by Susan Ronald
Without delay, Walsingham concentrated on the Florentine banker, Roberto Ridolfi, who had been on the fringes of the court’s financial affairs. Under the respectable cloak of banking, Pius V had made Ridolfi’s services available to Mary, effectively as his secret nuncio in England. What Pius had been unaware of was that the charming Italian was also in the pay of Spain and France, reporting back regularly to their monarchs. Walsingham made Cecil aware that Ridolfi was receiving large sums of money from abroad and that much of this was destined to help finance rebellion in the north of England aimed at freeing Mary. The money, he suspected, came from the pope.
Ridolfi was put under watch. Walsingham, meanwhile, discovered that further funds were paid out to the bishop of Ross and other of Mary’s loyal servants, including those in the pay of the Duke of Norfolk. The order was sent out for an arrest on October 7 signed by Leicester and Cecil “for the apprehension of Roberto Ridolfi, whom her Majesty would have remain in your house without conference until he may be examined of certain matters which touch her Majesty very nearly.”15 Ridolfi immediately and willingly confessed to Walsingham his funding the northern earls, Mary, and even Norfolk.
On October 8, Norfolk was transferred from Sir Henry Neville’s home to the Tower. After Norfolk’s initial interrogations and protestations of innocence, Elizabeth determined with Cecil that they had to “deep search” just how the plot ran. In what seems like a bizarre twist, Ridolfi pleaded for his liberty in return for his honesty. Amazingly, this was granted with a bond of £1,000 in security paid on the promise that he would no longer meddle in matters concerning the state, except by Elizabeth’s consent.
Why was Elizabeth so generous to Ridolfi in face of proof that there had been several plots against her? The only reasonable explanations are either that the pliable Ridolfi promised he would faithfully serve England for an appropriate payment—just as he had done the pope, Philip, and Charles IX—or that Walsingham and Cecil deemed he would be of greater value to England left in place where his machinations could be followed.16
Clearly, Mary presented a serious threat. Cecil had little difficulty in persuading Elizabeth that so long as Mary lived, she would “always be a dangerous person to her estate.” While Mary remained restrained, that danger could be contained; if she were at liberty, then the threat she posed would increase. What was needed was reliable information regarding the Catholic nobility, including Norfolk, whose Protestantism was seen as unsafe, and a clear idea of the type of defense a muster of the non-Catholic nobility and gentry could generate. Cecil wrote to the Earl of Sussex, now president of the Council of the North, directing him to be on the lookout for “lewd persons uttering seditious speeches or any attempting unlawful actions.”17
Though the first reports back declared that there was no danger, Elizabeth remained mistrustful of Sussex, as he was one of Norfolk’s dearest friends. It didn’t help that Leicester loathed Sussex as well and that Elizabeth’s favorite never missed an opportunity to whisper some poisonous remark about him into her ear. Yet, setting these petty squabbles aside, Elizabeth was right to fear her northern Catholic nobility. These were the men who guarded the borders between Scotland and England, and her first line of defense from a northern invasion. She now had proof that the pope had been funding rebellion among them.
* * *
The northern counties of Yorkshire, Northumberland, Durham, Cumberland, and Westmorland were a natural refuge for brigands and malcontents. Each county was dominated by a fortified cathedral city that had carried out the law of the land for centuries. With Chester on the west, Newcastle-upon-Tyne to the north, and York rising above the dales of York and Pickering, the only road north was through the Tyne Gap toward Scotland, and the way south stretched via the Great North Road. Lancashire (within Cumberland) was administered by a separate duchy under Elizabeth’s control.
Yet it was the sheer isolation and distance from London as well as the mountainous terrain scarred with deep glacial valleys that made it a natural frontier for the local gentry and nobility to call their own. For centuries, this country had been dominated by the Earls of Northumberland (Percy) and Westmorland (Neville) and the Dacres, who ruled as its virtual princes. Elizabeth’s great error was in ignoring the local magnates while favoring her southern “new men” like Sussex instead.
