by Susan Ronald
* * *
The Netherlands had adopted Calvinism as its favored form of Protestantism. Calvinism, as opposed to the English Puritanism or the German Lutheranism, arrived late in the Netherlands but spread like a ferocious fire. With the outbreak of the first religious war in France between Huguenot and Catholic, thousands of Huguenot refugees had poured across the frontier to the Low Countries or across the seas to England for protection. There they preached and taught their coreligionists the Word according to John Calvin. “Heresy grows here,” Margaret of Parma wrote, echoing Elizabeth’s fears, “in proportion to the situation in our neighbors’ countries.”7 It was the Huguenots who gave the necessary instruction in the dogma of the Reformed faith, and the English Puritans who gave them their first churches in London. From England, the Dutch exile Guy de Brès learned how to organize the Reformed Church back home.
Meanwhile, Calvinism evolved rapidly into the Dutch Reformed Church. Debating chambers of rhetoric and amateur dramatic societies were used as meeting places to give voice to their ideas. Prominent Protestants belonged to these, as did Marrano Jews who had fled the Spanish Inquisition.8 Many of these Marranos who had been quietly allowed to observe Judaism for over a century became sympathetic to the Protestant dilemma and joined the Calvinist Reformed Church. With their membership came new ideas on the art of avoiding detection and persecution.
Still, the religious situation was intolerable. The States met in the spring of 1565 and settled on sending Egmont to Spain to discuss revising the heresy laws. When he returned at the end of April from his mission, Orange was speechless with outrage. Not only had Egmont failed in his mission, but he had been utterly charmed by Philip. When official instructions arrived a week later, Philip made his policy clear. Heresy would not be tolerated in the Low Countries. Only the regent, Margaret of Parma, could call a council of bishops. A new education policy would be implemented to stamp out Calvinism, as the heretics had “usurped the sovereign control of all business.”9
Then, in June, Fernando Álvarez de Toledo, third Duke of Alba, who had been out of favor and a strong supporter of Granvelle, was suddenly back in good odor.10 Alba accompanied the Spanish queen to visit her mother, Catherine de’ Medici, at Fuenterrabia on the border with France. There, Alba held secret discussions with the leading French councillors of state concerning the “heretical threats” to their kingdoms behind the innocent cloak of a family reunion.11 The result was a series of vicious documents known as “the letters from the Segovia Woods”—written by Alba but signed by Philip—directly challenging the Netherlander nobles and their Protestant cause. Either they would obey their king and enforce the laws against heresy or they would be accused of treason. The choice was theirs.
Margaret of Parma delayed in publishing Philip’s orders until two days after her son’s wedding on November 11 to Maria of Portugal, giving the Council of State until November 30 to consider the full impact of the king’s orders. Only on December 20 was a proclamation made to all provincial authorities to enforce the new heresy laws.
Even before the proclamation had been published, Orange, Egmont, and Horn had decided to withhold their cooperation and maintain their solemn league against the heresy laws, which were a direct contravention of their ancient privileges. Their stance shocked Elizabeth. These men were Philip’s peacekeepers, not some evangelical preachers. This was Philip’s aristocracy who were near revolt. By January 1566, as many as four hundred signatures of noblemen and administrators were sealed on what became known as the Compromise of the Nobility demanding a confederation against the Inquisition. Missing from the Compromise were the signatures of the three most powerful men in the country: Orange, Egmont, and Horn. They had no need to sign, they argued. They simply refused to carry out the king’s orders in their provinces.
When Margaret pressed Orange to obey, he asked to be relieved of all his governorships. The great nobles met at Orange’s home at Breda and eventually sent their “Request”—presented to Margaret on April 5—setting out reasons for their noncompliance. They knew full well that without them there would be no government in the Low Countries. Margaret had no alternative than to circulate her own orders conceding defeat to all magistrates and provincial seats of government on April 9.
