by Lee Miller
To Win Enemies
For Raleigh, a crisis is imminent. One he cannot avoid. It springs from contempt and jealousy, from a dangerous structural problem inherent within the Court. It is created by Elizabeth’s need to balance incredibly powerful and volatile factions in this rapidly changing society. To prevent England from exploding into civil war like those raging across the rest of Europe, Elizabeth deliberately produces a power vacuum in which no one party achieves absolute authority. In essence, a brokered anarchy. She ruled much by faction, keeping everyone off balance.
Individuals are supported, then undermined as soon as they become too powerful. An illusion is created that anyone can gain control. As a consequence, those without stature are led to believe that they can make it to the top, if only those in favor are removed. To do this, they employ slander, outrageous libel, forgery, and preposterous fabrications — often encouraged by the more powerful, who use them as pawns in a larger and deadlier game. The Court is full of men seeking to please and win favour by slander… such as make up their own buildings with other mens ruins, and delight to say anything that may entrap the guiltless.49 One is lucky if it ends at this: false imprisonment and murder are all too common.
A molten viciousness lies beneath the polished floors of Whitehall, ready to erupt. Traps are set, poison laid. Men of wit and vigor proceed boldly, unaware that conspirators are plotting their undoing. The attack will catch them off guard. Lies and false accusations spew forth, dragging them down with a meanness out of all proportion to circumstances. Those oppressed are not always the guilty. I fear the malice of some discontented persons, said Burghley, wherewith the Court is overmuch sprinkled.50
Little wonder that Raleigh, who bursts onto the scene from the remote West Country to achieve unrivaled influence, is easily the best-hated man in the world.51 Yet everyone close to the Queen suffers envy and slander. The question is, who among Raleigh’s enemies was powerful enough to bring him down? And escape blame? And why? Why would someone so seek his ruin that they would destroy Roanoke and 116 innocent people to see that it happened?
15 POLITICAL TURMOIL
And in very deed it is most apparent that riches are the fittest instruments of conquest…
Richard Hakluyt1
Forbidden Territory
January 1569. A stinking, broken-down ship named the Minion limps into a Cornwall harbor. Along the quay, onlookers gasp at the sight of the grisly crew. Pale, skeletal faces; bony hands clawing at proffered food. Here they are: fifteen men, all that remain of John Hawkins’s squadron, which left Plymouth harbor in six ships little more than a year before.2 More shocking still, the Minion belongs to the Queen.
Hawkins had gambled. He ventured trading ships into the Spanish West Indies, violating international law. The English were not supposed to be there. On May 4, 1493, from a room in the Vatican, Pope Alexander VI — a Spaniard — decreed this, touching pen to paper and neatly dividing the world between Portugal and Spain. All other nations excluded.
In the Mexican harbor of San Juan de Ulloa, Hawkins’s ships were attacked by a fleet under the command of the Spanish Viceroy. Most of his crew was slaughtered. Survivors were subjected to the Inquisition: burned at the stake or made galley slaves for life. If all the miseries and troublesome affairs of this sorrowful voyage, Hawkins lamented, should be perfectly and thoroughly written, there should need a painful man with his pen? From this point forward, the military and sea-faring men all over England… desired war.4
Holocaust
The basis of it all is power. Spain’s conquest of the Indies has generated the wealth necessary to fuel that power. When Philip II ascended the throne in 1556, Spain controlled fully one half of Europe.5 The effect of these treasures was rightly foretold by Peter Martyr of Anghierra, cried Hakluyt, whereby all the world shall be under your obeisance.6 Spain is mustering the most powerful army and navy money can buy.
One by one, the countries in Europe fall. King Philip’s military regime is gathering nations and power and wealth and momentum. The proud, hateful Spaniards are destroying world peace through servitude, tyranny, and oppression.7 Creating chaos, inciting insurrection. Spain’s armies are unleashed upon the land. The upheavals cause waves of terror in England. Hath not he these many years given large pensions to numbers of English unnatural rebels?… Hath not he divers times sent foreign forces into Ireland furnished with money, armour, munition, and victuals? Hath not he sent round sums of money into Scotland?... The havoc wreaked in the Holy Roman Empire and the Low Countries is like to work in other places unless speedy order be taken to hinder it.
