Heretic Queen

by Susan Ronald

  —Ambassador Zuñiga to Philip II

  Shortly before the execution of Francis Throckmorton for treason, Elizabeth’s “frog,” Francis of Anjou, died of complications of a tertian fever (malaria). His failure to win back territory for the rebellious Dutch, however, had broken him long before the disease did. Anjou’s death was a mixed blessing to Spain. Though ineffective as a military commander, Anjou had been a moral boost to the beleaguered Dutch. Now that he was dead, the Protestant Henry of Navarre was next in line for the French throne.

  In recent years, reversals for the Dutch in the Low Countries had been terrifying. Certainly, it was thought they would not be able to hold out much longer against the “iron fist in the velvet glove” approach inflicted on them by the brilliant commander Alexander Farnese, Duke of Parma. William of Orange pleaded with Henry III to send money and men, thus taking the place of his dead brother, Anjou, but Orange’s pleas were met with stony silence.

  Less than four months later, at the end of June 1584, an unknown soldier of fortune, Balthasar Gérard, made an appointment to see William of Orange at his home in Delft. As William left the dining room to go upstairs, Gérard shot the beloved Orange at close range, killing him. Gérard tried to make good his escape to collect the 25,000-crown reward that Philip II had placed on William’s head, but the assassin was captured before he could leave Delft. In an age of gruesome executions, Gérard’s figures among the worst. The magistrates sentenced him to death, but first his right hand should be burned off with a red-hot iron; his flesh should be torn from his bones in six places; and only then should he be quartered and disemboweled, his heart torn from his body and thrown in his face.

  * * *

  The assassination of William of Orange changed everything. If the Dutch Revolt failed, then Philip would once again possess the Netherlands and its ports facing west toward England. Once Holland fell, Philip’s invasion of England could not be far behind. Orange’s untimely death instantly ignited the long-standing cold war between England and Spain into a hot one, and thereby changed the course of European history. With the breakaway seventeen Dutch provinces more determined than ever to remain free from Spanish rule, and Henry of Navarre powerless to intervene on their behalf, Elizabeth was now under tremendous pressure from Leicester, Hatton, and Walsingham—the “hawks” of her council—to become the putative leader of the Dutch Revolt.

  As Walsingham saw it, the Dutch needed protection from “a potent prince.”1 Burghley, like Elizabeth, favored a combined approach with France against Spain but worried at the same time that France would then become the occupying army of the breakaway provinces. Leicester and Walsingham concurred with any action as opposed to inaction, simply because they feared the Dutch “ere Christmas next, to become Spanish.”2

  Henry III had his own pressing problems. The ultra-Catholic Guise faction was demanding that Henry do something—anything—to prevent the handsome, daring, and Protestant Henry of Navarre from becoming king of France. Henry III tried to persuade Navarre to convert to Catholicism against the promise Navarre would become Henry’s official heir.3 Navarre naturally refused. Then, by the end of 1584, the Guise faction agreed to form a Catholic League with Philip II “for the preservation of the Roman Catholic religion, the extirpation of heresy both in France and the Low countries, and the exclusion of the heretic of Navarre from the throne of France.”4 Philip would be its paymaster, with 50,000 crowns disbursed each month to support the league in exchange for the restoration of the town of Cambrai to the Spanish king.

  To compound matters further, the exiled former king of Portugal, Dom Antonio da Crato, was now demanding succor in France. He wanted French men and arms to help him recapture his crown from Philip, strewing vague promises about as if they were confetti. Elizabeth’s hope that the weakened Henry III would agree to give joint sustenance with England to the Dutch provinces ebbed away daily.

  Since 1563, Elizabeth had viewed foreign wars as an utter waste of men, munitions, and money. Still, as the negotiations for a joint response with France dragged on, it was obvious that something would need to be done rapidly, or Holland would fall. Leicester and Walsingham urged Elizabeth repeatedly to move swiftly, or the enemies would all too soon be at England’s gates. Finally, she felt obliged to send the “wise person” of William Davison to open discussions with the Dutch for her.

