Chapter 13
In This Chapter
● Setting up a new Church
● Underlining the Royal Supremacy
● Imposing on Ireland
● Saying goodbye to France
● Uncovering plots (and Mary Queen of Scots)
● Weighing up Elizabeth’s first decade
When filling in a form today that asks about religion, many people in Britain write C of E. This is shorthand for the Church of England, which was essentially the brainchild of Elizabeth I.
When she became queen, Elizabeth was only too aware of the upheavals in religion throughout her life. In some ways, because of who her mother was (Anne Boleyn), she could be said to be part of those upheavals. Now she was determined to build her via media (a middle way, or compromise) that would bring Catholics and Protestants together.
Settling the Faith
What was the religious situation when Elizabeth became queen?
● Everybody expected the new queen to make changes. Anybody in the know knew that Elizabeth was a Protestant; her vague pretence to be Catholic had been for her sister Mary’s benefit only.
● The Catholic Counter-Reformation in England (see Chapter 8) had stalled badly between 1557 and 1558 because Mary fell out of favour with the pope and Cardinal Pole died.
Elizabeth could easily have carried on without change until she’d found her feet, but that wasn’t her way.
Gauging opinion
The bishops supported Elizabeth as queen (but not the archbishop of York, who was unhappy with her religious settlement; see Chapter 12), but they warned her that if she changed things, God would send his lightning bolts.
In 1559 the same sort of attitudes prevailed as at the start of Mary’s reign six years earlier (see Chapter 10):
● Some people wanted to see a return to the Church ‘as King Henry left it’ - Six Articles, an English Bible, no monasteries, no pope (see Chapter 6 for details of Henry and the Church). The difference now was that Catholic and Protestant had become more obvious and more opposed. The clergy of 1559 once again looked to the pope as their boss.
● Some wanted a full Protestant set-up - English services and prayer books and no Catholic ‘hocus-pocus’. Men who’d run for their lives when Mary became queen started coming back from exile in Europe.
Most people - the mildly conservative silent majority - decided to wait and see.
Pinning down the queen’s beliefs
What did the queen actually believe?
● Her mother, Anne Boleyn, may have supported the religious reformers to an extent but Elizabeth could have few memories of her, so it’s not very important.
● Under Edward she no doubt went Protestant - hence the simple, cheap clothes. She accepted the 42 Articles of the Faith in 1553 (see Chapter 8) and believed in only two sacraments - baptism and communion.
● Under Mary Elizabeth went through the motions of Catholicism, taking the mass, but even Mary realised her commitment wasn’t for real. But Elizabeth did like a bit of Catholic colour - music in church, crosses and candles - and was suspicious of married priests in line with Catholic beliefs.
A Protestant Church would be a fresh start, a clean break and a chance to promote very clever men (many of them still in exile) to be bishops. It would also put Elizabeth in the driving seat. On the other hand, those who were strongly Catholic were still a large minority and the move would be bound to upset them.
● Elizabeth followed in the footsteps of her father in dismantling the few monasteries that Mary had set up.
● She believed in Church government by bishops (the episcopalian system) and that they should be appointed by her, not the pope (who was now out forever). She was careful to choose conscientious churchmen, not mere yes men, and she paid them well.
● She had no opposition to Church courts, and they went on as before, with no change from Mary’s reign.
It may have been Elizabeth’s intention to turn the cathedrals into powerhouses of reformed teaching, but she met a lot of resistance. Some of the cathedral clergy lost their jobs because they wouldn’t take the oath of Royal Supremacy (Henry VIII had men killed for that - see Thomas More in Chapter 4). It would take a generation to make a real difference in the cathedrals.
No doubt Elizabeth was a Christian, but she often consulted her magus, the astrologer Dr John Dee (Chapter 17 has the lowdown on him).
Clashing over uniformity
Parliament accepted a new Bill of Royal Supremacy in January 1559. Only the bishops in the Lords voted against the bill, and they were a small minority. Elizabeth now called herself supreme governor of the Church of England, and the bishops and an Ecclesiastical Commission handled the day-to-day business.
