Gloriana: The Life and Reign of Elizabeth I

"There is only one Christ Jesus and one faith: the rest is dispute about trifles." Elizabeth I.

For almost 20 years, two Queens lived in England, each viewed by various European countries and religions as the only legitimate ruler, the other as a usurper. On May 16, 1568, Mary Queen of Scots sought refuge across the border in Elizabeth's realm from her rebellious Scottish subjects. From then, until Elizabeth had Mary's head cut off 19 years later, the Queen of England contended with the twin dangers of Mary's descent and religion. As the only child of Elizabeth's first cousin, James V of Scotland, Mary was not only Elizabeth's closest heir, but a Catholic in a world where the Pope encouraged the faithful to remove Elizabeth by any means from her heretic throne.

It is impossible to sum up or exaggerate the shadow thrown over Elizabeth's reign by her father's actions in breaking with Catholic Europe. When Henry VIII created the renegade Church of England in 1532, not even Martin Luther so impacted European politics. Luther defined the spiritual rebellion of individuals; Henry symbolized the political rebellion of entire kingdoms from Rome's authority. The Pope announced Henry's excommunication in 1533, the year of Elizabeth's birth. The 180-degree swings between the severely Protestant reign of his son, Edward VI, and the violently Catholic reign of Mary 1, meant Elizabeth inherited a kingdom cross-eyed from attempting to resolve impossible contradictions of faith. Either the Pope was the sole arbiter of Christian faith for English subjects or their Queen was that authority. Whichever one was correct, the other was damned, as were all subjects following their antithetical directions.

Add this argument to the traditional English political enmities with France and Spain (both still Catholic) and politics and religion merged, not to be untangled for centuries. During the long course of Elizabeth's reign, being Catholic came to be seen as supporting England's traditional enemies. To be Protestant meant being loyal to the Elizabethan peace between Catholic and Puritan dogmatic extremes: eventually, it became a symbol of loyalty to England itself. This was the beginning of Catholics being portrayed for political motives as spies, anarchists, murderers, and enemies of England; the concept endured in England for over 300 years.

Elizabeth's genius for compromise between her disunited subjects had led to the Religious Settlement of 1559, in which she displeased fanatics on both sides by steering a middle course between the increasing severity of Protestantism (in which almost every element of Catholic ritual had been stripped) and the full Catholic rite. Henry VIII (and likely Elizabeth herself) preferred the nearly-Catholic rite, but the Protestant reformers - of which there were increasing numbers, becoming Puritan at the fringes - protested volubly. Her compromise was anathema to the Pope, while the Catholics imperiled their souls even to attend Church of England services. Yet the settlement endured; after a shaky start, it appeared to find increasing acceptance in the English realm during the 1560's. The wary Pope did not excommunicate Elizabeth, perhaps hoping against hope she would be forced to see reason. Around Europe, interested politicians (including the Holy Roman Emperor and king of Spain, Philip II) waited and watched, hoping for opportunity to take the heretic kingdom by force while religious turmoil increasingly raged in their own lands. The arrival of the refugee Mary of Scotland renewed fuel for the religious and political fires in England.

Mary was already a legend when she died in 1587. Queen of Scotland one week after her birth, following her father's premature death in 1542, she was sent to France at the age of five to be brought up as the wife of Francis, heir to the French throne. When his father, Henry II, died in 1558, Mary (aged 16) and Francis were crowned rulers of the most powerful kingdom in Europe. That same year, immediately after Elizabeth assumed the throne, Mary and her husband had been persuaded to assume use of the royal English coat of arms, claiming to be the legitimate rulers of England. The French argument was that Mary was the true queen of England because she had been born in Catholic wedlock. Elizabeth's status on this point had always been ambiguous due to her birth while her father's first wife was still alive. It is a spectacular understatement to say the English saw this move as politically provocative. As Elizabeth later said of Mary, she was "the daughter of debate, that discord eke [always] doth sow."

Mary's mother, Mary of Guise, died in 1560. She had ruled Scotland as a strong regent and managed to find accommodation with her turbulent, increasingly Protestant nobles. In December of that year, Mary's husband, Francis, also died. His younger brother became king, and Mary - queen no longer - was an 18-year-old widow. Retaining extensive properties in France, her main asset was now her throne in Scotland. In 1561 she returned to her kingdom. She was in in all essentials a Frenchwoman who had forgotten most of her Scots, a beautiful, willful, charming woman taller than most men of her day, to whom nothing in her life had ever been refused and who had absorbed into her very fibers the authoritarianism of Catholic France. Scotland at the time was not only officially and radically Protestant, but ruled by ambitious nobles known as the Lords of the Congregation. First among the Lords was her illegitimate half-brother, James (later Earl of Moray). Although Mary promised to respect her subjects' religion and only celebrate Mass in private, an explosion was bound to occur.