  Then, in March 1585, the plans of the French-Spanish Catholic League were revealed to Elizabeth. Out of sheer anger, she acted decisively, sending Edward Wotton to Scotland to invite James VI to cooperate with England in a Protestant League. Frederick II, king of Denmark, and the Protestant German princes were invited to join by Sir Thomas Bodley. Arthur Champernowne, Walter Raleigh’s uncle, was dispatched to Henry of Navarre to extend the queen’s invitation to him personally as well.

  A month later, the Dutch States-General wrote to Elizabeth asking her to become their sovereign queen and requesting she send four to five thousand men to relieve Antwerp from Parma’s nearly yearlong siege. She had never approved of taking arms up against a sovereign lord, and yet, if she allowed the Dutch to fall, England, she had been persuaded, would be next.

  * * *

  In the meantime, Parliament had been convened to ask for a subsidy for the Dutch adventure. As before, Parliament retained its strong and vociferous Puritan membership. The revelation of the Throckmorton Plot and the dangers it represented to the realm, hot on the heels of the Jesuit missions, had the honorable members in an uproar. Though the Dutch subsidy was granted with the minimum of fuss, their main purpose was to ensure Elizabeth’s safety. They, like Burghley, were worried about the strengthening of the Catholic threat. Elizabeth only cared to have the subsidy bill discussed and once more began to obfuscate on religious matters. Parliament, yet again, would not be cowed.

  A bill called the Oath of Association to bring to justice anyone who plotted to kill the queen was debated and entered its third reading before the House when Dr. William Parry, a new member and one of Burghley’s agents in France, rose to protest, denouncing “the whole bill” as it “savoured treasons full of blood, danger, despair and terror to the English subjects of this realm.” When challenged, Parry exclaimed that he would tell his reasons for objecting “only onto Her Majesty.”5 Parry was censured for trying to gag Parliament and was only readmitted on Elizabeth’s order after the Christmas break.

  By mid-February 1585, Edmund Neville, Parry’s accomplice in a plot formed the previous summer to assassinate Elizabeth, reported it to the authorities. Leicester and Walsingham were sent immediately to interrogate the egregious MP. Parry confessed that it was young Edmund Neville who had hatched the conspiracy. Parry’s defense was that he was merely acting as an undercover agent for Burghley. It was his job, after all, to infiltrate the exiled English Catholic community in Paris. The only problem with Parry’s argument was that he hadn’t told Burghley about the plot. Unsurprisingly, Burghley did not come to his rescue, and so Parry met a traitor’s death.

  The renewed attempt on Elizabeth’s life resulted in a compromise in the wording of the Oath of Association: Only those who were “assenting or privy” to the offense of attempting any harm to the sovereign could be tried under its provisions. Though framed in an atmosphere of terror, the Oath of Association stood the test of time and was only repealed in the reign of Queen Victoria.6 That March, Elizabeth wrote to Mary, “In open Parliament motion has been made … to revive the former judicial proceedings against you, which … was only stayed at that time by us.”7

  * * *

  Yet religious tensions continued to rise. The year 1585 dawned with Gregory XIII making yet another proclamation against England’s heretic queen, calling her people to arms for Catholicism. The bellicose pope had agreed to give Philip II nearly 2 million crowns annually over a five-year period to eradicate the “heretical state” of England. Proceeds would be collected from the papal concessions to the crown of Spain and collected in special chests at Madrid’s mint for the king
’s personal use against Elizabeth. Before the year was out, Philip raised an additional 900,000 crowns for his Enterprise.8

  Then Philip struck a brilliant blow. Early that spring the Spanish king had called for help from the English, Danish, and northern German merchants to relieve the starving Spanish people after a harsh winter. The specific invitation to the English merchants was to send cargoes of corn. In these troubled times, Philip’s call for help was accompanied, of course, with a personal promise of safe conduct. Payment for the corn would be made by bills of exchange payable to the City of London in Antwerp at fair-market prices. The ships dutifully arrived en masse laden with food.

  Then, without warning, on Wednesday, May 26, 1585, Philip II ordered all Protestant shipping in Spain’s harbors to be boarded and sequestered in a coordinated attack. Only one ship escaped, the English bark The Primrose. It would return to England with the terrified Spanish magistrates and harbormasters aboard, to catalog the disaster to the Privy Council. Naturally, the starvation of the Spanish people was pure fiction.

