"Let us follow the example of Christ, our Master, who seeing His death approaching, said to God, My Father, not as I will, but as thou wilt; thy will be done, and not mine.—Let us offer then, unto God our Father, ourselves for a sacrifice, whose savour, although it be evil in the nose of the world, yet it is good and agreeable unto God, by Jesus Christ his Son, in the faith of whom we do dedicate and offer ourselves, when we perceive our hour to approach.
"And, whatsoever betide, let us not fear men; let us not fear them. God doth inhibit and forbid us in the same, saying, by his prophet, Fear them not, for I am with you; and seeing God doth forbid us to fear men, can we fear them without sin? No truly. To what purpose do we fear them? Men of themselves can do nothing, and if at any time they have any power, the same only cometh unto them from God, and is given unto them only to accomplish the will of God. But peradventure ye will say to me that Jesus Christ himself, in the time of his cross, did fear death, and therefore it is no marvel though we do fear it, in whom is no such perfection and constancy. Truly the flesh doth always abuse herself with the example of Jesus Christ; she doth abuse it, for she cannot rightfully use it, inasmuch as the flesh is in all ways repugnant unto the spirit and the good will of God. Forasmuch as ye will herein follow Christ—well, I am contented—fear death, but fear it as he did fear it. If you will say that Christ had fear of death, consider the same also to be on such sort as the fear did not keep him back from the voluntary obedience of his Father, and from saying, with unfeigned lips, Thy will be done.
"Ye will say, We fear not death for any fear we have to be damned, neither for any diffidence that we have of eternal life; but we fear death for the human understanding that we have of the great pain that some do suffer in dying, and especially in dying by fire; for we suppose that pain to surmount all patience. O fond flesh, thy voice is always full of love of thyself, and of a secret diffidence and mistrust of the Almighty power, wisdom, and goodness of God."
While the true heroes of the age were fighting for freedom with the weapons of noble suffering, the world was about to recommence its own battles, with which it is less easy to sympathise. The attempt on Calais having failed, it became a question at the French court, whether, after having given so just cause of quarrel to England, wisdom would not suggest an abandonment of the intention of recommencing the war with Philip. Noailles crossed to Paris in December, where the king questioned him whether Mary would be able to declare war. Noailles assured him, "that out of doubt she would not; for if she should send those whom she trusted out of the realm, then would they whom she trusted not, not fail to be busy within the realm."[597] Reassured by the ambassador's opinion, Henry resumed his intentions. In March, the Duke of Guise led an army into Italy. The pope recovered courage, defied Alva, and again laid claim to Naples; and it was to be seen now whether Noailles was right—whether the English people would unite with the court to resent the French king's conduct sufficiently to permit Mary at last to join in the quarrel.
Philip, anxious and hopeful, paid England the respect of returning for a few weeks, and in the same month of March came over to sue the council in person. The affair at Calais was a substantial ground for a rupture, but the attack, though intended, had not been actually made. The story might seem, to the suspicions of the country, to have been invented by the court; and, in other respects, Mary's injuries were not the injuries of the nation. The currency was still prostrate; the people in unexampled distress. The Flanders debts were as heavy as ever, and the queen had insisted on abandoning a fifth of her revenues. A war would inevitably be most unpopular. The attempt nevertheless was made. The queen produced the treaty of 1546, between England and the empire; and, in compliance with its provisions, laid before the privy council a proposal, if not to declare war with France, yet to threaten a declaration, in the event of an invasion of the Netherlands.
The privy council considered the queen's request; their conclusion was not what she desired.
The treaty of 1546, the council replied, had been abrogated by the treaty of marriage, so far as it might involve England in a war with France. "Her majesty would be unable to maintain a war, and, therefore, to say to the French king that she would aid her husband, according to the treaty, and not being able to perform it, indeed would be dishonourable, and many ways dangerous." "It was to be considered further, that, if by these means the realm should be drawn into war, the fault would be imputed to the king's majesty." "The common people of the realm were at present many ways grieved—some pinched with famine, some for want of payment of money due to them, some discontented for matters of religion; and, generally, all yet tasting the smart of the late wars. It would be hard to have any aid of money of them. And in times past," the council added, significantly, "although the prince found himself able to make and maintain wars, yet the causes of those wars were opened for the most part in parliament."[598]
Objections so decided and so just would have hardly been overcome, but for an injudicious enterprise of the refugees, under French auspices. The French court believed that, by keeping Mary in alarm at home, they would make it the less easy for her to join in the war. They mistook the disposition of the people, who resented and detested the interference of France in their concerns.
