had been ill-governed and the public interests neglected. The nation was in debt and unarmed, with war raging abroad. But Elizabeth's greatest difficulty consisted in the fact of her being a Protestant, and the successor of a Roman Catholic queen who had reigned with undisputed power during the five years which preceded her accession to the throne. No sooner had she become queen than the embarrassment of her position was at once felt. The Pope denied her legitimacy, and refused to recognise her authority. The Bishops refused to crown her. The two universities

united with Convocation in presenting to the House of Lords a declaration in favour of the Papal supremacy. The King of France openly supported the claim of Mary Queen of Scots to the English throne, and a large and influential body of the nobility and gentry were her secret if not her avowed partisans.

From the day of her ascending the throne, Elizabeth was the almost constant object of plots formed to destroy her and pave the way for the reestablishment of the old religion. Elizabeth might possibly have escaped from her difficulties by accepting the hand of Philip II. of Spain, which was offered her. She refused, and determined to trust to her people. But her enemies were numerous, powerful, and active in conspiring against her authority; and they had their emissaries constantly at the French and Spanish courts, and at the camp of Alva in the Netherlands, urging the invasion of England and the overthrow of the English Queen.

One of the circumstances which gave the most grievous offence to the French and Spanish monarchs was the free asylum which Elizabeth offered in England to the Protestants flying from persecution abroad. Though those rulers would not permit their subjects to worship according to conscience in their own country, neither would they tolerate their leaving it to worship in freedom elsewhere. Conformity, not depopulation, was their object; but conformity by force if not by suasion. All attempts made by the persecuted to leave France or Flanders were accordingly interdicted. They were threatened with confiscation of their property and goods if they fled, and with death if they were captured. The hearts of the kings were hardened, and they "would not let the people go!" But the sea was a broad and free road that could not be closed, and from all parts of the coasts of France and Flanders the tidings reached the monarchs of the escape of their subjects, whom they had failed either to convert or to kill. They could then but gnash their teeth and utter threats against the queen and the nation that had given their persecuted people asylum.

The French king formally demanded that Elizabeth should banish his fugitive subjects from her realm as rebels and heretics; but he was impotent to enforce his demands, and the fugitives remained. The Spanish monarch then called upon the Pope to interfere, and he in his turn tried to close the ports of England against foreign heretics. In a communication addressed by him to Elizabeth, the Pope proclaimed the fugitives to be "drunkards and sectaries"-ebriosi et sectarii,-and declared "that all such as were the worst of the people resorted to England, and were by the queen received into safe protection "-ad quam velut ad asylum omnium impestissimi perfugium invenerunt.

The Pope's denunciations of the refugees were answered by Bishop Jewel, who vindicated their character, and held them up as examples of industry and orderly living. "Is it not lawful," he asked, "for the Queen

to receive strangers without the Pope's warrant?" Quoting the abovecited Latin passages, he proceeded :-" Thus he speaketh of the poor exiles of Flanders, France, and other countries, who either lost or left behind them all that they had, goods, lands, and houses-not for adultery, or theft, or treason, but for the profession of the Gospel. It pleased God here to cast them on land; the Queen, of her gracious pity, hath granted them harbour. Is it so heinous a thing to show mercy ?" The Bishop proceeded to retort upon the Pope for harbouring 6000 usurers and 20,000 courtesans in his own city of Rome; and he desired to know whether, if the Pope was to be allowed to entertain such "servants of the devil," the Queen of England was to be denied the liberty of receiving "a few servants of God?" "They are," he continued, "our brethren; they live not idly. If they have houses of us, they pay rent for them. They hold not our grounds but by making due recompense. They beg not in our streets, nor crave anything at our hands, but to breathe our air and to see our sun. They labour truefully, they live sparingly. They are good examples of virtue, travail, faith, and patience. The towns in which they abide are happy; for God doth follow them with his blessings."

When the French and Spanish monarchs found that Elizabeth continued to give an asylum to their Protestant subjects, they proceeded to compass her death. Their ambassadors at the English Court acted as spies upon her proceedings, organised plots against her, and stirred up discontent on all sides. They found a ready instrument in the Queen of Scots, then confined in Tutbury Castle. Mary was not, however, held so strict a prisoner as to be precluded from carrying on an active correspondence with her partisans in England and Scotland, with the Duke of Guise and others in France, and with the Duke of Alva and Philip II. in Flanders and Spain. Guilty though the Queen of Scots had been of the death of her husband, the Roman Catholics of England regarded her as their rightful head, and were ready to rise in arms in her cause.

