conspiracy against Elizabeth; but jealousy of Cecil and Bacon, who were known to favour the claims of the house of Suffolk, was at the bottom of it with some; others, and even Norfolk himself, may have thought the measure really good for the country; and the Catholics looked to the re-establishment of their religion by means of it.

The affair, however, could not be expected to remain long a secret from the queen and Cecil. Elizabeth, on the 13th of August, 1569, took the duke to dinner at Farnham. "Be careful," said she to him, "of the pillow on which you are about to lay your head." He understood the allusion, and replied, "I will never marry a person with whom I could not be sure of my pillow." Soon after, Leicester (whom Norfolk is said to have urged in vain to reveal the whole to the queen) fell sick, or feigned sickness, at Titchfield, and when Elizabeth came to visit him he told her all he knew. The queen then taxed Norfolk with his designs, and charged him to abandon them. He readily promised, spoke disparagingly of the Scottish match, affirming that his English estates were nearly as valuable as the kingdom of Scotland, and that, when he was in his own tennis-court at Norwich, he thought himself a petty prince. petty prince. Finding himself looked upon coolly, he shortly after left the court without permission, and retired to Norfolk. soon, however, repented of this step and was returning, but was arrested and sent to the Tower on the 9th of October. Pembroke, Arundel, Lumley, and Throgmorton were also put in custody.

He

In the mean time, rumours of a meditated rising in the north prevailed. Sussex, the lord president, summoned the earls of Northumberland and Westmoreland before him; their excuses, however, satisfied him, and he dismissed them. The reports growing stronger, the queen wrote on the 10th of November, summoning the two earls to court; but they had gone too far in treason to venture on that course. In conjunction with Radcliffe, Sussex's own brother, with Leonard, uncle of Lord Dacres, and the families of the

1569.]

RISING IN THE NORTH.

55

Nortons, Markenfields, Tempests, and others, they had been in constant communication with Mary and with her friends in Scotland; they had also arranged with the Duke of Alva, Philip's vicegerent in the Netherlands, for the landing of a body of Spanish auxiliaries; and one of his ablest captains, Ciappino Vitelli, had been sent over to London on some trifling embassy, to be on the spot to take the command of them when they should land.

Northumberland being a timid, irresolute man, his more energetic followers employed the following expedient to rouse him. At midnight one of his servants rushed into his chamber, crying out that his enemies, Oswald, Ulstrop, and Vaughan, were surrounding the place with armed men. He rose in a hurry and fled to a lodge in his park; and the next night he went to Brancespeath, a seat of the Earl of Westmoreland's, where a large number of those who were in the secret were assembled. A manifesto was immediately put forth in the usual style, expressive of the utmost loyalty to the queen, but declaring their intentions to rescue her out of the hands of evil counsellors, to obtain the release of the duke and other peers, and to re-establish the religion of their fathers. They marched to Durham on the 16th of November, where they "purified" the churches by burning the Protestant Bibles and Prayer-books. At Ripon they restored the mass; and on Clifford Moor they mustered seven thousand men. Richard Norton, a venerable old gentleman, who had joined them with his* five sons, raised in their front a banner displaying the Saviour with the blood streaming from his five wounds.* Finding that the Catholics in general were loyal to the queen, and that Sussex was collecting an efficient force at York, on the 16th of December they fell back to Hexham. Here the footmen dispersed; and the earls, with the horse, about five hundred in number, fled to Naworth and thence into Scotland.

The fate of the Nortons is commemorated (though not with strict historic accuracy) in Wordsworth's most beautiful poem of The White Doe of Rylstone."

Northumberland was taken and delivered to the regent, who confined him in Lochlevin Castle; and, some years after, he was given up to the English government, and was executed at York. Westmoreland made his escape to Flanders, where he died in 1584, commandant of a Spanish regiment. Many executions, as was to be expected, took place. The Queen of Scots, for greater security, had been removed from Tutbury to Coventry.

Soon after, Leonard Dacres collected about three thousand men at his castle of Naworth, and the queen's cousin, Carey lord Huntsdon,* advanced from Durham with an equal number against him. They engaged on the banks of a stream named the Chelt, on the 22d of February, 1570, and about three hundred fell on either side. The rebels, however, were defeated, and Dacres escaped to Scotland, and thence to Flanders, where he died in poverty.