The House of Commons had no real Catholics in 1559 - so much for Mary’s old faith having won the hearts and minds of her subjects.
The Royal Supremacy was one thing, but bringing back the 1552 prayer book (see Chapter 8) was altogether more difficult. The Commons accepted the book but the more conservatively minded Lords said no - they wanted a return to the Church as King Henry VIII had left it, stepping back from the full Protestantism of Edward VI.
Elizabeth suspended Parliament over Easter 1559 to give herself time to think.
Although Elizabeth can’t have known it, the Lords blocking the prayer book was a warning for the future power balance between monarch and Parliament (see Chapter 14 for more on this). Seeking backing from Parliament of course meant the risk of not getting backing at all. For Elizabeth merely to suspend or dismiss Parliament until they came up with the answer she wanted wasn’t the right thing to do. In 1642, clashing with Parliament led to Civil War and in 1649 Charles I lost his head because of it. Today, the actual powers of the monarch are very limited and Parliament calls the shots. The last time a monarch stopped an act of Parliament was in 1884, when Victoria vetoed a bill on lesbianism.
Elizabeth’s strategy was clever. She let the members of Parliament fall out among themselves. Over Easter the old and new bishops agreed on a debate to iron out the situation. The old party blew the rules of procedure during the debate and two of the bishops went to jail for contempt. In this weakened state, when Parliament was recalled the Lords’ vote went Elizabeth’s way by one vote. Phew!
After building her via media (middle way) Elizabeth made no more religious changes. Religious ideas were changing, however - more and more extreme forms of Protestantism were gaining ground. Many reformers wanted a Church run by synods (assemblies of clergy and important laymen) not by the bishops and the queen. Elizabeth saw this as an attack on the Royal Supremacy and her own role as governor of the Church. She believed her role was God-given. The methods may be negotiable; the authority itself wasn’t.
Elizabeth’s Church remained Protestant, emphasising preaching and the use of the English Bible, but the clergy still wore flashy clothes (vestments) and stuck to the set services from the prayer book. By the end of her reign, people unhappy with the Church broke away to form a number of sects on the ‘left’ of Elizabeth’s compromise. The dissenters were every bit as rabid as the Catholics on the ‘right’, and we have a detailed look at them in Chapter 14.
Telling little white lies to Rome
Pope Paul IV died in August 1559 (hurrah, all of Rome cheered! - see Chapter 10) and the new man was Pius IV. He didn’t terrify people like Paul, he had three illegitimate children and he spent most of his time finding jobs in the Vatican for his relatives.
England had no papal ambassador for the rest of Elizabeth’s reign, so all news about what was going on in the country reached Rome via the Low Countries (today’s Netherlands) or the Spanish ambassador.
No important Catholic was in the mood for a crusade against England. Elizabeth claimed that her Church was essentially Catholic, only a bit different ‘in certain particulars’ (which was nonsense). Pius chose to believe it (anything for a quiet life) and Philip of Spain still wanted England as an ally.
When Pius invited England to send representatives to the ongoing Council of Trent (see Chapter 8) however, Elizabeth was put on the spot. She ignored the invitation, so blowing her ‘Catholic’ cover in terms of European diplomacy. Had she really been a supporter of Catholic ideas, she would have sent somebody; no representatives were ever sent.
Enforcing her will
Elizabeth was well aware that getting the prayer book reaccepted by one vote (see ‘Clashing over uniformity’) wouldn’t cut the mustard, so her ministers persuaded her to get heavy (the queen herself was all for toleration).
● Non-attendance at church cost a fine of 12 pence (1 shilling).
● The queen’s right-hand man William Cecil made sure that a few prominent Catholics still celebrating mass went to jail.
● Matthew Parker, the new archbishop of Canterbury, got the job of making sure that people everywhere accepted the 39 Articles of Faith (reduced from the 42 of Cranmer’s time - see Chapter 8 for details). Parker sent out his ‘advertisements’ in 1566 demanding that his priests play ball, but Elizabeth wouldn’t let him use her name to force the issue.
But if Elizabeth was trying to stand aloof from Protestants and Catholics in the hope religious rows would go away, she was wrong.