Elizabeth's relationship with Mary was problematic from the first. After she had assumed the arms of England, a treaty negotiated between her nobles and the English in the Treaty of Edinburgh compelled Mary to renounce the English throne for herself and her heirs. Mary refused to ratify the treaty. Elizabeth retaliated by refusing Mary the routine courtesy of a safe-conduct to Scotland. Mary's claims struck at the heart of Elizabeth's personal security and Mary would not let the matter drop, sending her ambassador, Maitland of Lethington, to press Elizabeth in late 1561 to declare Mary her successor. Elizabeth appeared to agree that Mary had a claim to the throne while diplomatically refusing to formally name her, noting drily, "Think you I should love my winding sheet?" Elizabeth appears to have proceeded from the beginning without any trust for Mary's protestations of affection, probably based on conviction (proved true, in the event) that she would never give up her claims to England. Elizabeth's spies reported that Mary had the tactless habit of making negative remarks to her court about Elizabeth's looks and behavior. This did not help the trust quotient.

Elizabeth tried to manipulate Mary to her own political advantage. Events soon proved her efforts unnecessary; Mary turned out to be adept at self-destruction. After a hopeful start in which Mary showed tolerance in religion and appeared to be taking good advice about a second royal marriage with a foreign king, she proceeded with spectacular bad judgment to fall passionately in love with Henry Stewart, Lord Darnley. Darnley was her second cousin, grandson of Henry VIII's sister, Margaret. Born and educated in England, his mother, Lady Margaret Douglas, had raised him as a pawn for her own frustrated claims on England's throne and had sent him hopefully north to catch the Queen's eye. The family was strongly Catholic. After only a few months, Mary surprised her Court and astounded her advisers by marrying Darnley in July, 1565. Darnley was 19 years old, good looking, taller than the Queen (who stood 5'10") and was full of surface charm. Underneath, he was apparently a man in whom no one but his mother found any redeeming qualities, being vain, shallow, dissolute, drunken,and completely without force of character.

The marriage fell apart with spectacular speed. Darnley and several important Scottish lords became jealous of Mary's favorite musician, the Italian David Rizzio: he was murdered in her presence by a conspiracy of nobles and Darnley in March, 1566. Thereafter, the heavily pregnant Queen was threatened and held captive. Mary courageously escaped with the weathervane Darnley, who betrayed his fellow-conspirators. These scampered south of the border and lurked, awaiting better times but full of vengeance for the "long lad" who had betrayed them.

Mary gave birth to a son, James, in June, 1566. In December, she fully pardoned the murderous nobles in England, who returned to Scotland with vengeance on their minds. On February 9, 1567, Darnley was himself murdered under catastrophically dubious circumstances which implicated the Earl of Bothwell, among many others.

Elizabeth was in a unique position to be horrified at these events, having survived the scandal following the suspicious death of Dudley's wife. The mask was off as she wrote Mary on February 24:

"My ears have been so astounded and my heart so frightened to hear of the horrible and abominable murder of your former husband, our mutual cousin, that I have scarecely spirit to write; yet I cannot conceal that I grieve more for you than for him. I should not do the office of a faithful cousin and friend, if I did not urge you to preserve your honor, rather than look through your fingers at revenge on those who have done you that pleasure as most people say. I advise you to so take this matter to heart, that you may show the world what a noble Princess and loyal woman you are. I write thus vehemently not that I doubt, but for affection." Elizabeth I, p. 191.

Two months later, Mary married Bothwell in a Protestant ceremony. She was almost certainly pregnant with twins, later miscarried.

The nobility and people of Scotland rose against Mary, who was imprisoned at Lochleven and forced to abdicate in favor of her infant son, who was in the hands of the nobles. Bothwell fled abroad. Seducing a guard with her charm, Mary escaped from Lochleven and raised an army. It was promptly routed by her half-brother, James, now de facto ruler of Scotland. Fleeing her kingdom, Mary crossed the border into England with a handful of followers and only the borrowed clothes she stood up in:

	" There can be no doubt of Mary's courage, her resourcefulness, her invincibly optimistic outlook, her personal charm and her ruthless egotism - all qualities which were to make her infinitely more dangerous as a homeless fugitive in her cousin's realm than she had ever been as a neighboring sovereign."
	Plowden, Danger to Elizabeth,79.

