by Susan Ronald
* * *
Meanwhile, Catherine de’ Medici was facing a direct challenge to her young son’s rule. The Guise faction was now backed by Philip II. The Spanish king disapproved of Catherine’s earlier attempts at reconciliation with the Huguenots through the Colloquy of Poissy the previous summer, and he feared that Protestantism was gaining ground in France. As Philip stepped up his campaign for Catherine to clamp down on the rampant spread of Protestantism, Louis de Condé was the first to lead the Huguenot noblemen to treat Catherine as “our Queen” and make countless professions of loyalty to her and the child king, Charles IX.27
Then something entirely predictable, yet unexpected, happened. The Duke of Guise rode out with his armed escort on the morning of Sunday, March 1, to hear Mass in the town of Vassy, which belonged to his niece Mary Queen of Scots. While at Mass, the sound of voices singing from a nearby barn within the town could be heard through the stone church walls. Unlike the approved Mass he heard, the voices wafting to his ears sang the illegal and forbidden Protestant service. As the voices of the Protestant psalm singers rose, so did the duke’s temper. Though he later claimed that he had not instigated hostilities, the duke and his men were clearly the aggressors. The only survivors of the “regrettable accident” were, of course, Guise and his followers, who stated that angry words flared into a violent struggle between the Huguenots and his men. Seventy-four Protestants were killed and over a hundred wounded. Women and children were slaughtered. Guise himself received a cut across his cheek that scarred him for life. The “regrettable accident” became known as the Massacre of Vassy, and it would spark off the first religious war in France, a war that would embolden Elizabeth to try to retake Calais.
SIX
Untrustworthy Allies
England remaining thus oppressed by the heretics, it is to be feared that there will be constant correspondence between them and the rebels and heretics of France and other neighboring countries.
—Charles Borromeo, archbishop of Milan, to the French legate, March 1562
Before word of the atrocity at Vassy reached Catherine de’ Medici, civil war in France was on everyone’s lips. The outspoken English ambassador, Nicholas Throckmorton, urged English intervention on the side of the Huguenots to Cecil, particularly as Spain had removed most of its troops from the Netherlands to fight the greater threat of the Ottoman Turk in the Mediterranean the previous year. His letter to Cecil of April 10, 1562, ordered, “Besides severe looking to the subjects at home to cut off and prevent practices and conventicles, you must animate and solicit the Princes Protestant with speed by all means you can not to suffer the Protestants to be in this realm [France] suppressed.”1 Throckmorton urged an English intervention, particularly since a new, effective leader of the Huguenot faction had emerged, a prince of royal blood—Louis, Prince de Condé, battle hardy and able to pursue the French Protestant cause by force of arms.
Within two weeks of Throckmorton’s letter, Condé sent an envoy to England, Monsieur des Sechelles, an ardent, Bible-bashing emissary with pressing letters for Cecil. Des Sechelles’s prime purpose in coming to England was to invite Elizabeth’s intervention in the Huguenot struggle on Condé’s behalf. The Frenchman argued that the cost of English support of Condé’s cause would be a mere snip at a hundred thousand crowns. There would be no need for an English army to support them, at least not yet. Oddly, no minutes of the high-level meetings with des Sechelles were taken, nor is it known who was in attendance. The mission was shrouded in the utmost secrecy. Cecil broke his silence, writing to Throckmorton on April 24 that he was hoping to send an English emissary to broker a peace between Condé’s elder brother, the king of Navarre, and the queen mother of France. Nonetheless, Cecil added, he held out little expectation of Elizabeth’s compliance with the plan.
Then suddenly, four days after Cecil sent his letter, Sir Henry Sidney, Robert Dudley’s brother-in-law, was dispatched to France to negotiate a peace. That Sidney had been selected for this highly sensitive mission was no quirk of fate. He had been specifically chosen by Sir Robert Dudley with the personal blessing of Elizabeth. Dudley’s interest in French affairs was part of a much larger, complex puzzle of bluff and double-bluff with the Spanish ambassador, de Quadra, who had been working as Dudley’s hopeful puppet-master. It was de Quadra’s primary objective to “turn” Dudley to betray the English Protestant cause if the Spanish king would favor him as Elizabeth’s husband. However, de Quadra hadn’t reckoned on a betrayal within his own household by his secretary, Borghese Venturini, instigated by Cecil.