Conforming clergymen?
The debate between Catholics and Protestants went on for the rest of Elizabeth’s reign. Bishop John Jewel wrote an article defending the new Church; Catholic pamphleteer Thomas Harding wrote one attacking it . . . and so on.
Stoking the fires
Most of Elizabeth's grief over religion came from the universities of Oxford and Cambridge. Under Mary, Cardinal Pole had made sure that all lecturers were Catholic and many of them were rabid. Between 1559 and 1562 many of these men left the country for European universities like Bologna and put their talents to good use on behalf of the Council of Trent and the Counter-Reformation.
In 1568 William Allen set up 'a nest of scorpions', an English college at Douai in France that was a training ground for disaffected Englishmen, whose mission it was to win England back to the old faith by whatever means necessary.
In 1559 Elizabeth sent a royal visitation that was supposed to get the backing of the bishops for the Acts of Supremacy and Uniformity, but all but one of them refused and the deans and archdeacons followed suit. Bishops who wouldn’t play ball lost their jobs. Some went abroad and others were imprisoned. (Nobody died.) Most of the rank and file clergy took the oath, however, probably to keep their jobs and because if the queen wanted to upset God, that was her business, not theirs.
A lot of clergymen and their flocks went to prayer book services in the morning and had a quiet mass celebration in the evening when they hoped nobody was looking.
Converting Ireland?
Elizabeth probably realised that re-imposing the prayer book in Ireland wasn’t going to work (see Chapter 10 for how far anglicisation had got there).
The Irish Parliament met briefly in 1560, just long enough to re-impose Royal Supremacy, which Thomas Radcliffe, the earl of Sussex, would manage at ground level.
Tackling the tribes
Sussex’s approach was a no-nonsense military occupation. On the grounds that the French might invade at some point (always a useful one to keep up your doublet sleeve) he raided and burned tribal lands, put his cronies into key positions and built up an army of 2,500 men.
The O'Neill
Shane O'Neill was the brother of the earl of Tyrone and he wanted to inherit the title. He was pushy and dynamic and the question everybody was asking was whether he was only after his brother's title or trying to get the English out of Ireland. He had massive backing across Ireland.
A compromise was reached in 1562 when O'Neill came over to Elizabeth's Court and she gave him the title of captain (but not earl) of Tyrone. His powers were very vague and although the queen recognised him as tribal chieftain of the O'Neills, all this did was put him at loggerheads with Sussex. For details of Shane O'Neill's ongoing rebellion, see Chapter 14.
Elizabeth kept Sussex on a tight financial leash (remember, she was Henry VII’s grand-daughter) and told him how to do his job in terms of the plantations (see Chapter 10). Not unnaturally, the local nobility and tribal chieftains took exception to Sussex’s high-handed approach.
Setting up the counties
Sussex realised that the only way to stop the endless squabbling between the Irish tribes was to conquer the whole island and bring in a hard-line English overlordship, which in the past the English had only ever tried in the Pale (Chapter 2 explains the geography of Ireland at this time).
Sussex was recalled in 1564 and was replaced by Sir Henry Sidney, who carried out a low key and usually peaceful anglicisation over the next 14 years. The most obvious outward sign of anglicisation was the creation of counties: Clare and Wicklow, 1560; Galway, 1569; Longford, 1571; Mayo, 1576; and Donegal and Coleraine, 1585.
Creating the counties didn’t just involve changing names of areas. The counties had their own sheriffs and courts based on the English model, which sat uneasily alongside the Irish tribal set-up that most Irishmen continued to follow. Setting up counties was a bit of a cosmetic exercise but it gave Sidney a pretext to intervene if he wanted to.
Polarising the faiths
The arrival of the new counties offended the old English, the families who’d held land and power in Ireland for generations. Ireland had technically been made a kingdom in 1541 when Parliament passed an act that said ‘The King’s highness, his heirs and successors, kings of England, shall be always kings of this land of Ireland.’ Since then, a situation that favoured the Irish had been developing:
● The Anglo-Irish community became more, not less Catholic as time went on.