Among the exiles at the court of Paris, the most distinguished by birth, if not by ability, was Sir Thomas Stafford, Lord Stafford's second son, and grandson of the Duke of Buckingham, who was put to death under Henry VIII. On the 27th of April, Wotton sent notice to the queen that Stafford had sailed from the mouth of the Seine with two vessels well manned and appointed. His destination was unknown; but it was understood that he intended to take some fortress on the English coast, and that the refugees, in a body, intended to follow him. Before Wotton's letter arrived, the scheme, such as it was, had been already executed. Stafford, with thirty Englishmen and one Frenchman, had surprised Scarborough Castle, and sent his proclamations through Yorkshire. He was come, he said, to deliver his country from foreign tyranny. He had sure evidence that an army of Spaniards was about to land, and that Philip intended to seize the crown by force. The queen, by her marriage with a stranger, had forfeited her own rights; and he himself, as the protector of English liberty, intended to bestow the crown on the next rightful heir, and to restore all such acts, laws, liberties, and customs as were established in the time of that most prudent prince, King Henry VIII. "He did not mind," he thought it necessary to add, "to work his own advancement touching possession of the crown, but to restore the blood and house of the Staffords to its pristine estate, which had been wrongfully suppressed by Cardinal Wolsey."[599]
The landing of Edward IV., at Ravenspurg, had made any wild enterprise seem feasible, and Stafford had counted on the notorious hatred of the people for the queen.
But if the Spaniards meditated a descent upon England, it was not by adventurers like the refugees that their coming would be either prevented or avenged; and the good sense of the country had determined once for all to give no countenance to revolution supported by France. The occupation of Scarborough lasted two days, at the end of which Stafford and his whole party were taken by the Earl of Westmoreland. Thirty-two prisoners were sent to London; thirty-one were put to death; and the council reluctantly withdrew their opposition to the war. A hundred and forty thousand pounds were in the exchequer, being part of the subsidy granted by parliament to pay the crown debts.[600] With this the court prepared to commence, trusting to fortune for the future. War was to be declared on the 7th of June, and, while seven thousand men were to cross the Channel and join Pembroke in the Low Countries,[601] Howard was to cruise with the fleet in the Channel to use his discretion in annoying the enemy, and, if possible, to destroy the French ships at Dieppe.[602]
Happy, however, in having succeeded in gratifying her husband, the queen brought at once upon herself a blow which she had little foreseen, and from a quarter from which an injury was most painful. In her desire to punish France for assisting her rebellious heretical subjects, she seemed to have forgotten that France had an ally beyond the Alps. No sooner did Paul IV. learn that England was about to declare on the side of Philip, than, under the plausible pretence that he could have no ambassador residing in a country with which he was at war, he resolved to gratify his old animosity against Cardinal Pole, and cancel his legation.
Sir Edward Karne, the English resident at Rome, waited on the pope to remonstrate. He urged Paul to recollect how much the Holy See owed to the queen, and how dangerous it might be to re-open a wound imperfectly healed. The pope at first was obstinate. At length he seemed so far inclined to yield as to say that, if the queen would herself expressly desire it, he would distinguish between her and her husband.[603] But the suspension of the legation, though not at first published, was carried through the Consistory; and so ingeniously was it worded, that not only the formal and especial commission was declared at an end, but the legatine privileges, attached by immemorial custom to the archbishopric of Canterbury, were cancelled with it. The pope chose to leave himself without representative, ordinary or extraordinary, at the English court.
The queen was in despair. Before Karne's letter reached her, she had heard what was impending, and she wrote a letter of passionate expostulation, in which she expatiated on her services to religion, and on the assistance which Pole had rendered her. She said that, in the unsettled condition of England, the presence of a legate with supreme authority was absolutely necessary; and she implored Paul to reconsider a decision so rash and so unkind.