With her Act of Settlement came the need for these lords to outwardly conform. The locals, however, chose instead to embrace the Scottish Catholic priests who fled Knox’s Reformation. As the books and pamphlets arrived from Louvain and elsewhere, Sir Ralph Sadler, Elizabeth’s special envoy to the north, remarked that fateful December in 1569, “There be not in all this country ten gentlemen that do favor and allow of Her Majesty’s proceedings in religion, and the common people be ignorant, full of superstition, and altogether blinded by the Popish doctrine.”18
While the nobility in the north were not in favor of the Norfolk match, it did afford them the opportunity to rise up to free Mary and determine what they could do with her afterward. Though this was an unclear war aim, preparations were made nonetheless to carry Mary north to Scotland by Leonard Dacre’s skilled horsemen.19
By November 1569, contact between the northern nobles and Rome had been made. As early as November 3, Pius V wrote a short note to Alba in the Netherlands, “exhorting him to do what he may in aid of insurgent Catholics in England, and for the liberation of the Queen of Scots and her restoration to the throne of Scotland.”20 The “insurgency” had yet to take place.
Meanwhile, Elizabeth made her feelings known. She would have felt better if the northern earls were under lock and key at the Tower. While the queen’s musters outnumbered the northern earls by five to one, the earls represented a formidable threat of civil war. That November, Sadler wrote again to the queen that “if the father be on this side, the son is on the other, and one brother with us, the other with the rebels.”21 Elizabeth sent the final order to remand the earls into custody, but they were already on the move.
On November 13, the earls rode into the hilly cathedral city of Durham, forced their entry into the cathedral, destroyed the Communion table, and tore up the Bible. Three days later, on the steps of the Market Cross at Ripon, they raised the cross of the Crusades and read out their proclamation:
We, Thomas Earl of Northumberland and Charles, Earl of Westmorland the Queen’s true and faithful subjects, To all the same of the old Catholic religion know ye that we with many other well-disposed persons as well as of the nobility as others have promised our faith in the furtherance of this our good meaning. For as much as divers evil persons about the Queen’s Majesty have by their subtle and crafty dealing to advance themselves overcome in this our realm the true and Catholic religion towards God, and by the same abused the Queen, disordered the realm and now lastly seek and procure the destruction of our nobility. We therefore have gathered ourselves together to resist by force … with restoring of all ancient customs and liberties to God’s church and this noble realm.22
The response to their call to arms was huge. If a gentleman was demanded by the queen to call ten men to muster against them, the same gentleman would often send his son with twenty men to the earls. Others hid in the woods rather than fight against their brothers for the queen. Still, things looked grim for the rebels. Money was in short supply, and as their army gathered around them, word came that Mary had been taken southward and inland to Coventry in the Midlands. Knowing that they would be unable to fight and win against the crown’s superior forces, the earls dispersed, fleeing across the border into Scotland.
Retribution for those who remained in England was swift. Over eight hundred were executed under martial law in January 1570. Those who survived were rendered destitute, with their lands and property confiscate to the crown for their insurgency. Their leaders, the northern earls, were attainted by Parliament and all their lands and possessions forfeit. Moderate Catholics who had not participated in the uprising fled into exile, knowing full well that matters
had become extremely grave. As they packed their worldly goods, the English armies rode across the borders into Scotland, burning over three hundred villages; taking those who helped the earls to escape into custody or murdering them, razing ninety strong castles and houses to the ground, and wreaking biblical devastation wherever they went.23 A new law called the Act Against Fugitives over the Sea ordered the new Catholic exiles to return within six months or forfeit any and all profits from their lands and businesses.
This was the Elizabethan equivalent to the Dissolution of the Monasteries perpetrated by Henry VIII, the suppression of the guilds under her brother, Edward VI, and the burning of Protestant heretics by her sister, Mary I. In straightforward government terms, it was the spoliation of the north to ensure that they could never rise again against their anointed queen. From Pius V’s and Philip II’s viewpoint, it was an act of war.
THIRTEEN
Regnans in Excelsis
We … lay before you … certain matters of urgent importance in regard to the redressal of the Queen of Scotland’s wrongs, and the aid to be extended to the effort being made on behalf of religion by the Catholics in England and their forces.