There are two versions of the tale: the first from de Quadra to Philip II and the Duchess of Parma; the second from Cecil to Thomas Chaloner, the English ambassador in Spain. In Cecil’s version to Chaloner, Borghese Venturini betrayed his master because he believed that de Quadra was dedicated to international Catholic interests rather than Spain’s. In other words, de Quadra set the pope above Philip. De Quadra’s version of events makes more sense: Borghese loved living extravagantly, and his loyalty was purchased by Cecil, who was prepared to support that lifestyle. What Borghese “sold” was how the Spanish embassy in London functioned: who precisely attended Mass at the embassy on Sunday; who came and went on state business; what the latest Spanish thinking was; and most significantly, how de Quadra was inciting English Catholics to rise up for the Spanish cause. Lastly, Borghese told Cecil about de Quadra’s long and intricate intrigue with Dudley to obtain England’s throne as Elizabeth’s consort.
This revelation should have sent Dudley to the Tower and had de Quadra recalled. Yet nothing of the sort happened. There were no letters of admonition from Cecil against Dudley, no urging by Elizabeth to have de Quadra recalled. There were some raised voices, barely cries, over de Quadra’s meddling with English Catholics, but nothing more. Most telling, de Quadra alone was discredited.
This curious espionage episode had several noteworthy outcomes. The first concerned Dudley. Since he was not cast out of Elizabeth’s inner circle, as had been the case after his wife’s mysterious death, we can only assume that Cecil and the queen had been party to Dudley’s alleged flirtation with Catholicism and de Quadra’s clumsy attempts to “turn” him to Spain’s advantage. The second outcome was that by keeping de Quadra in place as the enemy the Privy Council knew, they had utterly neutralized him and his policies. The third outcome was to make Cecil the putative head of a fledgling Elizabethan secret service. This “secret service”—one of several in the years that lay ahead—would become the principal tool in unmasking all manner of threat against the crown.
On a personal level, Cecil could lay to one side any pretense that de Quadra was his friend. In the revelations by Borghese, all of de Quadra’s poison against “the heretic” Cecil had also been laid bare. Cecil wrote to the Spanish ambassador that “as an Englishman sprung from no ignoble race,” he would “by every lawful means uphold his own dignity.” Not only was Cecil defending himself against de Quadra’s slurs, but he also upheld the dignity of Robert Dudley and Elizabeth.2
* * *
Consequently it was against the backdrop of this intrigue by the Spanish embassy in England that an emboldened Sir Henry Sidney met the English ambassador in France at the beginning of May 1562. His mission, as laid out by Cecil, was simple. The queen’s purpose was strictly to restore the peace, and in the event that there was any meddling of foreign princes in France’s internal affairs, she would protect England’s position by force of arms. The threat was clear. If Catherine allowed Spain to intervene on behalf of the French crown, England would retake its former staple town of Calais. Robert Dudley’s message to Throckmorton put this French spin on Elizabeth’s interest in country’s misfortunes when he wrote, “She [Elizabeth] doth not so much measure common policy as she doth weigh the prosperity of true religion, as well to the world as for conscience sake.”3 Politics was, as ever, about religion.
Sidney’s mission would reinforce this. He made no headway at court, perhaps because of Th
rockmorton’s outspoken viewpoint that the English should mount an armed intervention in France. By the time the mission was over, Sidney’s contacts with the Huguenot leaders had become solid, even cordial. When Sidney returned a month later, Throckmorton’s favored plan of sending men to Newhaven (Le Havre) or Dieppe to assist Condé militarily against a future exchange for Calais had become Dudley’s favored course of action, too.
