation made the removal of Mary Queen of Scots a public necessity. Every Catholic plot to depose Elizabeth focused on placing Mary on the English throne, and it was her very existence in England that seemed to be the catalyst for such scheming. It is true that Mary was aware of most of the plotting and was desperately seeking her freedom. Nevertheless, she was being extremely cautious, and, by this time, had probably lost any ambition for the English Crown. The success of any plot depended on Continental Catholic support, and realistically only the Spanish had the will and the military might to provide it. It was always assumed that English Catholics would support a foreign invasion force, but in reality they remained more supportive of their Protestant English Queen than of any potential foreign Catholic monarch. As Parma realised, his prospect of leading a successful invasion force was extremely doubtful and, once enthroned, Mary was likely to ally with French rather than Spanish interests. So long as Mary lived, there was no great Spanish appetite to invade England, as Elizabeth was astute enough to recognise.

  Although a Spanish-led invasion might seem unlikely, the English Government remained concerned that if Elizabeth died, Mary was likely to gain the English Crown by dynastic right. Nevertheless, Elizabeth was not going to agree to Mary’s execution unless she was demonstrably involved in a clearly defined plot that threatened the English Crown. As she was not English, it was even questionable whether her involvement in a plot against Elizabeth would be treasonable. It was only her enforced presence in England that provided any grounds for an English court to try an anointed monarch.

  A way had to be found to protect the Queen. It was Robert’s protégé, Thomas Digges, who came up with a mechanism in his pamphlet, Humble Motives for Association to Maintain Religion Established. He proposed ‘a formal bond to be entered into by all English Protestants for the protection of their Queen’.1 Robert put it forward to the Council and in October 1584, Walsingham promoted a Bill for the Surety of the Queen’s Person. Englishmen were obliged under oath to pledge their allegiance to the Crown. Under the resultant ‘bond of association’, they were required to seek the death of those plotting against Elizabeth and of those who would benefit from such plotting. Even a beneficiary’s heirs were to be excluded from the succession. A body of twenty-four councillors and peers was to examine the evidence and take control if Elizabeth should die. Elizabeth balked at the execution without trial of any person simply because of another’s action and wanted to protect James VI from being barred from the English throne. The bill was redrawn so that, when it passed in February 1585, only those who had consented to a crime could be put to death. In a show of Protestant solidarity, thousands flocked to sign it. Burghley then prepared legislation, which became the Act for the Queen’s Safety which passed into law in March 1585. This stipulated that if a claimant to the throne became involved in an invasion, rebellion or plot against the Crown, he or she would be tried by a commission of Privy Councillors and other Lords of Parliament, with the verdict to be given
by royal proclamation. A claimant found guilty would be excluded from the succession, with Englishmen being authorised to kill him or her out of revenge.2 These two Acts taken together, provided the legal framework for Mary’s future trial and execution.

  Walsingham faced a different problem. His agents had infiltrated all the Catholic hotbeds of dissent and had failed to unearth any plausible plot with which to implicate Mary. He had to resort to entrapping her into supporting a plot put together by his own agents. In October 1585, Gilbert Gifford, a member of a well-to-do Catholic family from Staffordshire, visited Archbishop Bethune’s offices in Paris, now thoroughly infiltrated with Walsingham’s men. Gifford was an able linguist who had failed to be accepted as a priest after Jesuit training at the English College in Rome and later at Douai. He was interviewed by Thomas Morgan who organised the system for communicating with Mary from Paris. Morgan immediately employed Gifford, who divulged his plans to assassinate Elizabeth and place Mary on the English throne. Gifford’s plot also involved his cousin, George Gifford, as well as John Savage, another failed priest, and John Ballard, an ordained soldier-priest, sometimes known as Fortescue. Morgan introduced Gilbert Gifford to Walsingham’s mole, Paget, who enticed him with other conspiracies to free Mary. Gilbert was then given the task of providing a new delivery system for Mary’s correspondence, which was piling up at the French embassy in London. By this time, Mary was being held under the guardianship of Amyas Paulet at Chartley Hall in Staffordshire, which belonged to Essex. Although Essex had complained vociferously at the stigma of it being used to house her, its water-filled moat provided great security and limited access to her.

  While Paget was undoubtedly a double agent acting for Walsingham, in all probability so was Morgan. He was certainly mistrusted by his French colleagues and had spent time imprisoned in the Bastille. Nevertheless, Mary trusted him implicitly. When Gilbert Gifford crossed the channel to Rye in December, he was arrested after a tip-off by either Paget or Morgan. He was taken to Walsingham, who immediately blackmailed him into becoming another double-agent. He seemed to relish his new role as a spy and dropped any further involvement in his conspiracy. He agreed to intercept Mary’s correspondence, passing it to Morgan’s friend, the master codebreaker, Thomas Phelippes, to whom he was introduced. Gilbert was sent to collect letters from the French embassy. He then passed them to Walsingham so that Phelippes could decode and copy them. When they reached Staffordshire, they were double-checked by Paulet, before being returned to Gilbert who passed them to a brewer in Burton-on-Trent. The brewer placed them in a waterproof pouch, which was pushed through the bunghole of barrels of beer delivered to Chartley. Letters sent by Mary followed the same route in reverse.3