—Pius V to Philip II, February 22, 1570
From her captivity, Mary, too, raised her standard against Elizabeth. On January 23 at Linlithgow, the Earl of Moray was shot and killed. His assassin, James Hamilton of Bothwellhaugh, had been appointed by his clansmen for the task. Moray had long been aware of his precarious position as James’s regent so long as Mary lived. Financially ruined and weighed down by feuding factions at home, Moray had sent his envoy, Nicholas Elphinstone, weeks before to plead with Elizabeth to recognize Mary’s son as James VI of Scotland and himself as regent. Scotland now stood on the brink of civil war. It would be nearly five long months before a new regent acceptable to England would be appointed.
In Rome, the pope fulminated. All of his efforts on behalf of the northern earls had seemingly failed. Nonetheless, a few rays of hope remained. Northumberland, Westmorland, and Dacre had all escaped into Scotland. What he didn’t know was that the English commanders were marauding at will in the Borders to capture the rebellious earls and make an example of them.
Then, just as Moray was assassinated, welcome news came to Rome that Philip had resolved to send the “insurgent Catholics” in England 200,000 ducats, “and an English gentleman, who is secretly opposed to the Queen, is being sent hence to seek out those insurgent lords … 10 or 12,000 ducats, ready money, on the part of the king, and to tell them that the 200,000 ducats are at their disposal if they will be in time and required.”1
On February 4, 1570, Pius V penned a letter to Alba: “In view of the confusion into which English affairs have been thrown by the Catholics in antagonism to the heretics and by consequence to her who plays the part of Queen of England … We, upon whom rests the burden of Apostolic servitude, must needs be in daily anxiety and solicitude as to their safety who have taken arms no less holy than just for the restoration of the Catholic religion in that kingdom.”2
Pius V goes on to exhort Alba to lend the rebellious northern lords whatever armed forces he can to prevent them from being “overwhelmed by their adversaries, or dispersing of their own accord,” and emphasizing that the outcome of this gargantuan battle rests solely in Alba’s hands. Only Alba had the power to return England to Roman Catholicism, the pope claimed, “and if by God’s help, supplemented to the best of your ability by your efforts, this should come to pass you must yourself see how great, how lasting, how true a glory you must thereby win.”3 However, by the time Pius V had written these unambiguous words urging Alba down the path of Holy War against England, the Northern Rising, as the rebellion became known, was over. By February 11, word officially reached the Pope.
Mysteriously, on February 20, Pius V responded at considerable length to a letter received from Thomas Percy and Charles Neville, the earl of Northumberland and Westmorland respectively, written on November 8, 1569. Knowing that their cause was lost, Pius V lamented, “We grieve that it should be in our pontificate rather than in any other that the Christian commonwealth should be invaded by so many and so potent poisons of wicked heresies, and afflicted with such deadly wounds.” Then, after another full page of anguish, he signals to the northern earls that he is “forthwith granting you such sum of money as our present resources may enable Us to furnish you withal, as our dear son Roberto Ridolfi will give you more clearly and fully to understand, it being also our purpose to endeavor to grant you somewhat more than the slenderness of our resources may warrant, and with a willing and cheerful mind to lend your pious enterprise all the assistance that with the means at our disposal We by God’s grace may.”4
Seemingly, Ridolfi was back in business as the pope’s spy and knew where to deliver the money to the exiled earls.
