Foundations of the Anglican Church XCIII

Sir Francis Walsingham

Elizabeth's spymaster

I have noticed that when I write about the synod or about our friends among the katholic krazies, I get four times as many visits to my blog as when I deal with the more distant history.  While I must admit it is more fun to write about history in the making than in the past, and obviously more readers find it more fun to read about current developments in the life of the Church, I am disappointed that my ardent love for the past doesn’t translate into blog popularity.  Nevertheless, I write this for my satisfaction, and not yours, beloved readers, so let me return—at least occasionally—to our saga of the Church of England.

In this posting I want to pick up on Garrett Mattingly’s essay on the execution of Mary Stuart, Queen of Scots.  I really am sorry that relatively few readers looked at that entry as it is, I believe and as I wrote in the introduction, the single best written piece of historical narrative that I have come across.  Mattingly knows how to make serious history read like a dime-store novel.  Mattingly honed his literary style writing sonnets.  Supposedly he wrote a sonnet every day of his adult life.  It taught him the discipline of saying as much as possible in as few words as were probable to the sonnet format.  But it isn’t his style that I want to comment on today but his thesis that Mary was, alas, no Catholic martyr. 

Yes she died in the faith but, despite her efforts to appear the martyr, she did not die for it.  Her cousin, Elizabeth Tudor, Queen of England and daughter of Henry VIII has a reputation for being a rabidly blood-thirsty Protestant hell-bent on exterminating English Catholicism by hunting down and judicially murdering each and every adherent to the “old faith” in England.  But that simply was not the truth.  Elizabeth had a number of Catholics in her court and employ.  William Byrd, the composer and organist in her chapel, was a devout Roman Catholic and she granted him and fellow Catholic composer, Thomas Tallis, a monopoly on the publication of polyphonic music. Her attempts to secure her control over Ireland meant that she needed to have good relationship with the Irish nobles, most of whom remained in the “old faith.”  Several of the foreign princes with whom she flirted about marriage were Catholics.  Moreover many of the peers of her own realm, especially in the North, were Catholics as were many of the wealthier gentry families—it was fashionable to be Catholic to show you were an “old blood” family and not Tudor parvenus.  Elizabeth had no interest in troubling the consciences of her subjects and was, by and large, willing to let sleeping dogs lie in the comfort of their own preferred religion as long as they were politically loyal to her.   The problem was that many Catholics, instead of being content to remain in the background under a Protestant Queen, wanted to replace her with a Catholic one and regain the political ascendency.  The Bull of Pius V, Regnans in Excelcis, which absolved English Catholics of their allegiance to their Protestant Queen, threw fuel on this fire.   The convenience of Mary Stuart being both a Catholic and the next, by blood, in line to the English throne proved to be too great a temptation and in the 1570’s and 1580’ several plots were hatched to assassinate Elizabeth and put Mary on the throne.  Mary was foolish enough to get herself involved in some of these plots and it led to Elizabeth’s Council demanding Mary’s execution. 

The final straw was a plot led by Sir Anthony Babington to murder Elizabeth and replace her with Mary.  Mary wrote a letter explicitly condoning the assassination.  The letter was intercepted by Thomas Phelippes, an agent of Sir Francis Walsingham who directed Elizabeth’s spy network.  Unfortunately for the integrity of their case, Phelippes, who was a master forger, was also instructed to add a forged document to the letter, but Mary’s complicity in the plot was established (and for historians remains established) nonetheless. 

Elizabeth asked Sir Amias Paulet, Mary’s gaoler to dispose of Mary’s discreetly, but Paulet—a convinced Calvinist and a man of the highest integrity—refused to be involved in a murder.  It forced Elizabeth to consider a trial, conviction, and judicial execution.  Mary was tried and convicted in October 1586, but Elizabeth remained reluctant to sign the warrant for her execution.  Mary was an anointed Queen and it would not be a good precedent for the Lord’s Anointed—even a Catholic Lord’s Anointed—to be put to death.  Both Parliament and the Privy Council pushed Elizabeth to sign the warrant and yet she hesitated.  Finally she was convinced to sign it but not to authorize its being carried out so that, should something untoward happen to her (Elizabeth), Mary would be executed and prevented from ascending the throne.  On February 1, Elizabeth signed the death warrant.  Sir William Cecil, Elizabeth’s chief advisor, summoned the Privy Counci without Elizabeth’s knowledge and the Council decided to have Mary executed.  On February 7, 1587 Mary was beheaded at Fotheringhay Castle as Mattingly so well described in this blog’s entry of October 21^st.  Elizabeth claimed to be most angry that the warrant was carried out contrary to her instructions that it be held until such time that she should decide.

