1556]

Mary's increased severity

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series of instructions which she placed in the hands of Pole. But the bill when it came down to the Commons at once gave rise to a warm discussion, and was eventually carried against an ominous minority of 126. Six days later (December 9), Mary dissolved Parliament; and two years elapsed before it met again.

In the meantime the royal purpose was becoming more inexorable and pronounced. In the communications to Pole, above referred to, Mary gave it as her opinion that it would "be well to inflict punishment" on those "who choose by their false doctrine to deceive simple persons. It was, however, her express desire that no one should be burnt in London "save in the presence of some member of the Council," and that during such executions some "good and pious sermons should be preached." It was probably under the belief that Pole's better nature would exert a certain influence, that Philip, when he departed for the Low Countries, had advised Mary to take the Cardinal for her chief counsellor. But firmness was never one of Pole's virtues, and when confronted by a stronger will, in conjunction with that more practical knowledge of men and affairs in which he was notoriously deficient, he deferred to the judgment of others and reluctantly acquiesced in a policy which he himself would never have originated. But he still at times vacillated; and, as we have already noted, would recommend the Bishops to have recourse to gentle methods in their endeavours to reclaim heretics; while in August, 1556, he succeeded in setting free no less than twenty prisoners whom Bonner had condemned to the stake. It was possibly in anticipation of his resignation of the office of legatus a latere that Pole aspired to succeed Gardiner as Privy Seal, for the incompatibility of the two offices was obvious; the seal was ultimately, at Philip's suggestion, bestowed on Lord Paget, who, as a layman and a statesman of known tolerance in religious questions, succeeded on January 29, 1556. The Chancellorship was not bestowed on Thirlby, now Bishop of Ely, who had been discharging its duties as deputy and whose claims were favoured by Mary - his known Catholic sympathies rendering it inadvisable, even in the eyes of Philip, to continue him in the office; and on January 1, the Great Seal was conferred on Heath, Archbishop of York. Pole, however, succeeded Gardiner as Chancellor of the University of Cambridge; and on March 22, 1556, the day after Cranmer was burnt at Oxford, he was consecrated to the Archbishopric of Canterbury.

Under his auspices, and with the aid of the royal munificence, several of the foundations which had been swept away by Mary's father in his anger at their contumacious resistance to his arbitrary decrees now rose again. The Grey Friars reappeared at Greenwich, the Carthusians gathered once more in their splendid monastery at Sheen, the Brigettines reassembled at Sion; while Feckenham, abandoning his deanery at St Paul's, made his solemn entry into Westminster as Abbot of a body

544

The Dudley conspiracy

[1556

of Benedictine monks who took the places of the expelled canons. Parliament had ceased from troubling; and, with the false teachers silenced, the heretical books suppressed, the authority of the ecclesiastical courts re-established, the new Primate might almost flatter himself that the ideal conditions contemplated in his Reformatio Angliae had become an accomplished reality. The denunciation of the Dudley conspiracy rudely dispelled this pleasing vision. On Easter Eve, April 4, 1556. official intelligence was received of a new plot, having for its aim the seizing of Mary's person and her deposition, in order to make way for Elizabeth, who was to marry, not Ferdinand, but Courtenay; -a name still potent to conjure with, although the unfortunate nobleman was himself unambitious of the honour and then nearing his end, which came to him in the following September near Padua.

The plot itself, in its origin, was not suggestive of any very deep or widespread agencies, being the outcome of a series of meetings among some country gentlemen in Oxfordshire and Berkshire, - Sir Anthony Kingston, Sir Nicholas Throckmorton (a friend of Courtenay's, who had already been pardoned for complicity in Wyatt's rebellion), Sir Henry Peckham, and Sir Henry Dudley, a relative of the late Duke of Northumberland. Further evidence, however, obtained at a considerable interval, implicated not only Noailles, the ambassador, with whom Dudley was in correspondence, but also Henry, at whose Court Dudley had been received and his proposals favourably considered, and finally Elizabeth herself. The fact that, in the preceding February, Charles and Philip had concluded at Vaucelles a truce with Henry, which was to last for five years and included important concessions to France, showed the faithlessness of the French monarch. Henry, however, advised the conspirators to defer the execution of their plans, and to their disregard of this advice the collapse of the whole scheme appears to have been mainly attributable.