Mary and Elizabeth had corresponded with diplomatic sweetness during the seven years Mary ruled in Scotland. The game required frequent protestations of kinship and mutual monarchical support, even when the two kingdoms were in warlike stance. Mary apparently felt she could assume that Elizabeth, as a fellow royal, would immediately put her resources at Mary's disposal. Days after her arrival in England, Mary sent her ambassador to Elizabeth asking to borrow an army.

Elizabeth had no mercy for rebellious subjects. She also had a lifelong, parsimonious loathing for war - let alone war to set a disgraced Catholic queen back on top of a Protestant kingdom. She was now unwilling hostess to a woman who had trumpeted for more than a decade that she, not Elizabeth, was rightful Queen of England. Mary presented an insoluble problem to the English queen and council. If permitted to leave England, Mary would simply ally herself and her kingdom with Catholic Europe. Support from either France or Spain with which to invade Scotland might also be used to invade England. At the same time, it became obvious it was unthinkable to allow Mary free range and sanctuary in England: she would be a lightning rod to all dissatisfied Catholic subjects throughout Britain. Elizabeth in every sense had a wolf by the ears. To let go seemed more dangerous than to hang on.

	" I have always abhorred to draw in question the title of the crown…so many disputes have been already touching it in the mouths of men. Some say that this marriage was unlawful, some that someone was a bastard, some other, to and fro, as they favour it or mislike it…howsoever it be, so long as I live I shall be Queen of England. When I am dead, they shall succeed that have most right."
	Elizabeth I, 1561.

Mary was given no army but placed under what was essentially polite house arrest. The English Queen announced she would help her "dear sister" if and when certain charges concerning the murder of her husband had been addressed. Mary's letters to Elizabeth became increasingly defiant and demanding, as did her letters to the continent. Elizabeth temporized, blaming her Council for the demand that the Queen be cleared of any taint in her husband's death before aid could be rendered.

Considering that the Darnley-Bothwell-Mary scandal was reverberating throughout Europe, and that even the Pope condemned Mary, this was no lie. The council demanded that Mary be brought to trial for Darnley's murder, as certain incriminating evidence had been placed in their possession that condemned her. In fact, a fertile correspondence existed between the triumphant Lords of the Congregation (headed by the Earl of Moray) and the English council. It was alleged that secret letters from Mary to Bothwell showed she had prior knowledge of the murder plot. Mary denied all charges and fought vigorously against being judged by commoners. She sought help from every Catholic ruler in Europe, providing the genesis of the spy network and intrigues that would enmesh Mary and Elizabeth until Mary was dead. As one of Philip II's ambassadors wrote him, Mary said to "Tell the ambassador that if his master will help me, I shall be queen of England in three months and mass shall be said all over the country." Guerau de Spes, January, 1569.

Five months after Mary arrived in England, a conference at York - a hybrid between a public trial and a Star Chamber interrogation - addressed the "evidence" against her. Mary was not permitted to attend. The Earl of Moray produced the soon-infamous "Casket Letters" as proof that Mary was an accessory before the fact of her husband's murder. At the same time, the inquiry addressed whether her Scots subjects had unjustly rebelled against her. If the inquiry found her guiltless and her subjects in unjustified rebellion, Elizabeth could support her. However, the inquiries found "not proven" for both inquiries. This ambiguous verdict gave Elizabeth shaky justification to continue Mary's "security" confinement. The Scots and English councils were satisfied. Mary remained in custody, as she would do, in increasing desperation, for the rest of her life.

Throughout the 1570's, opinions on Mary began to change. In spite of her lapses, her imprisonment was now viewed as unjust by her European supporters. The wave of sympathy eventually surmounted the horrific scandals of her last years as Queen. As Mary became the very inspiration for rebellion Elizabeth had dreaded, her government faced one plot after another from Mary's champions. There was genuine danger to Elizabeth. Any one of these plots could have succeeded in unseating the Protestant for the Catholic queen. The repetition of domestic and foreign threats forced Elizabeth's government to develop spymasters and defensive intrigues to an unparalleled extent. Paranoid, the government increasingly clamped down on Catholics, felt to be aiding England's enemies by way of Jesuit priests. It is a distasteful, if realpolitik, aspect to the Elizabethan Age and a contradiction of the Queen's oft-stated desire that she had no wish to make window's into men's souls.