Was Elizabeth sincere or was she playing a double game?  Most historians—as indeed thought also most of Elizabeth’s contemporaries—think that Elizabeth was attempting to play innocent in Mary’s execution.  Yet, Elizabeth did have strong qualms about where this would lead.  Mary’s grandson, Charles I of England and Scotland would end up being beheaded (1649) after being tried for treason by the Parliamentary party in the English Civil War.  The French would bring to trial and execution their King and Queen in 1793.  The Russian Imperial Family would be murdered in 1918.  The execution of Mary, Queen of Scots, would also bring danger to Elizabeth and to her England, but she would prevail and the Protestant faith would remain the established religion.

Rebellious Catholics VI

Elizabeth I, target of Papal Plots

Imagine for a moment: You have a foreign religious leader sending foreign-trained clerics into a Christian country with orders to kill the leaders of government and replace them with their own coreligionists who will impose their religion on the native population.  No I am not speaking of Radical Islamic Terrorists infiltrating the United States; I am speaking of sixteenth century Roman Catholics Terrorists infiltrating England.  You have a Pope who has declared the Monarch to be a “servant of crime” and deposed for her religious views.  The Pope further declared her Catholic subjects freed of any allegiance to her and in the name of their religion forbade them to obey her in any matter, civil or religious.  Priests trained in the dominions of her enemies, the Kings of Spain and France, were sent into the country encouraging plots for the Queen’s overthrow and murder in  hopes of replacing her with a Catholic monarch who would suppress English constitutional freedoms and imposed the Catholic faith on the realm.  Who thinks of a sainted pope as an Ayatollah; Jesuits as radical clerics (ok, I’ll give you that one), and devout Catholics as religious terrorists, but there you have it.  For us the Papal Ayatollah is a canonized saint; the terrorist plotters canonized or beatified martyrs; and the cause, Catholicism.  How often are our moral judgments no more than matters of perspective?     

Well, back to the unfolding story of Mary, Queen of Scots—a pawn in this drama—the would be Catholic replacement for Protestant Elizabeth.  When we left our saga, Mary had been deposed from the Scottish throne by her Protestant barons, ostensibly for having married the Earl of Bothwell, the man suspect in the death of her previous husband, Lord Darnley.   Of course, the reasons were far more complex than that and the religious tensions of Scotland in the 1560’s and ‘70’s played a major part in the dissatisfaction of the Protestant barons and populace with the Catholic Queen. Even more to the core of the issue, however, was Mary’s failure to know how to rule and the consequent civil unrest.  In any event, in May the deposed Queen fled south across the border to England.

Mary’s hope was that Elizabeth of England would help her regain her Scottish throne.  They were, after all, both anointed monarchs and it served neither that the idea should spread that an anointed Sovereign should be forced to abdicate by the nobility of the realm.  Elizabeth was sympathetic to the argument but was caught in a difficult position herself.  Mary was her nearest relative and consequently the heir apparent to her own throne.  It did not serve Protestant Elizabeth’s welfare to have her heir, a Catholic, in England where Mary could be a rallying point for rebels against Elizabeth.  And of course, a letter to English Catholics from the Pope—Saint Pius V (notice the “Saint” part) and the Bull, Regnans in Excelsis—commanding English Catholics to withhold their loyalty to Elizabeth did not make Mary any the more welcome to Elizabeth.    It would be much better for Elizabeth if Mary were back in her own kingdom and busy with her own problems there.  On the other hand, Elizabeth’s Council—all Protestant—didn’t favor England helping a Catholic Queen regain control over and against the Protestant rulers of a neighboring country.  Moreover, Elizabeth was troubled by rumors of Mary’s involvement in Darnley’s murder.   So Elizabeth convened an inquest to investigate Mary’s role in the murder.  