● After 1570, as you see in Chapter 14, Ireland was the target of Catholic missionaries who realised that Irish hostility to the English was useful in their bid to get England back to the old faith.
● Getting people to take on Church of Ireland jobs was difficult - they were badly paid and unpopular.
Claiming Calais
The last English strongholds in France, Calais and Guisnes, had fallen to the French in Mary’s reign, but a lot of Englishmen (and Elizabeth was one of them!) looked back with nostalgia to when their great-grandfathers had owned half of France and thought, wouldn’t it be nice to get some land back?
England, France and Spain signed the Treaty of Cateau-Cambresis on 2 April 1559 after months of negotiations that had started under Mary, bringing an end to the long conflict between Spain and France. In the treaty both Henri II of France and Philip II of Spain recognised Elizabeth as queen of England. They agreed that Calais would stay French for eight years, but in 1567 it was to go back to England or the French would have to pay a whacking fee for the land (nobody thought they’d have the money). If this all sounds familiar, it’s because Francis I and Henry VIII struck a similar deal (see Chapter 3).
Feeling uneasy
The new friendship between France and Spain was worrying to Elizabeth and the Council. Henry VIII’s and Edward VI’s advisers had kept the Valois-Habsburg feud going because it kept France and Spain at each other’s throats and England could cash in on that. The prospect of two Catholic powers cosying up led to the myth of a great Catholic conspiracy, which had knock-on effects on various plots against Elizabeth (see Chapter 14).
Getting involved in a French squabble
The accidental death of Henri II in a tournament in July 1559 (ironically, to celebrate Cateau-Cambresis) led to chaos in France. The new king (Francis II) was only 15 and his meddling mother was Catherine de Medici, who was so unpopular in France that it gave a green light to other families who believed they had a right to the throne. The gloves were off and three rival families jostled each other for power - the Guises, the Bourbons and the Montmorencys. The struggle was heightened by the fact that the Bourbons were Protestants and the Guises arch-Catholics, determined to stamp out heresy. The complicated ins and outs of years of French in-fighting didn’t really concern the queen, but with only 21 miles of sea between France and England, Elizabeth couldn’t sit on the sidelines for ever.
The leading light of the Bourbon family was the Prince of Conde and he was looking for Protestant allies to help his cause and that of the Huguenots
(Protestants) in France. In 1562 he got help from Robert Dudley, the queen’s favourite you meet in Chapter 12, and the queen sent Henry Sidney (her man in Ireland; he gets around, doesn’t he?) to France to negotiate with Conde. Cecil didn’t like Elizabeth’s decision, but most of the Council did because here was a chance to get Calais back now. Conde got £45,000 cash aid plus 4,000 troops under Ambrose Dudley, earl of Warwick, who took over the town of Le Havre in pledge until Calais could be recovered.
In the fighting that followed the Protestants were beaten all over the place and the English garrison at Le Havre found itself cut off. When both French sides came to a peace settlement (with the Guise Catholics getting the better of the deal), everybody seemed to have forgotten about Le Havre. But by May 1562 Catholic and Protestant Frenchmen united against the English garrison, and to cap it all, plague broke out in the town. The earl of Warwick had to surrender Le Havre.
The final upshot - humiliating but inevitable - was that Elizabeth signed the Treaty of Troyes in April 1564, giving up Calais forever and bringing the curtain down on 300 years of history.
Stirring Things Up with the Stuarts
Mary Stuart Queen of Scots was Elizabeth’s nearest relative and her nearest rival for the throne of England. In 1560 she’d face a double blow, losing both her husband, Francis II of France, and her mother, Mary of Guise (regent in Scotland), and would returned home to sit on the throne of Scotland. But the succession was far from straightforward.
Securing Scotland
Scotland didn’t join France (her usual ally) in the war against Spain between 1557 and 1559 because Philip kept the Scots out of the loop and Mary of Guise, regent in Scotland, couldn’t get support from the Scots nobility.