  The response to Philip’s underhand dealing with the English was swift and complete. In June, Elizabeth let loose Sir Francis Drake, the bane of the Spanish, on yet another voyage to “singe the King of Spain’s beard.” Walsingham drafted his “Plot for the Annoying of the King of Spain,” in which ships of war would be dispatched against the Spanish fishing fleet just as it arrived at the Newfoundland banks for its spring fishing expeditions. Ships were to be captured and cargoes taken to pay for the Spanish depredations against England. Walsingham’s idea was that the Spanish should now starve in fact, rather than in fiction.9 Walter Raleigh, heir to his half-brother’s lands in North America, received his commission and executed his duties to the letter. He captured the Spanish fishing fleet along with six hundred mariners.10

  Henry III’s reaction to the renewed Spanish threat against the Protestant countries was not surprising. He and his mother abandoned Henry of Navarre in favor of the Guise faction. Navarre, already proving himself to be a great military commander, retaliated by announcing his support for the Protestant League. By the middle of July, Catherine de’ Medici and her son had signed the Treaty of Nemours with the ambitious Henry of Guise. Mary Stuart’s star was once again in the ascent.

  * * *

  Though Henry of Navarre appealed to Elizabeth for money to raise a mercenary army in Germany, and Elizabeth initially agreed, she was rightly afraid of lifting her head too high above the parapet with both Spain and France simultaneously. To complicate matters further, while Navarre’s envoy was still in London, a deputation of Dutch nobility arrived to offer Elizabeth sovereignty of the Low Countries. Navarre’s man left empty-handed, while the Dutch stayed on, haggling with Elizabeth. Walsingham wrote to Sir Henry Wotton, “This cause of the Low Countries doth at this present wholly entertain us. Her Majesty’s own natural inclination to peace is not unknown … Entering into a war with so puissant a prince as the King of Spain, especially … that things in France take such a course, may seem an enterprise of dangerous consequences.”11

  Finally, two months later, on August 10, the Treaty of Nonsuch with the Dutch was signed. Essentially, the queen was bound to provide four thousand foot, four hundred horse, and seven hundred men for garrison duty to serve at her cost until the end of the war. In exchange, the States would make over to the English the towns of Brielle, Flushing, and Rammekins as security until the monies spent on their behalf could be repaid. Elizabeth also agreed to send a “nobleman of great quality not only to take charge of our forces but to assist you by his advice and council [sic].” Leicester would be her general.12

  Virtually every nobleman in England put together his own forces under the queen’s banner in the month that followed, and over three hundred noble gentlemen adventurers led thousands into Holland and war by the end of the year.13 Leicester would command the armies to prevent “the King of Spain to grow to the full height of his design and conquests.”14

  Sadly, Leicester was never a great military commander, and in the autumn of 1585, he had reason to have his mind elsewhere. Leicester had suffered the loss of his only legitimate son and the hope of perpetrating the family line through the boy’s marriage to Arbella Stuart, another putative heir to Elizabeth’s throne. To make matters worse, while Leicester prepared to leave for the Low Countries, a ferocious attack against him appeared in a scurrilous pamphlet entitled Leicester’s Commonwealth. It became an instant bestseller. This work of Catholic propaganda against Elizabeth’s greatest favourite became a cause célèbre with Protestants and Catholics alike. It proved Sir Francis Englefield’s assertion that “instead therefore of the sword, which we cannot obtain, we must fight with paper and pens, which cannot be taken from us.”15

  * * *

  Fortunately, others were more able than Leicester. Drake had an ambitious plan that could rip apart the Spanish Empire as a diversionary tactic. He planned to attack the Galician coast of Spain before heading westward to capture Santo Domingo, Cartagena, Nombre de Díos, Río de la Hacha, and Santa Marta in the West Indies. After that, Drake would head north to provide sustenance to Raleigh’s stranded colonists in Virginia. Though Drake would bring twenty-three hundred men with him, the truly daring part of the voyage was his intention to free around five thousand Cimaroon slaves from the Spanish to fight alongside his own men as their equals.16 Drake felt that he owed these slaves his very life and fame, for it was a group of slaves who had shown him the Pacific and inspired his voyage of circumnavigation.