The Earl of Moray, regent for the infant James VI and thus chief opponent of Mary’s return to Scotland, produced a silver jewel-box with the monogram of Francis II of France, Mary’s first husband, containing love letters and poems from Mary to Darnley’s suspected killer, the Earl of Bothwell.   If the letters were genuine they could be construed as proof of a plot between Mary and Bothwell to do away with Darnley and marry his murderer.  Historians even today are undecided if the letter were genuine.  As the original letters were destroyed by Mary’s son, James VI, in 1584, they cannot be examined for evidence.  Most contemporary historians believe they were forgeries but while their authenticity might indicate their conspiracy, their being forgeries proves nothing either way.  Mary may or may not have been party to Darnley’s murder, but she certainly was a more than willing partner to marriage with his alleged (and probable) murderer.  Elizabeth’s inquest ended, as Elizabeth had planned, with no verdict.  Mary was kept in England, far from the Scots border lest her allies rescue and rally around her and yet distant enough from London to be no threat to Elizabeth. 

Well, one can’t say no-threat to Elizabeth as Mary became the focus of several plots by English Catholic nobles and gentry to do away with Elizabeth and put Mary on the throne.  Elizabeth’s council became increasingly anxious to be rid of Mary and wanted her executed but Elizabeth saw that it would not set a good precedent to executed an anointed monarch.      

Mary’s imprisonment was far from severe.  She maintained her own household with usually about twenty retainers including Catholic chaplains.  She was permitted Catholic worship in her chapel.  She had her own cooks and ate as befits a Queen.  She received visitors seated on a chair of state under a royal canopy. Her possessions filled over 30 wagons.  She never let those responsible for her oversight forget that she was a Queen.  She would spend nineteen years in captivity. 

Elizabeth’s advisors wanted to be rid of Mary and while Elizabeth herself was reluctant to move against a fellow Queen, members of her Council began to actively seek reasons to do away with the Catholic threat to the Crown—and threat to their influence over that Crown.  In 1584, after several Catholic plots against Elizabeth in Mary’s favor, Mary’s imprisonment became more restrictive under the oversight of Sir Amias Paulet, a rabid anti-Catholic Calvinist.  Yet Mary still maintained her own household and chaplains and compromised not at all about her style and rank as a Queen.  In response to the Ridolfi plot and the Throckmorton plot—both Catholic led plots to overthrow Elizabeth and replace her with Mary—Parliament passed ever more severe laws against those who might plot against Elizabeth to put Mary on the throne.  Mary herself would eventually be caught in the web of those laws.      

The occasion to use those laws to get rid of Mary came with the 1586 Babington Plot, named for a twenty-five year old Catholic Nobleman, Sir Anthony Babington, who conspired with agents of Philip II of Spain and members of Mary’s household to assassinate Elizabeth and, with the aid of an invasion army from Spain, put Mary on the English throne and restore Catholicism.  Philip II was motivated in this by the 1570 Bull of Pius V, Regnans in Excelsis, which declared Elizabeth an usurper and admonished Catholics not to recognize her as Monarch.  Philip had declared his willingness to work with English rebels who would put the “rightful” monarch—Mary—on the throne.  Now Philip was a devout, indeed fanatical, Catholic but his purposes were not to implement a Papal Bull but rather to use that bull as the occasion to exercise Spanish influence over England.  Spain was the greatest power of the day with its vast American colonies and the titanic amount of gold those colonies were producing, but England was the up and coming power that would soon challenge Spain and which, indeed, by the late 17^th century replace Spain as the greatest naval power and expand its Empire way beyond that of Spain.  In other words, Philip wanted to crush the English serpent while it was still in the egg and before it could be a threat to his empire.  Putting Mary on the throne of England would make England a client-state of Spain rather than a potential rival.  If it advanced the Catholic faith—all the better, but that was a benefit not a motivation. 

