The Gunpowder Plot (History/16th/17th Century History) (3 page)

A mere six priests had fallen foul of the laws of England and had been executed themselves before the beheading of Mary. But in the following year, 1587, with the country in a state of edgy passivity, waiting for an attack from Spain, the tempo of executions was stepped up and thirty-one died. Also in that year the work of rounding up recusants and valuing their lands was taken from the local authorities and given to operatives of the privy council. Lacking inhibitions based on personal familiarity they went about their business with an unyielding vigour; a procedure enhanced by a promise of an ‘allowance out of the forfeitures’ they should secure, and also by the first chance to purchase from the queen the lease of confiscated lands. The early missionary successes proved to be temporary and collapsed as the war against Spain continued after the Armada crisis into the next decade. There remained a pervasive fear of attack and a national preoccupation with war. The efforts to dissolve lay Catholic allegiance to Elizabeth, which were mounted at home and abroad, led to further executions in the 1590s – eighty-eight in all. The estrangement of the majority of the population from the old faith was now certain, and the government’s measures to counter the vituperation of Father Persons and the pro-Spanish party abroad were accepted. ‘Policy and ideology converged in England’s national energies, which were largely directed to defensive as opposed to aggressive or interventionist ends.’ Not everyone favoured the brisk efforts of Essex in his leadership of the Cadiz expedition (1596) and the Islands voyage (1597). As Thomas Wilson noted in
The State of England, Ann. Dom. 1600,
the ‘common soldiers that are sent out of the realm be of the basest and most inexperienced, the best being reserved to defend from invasion.’ But laws to prohibit could also entice, and in court circles Catholicism had a fluttering fitful glamour as the late cult of Eliza took on a rather desperate air. The sort of scepticism about Rome that finds voice in Marlowe’s spiritual drama
Dr Faustus,
could yet open the way to a nostalgic conversion.

There were tensions, too, within the upper levels of government, involving the tugging of policy by factions. Lord Burghley, ageing and sometimes infirm, came increasingly to rely on the administrative skills of his younger son Sir Robert Cecil. They shared not only the primary tasks of office as ministers, but also an identical dislike of minorities, the improvident and dissident. In what seems like a deliberate contrast there was Essex who benignly gave such provocative elements neglected space, jobs and support whenever he identified an opportunity – and if it ruffled the Cecilians that was a pleasurable bonus. As the heir of his stepfather Leicester (
d
. 1588), the young earl had puritan support as well, and he married Walsingham’s daughter, the widow of the great Protestant hero Sir Philip Sidney just before Walsingham’s death. But among Essex’s closest friends were the dashing Earl of Southampton, an unsteady Catholic, and Sir Oliver Manners, who had turned back to the old faith. The convert cast of mind found expression in the works of Henry Constable, who had been at St John’s College, Cambridge, and yet had Catholic kinsfolk, including priests and nuns from the large Babthorpe family; the conversion of Constable himself seems to have taken place in 1591.
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A letter that he wrote to Essex in October 1595 is revealing, for in it he declared that ‘he was more affectionate to him than to any’ and although there was a gap between them on religious matters, the fact that this had forced him to depend on others had been against his will. He then claimed – as many of his co-religionists would have done – that although passionately devoted to Catholicism, he did not wish its restoration in England, nor the servitude of his country to a foreign tyranny, and that he had on several occasions dissuaded some of his Catholic countrymen from violence ‘and such as be in authority in the church from approving of them’.

