Page:Cassell's Illustrated History of England vol 2.djvu/492

478 however, gave Rudolfi an enthusiastic reception, and promised wonders. These promises were contained in the letters in cipher betrayed by Hickford to the Council; and from that moment the spies of Cecil were upon Rudolfi's track. From Flanders he proceeded to Rome, avoiding the French Court, which at the moment was engaged in the negotiation for the marriage betwixt the Duke of Anjou and Elizabeth.

The Pope placed a sum of money at the disposal of Mary, and accompanied it by a letter to Norfolk, regretting that he could send him no further aid this year. Thence Rudolfi hastened to Spain, and reaching Madrid on the 3rd of July, 1571, he delivered his letters to Philip. Meantime Philip had received letters from both the Pope and Alva. The Pope urged him to accept the enterprise, and rescue England from heresy. The more astute Alva advised him to have nothing to do with it, for he had no faith in the men engaged in it, nor in the soundness of their plans. Philip, however, listened to the scheme, and was so much impressed by it as to determine to undertake the expedition, and to appoint Vitelli its commander. Rudolfi assured the king that he would find plenty ready to co-operate with his forces in England; that he might calculate on an army of 20,000 infantry and 3,000 cavalry meeting his troops on landing, led on by the Duke of Norfolk, the Earls of Worcester and Southampton, the Lords Montague, Windsor, and Lumley, with many others; that it was intended to dispatch Elizabeth whilst on a visit to some country house, and also to destroy with her Cecil, Bacon, Leicester, and Northampton. All this Rudolfi wrote to communicate; but the scheme was suddenly scattered to the winds by the discovery of his money and letters.

The alarm in the country on the rumours which now broke out was intense. The Duke of Alva, it was said, was coming with an army to burn down London and kill the queen. The Pope was sending over money to carry on the enterprise and nothing was heard of but the Pope, Alva, the King of Spain, and legions of foreign Papists on the way to murder and destroy all good Protestants. More bloody and frightful than all the rest was the disclosure of a plot by one Herle, for the assassination of Cecil, and others of the Privy Council. The first intimation of this plot was in a voluntary confession by letter from Herle to Cecil, dated January 4th, 1572, as follows:—"Of late I have, upon discontent, entered into conspiracy with some others to slay your lordship; and the time appointed, a man with a perfect hand attended you three several times in your garden to have slain your lordship; the which not falling out, and continuing in the former mischief, the height of your study window is taken towards the garden, minding, if they miss these means, to slay you with a shot upon the terrace, or else in coming late from the Court, with a pistol."

Having made this singular confession, Herle hopes to be duly rewarded for not having done it! The two miscreants who, he said, were his accomplices, were one Kenelm Barney and Edmund Mather. These men mutually accused each other, and appear to have been low vagabonds led on by Herle, and who had talked in public-houses of "dancers and carpet knights," meaning Leicester and Hatton, who "were admitted to the queen's privy chamber;" of liberating the Duke of Norfolk, and of the promotion to be expected under a new sovereign. Mather swore that he was on the point of informing of Herle and Barney, but that Herle had been too nimble for him. The whole affair bore the impression of a sham conspiracy got up by Cecil through Herle, and this became still more clear when Barney and Mather were drawn from the Tower to Tyburn, and there hanged, embowelled, and quartered, whilst Herle was taken into Cecil's service.

At length the queen determined to bring Norfolk to the bar. She named the Earl of Shrewsbury high steward, and he summoned six-and-twenty peers, who were in the first place chosen by the ministers, to attend on the 16th of January, 1572, in Westminster Hall. Thither Norfolk was brought by the Lieutenant of the Tower and Sir Peter Carew, and was charged with having compassed and imagined the death of the queen, and levying war upon her within the realm—1st. By endeavouring to marry the Queen of Scots, and supplying her with money, well knowing that she claimed the crown of England. 2nd. By sending sums of money to the Earls of Westmoreland and Northumberland, and other persons concerned in the rebellion in the North, enemies to the queen, and attainted of high treason. 3rd. By dispatching Rudolfi to the Pope, Alva, and the King of Spain, recommending them to send forces to depose the queen, and set up the Queen of Scots in her place; he himself marrying the said Queen of Scots.

Norfolk replied by asking for counsel, which was not allowed him, and he then complained that they dealt hardly with him; that he had been called on all at once to prepare his defence, not fourteen hours being granted him in the whole, including the night, and that totally without books, or so much as a breviate of the statutes. He declared that he was brought to fight without his weapons. He represented himself as an unlearned man, whose memory, never good, had been sorely decayed by heavy troubles and cares. He displayed, however, a memory, a readiness of resources, and a knowledge of the law which astonished his judges. He pleaded that the Queen of Scots was no enemy or competitor of his own queen; that she had abandoned the title of Queen of England on the death of her husband, Francis II., and, so far from Elizabeth treating her as an enemy, she had for ten years been on very friendly terms with her, standing godmother to her child. Therefore, in wishing to marry the Queen of Scots, he could have committed no treason. That he had never spoken with Rudolfi but once, when the interview was on account of some banking business; but that Rudolfi did at the same time inform him that he was seeking aid to obtain the release and restoration of the Scottish queen, but with no intention of hostility to England, as far as he could learn. He denied having sent any aid to Westmoreland and Northumberland during their rebellion in the North, but admitted remitting money since to the Countess of Westmoreland, his own sister, to assist her in her distress; and that he had in like manner given his advice as to the distribution of some money sent by the Pope to the English refugees in Flanders, on the same principle. Moreover, that he had received a letter from the Pope, which he had resented, having nothing to do with the Pope or his religion.