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.       

 

Rebellious Catholics V

James Hepburn, 4th Earl
of Bothwell

We have been looking at the Saga of Mary, Queen of Scots—a figure whom Catholic mythology has converted into a saintly woman and a martyr for the faith when in fact she was a woman of somewhat compromised morals and ambition for the death of the Queen of England in hopes of stealing her throne.  If you check the previous two posts, you will find that Mary inherited the throne of Scotland as a six-day-old infant, but was raised in France to be Queen there.  She was widowed while still in her teens and returned to Scotland where she was caught between the Protestant and Catholic parties attempting to dominate Scots politics.  She was freed from the trap of a second and unhappy marriage to a rather slimy and ambitious rake by the assassination of her husband—to which she may (or may not) have been party.  And now, as we pick up the story, she is about to be married a third time—to the prime suspect in her husband’s murder.  But first he has to be rid of his new wife so he can abduct, rape, and marry the Queen.  Yes rape.  Or maybe not quite.  And so back to our story. 

About a year after her marriage to Bothwell, Lady Jean Godorn began divorce proceedings against him, alleging his adultery with one of her servants, a Bessie Crawford.  Bothwell’s friends, not his enemies, were urging her to divorce him and providing the evidence she needed to prosecute her case. Bothwell himself wanted out of the marriage—for reasons we shall soon see—and Lady Jean seems to have been happy to be rid of him.  The Protestant Court Consistory—the equivalent of a Catholic Tribunal—granted the divorce.  A Catholic annulment was also obtained from Archbishop Hamilton of St. Andrews on the grounds that the proper dispensations needed because Bothwell and Lady Jean were related had not been obtained.  What is strange in this decree is that Archbishop Hamilton himself had issued the dispensations before the marriage.  (An annulment was necessary because at the time the marriage of a Catholic [Lady Jean in this instance] before a Protestant minister was not automatically invalid as it would be today.)  What is strange about this divorce and subsequent annulment is that it all seems “arranged” in such a way as to leave Bothwell free to marry someone else.  Hmm, I wonder who.  Lady Jean for her part seemed content to be done with the marriage and, in fact, it was her brother George who supervised the process of freeing Bothwell from the entanglement. 

Of course there was still the matter of Bothwell’s being suspect in the death of Darnley.  He was brought to trial in April 1567.  He made a public show of his arrival at court with an entourage of his retainers along with leading peers of the realm and after a process of only seven hours was acquitted of the murder.   Several days later, an assembly of Lords Spiritual (bishops) and Lords Temporal (Peers of the Realm) presented a petition to Bothwell to hand to the Queen beseeching her to marry a Scotsman and not a foreign husband.     Hmmm, I wonder whom they all had in mind?  

On April 24^th Bothwell, with an armed escort of 800 followers, kidnapped Mary (who seems willingly to have accompanied him) and took her to his castle at Dunbar where he raped her.  (I told you this guy was slime, but before you make a judgment about him, read on.)  Rape required that he marry the Queen—who many argue was a willing “victim” so as to provide reasons to justify the marriage.  (Bizarre as it is to us, among the genteel classes of the time, marriage to the perpetrator was the way to restore a woman’s “honor” after rape, providing that the rapist was a “gentleman” and not a commoner.  Arranged rapes were often used to require marriages that otherwise would have been difficult to justify.)   Two weeks later, Mary named Bothwell Duke of Orkney and married him on May 15, 1567 in a Protestant ceremony in Holyroodhouse Palace. This marriage took place twelve days after his divorce from Lady Jean Gordon was granted—an indication that the whole affair was being orchestrated to allow for the Mary/Bothwell match.   Many of the Scots who were convinced that Bothwell had been Darnley’s murderer were outraged at the Queen’s marriage to him and rose in rebellion.  At Carberry Hill, Mary’s army dwindled away and Mary was arrested by the rebels; Bothwell fled.  Mary was confined at Loch Leven castle where she was forced to abdicate in favor of her son James  (who then became James VI of Scotland and would eventually succeed Elizabeth as James I of England).  Mary’s half-brother, the Earl of Moray, was named Regent for the child-king.

