This Sceptred Isle

by Christopher Lee

  Gardiner died in 1555 and Cardinal Pole became Archbishop of Canterbury after Cramner was removed from office. Pole was an exiled Catholic who had been forced to leave England in 1532. He published an attack on Henry’s anti-papal ideas in 1536 and, because he was out of the country, his mother, the Countess of Salisbury (and a one-time governess to Queen Mary) was executed in his place. As for Philip, he was seen as a sinister figure largely because of the reputation of the Inquisition. Simon Renard, the Holy Roman Emperor’s ambassador, described the situation in a letter to his Emperor, dated 3 September 1554: ‘The Spaniards are hated . . . Only ten days ago, the heretics tried to burn a church in Suffolk with the entire congregation that was hearing Mass inside’.

  When in March 1556 the aged Thomas Cranmer was executed, the Protestant rebellion took greater heart and determination. Cranmer’s end was no more pitiful than that of the other martyrs. He was, with Nicholas Ridley, one of the most important theologians of the Reformation. It was Cranmer who insisted that the people should understand that Christ exists in faith, not in material symbols such as bread and wine. His original arrest would seem to have been because of Queen Mary’s need to avenge his part in the divorce of her mother, Catherine of Aragon. But he had to be shown as a traitor to the throne or better still as a heretic. There followed long months of interrogation to prove his heresy. Eventually Cranmer appears to have lost his nerve – a crude summary perhaps of the interminable questioning, humiliation and continuing threat of death to which he was subjected. Ironically, he was not the power throughout the land that he once had been, but he was still a symbol of persecution to the Catholics and therefore the Marian court.

  During his final days, Cranmer was taken from prison and lodged under house arrest with the Dean of Christ Church at Oxford. Between January and February 1556, he recanted his beliefs and acknowledged the authority of the Crown and the Pope. On 9 March Cranmer published his fifth so-called recantation in which he repudiated the doctrine of Luther and accepted Catholicism as the one Church. He received his requested absolution and went to Mass. This would not save him. He wrote a final recantation which was published on 18 March. Then came the drama that meant surely there would be no last stay of execution. At the University Church, Oxford, Cranmer delivered a homily that had been approved, but at the end of it he declared that the Pope was Antichrist. He had rejected all the documents he had signed, all the statements made in his name. He was dragged away along Brasenose Lane to the site in front of Balliol College where both Hugh Latimer, Church of England Chaplain to Edward VI, and Ridley had been burnt at the stake. There, 150 faggots of furze and 100 faggots of wood were stacked; Cranmer was stripped to his long white shirt and bound by the waist to the stake. As the flames grew Cranmer stretched his arm into the fire and cried, ‘This hand hath offended.’ It was 21 March 1556.

  Queen Mary wanted Cranmer a Catholic or no Cranmer at all. She had her way. Two years on, she too would be dead.

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  1558–87

  In 1558, Mary I, known as Bloody Mary, died. She had reigned for five tempestuous years and tried to reverse the Reformation. She failed. She also could not prevent another war with France and in her last year she lost the English possession across the Channel, Calais.

  And so, in 1558, Queen Elizabeth I came to the throne. Her country was poor, Scotland and France threatened England’s peace, the banks of Antwerp threatened the nation’s stability and many in Catholic Europe saw Elizabeth as a usurper. They believed Mary Queen of Scots (1542–87), the daughter of James V of Scotland and Mary of Guise who was now to be wed to the heir to the French throne (later Francis II), to be rightful heir to the Crown of England. Little wonder then that many in 1558 thought Elizabeth would not last very long. But Elizabeth took after her father, Henry VIII. She was experienced enough – perhaps sharpened is a better description – to understand the dangers of dogmatism, from whichever side of the religious divide it appeared. She had been threatened with beheading, had been locked in the Tower and was then made prisoner at Woodstock. Her mother had been executed and, for at least the past five years, Elizabeth had been seen as a direct threat to Queen Mary Tudor. However, Elizabeth did not stand alone. She had William Cecil, the man who would be judged by some as the finest civil servant of the whole century, as her Secretary of State. Moreover, she made it clear that Protestantism would continue under her stewardship as head of the English Church. That was never to be such a simple matter; the bishops, and most of the people who cared, were still Catholics. Perhaps if some arrangement could have been made with Rome that would have proved a better security for England and its monarch, then it would have been seriously pursued. But the then Pope, Paul IV, believed that princes and kings should grovel to papal authority.