Spain’s powerful ally is the Vatican; the Iberian army operating as the sword of the AntiChrist of Rome.9 A counterreformation is launched, a holy war bent on unseating Protestant leaders from power. Spanish-funded seminaries in Rome and Rheims churn out priests to foster sedition. Catholic recusants in England champion the claim of Mary Queen of Scots to the English throne; the Pope calls for Elizabeth’s deposition.
Catalysts of War
1568. The year Hawkins is attacked by Spain. In the Low Countries shocking events are unfolding. Seven states within the Netherlands have declared themselves free. They are the United Provinces, their champion the Protestant William the Silent, Prince of Orange and Governor of Holland, Zealand, Utrecht, and West Friesland. There have been riots. In Antwerp, a mob descended upon the Cathedral of the Virgin and desecrated more than seventy altars: smashing the organ with axes, trampling holy wafers underfoot, toppling a giant crucifix by pulling it down with ropes and chopping it into bits.10 The Spanish responded by dispatching troops to quell the rebellion, to lay the yoke upon a most free nation. And (as if their freedom were now quite lost), Spain’s top military commander, the Duke of Alva, is sent in to restore control.11
In Brussels, martial law is declared.12 Fear clings palpably to the city. The inhabitants hide in their houses, gripped by a terrible dread, speaking to no one, going out only when necessary, conscious of the watchful eyes of the soldiers. Businesses are shut down and trade grinds to a halt, leaving the streets deathly quiet. Ports and exits from the country are sealed and the Inquisition swings into action. February 16, 1568. The entire population of the Netherlands is condemned to death. Catholics as well as Protestants are marked for extermination; the latter for the crime of heresy, which is treason; the former for having allowed it to happen.13
Incapable of carrying out the full sentence, Alva creates a Council for Disturbances to determine who shall die. Twelve criminal judges constitute the tribunal. In the Netherlands, they are referred to as the Council of Blood.14 The nation is gripped by a constant fear of death.13 Friends and neighbors turn informant in a frantic effort to preserve their own lives. Arrests proceed without warning, as many as fifty people at a time tried and condemned. In Valenciennes, fifty-five citizens are beheaded at once.16 New prisons are built, unable to keep pace with the arrests. Wealthy merchants are exterminated, their estates seized to fuel the Spanish treasury.
A Year to Remember
In England, the holocaust in the Netherlands takes its toll. Elizabeth is amazed that she is changed so much and become so thin.17 Cries go up from neighboring Denmark, fearful that Spain will invade them next and that the Enemy of Mankind shall continue to water the seed of war, which he had sown in the Netherlands, with the blood ofmen.18
December 1568. To suppress the Dutch rebellion, Spain borrows tremendous sums of money from Genoa. As the vessels carrying it enter the Channel, French Huguenots give chase, forcing them to seek refuge in English ports. But by this time, news of Spain’s massacre of Hawkins’s crew is trickling into London. The Genoese loan, amounting to £400,000, is confiscated by Elizabeth and deposited in the mint at the Tower of London.19
Spanish reaction is immediate. Upon which very day, to wit, the 2gth of December, the Duke of Alva being in a furious rage seized upon the English-mens’ goods everywhere in the Netherlands and kept the Englishmen prisoners… the Duke of Alva inte
nded this against the English for a terrour.20How gravely he underestimates the Queen! Elizabeth, nothing terrified, responds in kind, impounding Spanish ships which were, indeed, a greater number.21 Spain then imposes an embargo on England, forbidding oil, alum, sugar, spices or other such like commodities to enter the country, arresting English merchants and delivering them to the Inquisition. Hostilities escalate and the wound is made to fester, which in the beginning might easily have been healed.12
Ireland, 1568.23 England’s exposed western flank. Ireland is a nation divided between traditional Celtic chiefdoms and powerful Anglo-Irish feudal lords who have controlled vast tracts of territory since the time of the Norman invasion. Neither is loyal to the English Queen. Spaniards have begun trading here, supplying both parties with arms and ammunition — and propaganda. They are promised aid to restore their former power and liberty, though neither the Celts nor the lords would welcome the control of the other. Bitter fighting breaks out in Munster between factions supported by the Queen and those backed by Spain and the Vatican. The movement is crushed by Raleigh’s brother Humphrey Gilbert, sent to Ireland as Munster’s new command.