Bothwell, for his part, fled to Denmark but instead of finding refuge was arrested by the Trondson family for having abandoned his wife, Anna Trondson. Remember her?  He was held in captivity until he would return her dowry.  His ship was confiscated in place of the debt but the King of Denmark kept him in prison to please Elizabeth of England who held him guilty for the murder of her cousin, Lord Darnley.  O what tangled webs we weave.  He died insane in 1578.  

Mary, for her part, was able to escape her confinement at Lock Leven.  She rallied an army but was defeated at Langside on Mayr 13, 1568 and fled south to England hoping—against all reason—to enlist Elizabeth’s help in regaining her throne.   Once across the border she was taken into protective custody at Carlisle. And here we will break the story once more, but you can see already that Mary was no saint.    

 

Rebellious Catholics IV

Mary, Queen of Scots

In the previous posting I had begun the story of Mary Queen of Scots, the exiled Queen of Scotland whom Elizabeth had executed in 1587.  Catholic historians have over the past century and a half tried to portray her as a saintly victim martyred for her faith when in fact while she was a devout Catholic she was a person of somewhat tangled morals who was beheaded for purely political reasons.  Elizabeth was not nearly the ogre and Mary not nearly the saint that Catholic writers have tried to portray them as.  History is always political and here the politics of religion has long been allowed to jumble the historical narrative for an agenda of apologetics 
Much had happened in Scotland during Mary’s absence.  The pro-English Protestant faction among the nobility had grown in strength and for several years had been all but in rebellion against Mary’s regent, her mother, Mary of Guise.  Mary of Guise herself had died only six months before her daughter was widowed and the Protestant party had used the power vacuum to consolidate their strength.  The Protestant faction was led by Mary’s illegitimate half-brother James Stewart, the son of James V and Lady Margaret Erskine.    The Calvinist reformer, John Knox, was the spiritual leader of the Protestant party and in 1558 had written a treatise “The First Blast of the Trumpet Against the Monstrous Regiment of Women” which was not directed solely at Mary’s Reign but also that of the late (Bloody) Mary of England and her sister, Elizabeth, the newly crowned English Monarch.  Knox claimed that Rule by women was an affront to God. (Today he would be made a Cardinal in grateful recognition for this insightful theological contribution.)   Knox now directed his preaching against Mary for her Catholic religious practices, for her dancing and gaming, and for her frivolous dress and lifestyle.  Knox was the leader among those who would give Calvinism a grim reputation—not that Calvinism itself didn’t flourish on cheerlessness even without Knox’s sourpuss preaching.     
Due to her education in the French Court, Mary was a fine athlete, a brilliant linguist, and an accomplished writer, but what had been neglected in Mary’s education in France was how to rule.  She was not bred to be Queen of Scotland but rather Queen consort of France and now she had no idea how to manage the complex politics of her kingdom.  She failed to play the Catholic and Protestant parties off against one another to her advantage but allowed herself to be dominated by her enemies.   She summoned Knox to remonstrate against him—he only mocked her by preaching at her when she tried to speak to him.  She charged him with treason; he was acquitted.  Mary tried to accommodate the Protestant faction and allowed them to dominate her privy-council.  She kept her Protestant half-brother, James Stewart, Earl of Moray, as her chief counselor and ignored the Catholic lords.  The Catholic nobles, for their part, were angry that the Queen was so sympathetic to the Protestant cause and several of them rebelled against her in 1562.
Realizing that she lacked political astuteness, Mary sensed what she needed was a savvy husband to guide her.  The French proposed an Austrian but Mary refused.  Mary proposed a marriage to Don Carlos, the Spanish heir, but the Spaniards refused.  (Lucky too, as Don Carlos inherited his family’s gene for lunacy.)  Elizabeth suggested a Protestant old boyfriend of her own, Robert Dudley, Earl of Leicester but the proposed groom refused.  (Mary was not particularly interested anyway.)
By the way, does any of this sound like the stuff of which religious martyrs are made?  Hold on, it only gets worse.