  If there is any Christian persuasion in England unlike Catholicism, then it is non-conformism – that is, those worshippers who refuse to conform to the liturgy and style of the Church of Rome and what had now become an established Church of England. It was in Elizabeth’s time that the Puritans emerged to question not simply the monarch’s standing in ecclesiastical matters, but the very style of the established Church. Here was the basis for what would follow in the coming centuries – Cavaliers versus Roundheads, Tories versus Whigs. Elizabeth was truly trying to bring about an obvious unity within the country’s Church of England’s religious order. It was never going to be easy especially as the distinctions between the mighty Church and high-minded Church were inevitably irreconcilable. On one side, the Church of England had its origins and contemporary practice well defined by papist custom and law. The Puritanical streak was harder to fathom; describing what it was against, rather than precisely what it was for, is an easier way of defining Puritanism. Puritans were the extreme Protestants. Their theology was largely based on Calvinism. Puritans wanted a sparer, less ritualistic Church of England.

  In 1558 the Continent was dominated by two opposing Catholic powers: the Valois monarchy of France and the Habsburg Empire, with Philip of Spain at its head. But there were signs of a truce, and if that were to happen, then the Pope might encourage them both to join in a Crusade – against the English. After all, in Catholic eyes, the English throne was now occupied by the daughter of the two people who caused the break with Rome: Henry VIII and Anne Boleyn. She represented a serious threat to Catholicism.

  So for Elizabeth to maintain her religious balancing act, whatever measures were taken to defend the throne must also reflect what was going on elsewhere in Europe. And Elizabeth’s own view was that she mustn’t be seen to be fanatically Protestant because of the threat from Rome, and because of the disquiet of some of her own people who were still mostly Catholics. At the same time, she mustn’t be seen to be leaning towards Rome, or she would not be able to contain the Protestant and Puritan opposition.

  In 1559 the Acts of Supremacy and Uniformity were passed. The Act of Uniformity laid down the use of common prayer, divine service and the administration of the sacraments. It was, in some senses, a compromise. For the Protestants it didn’t go far enough. It implied, to take just one example, the wearing of Catholic vestments. As the Scottish reformer John Knox remarked, ‘She that now reigneth over them is neither good Protestant nor yet resolute Papist.’ The 1559 Acts had some uncompromising warnings for churchmen who failed to conform to the letter of the Book of Common Prayer. A first offending priest would be fined one year’s profit from his benefice and could even spend six months in prison. A second offence would mean a year in prison. A third offence would signify serious intent to defy the State and so a priest would, or could, be imprisoned for life.

  The Acts of Supremacy and Uniformity were passed by Parliament, significantly without the consent of any of the churchmen; here was a clear demonstration of William Cecil’s abilities. He was the sixteenth-century version of a twenty-first century robust government chief whip. The whole matter was concluded in 1563 with the definition of Church doctrine: the Thirty-Nine Articles,
which were based on Cranmer’s first draft completed as long ago as Edward VI’s time. Eight years later, the Subscription Act made it unlawful for clergy not to subscribe to the Articles.