A group of Scottish Protestant lords called the Lords of Congregation of Jesus Christ rebelled against Mary of Guise and asked Elizabeth for help. That put the queen in a cleft stick. She was torn between using the request as her excuse to sort Scotland out and the fact that supporting rebels who were against their lawful government was a bad idea - it could be her turn next to face rebellion.
By February 1560 Elizabeth felt she had no choice but to interfere and she sent a fleet to prevent any more French troops landing in Scotland and sent Thomas Howard, the duke of Norfolk, across the border with a small army.
Signing a treaty with the Lords of Congregation was a clever move. Elizabeth claimed to be protector of the liberties of Scotland against the French and this agreement would only come to an end with the deaths of Francis II, Mary or Elizabeth. The queen wouldn’t repeat the mistake of Henry VIII’s reign (see Chapter 3) of having to fight Scotland as well as France.
After some inconclusive skirmishing in the Scottish Lowlands and an attempt to capture the town of Leith (which didn’t work), Mary of Guise died and representatives from both sides signed the Treaty of Edinburgh.
Under the Treaty of Edinburgh:
● Mary (then queen of France) was recognised as queen of Scotland in her absence.
● Scotland was now governed by the Lords of Congregation.
● The English and French agreed to leave Scotland.
● Francis II and Mary stopped using the arms of England in their heraldry.
Mary never actually agreed to this treaty, but the important point was that Scotland seemed sorted out. The death of Francis, however, meant that Mary came back to Scotland to step up as the Catholic queen of an increasingly Protestant country, and that led to problems.
Landing right in the thick of trouble
When Mary arrived in Leith near Edinburgh on 19 August 1561 she came with princes, courtiers, musicians and a pretty large chunk of the French crown jewels. Thick fog made her crossing difficult, but it might have saved her life because her malevolent half-brother, James Stuart, earl of Moray, was waiting for her in English ships. Moray was determined to run Scotland his way and if that meant kidnapping Mary, so be it.
The previous year, Scotland had gone through a religious revolution of its own:
● The Scottish Parliament banned the Latin mass and broke with Rome.
● The new faith, along the lines of John Calvin in Geneva, was spearheaded by John Knox, who’d been exiled under Mary Tudor but came back to Scotland under Elizabeth to lead the Protestant rebels.
Despite what looked like a clean sweep on paper, the Protestants were in the minority, centred around Ayreshire, Fife and Perth in the Lowlands. In the Highlands, the lawless clans, like the Irish in the Wild Lands, did their own thing - and that meant remaining Catholic. And in Mary, of course, the country still had a Catholic monarch.
The 18-year-old Mary had intelligence, wisdom and charm - and she’d need all that in the years ahead, especially because John Knox was making loud noises about the unfitness of women to rule (today, he’d probably have ended up in an institution of some kind).
In Mary Queen of Scots, a far-too-tall Vanessa Redgrave tramps up the beach in the company of half-brother James, played by a Machiavellian Patrick McGoohan, while John Knox, flat-capped and wild-bearded, screams at her from the dunes. In fact, they met indoors in Edinburgh a few days later in rather more civilised surroundings.
Mary’s arrival concerned Elizabeth deeply and it kick-started 25 years of intrigue against the queen of England.
Wearing the crown, and losing the crown
In Scotland Mary kept her nose clean for four years. She saw herself as the eventual rightful queen of England despite the Treaty of Edinburgh (see ‘Securing Scotland’), which said she wasn’t. The Lords of the Scottish Council (Congregation) asked her opinion on some things but Mary’s input was slight.
To hard-bitten Scots politicians, the queen was a lightweight. She’d been brought up with French manners and attitudes, and many politicians probably agreed with Knox that she shouldn’t have been on the throne in the first place. Everything would be fine as long as Mary confined her Catholicism to her own Chapel Royal and didn’t interfere with the Kirk, the (now Protestant) Church of Scotland.
Loving a loser
Subjects expect queens to marry; it’s one of their duties. What were Mary’s options?
● Robert Dudley, earl of Leicester: Elizabeth put Dudley forward (very generous of her, considering they were involved; see Chapter 12) and she may well have given him the Leicester title to make him more acceptable. Elizabeth’s thinking is clear - she wanted the king of Scotland to be somebody she knew and could control. But Mary didn’t want one of Elizabeth’s cast-offs and said no.