* * *
Two days later, Pius wrote to Philip to say how proud he was of the Spanish king and all he was personally doing to relieve the plight of England’s Catholics. Still, for reasons that remain a mystery to this day, Pius did not make Philip privy to his innermost thoughts. Three days after this gentle and kind missive to Spain’s king, on February 25, 1570, Pius V published a papal bull entitled Regnans in Excelsis, the damning paragraph of which is below:
We declare the said Elizabeth heretic and fautress [patroness] of heretics and her adherents, to have fallen under sentence of anathema, and to be cut off from the unity of the Body of Christ, and her, Elizabeth to be deprived of her pretended right to the said realm and of all and every dominion, dignity and privilege; and also the nobles, subjects and peoples of the said realm, and all else who in any manner have made oath to her, to be forever absolved from such oath, and all duty of liege-fealty and obedience, as by the authority of these presents We absolve them, and deprive the said Elizabeth of her pretended right to the realm and of all else aforesaid, and lay upon all and singular the nobles, subjects and peoples, and others aforesaid, our injunction and interdict, that they presume not to yield obedience to her, or her admonitions, mandates and laws; otherwise We involve them in the like sentence of anathema.5
After years of threats, Elizabeth had been excommunicated. Any English man, woman, or child who continued to recognize her as queen would fall under the same anathema. Any Englishman who fought against her would be pardoned by the pope, Christ’s representative on earth. No word of the excommunication had been discussed with Philip or Catherine de’ Medici or Charles IX or Alba in the Netherlands or Emperor Maximilian II in Vienna. Why should it? Philip remained preoccupied in repelling the Ottoman Turks from Sicily after their victory in Tunis. He was also keeping his rebellious Morisco population in check in the south of Spain. France was yet again in the midst of civil war—its third in eight years. Alba had quite enough on his hands, and Maximilian hadn’t handled his Protestant German princes to Pius’s satisfaction. In the absence of leadership from the Catholic monarchs, Pius V had acted as so many popes had done before him, as a temporal leader.
* * *
For the time being, Elizabeth and her councillors were blissfully unaware that Pius V had proclaimed his papal fatwa on England’s queen. In February 1570, word had reached them of several Guise plots to assassinate Elizabeth, with Sir Henry Norris, the English ambassador to France, warning Cecil once again of “the great danger the Queen is in through the machinations of the cardinal of Lorraine.” As Huguenots increasingly sought, and were granted, refuge in England, detection of potentially undercover French Catholic assassins became ever more difficult. Norris’s solution was for Mary to be “further out of the realm, as she being there the Cardinal daily devises some mischief here [in France] to be practiced by the Papists there [in England].”6
That spring, the council was split on how to address the Catholic threat that Mary continued to represent. Councillors Cecil, Bacon, Bedford, Sadler, Mildmay, and Knollys advocated rigorous enforcement of the existing legislation against the Catholics. Leicester and Arundel strongly
disagreed and called for conciliation with France and Spain and advocated a mild attitude toward the English Catholics, who had failed at the end of the day to rebel with the northern earls. Three main points were discussed: the impending hostility of France and Spain, widespread Roman Catholic sympathy at home, and Mary Stuart.
Naturally, it was Mary who preoccupied them more than any other subject. To resolve the question of Mary would solve the other burning issues, or so they thought. In late May, Elizabeth believed she had reached an agreement with the French ambassador, La Mothe Fénélon, on how to restore Mary to her throne. First, the French king would need to induce the Hamiltons to surrender the northern earls or at least abandon their cause. Next, France and England would work together to get the warring sides to lay down their arms. English troops could then be safely withdrawn from Scotland, providing, of course, that the French would not send any more troops, and would withdraw those which were already there aiding the Hamiltons. Finally, Mary could proclaim that negotiations were at the ready for her release and restoration on the basis of Elizabeth’s offer.
The devil was, as always, in the details of the offer. Essentially, Mary would need to renounce all pretended rights to the English succession, forbid any foreign troops in Scotland, surrender England’s rebels, continue the men who led the king’s party in Scotland in their offices, and maintain Scotland in its Protestant religion. Failure to do so would result in a joint and immediate condemnation by the English and Scottish parliaments, resulting in Mary’s automatic forfeit of her Scots crown to her son.7
Fénélon dutifully sent off the proposed agreement to the French king in his dispatches of May 27, in the hope that he had brokered the release of Mary and lasting peace between England and Scotland. Unfortunately, Fénélon, like all of Britain, was utterly unaware that Pius V’s bull excommunicating Elizabeth and absolving the English from their allegiance to the queen had been pinned to the door of the bishop of London’s house in St. Paul’s Churchyard two days earlier. The choice facing English Catholics between Pope and Queen would henceforth become known as “the Bloody Question.”