  Elizabeth’s establishing of the Church in law – that is, the Established Church – prevented a religious civil war similar to the one running through France at the time. It also set the course for what is now called the Anglican Church as the mainstay of the Elizabethan State. That settled, the court turned its attention to the next important matter: the continuation of the dynasty. In other words, finding a husband for the Queen. The tradition of primogeniture in the preferment of monarchy made so much sense. A natural and undisputed succession of rights and monarchy removed many of the prospective causes of conflict and turmoil in any nation-state. The nation needed a successor to the Queen, therefore the Queen had to have a husband and then issue, preferably a son. Would the court have stood by and waited for natural selection? Hardly. There was talk of her marrying her deceased sister Mary’s husband, Philip II of Spain. That would have been a reasonable political marriage; it would have meant also being involved in the Continental rivalries that would have done little good to England. There was always Robert Dudley, her handsome favourite who was the son of the Duke of Northumberland. She believed, however, that there was little hurry. Yet in October 1562 Elizabeth seemed to be dying of smallpox. The Protestants feared, once more, a Catholic succession. They need not have worried. Their Queen recovered, but the Commons reminded her that she had a duty to marry and she must carry out that duty. If not abroad, then at home.

  However, her closest advisers had another concern – Mary Stuart. Mary had inherited the title of Queen of the Scots as a baby when her father James V died shortly after the Battle of Solway Moss in 1542. Since the age of six to eighteen she had lived in France, spoke French and Latin and probably could not understand the native Scots, but they most certainly understood what she represented. So when she fled to England from Scotland (following the suspicious death of her husband Lord Darnley) in 1568, Elizabeth and her advisers felt more threatened than welcoming. Elizabeth imprisoned Mary in Tutbury Castle. The castle walls could not restrain the danger that many believed accompanied Mary. That danger was not simply her potential as a rival: she was a rallying point for English Catholics. The Counter-Reformation of Europe understood well the symbolism of the imprisoned Catholic queen. None understood this more than Francis Walsingham, effectively Elizabeth’s head of intelligence. He understood that even if Mary Stuart had no ambitions for the English throne, she could be used as an excuse to plot against Elizabeth. If the plot to bring down the monarch and Protestantism succeeded, the cause of all Protestants in Europe would be fragile. Nowhere was the division of faith and persuasion more evident in Europe than in England itself. Northern England was mainly Catholic, the south mainly Protestant; and, in 1569, the Northern Rebellion began. It was the start of some seven years of instability in Elizabethan England. And England’s relationship with Catholic Spain was strained almost to the point of war, partly because Cecil had ordered the seizure of Spanish treasure ships on their way to the Netherlands.

  At the same time the Pope, tired of what he saw as English disobedience, excommunicated Elizabeth in 1570 and issued an order that loyal Catholics should get rid of her. The conflict between the Netherlands and Spain became a rallying banner for Englishmen against Catholicism and Spain, and they volunteered to defend the Netherlands. In Elizabeth’s government there were strong differences of opinion. The cause was accepted, but not England’s military commitment to it. But when the leader of the Dutch Protestants was assassinated the cause was revived. This was followed, in 1585, by Philip II of Spain seizing all the English ships in his ports and making plans to invade England. So the rapidly evolving differences between Spain and England were inevitably leading to war, and encouraged the ever-present threat of internal plotting on behalf of Mary Stuart against Elizabeth Tudor. Mary Stuart could never have hoped to survive whatever the personal feelings of Elizabeth. The Queen’s court cared for the survival of the State and that State could only survive as a Protestant realm. Mary was accused and found guilty of treason. It was up to Elizabeth to sign the death order. She could have refused. Or could she? She signed. She may have been saddened after the event, but we should not believe that she had misunderstood what she was doing. On 8 February 1587, Mary Queen of Scots was executed at the second attempt of the axeman.

  The England of this period was not utterly inward-looking and absorbed by its own calamities. This was, after all, the age of British discovery beyond the dreams of most, if not those of Francis Drake. It was also an age that was to leave a lasting stain on the conscience of the English societies of the nineteenth, twentieth and twenty-first centuries. That stain was slavery. The English were slow into this trade. The Portuguese had been the leaders of the West African slaving expeditions for close on a century before the British arrived in the region.