● Archduke Charles of Austria: He was the Pope’s choice.
● Don Carlos, son of Philip II: He was weak, vicious and cruel. He’d later be sentenced to death for plotting to kill his father’s courtiers.
If you think you’ve heard some of these names before, that’s because you have in Chapter 12. Charles and Carlos were in line to hook up with Elizabeth too - there weren’t too many eligible European princes knocking about in those days!
In the end, everything went pear-shaped because Mary fell in love with Henry Darnley, son of the earl of Lennox. He had the right credentials, descended as he was from Henry VIII’s sister, Mary, but he was vain, handsome, ambitious and empty-headed.
In Mary Queen of Scots Darnley is Timothy Dalton (later James Bond) in a very silly blond wig. He came across as petulant, egotistical and bisexual.
The marriage was made in hell. Mary quickly became pregnant but the couple had private and public rows over almost everything and eventually Darnley left her. In a moment of reconciliation, Mary made him the duke of Albany, but when she refused to give him the crown matrimonial he stormed off again and even took part in a coup that saw the queen imprisoned (see the nearby sidebar ‘Save me, lady, save me!’).
'Save me, lady, save me!'
In a particularly low period in Mary and Darnley's relationship, Darnley was involved in the murder of Mary's Italian secretary David Rizzio. On 9 March 1566 Mary was having supper with Rizzio in Holyrood Palace in Edinburgh (the headquarters of the Scottish Parliament today - check it out when you're north of the border). The queen was six months pregnant and decidedly alarmed when armed men burst in, led by Darnley himself, and plunged their daggers into the Italian as he clung to her skirts, begging her to save him.
Rizzio, as an Italian and a Catholic, had got too close to Mary for the liking of the Protestant lords, including James Stuart, earl of Moray. His corpse had 60 stab wounds.
Mary was held prisoner after the coup, but in a scene straight out of a Hollywood epic she got Darnley on side again - presumably by using her womanly wiles - promised everybody involved a pardon and was smuggled out of the palace via the crypt with the help of James Hepburn, earl of Bothwell. The pair rode through the night to Dunbar, then Mary sent out a call to arms and the Rizzio plotters ran to England.
Giving birth to the future king
On 16 June 1566 Mary gave birth to a boy, James, in Edinburgh Castle. There were the by-now familiar rumours of a substitute child replacing the actual baby born to Mary and of ‘the coffin in the wall’ that was supposed to contain a baby’s skeleton wrapped in a shroud with a royal monogram. But check out the later portraits of James and Lord Darnley and you’ll be in no doubt that James was the true son.
The importance here, of course, is that baby James was heir to the throne of Scotland, and as long as Elizabeth had no children, England too. When she heard the news of Mary’s new baby Elizabeth was furious, saying, ‘The queen of Scots is lighter by a son and I am of but barren stock.’
Getting rid of Darnley
Darnley was a political liability, with enemies in Scotland from coast to coast. In the early hours of 10 February 1567 his house at Kirk o’Fields in Edinburgh was blown up and his and his servant’s bodies were found strangled with a rope in the garden. Darnley was still wearing his nightshirt.
Who did it?
● The earl of Bothwell was chief suspect. He married Mary three months later and some accounts say he raped her and that she lost the twins she was carrying. Love letters were found later, however, which make both the rape and the forced marriage seem unlikely.
● Mary herself may have been in on the murder - Elizabeth certainly believed this (but then, she would, wouldn’t she?).
Ousting Mary
The Lords of the Council had had enough of their Catholic queen with her renegade politics and they forced her to abdicate, imprisoning her in the grim Lochleven Castle. Reluctantly, Mary passed the crown to little James (just over 1 year old) and agreed that Moray would act as regent for him.
Mary tried to raise an army to get her throne back, but ended up as a refugee in England (her new husband Bothwell high-tailed it to Denmark for his own safety). For the next 19 years Mary of Scotland was the prisoner of Elizabeth of England.