Mary eventually married her cousin, Henry Stuart, Lord Darnley at Holyrood Palace on July 29, 1565.  Both parties were Catholic but they failed to get the necessary papal dispensations for marriage of close kin.  (They were cousins through multiple family intermarriages, but both were grand-children of Margaret Tudor, the wife of James IV and thus first-cousins.)

This marriage infuriated Elizabeth as any child proceeding from the union would have a double claim to the English throne given that as descendants of Margaret Tudor both Mary and Darnley themselves had prime claims.  Moreover, Darnley not only held a Scots title of nobility but an English one and Elizabeth was aggrieved that he had not sought her permission to marry as he was her subject.   Mary’s half-brother, the Earl of Moray was also angry as were the Protestant nobles at the Queen having a Catholic consort, and they went into rebellion with Moray as their leader, but after several defeats by Catholic forces Moray fled to England and Elizabeth’s protection.  

Mary and Darnley had a son, James, who would become James VI of Scotland and eventually James I of England—the fellow we had written about in the gunpowder plot (see posting for December 27 2012).  Darnley was not a good choice for a husband.  He wanted to be not merely consort to the Queen Regnant but to be given the “Crown Matrimonial” which would make him co-ruler with his wife and King in his own right should he outlive her.  Mary refused and he grew angry and sullen.  Darnley was not a faithful husband (which was far from uncommon in those days among the upper classes, not that our age is known for marital fidelity) and there are hints that he may have been abusive to Mary.   He was also jealous of Mary’s secretary, David Rizzo.  There were rumors swirling around that Rizzo, not Darnley, was the father of Mary’s child and while these rumors remain unproven they cannot be totally dismissed.  Darnley and some of the Protestant party brutally murdered Rizzo in the presence of Mary who almost miscarried as a result of the trauma.  The Earl of Moray returned at this point and was reconciled to his sister.

The Murder of Rizzo sealed the demise of the Mary/Darnley marriage.  They separated and Mary sought counsel from her advisors as to what she should to terminate the marriage but there seems to have suddenly been a change of plans, indeed a change of the Queen’s heart.  Darnley was summoned back to Edinburgh and given a house in the Kirk o’ Field—a former Abbey—in which to recuperate from health problems—possibly syphilis or the result of poison.  Mary visited him there daily and it seemed they were to reconcile.  Then early in the morning hours of February 10, 1567,  Mary having left the house only hours before  to attend a wedding of a member of her household, an explosion racked the house.    Darnley’s body was found in the garden.  He had not been killed in the explosion and there were no signs of physical violence or strangulation.  He had apparently been smothered, a most curious death.  A variety of people were suspected of involvement in the murder including Mary, her-illegitimate half-brother the Earl of Moray, the Earl of Morton, and James Hepburn, the fourth Earl of Bothwell.  Now here is where it gets a bit sleazy.

If ever there was an unsavory politician, it was Bothwell.  (As there have been many an unsavory politician, you imagine just how sleazy Bothwell must have been to stand out in such company.)  Bothwell was Lord High Admiral of the Scots Navy and in this capacity he met and married Anna Trondson, the daughter of a Norwegian/Danish Admiral. (Norway at the time was part of the Kingdom of  Denmark.)  Anna travelled with her husband to Flanders and when he had gone through all his money, he forced her to sell her possessions to support his gambling and riotous living.  He then sent her home to get more money from her family, but when the family heard of his abusive behavior towards her they did not permit her to return to him.  Without obtaining any divorce from Anna, Bothwell then married Lady Jean Gordon in a Protestant service.  Lady Jean was Catholic, but Bothwell refused to marry according to Catholic rites.  Mary of Scots was enthusiastic about this match and hosted the wedding at Holyrood Palace.  She also provided cloth of silver for Lady Jean’s wedding gown.  Now here is where things become very murky, but the story will continue in the next posting.