  Elizabeth I herself was personally involved in the slave trade. In 1567, along with Lord Robert Dudley and the Earl of Pembroke, she backed John Hawkins’ third voyage to the west coast of Africa to fill his six ships with 500 Africans. He then set sail on the trade winds to the West Indies to sell his human cargo to the Spanish. Elizabeth, remembering the rich pickings of the previous trips, lent him two of her ships, the Jesus of Lubeck and the Minion. He had also four smaller vessels including the Judith, commanded by his nephew, Francis Drake. The prospects were fine. The conclusion was disastrous.

  The Spanish governor had said settlers should not buy slaves from Hawkins but the Englishman knew that they wanted African slaves and were willing to pay about 160 pounds on the black market for a half-decent specimen. However, in San Juan de Ulúa, now called Veracruz, in the Gulf of Mexico, Hawkins and Drake ran into trouble with the Spanish fleet. Many of his sailors were slaughtered and one of the Queen’s ships, the Jesus of Lubeck, was lost. Only fifteen of the 200 crew of her other vessel, the Minion, made it back to England. What had started as a colonial trading venture would indirectly lead to one of the most famous dates in English history, 1588 and the Spanish Armada (see Chapter Twenty).

  It was in this same period that we can see the beginnings of what was to become England’s first official colony in North America. The man at the centre of this exploration was neither Drake nor Hawkins, but Humphrey Gilbert, who had gained a reputation as a commander in Ireland by sticking victims’ heads on poles during his campaign to subdue the Irish. In 1578, Gilbert was granted letters patent to mount an expedition to North America. This authority from the Queen was not conclusive because the wording was cautious. Gilbert was told that he should: ‘Discover search find out and view such remote heathen and barbarous lands countries and territories not actually possessed of any Christian prince or people and . . . to have hold occupy and enjoy to him his heirs and assignees for ever.’ On Monday 5 August 1583 Humphrey Gilbert took St John’s harbour in Newfoundland for Elizabeth I and 200 leagues in every direction for his heirs, and with that he established the first English colony in North America. Unfortunately he went down with his ship on the return voyage.

  We have in Elizabethan history a dazzling gallery of adventurers. As well as Drake, Hawkins and Gilbert, there was Walter Ralegh. He was Gilbert’s half-brother and continued the pursuit of colonization on behalf of Elizabeth. At fourteen he was a student at Oxford. At fifteen he was fighting in France. He became the Queen’s favourite, then not, then again, then in her final year (but not under her reign) he was sentenced to death for treason, but sent instead to the Tower. He stayed there for thirteen years, was released in 1616 but executed in 1618. He wrote the History of the World and founded the Poets’ Club. Apart from the cloak, the puddle and the Queen, Ralegh remains a doublet-and-hose figure forever fighting the Spanish and, of course, supposedly bringing to England tobacco, potatoes and the possession of Virginia in North America. Ralegh made it clear that empire was possible. Two centuries on and Nelson made the
expansion of empire certain.

  In 1584, when Elizabeth told Ralegh he had a six-year monopoly on searching out what would be called Virginia, it was undoubtedly for colonization. This contradicts the idea that the British got an empire by accident. The letters patent were clearly titled:

  Granted by the Queen’s Majesty to Master Walter Ralegh, now knight, for the discovering and planting of new lands and countries . . . reserving always to us, our heirs and successors, for all services and duties and demands, the fifth part of all the ores of gold and silver that from time to time and at all times after such discovery, subduing and possessing, shall be gotten and obtained. All which lands, countries, and territories shall be for ever be holden of the said Walter Ralegh, his heirs and assignees of us our heirs and successors by homage and by the said payment of the said fifth part

  By now Ralegh was Elizabeth’s favourite, but there were plenty enemies at court that would have been only too pleased to see him away for a few months and he was far from liked in the country. Elizabeth had made him wealthy by giving him monopolies over the broadcloth and wine trades. He was using some of his money to fit out ships for explorations when he got his letters patent and the vessels sailed on 27 April 1584.