A mutinous Edinburgh mob marched round the streets, chanting, ‘Hang the whore!’ John Knox, who could have been content with an ‘I told you it would all end in tears’ went on to compare Mary from his pulpit with those sneaky ladies of the Old Testament, Jezebel and Delilah.
When Mary arrived in England in August 1568 she didn’t get the reception she’d hoped for. Elizabeth refused to see her - the meeting between them in Mary Queen of Scots, where Glenda Jackson (Elizabeth) meets Vanessa Redgrave (Mary) in a wood and Glenda ends up bashing Vanessa with her riding crop, never happened. Elizabeth rather spitefully sent the refugee queen some tatty old clothes with darns and mends all over them.
Marrying off Mary
Ignoring the Bothwell marriage, the Council thought it would be a good idea to marry Mary off as soon as possible to someone they could trust and control (the good old Tudor policy). Who was in the running?
● The Austrians: Part of the Habsburg power fixation.
● The Swedes: Gaining reputation in this period as a European power.
● Thomas Howard, duke of Norfolk: Powerful, popular and a former Catholic.
With Mary now in England, the Spanish and French ambassadors were involved and were busy feeding back information to their governments.
Elizabeth was furious once she knew about the proposed Norfolk marriage and she gave the man a dressing down for his arrogance in September 1569. The Spanish ambassador backed off, Howard went to sulk on his Norfolk estates and, as usual, when the queen was in one of her temper tantrums other lords ran for cover. In the event, Mary married nobody.
Triggering revolt
The far north of England had a reputation for being difficult, ignoring commands from London and doing their own thing. Thomas Percy, the earl of Northumberland, and Charles Neville, the earl of Westmoreland, were known Catholics and owned the lands that ran right up to the Scots Border.
Uniting against Cecil
By 1569 William Cecil was in the driving seat alongside the queen but he was unpopular for a number of other reasons:
● The old nobility regarded him as an upstart (he wasn’t Lord Burghley yet).
● Some didn’t like the religious settlement that he, as much as Elizabeth, represented.
● Some blamed Cecil for ordering the attack on the duke of Alba’s pay ships at the end of December 1568 (in fact, this had been the queen’s idea).
In the Council, Norfolk, Northumberland and Westmoreland were conspiring against Cecil, as was Leicester until he chickened out and confessed all to the queen (see Chapter 12). Their idea was to stage a protest, get the queen to kick Cecil out, go back to the Church ‘as king Henry left it’ and perhaps even name Mary of Scots as Elizabeth’s heir.
The earls of Northumberland and Westmoreland were left exposed by the attack on Cecil. Northumberland had the largest following of any nobleman - over 200 household servants as well as tenants all over the north who’d been loyal to his family for generations.
The earl of Sussex, president of the Council of the North, got wind of the plan and he arranged a meeting with the potential rebels to clear the air. The peace talks failed, and Sussex asked the Council of the North to appear at Court in London, they got their people together ready for a fight.
Burning themselves out
As they moved south in mid November, the rebel Earls realised how small their support base was and desertions increased daily. As with Kett’s Rebellion (flip back to Chapter 8), the rebels weren’t happy leaving their own area and by the time they were within 50 miles of Tutbury in Staffordshire, where Mary of Scots was being held, the whole movement began to crumble.
By 25 November the rebels were back in Durham and three weeks later they crossed the border into Scotland. Various noblemen took advantage of Sussex’s arrival to welcome his pursuing army and tell him how loyal they were to the queen.
The plot within the plot
Richard Norton and Robert Tempest were rabid Catholics working for the northern Earls. They wanted to kick Elizabeth out, replace her with Mary of Scots and bring back (yet again!) the old faith. They tried to link up with the pope, the duke of Alba and the Catholic Leaguers of Scotland (who opposed the government of the
Lords of Congregation). The rebels had around 10,000 men and they marched on Durham, took the city and publicly tore up the copies of the Book of Common Prayer in the cathedral. The earl of Sussex, sent north with an army, proclaimed them all traitors on 13 November.