Scotland, 1568.24 The year of momentous events continues. Mary Queen of Scots, imprisoned the year before by her own lords while her infant son, James VI, is crowned king, escapes and flees across the border into England. Yet Mary has repeatedly claimed the English throne as her own. She is rigorously backed by her Catholic relations, the French House of Guise. And by Spain. And by the Vatican. Whitehall is greatly alarmed, with good reason, that English Catholics will rally to her cause. Mary is taken into custody and confined.
The Northern Rebellion
1569. Elizabeth’s worst nightmare is realized. Revolution erupts in fury across the north of England.25 The Northern Rebellion is led by the Catholic lords of Northumberland and Westmorland. Supported by Spain. It is triggered by the arrest of the Earl of Norfolk following his engagement to the imprisoned Scottish Queen, a thrust for power that would have placed him on both the Scottish and English thrones. Elizabeth is tipped off to the plot by the mysterious Dr. Dee, acquaintance of Raleigh and perhaps also spy, who warns the Queen to beware of Norfolk, that he has surrounded himself with a network of agents.26
The rebellion, once begun, is waged as a religious war. The northern force, between five and ten thousand strong, sweeps from town to town under Catholic banners and Crusaders’ crosses, trampling Bibles and tearing Anglican prayerbooks. The Earl of Norfolk, they cry, will be freed in the name of Catholicism, and Mary Queen of Scots placed on England’s throne.
In reality, it is a power play. The feudal nobility resents the privileges lost at Elizabeth’s hands. They take up arms to defend the old order, lest the ancient nobility of England should be trodden under foot by new upstarts, and their country delivered for a prey to strangers.11 The Queen, outraged, raises a massive army against them. The rebellion dissolves in the face of overwhelming odds.
The Pope’s Bull
From the Vatican, Pope Pius V issues a bull of excommunication. A declaration of war against Elizabeth, it frees her subjects from their oath of allegiance and calls for her overthrow. The bull is found nailed to the Bishop of London’s door in St. Paul’s on a May morning in 1570. The alarm publicly expressed by the people here, and their fears of being ruined, writes Spanish agent Antonio de Guaras from London, are perfectly incredible, and the whole talk at Court consists of discussions as to how they will defend themselves or how they will perish.,28
Yet the bull has an unexpected effect. A groundswell of patriotic fervor, scarcely seen before, emerges as a direct result of the threat to the Queen. Intense sentiments of nationalism and loyalty find expression in impassioned vows to defend Elizabeth from harm. The Pope’s condemnation is referred to derisively as the great Bull and certain calves received, specially the Monster Bull that roared at my Lord Bishop’s gate.29
The Ridolfi Plot
1571. The Vatican steps up its campaign. A list of Catholic sympathizers within Elizabeth’s own Court is drawn up by an Italian agent named Roberto Ridolfi. A new plot is hatched.30 Elizabeth will be assassinated.
In Dover, a spy named Charles Bailly is seized carrying a packet of coded letters from Ridolfi to Mary Queen of Scots. He is apprehended by Lord Cobham. A search reveals a cypher key sewn into the lining of his coat. The letters disclose Ridolfi’s list of Catholic sympathizers. Cobham never turns it over to the authorities, for his own name is on the list. He forwards the packet to Mary’s agent, who, aided by the Spanish ambassador, replaces the letters with innocuous forgeries. The fakes are then passed on to Lord Burghley.
Charles Bailly is thrown into the Marshalsea Prison. As luck would have it, William Herllie occupies the adjoining cell. All of London knows Herllie, a tormented Catholic prisoner. He is visible from the street through the iron grates, a feeble skeleton bound in leg irons, fed only bread and water. Bailly, affected by his condition and by way of encouragement, confesses the Ridolfi plot. What he does not know, until far too late, is that Herllie is a spy on Burghley’s payroll.31
Burghley now knows of the plot, but cannot act without hard evidence. He can only watch and wait. Proof comes at last in the form of incriminating letters sent to Bailly. But they are in code and, without a cypher key, cannot be read. Reeling from his recent betrayal, Bailly refuses to talk, even when transferred to the Tower and racked. Until one dark night, when a man enters Bailly’s cell and identifies himself as Dr. John Story, celebrated Catholic prisoner and sufferer for the faith. He convinces Bailly to provide the cypher in order to ingratiate himself with Burghley as a double-agent. Incredibly, even after the previous Herllie-Burghley affair, Bailly complies. In the morning he delivers the key to his interrogators, only to discover that the real Dr. Story is incarcerated elsewhere and that his nocturnal visitor was an impostor.