The letter from Throckmorton to Cecil of May 2, 1562, is more significant for its foresight twenty years into the future than for wise counsel at the time:
She [Elizabeth] must ally herself with the Protestants in every country through the bond and contract of religion. And when she shall have in this country [France] as many well-willers for religion and ability then her Majesty is one of the best assured and established princes in her state and therewith one of the strongest in Europe.4
Catherine de’ Medici saw all overtures of “peace” through Elizabeth’s good auspices as a trap. Though the queen mother tried to restore the peace by republishing her Edict of St. Germain on April 16, 1562, allowing the Huguenots to preach wherever they liked—albeit not within a league of Paris—she soon found that this solution was obnoxious to the papacy and Spain.5 Like Elizabeth, Catherine wanted to find a middle way to make peace with her warring people. Unlike Elizabeth, she had failed to grasp the harsh reality that Protestant reformers had categorically rejected the two principal tenets of the Roman Catholic Church: the Eucharist and papal authority.
Pope Pius IV, meanwhile, fretted that an English intervention in France would tip the scales in Condé’s favor. This possibility, combined with Elizabeth’s steadfast refusal to name Mary Stuart as her heir, compelled Pius to write through the archbishop of Milan to the Guise faction:
England remaining thus oppressed by the heretics, it is to be feared that there will be constant correspondence between them and the rebels and heretics of France and other neighboring countries, whereby heresies and rebellions will be propagated in all the surrounding states … [Therefore] His Holiness will not fail to support the Queen of Scotland’s claims to the succession to the throne of England by all such means as shall be deemed necessary to the end that the Catholic religion may be re-established in that kingdom.6
Louis, cardinal of Lorraine, one of Mary’s uncles, hastened to Rome after the papal will had been made explicit by this letter. Shortly after his arrival, a report was received that Lyon had fallen to the Huguenots and that a thousand Catholics had been slaughtered in the churches in which they had taken refuge. Days later, word of another atrocity reached the pope: The Huguenots had taken Rouen and unroofed the church. The lead used to cover the ridges and valleys of the roof would be sold off, so the papal legate wrote, for some 20,000 francs in order to pay for the Huguenot wages and arms.7
Elizabeth, counseled by Dudley, sent Edward Horsey back to France to see if there was any mileage in assisting the Huguenots in securing the key port towns of Newhaven and Dieppe from the French crown.8 The roads and waters to Newhaven were blocked by royal troops, so Horsey diverted to Dieppe, arriving safely in June 1562. One of his agents, the resourceful Peter Adryan, headed inland to Rouen, where Condé claimed he was in sore need of relief. Horsey reported back to Elizabeth that Condé only wanted money and that he remained confident he could maintain Newhaven and Dieppe without foreign intervention. Adryan thought that Rouen was in the greatest danger of falling, but Horsey concluded that the city was too far inland to serve England’s purpose.
Both men had assessed the situation clearly. By late June, Condé pressed his request for a 100,000-crown loan from England once more, this time acknowledging that he needed men as well. Sir Thomas Wroth was sent to Germany “with speed” to raise an army of mercenaries, stipulating that the German princes should contribute men and arms paid for by England. Elizabeth agreed. She could support Condé and his Huguenots with cash while appearing not to meddle. It was a formula she would employ many times in the years to come.
Meanwhile, de Quadra, bereft of influence and intelligence, reported that Elizabeth had called an emergency meeting of her Privy Council on July 17 to discuss the worsening situation in France and the intervention of the English navy with troops into Normandy. No such meeting was ever reported to have taken place, yet Cecil did issue a memorandum of that same date. In it, he makes England’s intention to go to war clear. Local justices of the peace were warned to guard against uprisings; southern and eastern counties were ordered to levy troops; merchant ships were called upon to provide transport; a general at the head of an army of ten thousand men was to be appointed, and another envoy was dispatched to Germany. Three days later, Cecil issued another memorandum, entitled The Perils Growing upon the Overthrow of the Prince of Condé’s Cause:
The whole regiment of the crown of France shall be in the hands of the Guisans; and to maintain their faction they will pleasure the King of Spain in all that they may. Hereupon shall follow a complot betwixt them two, to advance their own private causes; the King of Spain to unable the House of Navarre for ever from claiming the kingdom of Navarre; the House of Guise to promote their niece, the Queen of Scots, to the crown of England … and … the realm of Ireland to be given in a prey to the King of Spain.