  Having established this convoluted delivery mechanism, Walsingham sat back to await a plot with which to implicate Mary. He encouraged Morgan or Paget to find someone to implement Gilbert’s original plan. With Paris being at the centre of Catholic intrigue, Morgan was visited by the 25-year-old Sir Anthony Babington, one of Shrewsbury’s former pages, who had probably met Mary. In June 1586, Morgan confirmed to Mary through the beer-barrel route that Babington was an approved contact. Babington moved to London and gathered round him a group including Gilbert’s former co-conspirators, George Gifford, Ballard, and Savage. Remaining unaware of Gilbert’s duplicity, they now initiated Babington and other colleagues into the plot’s original plans. Ballard communicated with Mendosa but seems to have exaggerated the level of Spanish support available. Morgan also confused things by tampering with messages from Mary’s Guise relations, making her doubtful of the level of their support.4

  Babington was oblivious of the conspiracy developing around him. Although he was the titular leader, the plot was based on Gifford’s original plan manoeuvred into Babington’s control by Walsingham’s agents. The Spanish invasion was apparently to be led by Mary’s Scottish supporter, Lord Claud Hamilton, but Philip II was at best lukewarm about it. It was little more than a romantic fantasy.5 There were various rumours that Elizabeth’s life was in great danger. Elizabeth Jenkins records that one of the conspirators, Robert Barnewell, confronted Elizabeth walking with a group of unarmed courtiers in Richmond Park, but lost his nerve after Elizabeth looked searchingly at him. (In my considerable researches on this subject, I have found no mention of this, but it was the kind of rumour that would make the threat seem greater than it was.)

  Walsingham wrote to Robert in the Netherlands: ‘If the matter be well handled, it will break the neck of all dangerous practices during her majesty’s reign.’6 All that he needed was Mary’s written agreement to support the plot, and she duly obliged. She did not realise that both sides of the correspondence were being read and copied and had given instructions for the originals to be burned. She was taking a gamble to gain her freedom, even if Elizabeth’s assassination was the price to be paid for it. To make the evidence absolutely clear, Phelippes provided an embellished version of the correspondence, but even the originals show that Mary supported the plot against Elizabeth. All the conspirators were arrested and faced a traitor’s execution, but Gilbert Gifford received £40 from Walsingham and was permitted to escape abroad, heedless of the fate of his former colleagues. Mary was moved to Fotheringhay Castle in Northamptonshire. Fearing that she would use the opportunity of her trial to demonstrate her martyrdom (as she duly did), Robert suggested that she should be quietly poisoned, but Walsingham rejected such an underhand plan.

  The easy part of the trial at Fotheringhay was to find Mary guilty of treason. The difficulty was to gain Elizabeth’s support for her execution. Elizabeth hoped that one of her own citizens would take the matter out of her hands by assassinating Mary in accordance with the bond of association without the need for her authority, but no one would act without her express agreement. Burghley, Walsingham and Robert were at their wits end to find a means to persuade her. If Mary lived, she might yet become Queen of England. Robert, who was still in the Netherlands, needed to return to steady her resolve. When he rejoined her, he was greeted with open arms, but Elizabeth worried about how Mary’s execution would be viewed by the Catholic superpowers and by posterity. They held a lengthy meeting in private over supper. It is not known what was said, but she agreed to authorise Mary’s execution. By the following morning, she had changed her mind. Nevertheless, Robert was now firmly back in his old position of influence and, progressively, he wore her down. In a letter which demonstrates his close trust in Robert, James wrote to him: ‘How fond and inconstant I were, if I should prefer my mother to the title [the English Crown], let all men judge. My religion ever moved me to hate her course, although my honour constrains me to insist for her life.’7 Elizabeth now knew that James would not stand in her way. On 4 December, she approved the execution, but when the authority was presented to her for signature, she could not bear to sign it.

  Burghley turned to subterfuge. He obtained tacit French recognition that her execution was morally justified and spread a rumour of an imminent Spanish invasion. On 1 February 1587, he arranged for the authority to be included in a pile of papers given to Elizabeth for signature by Davison, who was now her secretary. Although she signed it, it was on the understanding that it was not to be acted upon without her express authority. It was a responsibility too painful for her to face. Burghley did not hesitate. He convened a meeting of all available Privy Councillors, including Robert, and persuaded them to act in accordance with the bond of association. Each Councillor agreed to bear equal responsibility.8 They passed the authority to Fotheringhay for it to be implemented. Mary was executed immediately, poignantly playing her dramatic role as a martyr to the full.

  Elizabeth was hysterical, spending hours of weeping that her authority had been outraged. She tried to make out to Catholic heads of state that she had been duped. Davison bore the brunt of her fury. He was fined £10,000 and was thrown in the Tower. The fine was eventually remitted, and he served only eighteen months, during which he lived under a liberal regime. He was re
leased shortly after the Armada, when he received his full salary as a life pension. Burghley was in a better position to remonstrate with her, pointing out that such theatricals might salve her conscience, but would cut little ice with the outside world. This did not prevent his temporary banishment.9 Nevertheless, foreign recrimination was muted, and he was soon recalled.

  With Mary dead, Philip could launch an invasion of England in support of a Counter-Reformation with a figurehead properly connected to Spanish interests. He was soon mustering a fleet and a huge military force to place his daughter, the Infanta Isabella, based in Brussels, on the English throne. She was a descendant of John of Gaunt.

  English Catholics had to ask themselves whether they would prefer to keep Elizabeth on the throne or have [a foreign Catholic Monarch] put there by Spanish troops; they had only to consider whether they would prefer to remain an independent and prosperous country or be taken over by the King of Spain and ruled as a Spanish province on the lines of the martyred Netherlands.10

  Chapter 27 Lieutenant and Captain General of the Queen’s armies and companies