Just as Elizabeth’s attempts at moderation pleased few, Margaret’s undertakings failed to win the support of the court opposition, in the persons of Orange, Egmont, and Horn, and the fundamentalist Calvinists. Orange announced he would abandon the Netherlands and the service of Philip II for his family home in the German territory at Dillenburg. Egmont and Horn followed suit. Margaret was thrown into a virtual state of panic. She begged the three men to remain at their posts until she could arrange for further concessions from Philip, vowing that everything “should be done by the Council of State, morning noon and night.”12
Before the royal messengers had left for Spain, the Calvinists stepped up their resistance. To sit idly by and wait for what they feared would be an inevitable violent reply from Philip was simply not an option. By June a steady stream of exiled Netherlanders was returning home from England and France, armed with their Bibles and the ability to reach out to their countrymen with Christ’s Word. The first public Calvinist service took place in Zeeland on June 30, followed two weeks later by the first service in Holland. Within two months Calvinist worship was organized throughout the western Low Countries, aided by the good weather and long evenings. By July a slow trickle of people listened to their open-air sermons preached in town squares, outside city walls, on the land of the nobility or by hedgerows. Before the month was over, it had increased to thousands. One man observed that around thirty thousand people attended Calvinist meetings in the Antwerp area alone. More shocking still, it was rumored that Calvinists attended their open-air meetings fully armed. The awesome nature of these “conventicles,” as they were called, is captured in Breughel’s contemporary painting The Preaching of St. John the Baptist. Women, children, and artisans, along with people from all walks of life, are crammed together in the painting to hear the Gospel and sing psalms.
It was the armed nature of the meetings that worried both the nobility and Margaret. The Council of State discussed the dangers of an armed mob as early as July 9, 1566. Only three possible actions seemed open to them to maintain law and order. At an emergency meeting of the States-General, bishops and clergy were instructed to exhort their flock to pious works and civil obedience. Margaret pinned her hope on prevailing with the Beggars.
* * *
All of this happened before Margaret had had Philip’s response to the “Request” signed by Orange, Egmont, and Horn. Even worse, by the end of July the Beggars, too, had lost control. Only the Calvinist pastors seemed to have any impact on the people, making hundreds if not thousands of converts each day of ordinary people who had held their prior beliefs for a lifetime. More Calvinist preachers poured in from Geneva, France, Germany, and England, many wearing the blue leggings of the Calvinist “hedge preacher.” One of the returned Netherlander exiles from England, Sebastian Matte, a hatmaker turned preacher, appeared beneath the walls of Veurne with two thousand armed Calvinists from Ypres, attempting to make the town a fortified base for his operations.
Though the attempt failed, Matte remained undaunted. On August 10, his sermon near the monastery of St. Laurence at Steenvoorde led to the first smashing of Catholic images by approximately twenty members of the congregation. Three days later the same group preached a rabble-rousing sermon at the St. Anthony monastery at Bailleul. At its conclusion, the monastery was sacked. The next day, the same was repeated at Poperinghe, only this time, a hundred people joined in the smashing of idols, with over half of the people newly returned from England. The “iconoclastic fury” had begun.
The Calvinists preached that many of the Netherlanders’ woes were due to their impure churches, defiled by Catholic unholy images. Idolatry was an insult to God, and the images must be removed before more harm came their way. It was, i
n effect, the sacred duty and right of every Calvinist to purify their churches just as the English, French, and Scots had done before them. A government minister from Kortrijk reported that summer that “the audacity of the Calvinist preachers … has grown so great that in their sermons they admonish the people … to remove all idolatry from their hearts … and must also remove it from their sight … They will soon commit some shameful pillage of the churches, monasteries and abbeys; some of them are already making boasts about it.”13
All trade had trickled to a virtual halt. Elizabeth, along with other foreign debtors, had had repayment of her debts prolonged. Though payment was due in August, the situation was so fraught that a second suspension of debt repayment was anticipated.14 Philip’s most loyal councillor, Viglius, wrote on August 2 to a friend in Spain that “the fire, once lit, will spread, and that, since trade is beginning to cease on account of these troubles, several working folk—constrained by hunger—will join in, waiting for the opportunity to acquire a share of the property of the rich.”15
As Viglius so rightly predicted, it did not take long for the real trouble to begin. On August 21 at Ghent, grain prices remained at an all-time high. It was the last market day of summer, and the desperate poor and hungry people rioted, placing their own prices on the grain to be sold. The next day, the Calvinist preachers entered Ghent and sacked the churches and convents in the city. Everything—from the stained glass to all other articles of Roman Catholic worship—was destroyed. Antwerp, Middelburg, Mechlin, Amsterdam, Delft, Utrecht, The Hague, Leiden, Eindhoven, and other cities followed. The burgher guard stood by idly—fully armed—and did precisely nothing. They later told their magistrates that they would not fight their people for the church, the pope, or their monks. The Low Countries were in a state of civil war.