Arrests for the Ridolfi plot begin. In the twelve years of Elizabeth’s reign, no peer has been executed. Ridolfi changes everything. The Duke of Norfolk is the first to be beheaded, following the conviction for high treason of forty-eight others. Cobham is arrested. Both the Scottish agent and the Spanish ambassador are expelled from the country.32
There is an immediate crackdown on Catholics. They, in turn, point the finger at Burghley. He is a great heretic, the ousted Spanish ambassador indignantly informs Philip, and such a clownish Englishman as to believe that all the Christian princes joined together are not able to injure the sovereign of this country, and therefore treats their ministers with great arrogance. This man manages the bulk of the business, and by means of his vigilance and craftiness… thinks to outwit the ministers of other princes. … This to a certain extent he has succeeded in doing?33
Peace or War?
In April 1572 Dutch Protestants step up their revolt against Spain by seizing the city of Brill. Gilbert joins the fray, commanding a volunteer squadron to Zealand with Elizabeth’s approval. Raleigh has quit Oxford and is fighting in France, itself racked by civil war as Huguenots under Admiral Gaspard de Coligny battle with royalist troops. He marches with his cousin Henry Champernowne under the black standard of Count Montgomery: Let valour end my life.34
Unfortunately, the royalists only scoff at the English volunteers and their inability to employ longbows. Archery in England is now largely a pastime. It is reported in London that the French, deriding our new archery never hesitate in open skirmish, if any leisure serve, to turn up their tails and cry, “Shoot, English!” and all because our strong shooting is decayed and laid in bed. But if some of our Englishmen now lived that served King Edward the Third in his wars with France, the breech of such a varlet should have been nailed to his bum?5
August 22, 1572. St. Bartholomew’s Day. French royalist troops open fire on unarmed Huguenot civilians. Paris streets are awash with blood. By order of Catherine de Medici, Coligny is assassinated. Thirty thousand Huguenots are slaughtered; all who aid them are marked for death.36 Raleigh is lucky; he survives. So does another
Englishman in Paris — Francis Walsingham, then Elizabeth’s ambassador. There are those who claim that his role in the Huguenot uprising is not insignificant, and that his intriguing extends to the Low Countries as well.37
Officially England is neutral. Elizabeth’s ministers, chiefly Burghley, caution diplomacy. And yet her swashbuckling Devon volunteers prosecute an undeclared war, now spilling over into the Caribbean. In the summer of 1573, Francis Drake — Drago to the Spaniards — targets Spain’s silver depot at Nombre de Dios in the Isthmus of Darien, Panama. With the assistance of a local people known as the Cimarrones, the “wild ones,” mostly slaves escaped from Spanish mines, Drake attacks. Victory is complete; the loot incredible. The ships, groaning with treasure, can carry home only a small portion. In desperation, the men discard the silver, cramming the vessels only with gold.38
Sunday, August 9. Drake arrives in Plymouth harbor while church service is in progress. News of the plunder roars through the streets like wildfire. The church doors burst open and people spill out in a mad rush to the wharf, leaving the preacher without a congregation.39 But beyond Plymouth, Drake receives no accolades, for England and Spain are on the verge of a detente. For the moment, diplomacy has won.
London, the night of October 14. Sir John Hawkins is riding along the Embankment past the Middle Temple with a friend. Suddenly a figure lunges out of the darkness. Hawkins is stabbed and falls to the ground. His assailant is a law student named Peter Burchet, returning from a Puritan rally at Whittington College. He has mistaken Hawkins for Sir Christopher Hatton, rumored leader of the Privy Council’s Catholic faction.40 Although Hawkins recovers, panic over a Puritan conspiracy flares.