Mary's proponents tend to denigrate the reality of her threat to English peace, implying that Elizabeth's government created the device solely to keep Mary in custody. The irony is that Mary's imprisonment occurred just as the Catholic counter-Reformation was beginning to impact England. Mary, captive, was irresistible to anyone wanting a change of dynasty and religion, and the threats to Elizabeth were constant. In late 1569, Catholic lords in northern England rose in an abortive attempt to crown Mary as queen of England. A failed attempt to free her by force by local Catholics failed in 1570. Also in 1570, Pope Pius V formally issued a bull of excommunication against Elizabeth, which forbade her Catholic subjects to obey or support her and acted as a standing invitation to European Catholic powers to depose her. In 1571, Mary's ambassador in England plotted with an Italian banker in the so-called "Ridolfi plot," in which a Spanish invasion of England was timed with a Catholic uprising to unseat Elizabeth and make Mary queen. In 1572, the Duke of Norfolk - England's greatest peer - was executed for intriguing to marry Mary, install her as Queen, and return England to Catholicism. Three months later, the notorious St. Bartholomew's Day Massacre in Paris , in which the mob murdered thousands of Huguenots throughout France, signaled France's deepening commitment to religious persecution.

Mary's involvement in the plots was often tacit, sometimes unproved, but it is extremely unlikely (since she figured in all of them as the next Queen of England) that she was unaware of them, especially in view of her own prolific correspondence and spy system. At each new threat, each new discovered plot, Mary's imprisonment was made slightly more severe, although it was never truly onerous.

Efforts continued abroad to reclaim England for Catholicism. The English college at Douai in France was instrumental in training English priests to return undercover to England, while in Rome the Jesuits took on the task of reclamation. The first wave of activist undercover priests arrived in England in the 1570's and the government dealt with them with increasing harshness: with torture in 1577-78 and the execution of priests such as the Jesuit, Father Campion, in 1581. Acts were passed in that year making it high treason to revert to Catholicism, so deeply had the identification been made between foreign and religious threat. English Catholic Nicholas Throckmorton, in league with the DeGuises of France and the Spanish ambassador, was behind the 1583 plot to invade with Spanish forces, remove Elizabeth, and crown Mary. In fact, the Guise family boasted to the papal Nuncio, Castelli, that they had a plan to kill Elizabeth through a Catholic placed in court who was angry at the execution of his relatives. Arrested with Mary's letters in his possession, Throckmorton incriminated Mary during interrogation and was executed.

In 1584, the assassination by an agent of Catholic Spain of William of Orange - Protestant champion in the Netherlands - showed that religious murder was a workable concept in statecraft. By now, Sir Francis Walsingham - Elizabeth's version of Director of Homeland Security - had infiltrated the circles supporting Mary and almost certainly began active counterintelligence actions. In 1585, the "Parry plot" caught a would-be assassin of the Queen carrying a plenary indulgence and remission of sins from the Pope.

The government grew Increasingly paranoid. The Act for the Queen's Safety of 1585 now explicitly held Mary responsible for plots instituted in her name, with or without her knowledge. Certainly, by the time of the Babington Plot of 1586, there is no question that Walsingham was setting Mary up to remove her as the primary threat to his queen's survival. The fact that Walsingham was known as strongly Protestant, even Puritan, in his personal views added spice to his determination to nail the Queen of Scots. He now had a small army of intelligence gatherers to help him.

The Babington Plot was yet another intrigue between Philip II of Spain, Mary, and English Catholics to invade England, only in this case it included specifically the assassination of Elizabeth. Six men were committed to do the deed. Walsingham baited the trap with his own people. He initiated an infinitely careful ring of spies, who intercepted all Mary's secret correspondence before she received it (in a waterproof packet hidden in a beer barrel) and read and decoded her replies before sending them on. Finally, Walsingham had what he most desired - clear and indisputable letters in Mary's handwriting to French and Spanish agents with her active approval of the overthrow of Elizabeth and enthusiastic concurrence in her assassination. Babington and his fellows were captured, imprisoned, tortured and executed.