Writing on the same day to Anthony Bacon who had returned to England from a lengthy (and not untroubled) sojourn in France to take control of Essex’s intelligence operations, Constable wrote: ‘An honest man may be a Catholic and no fool.’ Some time later the poet wrote again to Essex in terms that suggest the growth of a friendly understanding between them. He renewed his protests of lawful affection for his country and said that he had written to Rome to dissuade the Pope from believing that English Catholics actually favoured Spanish designs against Elizabeth who had just passed her ‘climacteric’ of sixty-three years (a number loaded with significance for Elizabethans). Sir Robert Cecil and Essex were both advised of Constable’s movements and apparent intentions, and on 12 September 1598 Sir Thomas Edmondes wrote to the former from Paris that there was a project afoot to send Constable to Scotland to encourage James VI to allow Catholics there ‘a toleration of Religion’, and to assure him of the devoted support of English Catholics. In March of the following year George Nicholson reported to Cecil from Edinburgh that Constable had arrived from France, and the Laird of Boniton, another Catholic, had travelled with him. Yet several days after, Roger Aston informed Cecil that James had refused Constable an audience; the king rejected the notion of toleration. However, despite a summons before the Lords of Sessions, by August of that year Constable and Boniton were indeed negotiating on behalf of the Pope with the king. The object, cited in a despatch from the London ambassador of France to Henri IV, was to win liberty of conscience for Catholics ‘et declarer la guerre à la Royne d’Angleterre, lui offrant pour cest affect grand denier et l’assistance de tous les Princes catholiques de la Chrestienté et d’ung grand nombre de Catholiques de ce royaume.’
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The mission was not a success and there was some disbelief in political circles in London, rather more closely informed than the French ambassador after long years of monarch watching, that James had ever seriously considered cutting ‘the grass under Her Majesty’s feet’. When Henry Constable returned to Antwerp from Scotland, Thomas Phelippes, sometime spy coordinator and code-breaker to Walsingham, received a letter from his agent in Brussels who used the alias John Petit. He reported Constable now keeping company with a priest named Tempest and the Earl of Westmorland. One day when out walking they met a young English lad who worked for an exiled printer (probably the gifted and indefatigable Richard Verstegen), ‘and asked him what books are printing against the King of Scotland’s title; he said he knew of none.’ Constable’s view of James had evidently shifted and he thought now that the king relied on ‘no party in England but the Puritans, and will enter with that pretence, and before the tree falls, if he can find opportunity.’

Evidently Constable was far from elated by his contacts with James, retreating from his former position of supporting him and making some rather disparaging comments. Petit again to Thomas Phelippes (alias Peter Halins): ‘he has been as backward for the King of Scots as he was forward before; he speaks of him as little better than an atheist, of no courage nor judgment, and says he and his intend to make havoc of England when the day comes.’ Even so, with no other significant candidate to succeed the childless Elizabeth remotely acceptable to his countrymen Constable thought to persevere with James, and he may have been the author of a book the king received that denounced the notorious
Conference about the Next Succession to the Crown of England,
which appeared earlier in the decade with the alias R. Doleman for its author. This name was actually a cover for a collaboration between its essential author, Richard Verstegen, and its reviser Father Persons, a master of style in English and Latin. A text which Constable along with many others ascribed solely to him, it had repercussions in the succession debate that the stiff old queen tried to ward off. It was circulated on the continent late in the autumn of 1593, and a larger edition was printed in 1594 in Antwerp with a dedication to Essex. Optimism or an exile’s impertinence?

The book’s first purpose was to discredit the principle of legitimism ‘in favour of a contractual theory of sovereignty’, and then secondly to rubbish the claims of all save one person. James might briefly have hoped that the emotion generated by the execution of his mother would rally her Catholic supporters to his side. However, Verstegen and others in exile wanted a genuinely Catholic candidate to oust all others. Their book ‘brought together arguments for a Spanish successor which had been circulating since 1571’.
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Their choice was the Infanta Isabella, daughter of Philip II, based on what we might regard as a rather strained ancestral argument, but she was a princess whose faith was unimpeachable. As far as James was concerned it was the most dangerous book of its time. More moderate Catholics looked to Lady Arabella Stuart, cousin of James, since she had been born in England and he had not. After the publication of Doleman her name was regularly noted high on the list of claimants, and there was also talk of her being married to Ranuccio Farnese, one of the sons of the Duke of Parma. Commentators and many politicians did take Doleman very seriously too, and the book naturally became the prized handbook of the Spanish party. James was advised that there was an urgent need for a Protestant pro-Stuart counter to this insidious text, and he was urged as well to woo the common lawyers in England. This was because they were rich and influential in government and held the key to his legal status. Men trained in law had been solid servants of the queen and they had to be convinced of his right to be considered native born, and of a chiming of interests.