Elizabeth and Cecil were now fully convinced of the danger of having Mary in England: for, as that wise minister plainly foresaw, the horror inspired by her guilt would gradually soften down and give place to pity. Negotiations were therefore set on foot with her and with the regent for her return to Scotland: indeed, it has been said that there was a private treaty with Murray for giving her up to him. But the regent's sudden death put an end to all these projects: he was assassinated on the 23d of July, 1570, as he was riding through Linlithgow, by one Hamilton of 'Bothwellhaugh, from motives of private revenge.

As with other distinguished individuals at this time, the character of Murray appears in very opposite lights in the narratives of the two conflicting religious parties. His great abilities, however, are ac knowledged by all; by the people he was long remembered as "the good regent ;" and his moral virtues were extolled by his Catholic countrymen abroad. His zeal for the Protestant religion seems to have been sincere; and he was, perhaps, as free from errors

* He was the son of Mary, the elder sister of Anne Boleyn.

1570.] CONSPIRACY TO DETHRONE ELIZABETH. 57

as it was easy for a public man to be in those times. But the advocates of his sister have, from his own time down to the present day, sought to make him the scapegoat for her sins: assuming, as Mackintosh says, "that she did nothing which she appears to have done, and that he did all that he appears to have cautiously abstained from doing."

The Scots and Kers, border chiefs and partisans of Mary, having made an inroad into England, Sussex invaded Scotland. The regency was soon after committed to the Earl of Lennox, the young king's grandfather.

We can hardly conceive it possible for any one, who reads with attention the various collections of state papers relating to this period of English history, to escape the conviction, that there was an extensive conspiracy of the pope, the King of Spain, and the Duke of Alva, his vicegerent in the Netherlands, in which the court of France also partly shared, the object of which was the dethronement, and probably the death, of Elizabeth, the elevation of Mary in her place, and the overthrow of the Protestant religion. It seems to be also certain that Mary knew and fully approved of this conspiracy, and secretly corresponded with the heads of it; that her Catholic partisans, both in England and Scotland, were ready to take arms in support of it; that Norfolk was apprized of and sanctioned the measure, at least so far as related to the liberation of the Queen of Scots, and his own marriage with her; and that Arundel, Pembroke, and other nobles probably favoured it. It is not a little remarkable, that, not two months after Mary's flight into England, the English ministry obtained secret information to this effect: for Sir Henry Norris* wrote to Cecil from Paris on the 7th of July, 1568, that the night before he had had a private meeting with the French provost-marshal, at the desire of

* He was son to Norris who suffered death on account of Anne Boleyn. One of Elizabeth's first cares had been to promote this family.

the latter, who said to him, "he wished that he should advertise that the queen's majesty did hold the wolf that would devour her; and that it is conspired betwixt the King of Spain, the pope, and the French king, that the queen should be destroyed, whereby the Queen of Scots might succeed her majesty;" with more of the same character, mentioning particularly the name of Arundel. There is every reason to believe that it was Catharine de' Medici herself who caused the information to be thus conveyed to Elizabeth, out of jealousy to Mary, or through fear of seeing Britain under one head, and closely united, perhaps, with Spain.*

We have noticed these particulars (and we could increase them to a great extent) to show that Mary was not the meek, suffering saint that her admirers would make her to be. They likewise serve to prove that Elizabeth was not actuated by pure malignity. and petty female revenge in her treatment of her royal prisoner; and that she only did hold the wolf that would devour her in obedience to the great principle of self-preservation. The zealous and intolerant Pius V., just at this time, as if to prove to the world that Elizabeth was justified in acting as she had, published, on the 25th of February, his celebrated bull, Regnans in excelsis, in which, in the tone of a Gregory or

"The cardinal (of Lorraine) showed the queen-mother how hurtful to the crown of France would the union of the isle of Britain be; and thought meet that she should advertise the Queen of England to take order thereto, which the queen-mother failed not to do. This the queen (Mary) told me herself, complaining of the cardinal's unkindly dealing."-Melvill, p. 239.

The love of power and a passion for revenge were leading traits in Mary's character. "She told me," writes Knowles in 1568, "she would rather that all her party were hanged than submit to Murray; and, if she were not retained, she would go into Turkey rather than not be revenged on him." Her dissimulation, too, was extreme; while she was writing to Elizabeth in this strain, "I wish you knew what sincerity of love and affection are in my heart for you," she prays the pope "to forgive her for writing loving and soothing letters to Elizabeth; she desires nothing more than the re-establishment of the Catholic religion in England."