Among the arrests made in England were those of two members of Elizabeth's own household; of these a son of Sir Edmund Peckham (one of Mary's staunchest supporters) turned King's evidence and his testimony chiefly implicated Elizabeth. Again, however, Philip exerted his influence for her protection, while the Princess asseverated her innocence. It was at this juncture, May 25, that Noailles himself requested to be recalled; he had indeed some fear of being arrested by order of the Privy Council. His place at the English Court was temporarily taken by a brother, a councillor of the Parlement of Bordeaux ; and it was not until November 2 that Soranzo was able to report the arrival of the more distinguished brother, François, the protonotary, and Bishop of Acqs or Dax, in the same capacity. To François de Noailles Elizabeth confided her design of seeking an asylum in France; he however strongly dissuaded her from such a step, suggesting that her best policy would be to remain in England. In after years the

1556-7 -7]

Relations of Philip with Rome

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Bishop of Acqs was wont to boast that Elizabeth was indebted to him for her crown.

Lord Clinton had been instructed to make a formal protest at the French Court against the countenance which Henry afforded to the English malcontents; but his remonstrance only drew from the King the splenetic observation that they were so numerous that they "filled not only France but the whole of Italy." In the Italian peninsula, indeed, Philip now found himself involved in relations far from amicable with the reigning Pontiff. Caraffa's aggressive nature did not dispose him to judge charitably of others, while he was believed by Philip to harbour designs against his Neapolitan kingdom. The Pope was especially indignant when he heard of the Truce of Vaucelles; and, when in June, 1556, despatches were intercepted at Terracina sent from the Spanish envoy in Rome to Alva, Philip's viceroy in Naples, describing the defenceless condition of the papal territory, his suspicions became certainty. In the ensuing month his nephew, Cardinal Caraffa, arrived in Paris to concert measures with Henry for expelling the Spaniard altogether from Italy. The personal ambition of the Guises favoured the Pontiff's projects, and war was ultimately resolved on. Paul cited both Charles and Philip before him as vassals who had been unfaithful to their feudal obligations, pronounced the latter deprived of his kingdom of Sicily, and detained the Spanish envoy a prisoner at St Angelo. Alva issued a counter manifesto and conducted his army into the papal territory, while late in December the Duke of Guise in turn made a rejoinder by crossing the Alps at the head of a considerable force.

Such was broadly the political situation in Europe when the year 1557 opened; England appearing leagued with Spain, on the one hand, against France aided by the temporal power of the Roman Pontiff on the other; while Englishmen in turn were divided between sympathy with those of their countrymen who had fled from persecution, and resentment at the manner in which they had deserted to the common foe.

At Calais and throughout the English Pale the exiles were now discovered to be concerting with the native Huguenot element the surrender to Henry of two important fortresses, those of Guines and Hames (between Guines and Calais), a design which was defeated only by its timely discovery. It was at this juncture that Philip crossed over to Dover and from thence proceeded to Greenwich, where Mary was residing. Two days later the royal pair passed through London to Whitehall amid the acclamations of the citizens. The King's stay extended over nearly four months (March 18-July 3), and to the majority his visit appeared singularly opportune. The immediate object of his visit to induce Mary to join him in his impending war with France was one in favour of which his arguments might well appear irresistible. The Duke of Guise had already overrun

35

C. M. H. II.

546

Rebellion of Stafford

[1557

his Neapolitan territory; and it seemed probable that the King of France would shortly conquer, if not vigorously opposed, all that was still English within the limits of his realm. Again, and for the last time, Pole found himself involved in relations of difficulty with the House of Habsburg; and he was under the necessity of privately explaining by letter to Philip that diplomatic etiquette forbade that the Legate of the Holy Father should meet his master's declared enemy; whereupon he withdrew quietly to Canterbury. In April, however, his embarrassment received an unlooked-for solution, by Paul's peremptory recall of his Legates from the whole of Philip's dominions; and when King and Queen joined in urging that the actual condition of England made the presence of a Legate exceptionally necessary, the Pope at first sought to evade compliance by offering to appoint a legatus natus and to attach the office to the Archbishopric of Canterbury Eventually, however, in a Consistory convened on June 14, he appointed William Peto, Mary's former confessor; thus substituting, as Phillips, Pole's biographer, indignantly expresses it, a begging friar for the royally descended Cardinal! At the same time, the merciless Pontiff cruelly wounded his former Legate's sensitive spirit by insinuating that he was a heretic. Pole expostulated in an Apology, extending over eighty folio pages, vindicatory of his whole career; but Paul never revoked the imputation, which darkened the Cardinal's remaining days.