In the towns where the burgher guard obeyed orders—as in Lille, Bruges, or Leuven—there was no iconoclasm. Appeals from Margaret or Orange, Egmont, or Horn were of no avail. A small determined group of zealots—no more than a hundred men newly returned from England—had rampaged at lightning speed through the country, bringing total anarchy to the communities through which they passed. Despite the unremitting destruction, few raised a hand against them, even Catholics. The English Catholic diaspora watched and waited in dismay.
There was a distinct condoning of the attacks against church property. In spite of the real hardships facing the people, the church continued to prosper. It failed to offer alms or relief to the most needy. Its role as provider of charity and salvation had been replaced in the minds of many by that of a greedy landlord and tithe collector. Philip’s institution of the new bishoprics only enhanced this view. The fear among the ruling classes, whether Netherlander or Spanish, was that the riots would not be confined to the churches.
Finally, on August 23, Margaret of Parma conceded freedom of worship to Protestants wherever it was already in effect. Still, the apparent agreement of the nobility and the Calvinists to Margaret’s “Accord” fooled no one. The violence continued in the north of the country throughout September. Farther south, consistories sprouted all over Holland, Hainault, Flanders, and Limburg, with substantial congregations. By autumn, Orange had received word that the vengeance of the Spanish king was near. The Duke of Alba was on his way with a large force of Spanish troops—men hardened in the all-consuming battles against the Ottoman Turk—to teach the Netherlanders a lesson they would never forget.
“The army His Majesty is raising … is thought certain to consist of ten thousand Spaniards,” Horn wrote to Orange on October 4. “Eight thousand veterans from Italy and two thousand recruits … six thousand Italians, twenty-four thousand Germans, two thousand light cavalry, one thousand men-at-arms and five thousand heavy cavalry … I can assure you that it is a long time since a Christian prince was better supplied.”16 An appalled William of Orange reported this to his council, adding, “We shall soon see the prologue to a high tragedy.”17
* * *
Even as Orange uttered these words, the spread of Protestantism in northern Europe faced a new danger. The pope’s legate to Scotland had given vast sums to Mary to reestablish Catholicism there. Within the month, word was sent to the pope of “the Queen’s discontent with the King, her husband, who, seeing that the Queen will not allow him the authority that he had before the last turmoils of the realm … bade adieu to all the Lords of the Council with the intent to embark in a ship that he had ready.”18
The ship made ready by Darnley would reportedly head for Flanders, into the midst of the Netherlanders’ civil war, with Spanish troops closing in. Elizabeth and her privy councillors waited nervously, unable to influence events in the Low Countries or its closest neighbor, Scotland.
ELEVEN
Two Murders and Mayhem
Oculos habent et non vident.
Eyes have they but they see not.
—William Cecil to Henry Norris, November 1567
Soon enough, Elizabeth had a new worry in Scotland. Queen Mary had become embroiled in one of the great conundrums of the century that would set in train the circumstances of her own demise: the murder of her husband, Henry, Lord Darnley. Just as Mary had become quite ill in November 1566, so Darnley was reported to be suffering from smallpox early in the new year. Despite the reports, it seems more likely that Darnley, aged only twenty-one, was already seriously ill with tertiary syphilis.1 Surprisingly, Mary resolved to nurse her husband back to health.
What made the sequence of events even more incredible was that everyone knew Mary and Darnley loathed the sight of one another. Had Mary been influenced by Bothwell and others loyal to her, who only a month earlier thought to be rid of Darnley “by other means” without implicating the queen? Why was there this “rapprochement” when rumors that Darnley wished to harm their son, Prince James, were so widespread? After all, Mary had snatched James away from Stirling Castle to bring him to the safety of Holyrood only days earlier. Whatever her motivations for wishing to play nurse to Darnley once more, we may never know them.