In this meantime all the Papists in England shall be solicited not to stir, but to confirm their faction with comfort, to gather money and to be ready to stir at one instant when some foreign force shall be ready to assail this realm or Ireland. Whosoever thinketh that relenting in religion will assuage the Guisans’ aspirations, they are far deceived.9
For England, it was an invidious situation. To do nothing was not an option, and to venture forward was extremely risky. When Condé’s envoy arrived in July 1562 to plead for ten thousand men this time, the choices available to England were narrowed. Besides, Throckmorton had become a liability in Paris with his undisguised hawkish behavior and was recalled at the end of the month. He was replaced by the diplomat Sir Thomas Smith, who was far better at keeping his own counsel. By the end of August, a “secret” course of action had been decided upon. The Earl of Warwick, Robert Dudley’s elder brother Ambrose, would lead a fighting force of six thousand footmen to help the beleaguered Huguenot forces at Newhaven, leaving Admiral Coligny in charge of Dieppe.
Yet throughout this fraught period of negotiation and soul-searching, one thing was evident: Elizabeth now favored direct action. According to the ubiquitous de Quadra, “The Queen was quite furious at the Council, and replied to some of those who opposed the expedition that if they were so much afraid that the consequences of failure would fall upon them she herself would take all the risk and would sign her name to it.”10
Of course Condé dangled the possibility of England’s regaining Calais, but that was secondary. Elizabeth feared a Catholic or Guise victory in France would lead to an emboldened English Catholic population, just when the first green shoots of her religious settlement were becoming apparent. Religious unrest in France was tantamount to a clear and present danger within England itself.
The triumvirate that would dictate English policy until peace could be secured would be Queen Elizabeth herself, Sir Robert Dudley, and William Cecil. Dudley and his brother Ambrose would provide the military “expertise,” Cecil the administrative backup, and, of course, the queen would mastermind the foreign missions—both official and unofficial. It fell to Cecil to watch and neutralize the inveterate conspirator de Quadra. Once again, the Spanish ambassador would fare rather badly in his next brush with Cecil’s fledgling secret service.
It was a combination of De Quadra’s natural arrogance and Cecil’s bravura that led the events in the autumn and winter of 1562–63. Starved of firsthand information from the battlefront in France, de Quadra hungered to become the focal point of his king’s attentions once more. Most of our knowledge of what transpired at the English court in this period comes from de Quadra’s angry dispatches to Spain and how he presented Philip’s strongest protests against Elizabeth’s i
nvasion of France. He harangued Cecil repeatedly that England’s only interest in French affairs was Elizabeth’s desire to regain Calais. Cecil replied angrily that England would have never lost Calais in the first place if Philip hadn’t prevailed on his lovelorn wife, Mary, to support his own wars in France in 1557–58.
None of this is surprising, but what happened in January 1563 is.
De Quadra gave refuge to the would-be assassin of an Italian officer at the Spanish embassy, then at Durham Place on the Strand in London. Somehow de Quadra himself became involved in a street brawl as his servants locked the doors of the embassy behind the assassin and drove the crowds away. Meanwhile, the fugitive was directed to the water gate of the embassy opening out onto the Thames and escaped by boat. Unfortunately for de Quadra, the man was captured a short time later. Within hours the incident was reported to Elizabeth personally, who ordered the locks on the water gate changed and the only set of new keys brought to the Queen’s Keeper.
On January 7, de Quadra lodged a complaint before the Privy Council. The Duke of Norfolk presided, and the Spanish ambassador remained confident that his complaint would be upheld. Cecil replied on behalf of the queen. He pointed out that the would-be assassin had been a constant visitor to the Spanish embassy, had often received his meat and drink from the ambassador, had attended Mass there as many foreign Catholics did, and, most importantly, while in hiding in the embassy on the day of the attempted murder, held a private audience with de Quadra in his private chambers. Cecil went on to explain how the Spanish embassy made use of its private water gate to create mayhem in the city, with the perpetrators escaping through the embassy and onto the Thames. He read out a litany of known and notorious traitors and conspirators against the queen, including the most recent attempt against Elizabeth’s life by Arthur Pole, the unfortunate nephew of Cardinal Reginald Pole, who proclaimed himself king of England as a direct descendant of Edward IV’s brother the Duke of Clarence. Cecil, though never saying as much, had evidently placed a number of people within the Spanish embassy to spy on the ambassador.