The Babington Plot failed miserably.  It had been infiltrated by Elizabeth’s security system under Sir Francis Walsingham.  Moreover, despite Pius’ injunctions in Regnans in Excelsis, the majority of English Catholics among the nobility and gentry were loyal subjects of Elizabeth and Babington found nowhere near the support he needed. The end result was that Babington and thirteen coconspirators were executed for treason.  More seriously, Mary herself was accused of treason and brought to trial.  She was convicted on October 25, 1586 and sentenced to death for treason.   

Even then, Elizabeth was slow to act.  Parliament and Council insisted Mary be put to death.  Elizabeth didn’t like the idea.  Kill one queen, you can kill any queen and Elizabeth did want to show that Monarchs were liable to execution.  She had a point.  Her execution of Mary would be used as a precedent when Parliament executed Mary’s grandson Charles I in 1649.  Charles’ execution in turn would be the precedent for the execution of Louis XVI and Marie Antoinette of France in 1793.  Their execution would set the model for the murder of the Russian Imperial family in 1918.  You see how these ideas spread? 

Under pressure Elizabeth reluctantly signed a death warrant but she entrusted it to her secretary William Davison, a privy-councilor, with instructions not to part with it—in other words, to make sure it was not used.  Now it wasn’t that Elizabeth didn’t want to see Mary dead, she just didn’t want a public execution.  Elizabeth tried to use her influence to have Mary secretly poisoned—as if that wouldn’t be suspicious under the circumstances.   No assassins could be found, however—Sir Amias Palet, Mary’s gaoler (jailer) being a rabid evangelical was one who refused to do such a dastardly deed.  Elizabeth kept dragging her feet about allowing the execution.  William Cecil, Lord Burleigh—Elizabeth’s first councillor—convened a meeting of the Privy Council without Elizabeth’s knowledge and mandated the execution.

Mary was beheaded on the morning of February 8^th   1587 at Fotheringhay Castle.  Executions of this sort were state occasions and done amidst elaborated ritual.  It was, after all, a death and so black was the color of the day.  The Hall was draped in black, the scaffold erected in the middle of the room was draped in black, and all present wore black.  Three stools, all draped and cushioned in black were provided—one for the victim until such time in the ceremony she was to kneel at the chopping block, and two for the Earls of Shrewsbury and Kent, the official witnesses of the Queen.   

Mary was a Queen and she determined to control the scene—which she did.  She had been informed the night before that she was to be executed in the morning and after writing her will and a letter to her brother-in-law Henri III of France, spent the night in prayer in the castle chapel.  She emerged in the morning into the Hall of the Castle carrying her rosaries, tall, strong, and with determination.  She was dressed, as was the protocol, from head to foot in black. The axemen knelt and asked her pardon, which she graciously and with a smile granted.  Before kneeling at the block she had to disrobe of her veil and gown to give the headsman a clear chop, and as her dress fell to the ground the crowd gasped as she was left in her under-bodice and petticoats which were of scarlet red—the color of martyrs.  The point was lost neither on her executioners nor on historians. Her maids blindfolded the Queen with a gold-embroidered kerchief and she knelt and the block, extending her arms like the crucified.  Her last words were “in manuas tuas, Domine, commendo spiritum meum” (into your hands, O Lord, I commend my spirit).  

Mary’s most dramatic moment and the one in which she trumped her executioners came after the beheading.   As the executioner held  up her head by its auburn tresses and cried out the traditional “Behold, the head of a traitor; God Save the Queen,” Mary’s bald head fell free of what had been but a wig and rolled to the edge of the stage, leaving the headsman holding but a wig and the audience shaken by the display.  

Mary’s remains were conveyed to nearby Peterborough cathedral where they were interred after a Protestant service.  When her son James VI of Scotland acceded to the English Throne as James I of England, he had his mother’s body moved to Westminster Abbey and entombed in the chapel of Henry VII, across the aisle from the tomb of Elizabeth.  Just as a historical note, her original gravesite in Peterborough Cathedral was directly across the Quire from the resting place of Katherine of Aragon, first wife to Henry VIII, the remote and indirect perpetrator of so much of this misfortune.  A Saint—no.  A marty, no.  A politician and an actress—Mary Queen of Scots was among the best.