Page:Cassell's Illustrated History of England vol 2.djvu/504

490 it was that the queen had so soon forgotten St. Bartholomew, and heaped all sorts of abuse on both the devoted Anjou and the French nation at large; whilst in France the Catholics were equally violent at one of their princes marrying a heretic, and the grand supporter and promoter of heresy.

Elizabeth, roused to a pitch of terrible wrath by vile reports, which her enemies spread abroad concerning her and her favourite, let her vengeance fall on the author of a pamphlet called "The Gaping Gulf," showing the dangers of this marriage. The author was one John Stubbs, a student of Lincoln's Inn. Elizabeth laid hold on him, his printer and publisher, and had them condemned in the Court of Queen's Bench to have their right hands cut off. The printer was suffered to depart, but the sentence was executed on Stubbs and his publisher in the market-place of Westminster, by driving a cleaver through the wrist with a mallet. What would our authors and publishers say to such treatment now-a-days? The foolish Stubbs, the moment his hand was off, waving his cap with the left, cried—"Long live the queen!"

At the end of three months Anjou grew weary of this silly farce, and announced his determination to depart. Even then Elizabeth would not permit him to go without exacting a promise that he would soon return. She stormed, she raved, she called the states of the Netherlands, which summoned him to his duties there, des coquins, and accompanied the duke to Canterbury, where she parted from him weeping like a girl.

Truly did the great Elizabeth present a very undignified figure before the nation at this moment. As Anjou pursued his journey thence to Sandwich, she sent after him constant messengers to inquire after his health and comfort; and scarcely had he got on board his ship when the Earl of Sussex appeared with a passionate request that he would return. On her journey home, Her Majesty carefully avoided the very sight of Whitehall, lest it should remind her of the happy hours she had spent there with the beloved Anjou.

On his arrival in the Netherlands, Anjou found plenty of employment in contending with the genius and the forces of the Prince of Parma. He found, also, that the real authority in the country was centred in the Prince of Orange, and resolving to make himself the actual master of it, he laid a plan of seizing all the chief towns in the states on the same day. He failed. The Dutch, resenting the attempt, attacked his troops on all sides, and soon compelled him to fly back to France, where he terminated his existence at Chateau Thierry, in June, 1584, not without suspicion of poison. So great was Elizabeth's fondness for this prince, whom she might have married, and would not, that even at this period no one dare for some time inform her of his death, which she appeared to bewail with all the symptoms of real and deep grief.

Within one month of the death of Anjou there fell a far more noble and important man. The Prince of Orange, the great champion and founder of the independence of Holland, perished by the hand of an assassin. The ban of Philip had not failed to operate, though at a distance of four years. Balthazar Gerard, impelled by fanaticism and the 25,000 crowns offered by Philip, shot him on the 10th of July, 1584.

It is now necessary to trace the course of events in Ireland and Scotland during the years we have just passed over. A great work had been going on in the former, the object of which was to reduce the turbulent native chiefs to obedience, and to establish English settlers in the lands of those who were driven out or exterminated.

The most distinguished of those chiefs was Shane O'Neil, the Earl of Tyrone. Henry VIII. had granted the succession to Matthew, an illegitimate son of the old earl's; but Shane, the eldest legitimate son, would not submit to this arrangement. He was supported in his claims by the people, and vindicated his rights. By the persuasion of the Earl of Sussex, at that time governor, he was induced to appear at the Court of Elizabeth in 1502. He laid his claims before her, and excited a great sensation by appearing in his native costume, attended by a guard armed with battle-axes and clad in saffron-coloured vests. Elizabeth did not grant all his requests, but expressed herself highly pleased with his presence, and made him great promises. But Shane was too sensitive and independent in his feelings and ideas to be a very orderly subject. Frequently he did essential service as the ally of the English Government, but more frequently was compelled to seek vengeance for injuries and encroachments. In 1565, in three years after his appearance at the English Court, he was driven into open rebellion; and after a severe struggle was compelled to seek refuge in the wilds of Ulster amongst the Scots. There, at the instigation of Piers, an English officer, ho was assassinated, his estates confiscated, with those of all his followers, comprising one-half of Ulster, and the name and dignity of O'Neil abolished for ever.

That which was done in Ulster had to be done in every other province of Ireland. Whenever insurrection broke out and was suppressed, the lands were forfeited to the Crown. But so long as the Crown held nominally these lands, the natives continued to hold them really. To remedy this and to ensure a certain forfeiture to the rebels, and a reward to the English conquerors. Sir Thomas Smith proposed that these lands should be granted in various portions to English settlers, who, in prosecution of their own claims, would drive out the rebel natives and cultivate the country. It needs no reflection to perceive that this system must be fruitful beyond conception in crimes, murders, and miseries. Lands were granted to a bastard son of the projector's, and to numerous other adventurers. They drove out the Irish, and these came back in infuriated numbers, with fire and desolation. Under this frightful system the country soon became a desert. To put an end to these sanguinary scenes, Walter Devereux, Earl of Essex, represented that it needed only a sufficient force on the part of the English. He offered to bring under subjection, and to colonise, the district of Clanhuboy in Ulster. His proposals were that the queen and himself should furnish equal shares of the charge, and the colony being organised, should be divided equally between them. The courtiers who had envied him his favour with Elizabeth, pretended to promote his design till he had embarked all his fortune in it, when they threw all possible obstacles in his way. Through these hindrances, it was late in the summer of 1573 before he arrived in Ireland, and then only to find that the Lord-deputy Fitzwilliam questioned his powers; and on