Mary was an inveterate intriguer. We find her entreating the Courts of France and Spain to send her soldiers, artillerymen, and arms; and the King of Spain to set on foot the invasion of England, with the object of dethroning Elizabeth and restoring the Roman Catholic faith. Her importunities, as well as the fascinations of her person, were not without their effect upon those under her immediate influence; and she succeeded in inducing the Duke of Norfolk, who cherished the hope of becoming her fourth husband, to undertake a scheme for her liberation. A conspiracy of the leading nobles was formed, at the head of which were the Earls of Northumberland and Westmoreland; and in the autumn of 1568 they raised the standard of revolt in the northern counties, where the power of the Roman Catholic party was the strongest.* But the rising was speedily

* After having written to Pope Pius V., the Spanish Ambassador, and the Duke of Alva, to request their assistance, and to advise that a port should be seized on the eastern coast of England, where it would be easy to disembark troops, they left Brancepath on the 14th of November, at the head of five hundred horsemen, and marched towards Durham. The insur rection was entirely Catholic. They had painted Jesus Christ on the cross, with his five bleeding wounds, upon a banner borne by old Norton, who was inspired by the most religious enthusiasm. The people of Durham opened their gates and joined the rebels. Thus made masters of the town, the insurgents proceeded to the cathedral burned the Bible, destroyed the Book

suppressed; some of its leaders fled into Scotland, and others into foreign countries; the Duke of Norfolk was sent to the Tower; and the Queen's authority was for the time upheld.

The Pope next launched against Elizabeth the most formidable missile of the Church—a bull of excommunication-in which he declared her to be cut off, as the minister of iniquity, from the community of the faithful, and forbade her subjects to recognise her as their sovereign. This document was found nailed up on the Bishop of London's door on the morning of the 15th of May 1570. The French and Spanish Courts now considered themselves at liberty to compass the life of Elizabeth by assassination.* The Cardinal de Lorraine, head of the Church in France, and the confidential adviser of the Queen-mother, hired a party of assassins in the course of the same year, for the purpose of destroying Elizabeth, because of the encouragement she had given to Coligny and the French Huguenots. Again, the Duke of Alva, in his correspondence with Mary Queen of Scots and the leaders of the Roman Catholic party in England, insisted throughout that the first condition of sending a Spanish army to their assistance was the death of Elizabeth.

Such was the state of affairs when the Bishop of Ross, one of Mary's most zealous partisans, set on foot a conspiracy for the destruction of the Queen. The principal agent employed in communicating with foreign powers on the subject was one Ridolfi, a rich Florentine banker in London, director of the company of Italian merchants, and an ardent Papist. Minute instructions were drawn up and entrusted to Ridolfi, to be laid by him before Pope Pius V. and Philip II. of Spain. On his way to Rome through the Low Countries, he waited on the Duke of Alva, and presented to him a letter from Mary Queen of Scots, beseeching him to furnish her with prompt assistance, with the object of "laying all this island" under perpetual obligations to his master the King of Spain as well as to herself, as the faithful executor of his commands.†

At Rome, Ridolfi was welcomed by the Pope, who eagerly adopted his plans, and furnished him with a letter to Philip II., conjuring that monarch by his fervent piety towards God to furnish all the means he might judge most suitable for carrying them into effect. Ridolfi next proceeded to Madrid to hold an interview with the Spanish Court, and arrange for the murder of the English Queen. He was received to a conference with the Council of State, at which were present the Pope's nuncio, the Cardinal

of Common Prayer, broke in pieces the Protestant communion-table, and restored the old form of worship.-MIGNET-History of Mary Queen of Scots, Lond. ed. 1851, ii. 100.

*

it was

Assassination was in those days regarded as the readiest method of getting rid of an adversary; and in the case of an excommunicated person, regarded almost in the light of a religious duty. When the Regent Murray (of Scotland) was assassinated by Bothwellhaugh, in 1570, Mary of Scots gave the assassin a pension. Attempts were about the same time made on the life of William of Orange, surnamed "The Silent." One made at Mechlin, in 1572, proved a failure; but he was finally assassinated at Delft, in 1585, by Balthazar Gerard, an avowed agent of Philip II. and the Jesuits Philip having afterwards ennobled the family of the assassin. The wife of William of Orange, in whose arms he expired, was the daughter of Admiral Coligny.

+ Prince Labanoff's Collection, iii. 216-220, cited by MIGNET-History of Mary Queen of Scots, ii. 135.

The vicar

Archbishop of Seville (Inquisitor-General): the Grand Prior of Castille, the Duke of Feria, the Prince of Eboli, and other high ministers of Spain. Ridolfi proceeded to lay his plan for assassinating Elizabeth before the Council.* He said "the blow would not be struck in London, because that city was the stronghold of heresy, but while she was travelling." On the Council proceeding to discuss the expediency of the proposed murder, the Pope's Nuncio at once undertook to answer all objections. The one sufficient pretext, he said, was the bull of excommunication. of God had deprived Elizabeth of her throne, and the soldiers of the church were the instruments of his decree to execute the sentence of heaven against the heretical tyrant. On this, one Chapin Vitelli, who had come from Flanders to attend the Council, offered himself as the assassin. He said, if the matter was entrusted to him, he would take or kill the Queen. The councillors of state present then severally stated their views, which were placed on record, and are still to be seen in the archives at Simancas.

