1564 June Elizabeth and the Scottish succession. CHAP VIII presumptive with an inalienable right became inevitably a rallying point of disaffection. She did not trust the Queen of Scots, and if she allowed her pretensions to be sanctioned by Act of Parliament she anticipated neglect, opposition-perhaps worse. But of assassination she could scarcely be in greater danger than she was already ; and if she could induce Mary to meet her half way in some moderate policy, and if the Queen of Scots instead of marrying a Catholic prince and allying herself with the revolutionary Ultramontanes, would accept an English nobleman of whose loyalty to herself she could feel assured, she was ready to sacrifice her personal unwillingness to what she believed to be the interest of her people. There could then be no danger that England would be sacrificed to the Papacy. Some tolerant creed could be established which Catholics might accept without offence to their consciences, and Protestants could live under without persecution; while the resolution of the two factions into neutrality if not into friendship, the union of the crowns, and the confidence which would arise from a secured succession, were objects with which private inclination could not be allowed to interfere. Elizabeth had made the offer in good faith, with a sincere hope that it would be accepted, and with a fair ground of confidence that with the conditions which she had named the objections of the House of Commons to the Queen of Scots would be overcome. Even in the person whom in her heart she desired Mary to marry, Elizabeth was giving an evidence of the honesty of her intentions. Lord Robert Dudley was perhaps the most worthless of her subjects; but in the loving eyes of his mistress he was the knight sans peur et sans reproche; and she took a melancholy pride in offering her sister her choicest jewel, and in raising Dudley, though she could not marry him herself, to the reversion of the CHAP VIII English throne. She had not indeed named Lord Robert formally in Randolph's commission. She had spoken of him to Maitland, but she had spoken also of the Earl of Warwick; and she perhaps retained some hope that if Mary would be contented with the elder brother, she might still keep her favourite for herself. But if she enter tained any such thought she soon abandoned it; her self-abnegation was to be complete; and in ignorance of the objections of Mary Stuart to the Archduke Charles, she had even allowed Cecil at the close of 1563 to reopen negotiations with the Emperor for the transfer of his son to herself. Ferdinand however had returned a cold answer. He had been trifled with once already. Elizabeth had played with him, he said, for her own purposes with no real intention of marriage; and neither he nor the Archduke should be made ridiculous a second time.2 Elizabeth accepted the refusal, and redoubled her advances to Mary Stuart; relinquishing-if she had ever really entertained, the thought of a simultaneous marriage for herself, until she had seen how her scheme for Dudley would end. 1564 June 1 Randolph himself seems to have thought something of the kind. On the 21st of January, before the peace with France, he wrote to Elizabeth : The French have heard through M. de Foix of your Majesty's intent, and the Cardinal of Guise is set to hinder it. He writes to the Queen of Scots to beware of your Majesty, that you mean nothing less than good faith with her; and that it proceedeth of finesse to make her believe that you intend her good, or that her honour shall be any way advanced 2 Christopher Mundt to Cecil, De- CHAP VIII 1564 March The Earl of She was so capable of falsehood that her own expressions would have been an insufficient guarantee for her sincerity; yet it will be seen beyond a doubt that those around her her ministers, her instruments, Cecil, Randolph, the foreign ambassadors-all believed that she really desired to give Dudley to Mary Stuart, and to settle the Scottish difficulty by it. In this as in everything else she was irresolute and changeable; but neither her conduct nor her words can be reconciled with the hypothesis of intentional duplicity; and the weak point of the project was that which she herself regarded with the greatest self-admiration. She was giving in Lord Robert the best treasure which she possessed; and Cecil approved the choice to rid his mistress of a companion whose presence about her person was a disgrace to her. But no true friend of the Queen of Scots could advise her to accept a husband whom Elizabeth dared not marry for fear of her subjects' resentment. The first two months of the year passed off with verbal fencing; the Queen of Scots was expecting news from Spain, and Murray and Maitland declined to press upon her the wishes of Elizabeth;' while Mary herself began to express an anxiety, which derives importance from her later history, for the return to Scotland of the Earl of Bothwell. Bothwell it will be remembered had been charged two years before by the Earl of Arran with a design. of killing Murray and of carrying off the Queen. He had been imprisoned in Edinburgh Castle and had escaped, not it was supposed without Mary's connivance. 1 Letters of Randolph to Cecil and Elizabeth, January and February, 1564. -MS. Rolls House. March He had attempted to fly to France, but had been driven CHAP VIII by foul weather into Berwick, where he was arrested by 1564 the English commander. When Randolph informed the Queen of Scots of his capture he doubted whether she did give him any thanks for the news;' and a few days after she desired that he should be sent back to her keeping.' Her ministers' suspecting that her mind was more favourable to him than was cause,' and fearing that she wished for him only to be reserved in store to be employed in any kind of mischief,' had said that they would rather never see him in Scotland again; and Randolph took the opportunity of giving Cecil his opinion of the Earl of Bothwell. 'One thing I thought not to omit that I know him as mortal an enemy to our whole nation as any man alive; despiteful above measure, false and untrue as a devil. If he could have had his will neither the Queen's Majesty had stood in as good terms with the Queen of Scots as she doth, nor minister left alive that should be a travailer between their Majesties for a continuance of the same. He is an enemy to my country, a blasphemous and irreverent speaker both of his own sovereign and the Queen's Majesty my mistress; and over that, the godly of this whole nation hath cause to curse him for ever. Your honour will pardon me thus angrily to write; it is much less than I do think or have cause to think.'1 Having an animal of this temper in her hands, Elizabeth had not been anxious to let him go. Bothwell was detained for three months at Berwick, and 1 Randolph to Cecil, January 22, 1563.—MS. Ibid. 1564 CHAP VIII was then sent for to London. The English Government exasperated at the unexpected support which the Scotch Protestants then were lending to Mary Stuart's claims, trusted by keeping him in close confinement and examining him strictly to extract secrets out of him which could be used to reattach them to England-some proof that the Queen intended, as soon as occasion served, to turn round against them and against the Reformation.1 Bothwell was too loyal to his mistress to betray her; but the cage door was not opened. More than a year had passed since his arrest, and he was still detained without right or shadow of right a prisoner in the Tower. At length however Mary Stuart pleaded so loudly for him that Elizabeth could not refuse. In the midst of the marriage discussion the Queen of Scots asked as a favour what if she had pleased she could have demanded as a right. Bothwell was let go, and made his way into France. This object secured, Mary Stuart addressed herself more seriously to the larger matter. The Emperor supported by the Cardinal of Lorraine was still pressing the Archduke Charles upon her; and to make the offer more welcome, proposed to settle on his son an allowance of two million francs a year. But the Archduke Charles was half a Protestant, and was unwelcome to the English Catholics. At the end of February she sent her secretary to Granvelle to explain the reasons which obliged her to refuse the Austrian alliance and to learn conclusively 1 'La de Inglaterra, deseosa de descubrir alguna cosa que pudiese causar division entre la de Escocia y Milord James y los demas Protestantes, le ha hecho venir aqui, donde sera examinado Ꭹ bien guardado. |