The only skirmish of the rebellion was fought on 20 February 1570 when Lord Dacre, a disgruntled nobleman who’d just lost his family inheritance, took on Lord Hunsdon and was defeated. Dacre called himself ‘Lord of the North’, which was building up his part a bit, and Hunsdon was a member of the Privy Council and a cousin of the queen. The Scots clansmen who were supposed to be joining Dacre never materialised and he fled to the Highlands for safety.
Strengthening the Crown
The collapse of the Northern Rebellion proved two things:
● Not even the most anti and backward part of the country was willing to go to the wire against the new religious set-up or the queen.
● Philip II wasn’t willing to wade in; neither (directly) was the pope.
The failure of the rebellion was good news for Elizabeth, strengthening her claim to the throne and putting a big tick for success on the first ten years of her reign. It also, however, prompted the pope to get heavy with his attitude towards Elizabeth and indirectly perhaps sparked off other attempts to remove the queen permanently (see Chapter 14).
The North was reorganised, the earldoms of Northumberland and Westmoreland were reduced or abolished and the Dacre inheritance went to the Crown in 1572. Hundreds of executions took place and the writing was on the wall for the duke of Norfolk, who went to the block too.
Assessing the Decade: Girl Done Good?
A lot of historians like to divide up long reigns to make sense of them, and Elizabeth’s first decade as queen does stand alone because in 1570, partly because of Pope Pius’s excommunication (see Chapter 14), Elizabeth’s England went in a rather different direction. So how did the queen do in her first ten years?
● She was too slow to get involved in Scotland but what happened there settled Anglo-Scots relations for the next 40 years.
● She shouldn’t have encouraged Robert Dudley in the marriage stakes (see Chapter 12) although in the end this only affected her - and him - personally and didn’t cut much ice with anybody else.
● She behaved badly over her marriage: shilly shallying, dipping out, teasing and ignoring - all of this led to the end of the Tudor line.
● Backing John Hawkins (see Chapter 12) was a mixed blessing. Yes, she got a large slice of his profits and broke Philip II’s stranglehold on Spanish/American trade. But she also cranked up the tension levels, which eventually led to open war with Spain (see Chapter 15).
● Until 1572 she was generous enough to welcome refugees from the Low Countries seeking sanctuary in England.
● She sat on fences, endlessly delaying on decisions in the hope that problems would go away.
● She seemed obsessed by her father, copying his dominance. Her religious settlement was based partly on Henry VIII’s and partly on brother Edward’s with hardly a glance at the ‘new’ Reformation ideas coming back with exiles from Europe.
Check out the moment in Young Bess when Jean Simmons strikes the Hans Holbein pose of Henry VIII - hands on hips and legs thrust defiantly apart. Three hundred years after the Tudors, the poet Rudyard Kipling wrote ‘Bess was Harry’s daughter’, and he was right.
Historians shouldn’t look back with hindsight, but they can’t help themselves. No one at the time (least of all Elizabeth herself) knew how where England was headed, but looking back we can see that a lot of her policy made sense:
● If she’d married a European prince, England would have been dragged into the swamp of European politics and ‘Englishness’ would have been lost. And giving birth, particularly later in life, carried dangers in a time of high infant and maternal mortality (see Chapter 1).
● Keeping her councillors guessing meant that the queen stayed in control. Parliament was getting more powerful in Elizabeth’s reign (see Chapter 14) but was nowhere near governing like in today’s democracy.
● In religion Elizabeth’s middle way Church of England upset Catholics at one extreme and Puritans at the other. The bottom line was that Elizabeth had to go with her own beliefs and the knowledge that the majority of her people were very conservative, illiterate and superstitious, and she had to lead gently. The ravings of John Knox (see ‘Landing right in it’, earlier in this chapter) wouldn’t have gone down well in England.
Most of the criticisms of Elizabeth, whispered in her first decade and muttered more loudly as the years went by, is that she was a woman so was swayed by female emotions. She should have been married and she should have been bringing up children, tied to the kitchen sink (even if the sink was scrubbed by her scullions); leave government to the men. Saying that Elizabeth was a women’s libber isn’t right; she was more an honorary man.