While, in the meantime, Philip and his Queen were concerting measures with the Council, tidings arrived which imparted fresh force to the Pope's representations. On April 24 Thomas Stafford, a nephew of Pole and a grandson of the last Duke of Buckingham, had set sail with two ships from Dieppe and, having landed unopposed on the Yorkshire coast, had seized Scarborough Castle. Thence he issued a proclamation, announcing that he had come to deliver England from the tyranny of the foreigner and to defeat "the most devilish devices" of Mary. The rebellion, if such it could be termed, - for Stafford's appeal met with but slight response, - was speedily suppressed, Wotton's vigilance having given the government early intimation of his sailing; and its leader with a few of his personal adherents were captured by the Earl of Westmorland and sent to London. Stafford was found guilty of high treason, and suffered the punishment of a traitor at Tyburn (May 28). Henry, who designated Stafford as "that fool" and repudiated all knowledge of his mad undertaking, had probably full information of what was intended; and on June 7 war with France was declared. Affecting to regard this step as simply further evidence of "the Queen of England's submission to her husband's will," Henry at once ordered his ambassador at her Court to present his letters of recall, but François de Noailles had already been dismissed by Mary. On his way back to Paris, the latter stayed at Calais and made a careful survey of the fortifications; the ruinous condition of the outer wall

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Victories of Spain in Italy and France

547

more especially attracted his attention; and on his arrival in the capital and being admitted to an interview with the King, he expressed his belief that a sudden attack made by an adequate force on that ancient seaport would carry all before it.

Before Philip quitted England he received the gratifying intelligence that Alva's Fabian tactics had been successful against Guise, and that he had been finally driven from the Neapolitan territory. The mortification of Paul was equally intense, for he had scrupled at nothing to bring about an opposite result: had suggested to Solyman a descent on the Two Sicilies, and had brought over mercenaries from Protestant Germany, and all this in order to defeat the forces of the eldest son of the Church! When the Duke of Guise appeared to present his letters of recall the Pope's fury passed all bounds of decorum: "You have done little for your King, less for the Church, and for your own honour nothing." Such were Paul's parting words, although he little deemed how complete and how lasting the failure of the French intervention was to prove, and that the Habsburg rule was destined to remain unshaken, alike in the north and south of the Italian land, until the war of the Spanish Succession.

Of

On his return to Brussels Philip was accompanied by Michiel Surian, who had been appointed ambassador to his Court, and the Venetian Republic henceforth maintained no resident envoy in England. English affairs it had recently received the elaborate "Report" drawn up by Giovanni Michiel, and presented to the Doge and Senate in the preceding May. The King's first attention was now directed to the war with France, to which he addressed himself with unwonted energy. The signal victory of his arms at St Quentin, achieved mainly by a powerful division of Spanish cavalry, was attended by the capture of Montmorency, the French general, and the dispersion, with great slaughter, of his entire army; and three weeks later, St Quentin, which barred the road to Paris, was surrendered by Coligny. The news was received with great rejoicings in London, where a solemn Te Deum was sung; and Pole, at Mary's request, conveyed her congratulations to her husband. The conclusion of his letter is noteworthy: "We are anxiously expecting news of some good agreement with his Holiness, which may our Lord God deign to grant." With the Colonna already at the gates of Rome, even Paul himself now became aware that to yield was inevitable. Rarely however has the victor used his success with greater consideration for the vanquished. When Naples and its territory had been brought back to submission, Alva repaired to Rome, and, escorted by the papal guard into the Pontiff's presence-chamber, there fell upon his knees, imploring pardon for having dared, even at the command of his temporal sovereign, to bear arms against the Church, and was formally absolved. And again in London there were bonfires and illuminations in celebration of a peace, the peace thus effected between Philip and the Papacy.