  * * *

  Though Elizabeth had had intelligence about Philip’s Armada plans, she hadn’t realized that the Enterprise had been under way in all seriousness since the autumn of 1583. By the autumn of 1585, most of the pieces on the chessboard had been moved into place for the coming military conflicts between Spain, England, France, the Low Countries, the German princes, Rome, and Navarre. Gregory XIII had died and was replaced by Pope Sixtus V, who would prove equally hostile to England’s queen.

  As mountains of official papers piled higher on Philip’s desk, among them was Santa Cruz’s plan for the Armada, or the Enterprise of England. Philip himself had become physically twisted with arthritis and old age. Yet nothing came to pass in Spain without his personal stamp of approval and margin comments on each and every letter. The king of Spain would pore over his papers into the small hours of the morning by candlelight, attempting to find some magic strategic solution that would rid him of the overwhelming Protestant threat.

  Admiral Santa Cruz wrote to Philip that he would be ready to sail for England before the year was out, but how could Philip allow his admiral to sail without the backup he had planned from Parma in Holland? Surely until the Dutch provinces were conquered, the Armada could not risk the voyage? None of his papers told him where Drake—nicknamed El Draco, the Dragon—had sailed to. As indecisive as Elizabeth may have been, Philip truly dithered. For a king who only had six months without armed conflict in his entire thirty-year reign thus far, indecision was an anathema.

  For good or ill, it was Sixtus who would crystallize his thinking. The pope urged Philip to strike before England could land its forces in the Netherlands. Philip hastily disagreed and wrote to his ambassador in Rome: “Let His Holiness judge whether I can undertake new enterprises, with this one [the Dutch war] in its current state … because the war is fought against heretics … I am so busy with the war in the Netherlands, which is as holy as a war can be, I could not (even though I wish to) find the money for the others.”17

  At long last, Leicester landed in the Netherlands in December 1585 to serve as Elizabeth’s governor-general of the Dutch provinces. Philip’s enormous desk was piled ever higher daily with official memos about the English in Holland and their admiral Drake wreaking devastation in the Canaries, the Cape Verde Islands, and the Caribbean, where he had sacked Santo Domingo, Cartagena, and finally St. Augustine in Florida.

  Horatio Pallavicino, now Elizabeth’s envoy to Germany, whose brother had be
en held hostage by Gregory XIII, gloated that “it is most certain that one year of war in the Indies will cost the Spaniards more than three years of war in the Netherlands.” Pallavicino, a clever merchant banker, was the master of understatement. In Madrid, Philip’s friend and the former cardinal of Brussels, Cardinal Granvelle, expressed the outrage for all Spain when he said, “I keenly regret that the queen of England makes war on us so boldly and dishonestly.”18

  History is all about your point of view.

  TWENTY-ONE

  A Long-Awaited Execution

  My end is my beginning.

  —Mary Stuart’s motto

  The Throckmorton Plot had made Elizabeth fear that Mary Stuart would never stop scheming. Oddly enough, what cemented this perception was the negotiation with James VI to take charge of his mother and repatriate her to Scotland. Elizabeth and Walsingham had been in finely poised discussions with James for nearly two years before the Scots king finally refused to countenance Mary’s return. James ordered his envoy, the devilishly good-looking Patrick Gray, in March 1585 to write to Elizabeth to inform her that “the Association desired by his mother should neither be granted nor spoken of hereafter.” If the son acted thusly to his own mother, how could Elizabeth be wrong about Mary’s character?

  From James’s lofty perch, his mother had abandoned him before he held any memory of her. Further, he had had it drummed into him by his various regents that Mary had arranged for the murder of his father. Quite enough had happened since his birth to ensure that James held no filial love for Mary. So when the renewed approach came in 1584 for James to take charge of the mother he never knew, and upon whom much of his realm’s woes had been heaped, James understandably felt no personal emotion for her. As Mary’s excitement at being reunited on Scotland’s throne with her son dawned, James cooled on the idea. Mary hadn’t remotely considered James’s feelings. Why should she? Her natural expectation was to rule alongside her son. James’s had been quite the reverse.