Philip II. concurred in the plot, and professed himself ready to undertake the conquest of England by force, if it failed; but he suggested that the Pope should supply the necessary money. Philip, however, was a man of hesitating purpose; and, foreseeing the dangers of the enterprise, he delayed embarking in it, and eventually resolved on leaving the matter to the decision of the Duke of Alva.†

While these measures against the life of Elizabeth were being devised abroad, Mary Queen of Scots was diligently occupied at Chatsworth in encouraging a like plot at home with the same object. Lord Burleigh, however, succeeded in gaining a clue to the conspiracy, on which the principal agents in England were apprehended, and the Queen was put upon her guard. The Spanish ambassador, Don Gerau, being found in secret correspondence with Mary, was warned to depart the realm; his last characteristic act being to hire two bravoes to assassinate Burleigh, and he lingered upon the road to Dover, hoping to hear that the deed had been done. But the assassins were detected in time, and instead of taking Burleigh's life, they only lost their own.

The Protestant party were from time to time thrown into agonies of alarm by the rumour of these plots against the life of their Queen; and by the reported apprehension of agents of foreign powers arriving in England. The poor hunted Flemings, who had by this time landed in England in large numbers, and settled in London and the principal towns of the south, and the accounts which they spread abroad of the terrors of Philip's rule in the Low Countries, told plainly enough what the English Protestants had to expect if the threatened Spanish invasion succeeded.

The massacre of Saint Bartholomew, which shortly followed, exercised a powerful influence in determining the sympathies of the English people. The news of its occurrence called forth a general shout of execration.

* The minutes of this remarkable meeting of Council were fully written out by Zayas, Secretary of State, and are preserved in the archives of Simancas (Inglaterra, fol. 823). We follow the account given by Mignet in his History of Mary Queen of Scots, published in 1851, since fully confirmed by Mr Froude in his recently-published History of England from the fall of Wolsey to the Death of Elizabeth, vol. iv.

+ MIGNET-History of Mary Queen of Scots.

The Huguenot fugitives who crowded for refuge into the southern ports, brought with them accounts of the barbarities practised on their fellowcountrymen, which filled the mind of the nation with horror. The people would have rushed willingly into a war to punish the perfidy and cruelty of the French Roman Catholics, but Elizabeth forbade her subjects to take up arms, except on their own account as private volunteers.

The massacre of Saint Bartholomew most probably sealed the fate of Mary Stuart. She herself rejoiced in it as a bold stroke for the faith, and, it might be, the signal for a like enterprise on her own behalf. Accordingly she went on, plotting as before; and in 1581 she was found engaged in a conspiracy with the Duke of Lennox for the re-establishment of Popery in Scotland, under the auspices of the Jesuits.* These intrigues of the Queen of Scots at length became intolerable. Her repeated and urgent solicitations to the King of Spain to invade England with a view to the re-establishment of the old religion-the conspiracies against the life of Elizabeth in which she was from time to time detected t-excited the vehement indignation of the English nation, and eventually led to her trial and execution; for it was felt that so long as Mary Stuart lived, the life of the English Queen, as well as the liberties of the English people, were in daily jeopardy.

Philip of Spain at length determined to take summary vengeance upon England. He was master of the most powerful army and navy in the world, and he believed that he could effect by force what he had been unable to compass by intrigue. The most stern and bigoted of kings, the great colossus of the Papacy, the duly-appointed Defender of the Faith, he resolved, at the same time that he pursued and punished his recreant subjects who had taken refuge in England, to degrade and expel the sacrilegious occupant of the English throne. Accordingly, in 1588, he prepared and launched his Sacred Armada, one of the most powerful armaments that ever put to sea. It consisted of 130 ships, besides transports, carrying 2650 great guns and 33,000 soldiers and sailors, besides 180 priests and monks under a Vicar-General of the Holy Inquisi

*

MIGNET-History of Mary Queen of Scots, ii. 207-12.

+ One of such conspiracies against the life of Elizabeth was that conducted by John Ballard, a Roman Catholic priest, in 1586. The principal instrument in the affair was one Anthony Babington, who had been for two years the intermediary correspondent between Mary Stuart, the Archbishop of Glasgow, and Paget and Morgan, his co-conspirators. Ballard, Babington, and the rest of the gang, were detected, watched, and eventually condemned, through the vigilance of Elizabeth's ever-watchful minister Walsingham. Mary had been kept fully advised of all their proceedings. Babington wrote to her in June 1587, explaining the intention of the conspirators, and enumerating all the means for getting rid of Elizabeth. Myself in person,' he said, "with ten gentlemen and a hundred others of our company and suite, will undertake the deliverance of your royal person from the hands of your enemies. As regards getting rid of the usurper, from subjection to whom we are absolved by the act of excommunication issued against her, there are six gentlemen of quality, all of them my intimate friends, who, for the love they bear to the Catholic cause and to your Majesty's service, will undertake the tragic execution." In the same letter, Babington requested Mary Stuart to appoint persons to act as her lieutenants, and raise the populace in Wales, and in the counties of Lancashire, Derby, and Stafford. This letter, with others to a like effect, duly came into the possession of Walsingham.-See MIGNET-History of Mary Queen of Scots.