Mary ordered for hasty preparations to be made to remove Darnley from his Glasgow hide—and the company of his Lennox Stewart companions—to Edinburgh. In her capital, Mary could surround Darnley with men of her own choosing—Bothwell’s men—ostensibly to prevent her husband from plotting against her. What, if anything, Darnley had been scheming again remains a mystery. What mattered was Mary’s all-consuming belief that Darnley had instigated the murder of her secretary, David Rizzio, and that he had intended to kill her as well. These facts alone were sufficient for what followed.
* * *
So Darnley was brought from Glasgow to Edinburgh. Mary visited her husband regularly, their relationship seemingly improved, and he slowly recovered. On or before February 8, 1567, a cache of gunpowder was placed at Darnley’s lodgings at the old provost’s at Kirk o’Field by men loyal to Mary. The Scots queen, who had spent the early evening with Darnley, recalled at the last minute that she had to attend a masque in honor of a nobleman’s marriage and bade her husband farewell. Darnley expected to return to the marital home at Holyrood Palace the next day. At some time around two o’clock in the morning of February 9, an explosion rocked Edinburgh. The provost’s lodgings were blown to smithereens. Darnley’s body was found in the gardens, mysteriously strangled.
When William Cecil received the news, he was worn out after the months of wrangling with the Commons and Elizabeth. He spoke longingly of resignation and wearily of his gout. In his letters to his old friend Sir Henry Sidney, now in Ireland facing the wrath of Shane O’Neill, Cecil wrote that “my body [is] well but my sinews … by their weakness I am as a dead body.”2 Within days of composing the letter, Cecil learned privately from his northern commanders and spies, followed by Mary’s emissary, Robert Melville, two versions of the lurid affair of Darnley’s murder. According to Sir William Drury, the English commander at Berwick, placards had been posted throughout Edinburgh charging the Earl of Bothwell with the murder of their king,
naming Mary as his accomplice. This account matched the gossip that had been circulating at court and in London’s streets. Mary’s version proclaimed that she was entirely ignorant of the plot and that had it not been for a quirk of fate, she, too, would be dead.
Elizabeth listened to both sides of the story. Her letter to Mary frostily addresses her as “Madame” instead of her usual salutation of “ma chère soeur.” It opens with a sentence filled with shock and awe that can still be felt across the centuries: “My ears have been so deafened and my understanding so grieved and my heart so affrighted to hear the dreadful news of the abominable murder of your mad husband … that I scarcely yet have the wits to write about it.” A few sentences along Elizabeth is blunt: “However, I will not at all dissemble what most people are talking about: which is that you will look through your fingers at the revenging of this deed, and that you do not take measures that touch those who have done as you wished, as if … the murderers felt assurance in doing it.”3
Nine days after the Darnley murder, the Spanish ambassador to London, Guzman de Silva, wrote to Mary on the order of Philip II that he “had been told of the bad offices of her husband [Darnley] in writing against her to His Majesty, the Pope and other Princes in the matter of religion.”4 The Venetian ambassador reported to the doge that Darnley’s murder had been the work of heretics. Still the open question remained: Did Mary know about the plan to murder her husband?
Naturally, Darnley’s outraged father, Lennox, begged Cecil for Elizabeth’s assistance in punishing the murderers, especially Mary. Meanwhile, intelligence had arrived from Scotland that Mary had not only “looked through her fingers” but was also obstructing justice to bring Bothwell to trial. Elizabeth demanded to know the truth and sent the experienced Henry Killigrew northward as her ambassador. When Killigrew arrived in Scotland days later, he found a “very doleful” Mary. She seemed, so he reported back to Elizabeth, more interested in who was publishing the defamatory placards against her and Bothwell than in finding her husband’s murderers. By the end of the month, Killigrew and those loyal to the Earl of Moray had persuaded Mary that she must allow Lennox to pursue a private prosecution in Parliament against Bothwell as the murderer of his son.