Walsingham's "smoking gun" was Mary's letter of July 14, 1586, which replied to Babington's earlier, detailed description of the plot and the proposed murder of Elizabeth. Mary wrote with a cool and sophisticated appreciation of the necessary steps for the coup d'état (reminding Babington of the need for laying false cover-stories). The letter noted that she had, for many years, been encouraging the European Catholic powers to redouble their efforts to forcibly retake England for the faith. In the damning conclusion, Mary wrote:

	" The affairs being thus prepared and forces in readiness both without and within the realm, then shall it be time to set the six gentlemen to work; taking order, upon the accomplishing of their designing, I may be suddenly transported out of this place, and that all your forces in the same time be on the field to meet me in tarrying for the arrival of the foreign aid, which then must be hastened with all diligence. Now, for that there can be no certain day appointed for the accomplishing of the said gentlemen's designing, to the end that others may be in readiness to take me from hence, I would that the said gentlemen had always about them (or at least at Court) four stout men, furnished with good and speedy horses, for-so soon as the said design [the death of Elizabeth] shall be executed - to come with all diligence to advertise thereof those that shall be appointed for my transporting; to the end that immediately after they may be at the place of my abode, before that my keeper can have advice of the execution of the said design, or at least before he can fortify himself within the house or carry me out of the same. "
	Queen Mary to Antony Babington, July 17, 1586.

Walsingham moved quickly. A few days before Babington's arrest on August 14, 1586, Mary was taken riding and removed from her household supporters. She would steadfastly deny her actions and justify her efforts until her death. In October 1586, under statutes passed earlier holding Mary responsible for plots instituted in her name, proceedings are held in England that eventually lead to the decision by Parliament to condemn Mary for treason in November, 1586.

For three months Elizabeth debated the political cost of executing Mary. Like every decision involving politics and religion, all her options were dangerous. Under pressure from Parliament and her council, the Queen announced Mary's death sentence in early December, 1586, but refused to sign the execution warrant until February 1. In the long two months between, Elizabeth must have stared into the future, knowing her action - the judicial murder of one anointed Queen by another - would have profound effects on her own position and that of her successors. She was right to be concerned - her precedent helped lead to the execution of Mary Stuart's grandson, King Charles I, only 60 years later. What overt retaliation would Philip II and Charles IX, king of France, take for Mary's death? What action would be urged on Catholic subjects? How would the Pope respond, or history judge Elizabeth? Would the benefit of removing the focus of Catholic plotting from her kingdom outweigh the detriment of acquiring a reputation for spilling the royal blood sanctified by God? For, as she asked her parliament as it pressured her to execute Mary, "What will they not now say when it shall be spread that for the safety of her life a maiden Queen could be content to spill the blood even of her own kinswoman?" Elizabeth became cryptic in her efforts to justify her decision; she told delegates from both Houses, in response to their petition that she execute Mary forthwith, that they would have to accept her "thankfulness, excuse my doubtfulness, and take in good part my answer answerless." The Virgin Queen, 213.

There is a farcical quality to the final weeks prior to Mary's death. Once Elizabeth signed the warrant, Cecil had the temerity to rush the warrant off to northern England and chop off Mary's head. Mary, superbly, died in a blaze of Catholic martyrdom on February 8, 1587. Elizabeth then acted the part of the horrorstruck woman whose servants had taken the warrant without her authority. Utilizing every weapon in the political and feminine arsenal, Elizabeth raged, wept, and explained over and over to any foreign ambassador within hearing that she hadn't really meant the warrant to be used and that her ministers forced her hand. Cecil, Walsingham, and others of the council lurked in corners in a despair of frustration while the rest of the diplomatic world smiled behind its hands at Elizabeth's pageant of plausible deniability. But her actions had their intended effect - barely, just barely, she gained time arguing that Mary's death was a terrible accident, time to arm against the retaliation that would come because Mary died. Elizabeth's execution of Mary Stuart finally set in motion the long-deferred voyage of Philip II's Armada, to drive the English heretics into the sea.

There had been many reasons a Catholic power should desire to remove Elizabeth Tudor from the throne. Her judicial murder of an anointed Queen made Mary a martyr to Catholic faith and provided enough powder to ensure a conflagration. Her action was denounced throughout the Catholic world. In 1588, Pope Sixtus V issued a Bull in which he concluded his blast against the monstrous Queen of England by stating the the Queen was "unworthy to live." He of\officially extended a full Plenary Indulgence from sin from any Catholic who removed or killed the Queen. It was the year of the Armada, 1588.

The life and death issues between the two Queens was always as much about the religious turmoil of their age as political or personal rivalry. Mary of Scotland had gone to her death as a Catholic martyr. Due to the collision between two larger-than-life rulers, Mary's life had been wasted and Elizabeth's endangered. One, but not both, could live. The greatest attempt to wrest England by force from heretical damnation - the Spanish Armada - was in preparation. As Mary said of her own life, "in my end is my beginning" : she might have said the same to Elizabeth. By 1587, Elizabeth had finally become the undisputed queen of a staunchly Protestant England. In Scotland the Protestant son of Mary and Darnley waited, the undisputed heir to the English throne.