The sustained and sometimes furious bickering of the ‘Spanish’ and ‘Scottish’ factions among the exiled Catholics reached its climax during the years 1596–1601. Each grouping was then busy denouncing the other to the Pope, the archduke and the King of Spain. The whole thing became merged in the deeper-seated strife between Jesuits and seculars which found expression in 1598 in the domestic exchanges known as the Archpriest controversy. Persons and those who thought as he did, infuriated the secular clergy who regarded them contemptuously as a ‘Hispanicized faction’, and who credited them as being the real cause of the harsh laws against Catholics in general. As for Henry Constable, he was evidently a stalwart in the greater diplomatic tug-of-war and gave it his own particular thrust. He had spent some time in Rome before moving to live in Paris as a pensioner of the Duchess of Vendôme, sister of Henri IV.
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He continued to write to the Pope and Cardinal Baronio, making proposals for the conversion of England by means of France. In his estimation it was possible because Henri IV had himself made the leap from Huguenot to Catholic for reasons of state. Constable’s notion had led to discussions between the cardinal and Persons, but the scorn of the English Jesuit for its lack of a practical basis was enough to convince Baronio that it was flawed. The prelate told Constable that the Pope would not consider the matter.

The Englishman was phlegmatic about this and his views did find favour with certain other English exiles in Flanders. In Paris, too, men of influence chose to regard it with interest and d’Epernon and de Sancy convinced among others the papal nuncio in France. For his part Constable had contacted Dr Stapleton of Louvain; Dr Barrett, then rector of the Douai seminary and Dr William Gifford, Dean of St Peter’s in Lille, who had a somewhat spotted career and was to be paid by the government agent Charles Paget for supplying the English government with information after the gunpowder plot. This friendly contact was already known to Persons, as was Gifford’s continued correspondence with the French ambassador in Rome. The Jesuit took the understanding that a scheme was evolving for England to be brought into the French sphere of influence – Antonio Perez, exiled from Spain on charges of treason, had already represented Henri IV to Essex, who too had many Scottish contacts and was greatly esteemed by James. So, through the good offices of Henri there were to be negotiations leading to the granting of qualified religious liberty even during Elizabeth’s declining years. On her death the understanding would be that the same religious space and flexibility would continue under the benign rule of James. Persons understood that James had begun already to edge his nobles to a wary agreement and had appointed the Archbishop of Glasgow as his ambassador to France. Further, that promoters of the effort already had their agents in England about Essex and other accessible members of the privy council. Lord Dacre was in Paris with the archbishop and Persons expected him to travel to Scotland for talks with James. As for Constable – he was to be sent to Rome again.

The Spanish ambassador to the papal court, the Duke of Sessia, forwarded news of all this diplomatic activity to his government. On 1 February 1601 the Spanish Council of State reported to Philip III that Constable – named as a great confidant of James – had indeed arrived in Rome, with (it was believed) the consent of the king.
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The Pope had meanwhile been regaled with the delicious fable that James might be converted to his mother’s faith, and even more grandly that if the papacy and Spain joined forces to secure the English succession, then both England and Scotland might at last return to the old faith. This chimed with the strong view of the Jesuits that in monarchical Europe ‘it was absolutely essential to capture the sovereign’. Persons stated this line forthrightly in his vast correspondence, even in a letter to the Earl of Angus in January 1600: ‘the happiest day that could ever shine to me in this life, were to see both our Realms united together under one Catholic governor.’ Angus and James both fathomed the deeper meaning; no conversion, no succession was the implication. Persons at this time was prepared to allow the view that Constable might be sent to sound out James, but the Pope now retreated from giving his consent. He was more concerned that Philip III should quickly opt for whom he wished to succeed Elizabeth, and the Council of State approved of the papal refusal to give a brief to Constable because they feared that James’s Protestantism was fixed. Was it possible that the poet-envoy just might be gulled with feigned protestations of conversion in order that James should have the Pope in his pocket?