The council added their separate protest.[604] "They had heard with infinite grief that the legate was to be taken from them. There was no precedent for the recall of a legate who had been once commissioned, unless from fault of his own; and for themselves, they were unconscious of having misconducted themselves in any way since the reconciliation. Cardinal Pole had been the saviour of religion. Before his coming to England, the queen, with the best intentions to do good, had failed to arrest the growth of heresy, and the name of the Holy See was held in detestation. Pole, the noblest and most distinguished of the cardinals, had made what was crooked straight; he had introduced reforms everywhere; in a few years the wound would heal, and all would be well. If, however, he were now removed, the convalescent, deserted too soon by his physician, would relapse, and be worse than before. They entreated his holiness, therefore, to listen to them, and allow him to remain. When they were reconciled, the pope then reigning had promised that the customary privileges and immunities of the English nation should be maintained. It was the special prerogative of English sovereigns to have a legate perpetually resident in the person of the Archbishop of Canterbury; and from immemorial time there was no record of any archbishop to whom the legatine character had not attached as of right. The queen, who had risked her life for the faith of the church, did not deserve that the first exception should be made in her disfavour. The bishops did not deserve it. The few who, in the late times of trial, had remained faithful, did not deserve it. Even if the queen would consent and give way, they would themselves be obliged to remonstrate."[605]
Karne's letter produced a brief hope that the pope would relent. But the partial promise of reconsidering his resolution had been extorted from Paul, while it was uncertain whether England would actually join in the conflict; the intended declaration of war had in the interval become a reality, and the pope, more indignant than ever, chose to consider Pole personally responsible for the queen's conduct. Since a point was made of the presence of a papal legate in England, he was so far ready to give way; but so far only. The king left England the first week in July. Mary accompanied him to Dover, and there a papal nuncio met her, bringing a commission by which Pole was reduced into the ordinary rank of archbishop; and the office of papal representative was conferred on Peto, the Greenwich friar. For his objections to the present legate, the pope gave the strange but wounding reason, that his orthodoxy was not above suspicion.
The queen, with something of her father's temper in her, ordered the nuncio to return to Calais till she could again communicate with Rome. She interdicted Peto from accepting the commission, and desired Pole to continue to exercise his functions till the pope had pronounced again a final resolution. Pole, however, was too faithful a child of the church to disobey a papal injunction; he relinquished his office, but he sent Ormaneto to Rome with his own entreaties and protests.
Never had a legate of the Holy See been treated as he was treated, he said; there was no precedent, therefore, to teach him how to act, nor was ever charge of heresy urged with less occasion than against one whose whole employment had been to recover souls to Christ and his church, and to cut off those that were obstinate as rotten members. His services to the church, he passionately exclaimed, transcended far the services of any legate who had been employed for centuries, and, nevertheless, he found himself accused of heresy by the Vicar of Christ upon earth. Such an insult was unjust and unprovoked; and his holiness should consider also what he was doing in bringing the queen, the mother of obedience, into heaviness and sorrow. Mother of obedience the Queen of England might well be called, whom God had made a mother of sons who were the joy of the whole church. How was the pope rewarding this sainted woman, when with the thunder of his voice he accused the king, her husband, of schism, and himself, the legate, of heresy?[606]
Scarcely in his whole troubled life had a calamity more agitating overtaken Reginald Pole. To maintain the supremacy of the successor of St. Peter, he had spent twenty years in treason to his native country. He had held up his sovereign to the execration of mankind for rejecting an authority which had rewarded him with an act of enormous injustice; and to plead his consciousness of innocence before the world against his spiritual sovereign, would be to commit the same crime of disobedience for which he had put to death Cranmer, and laboured to set Europe on fire. Most fatal, most subtle retribution—for he knew that he was accused without cause; he knew that the pope after all was but a peevish, violent, and spiteful old man; he knew it—yet even to himself he could not admit his own conviction.
Fortune, however, seemed inclined for a time to make some amends to Mary in the results of the war.
The French usually opened their summer campaigns by an advance into Lorraine or the Netherlands. This year their aggressive resources had been directed wholly into Italy, and at home they remained on the defensive. Philip, with creditable exertion, collected an army of 50,000 men, to take advantage of the opportunity. Fixing his own residence at Cambray, he gave the command in the field to the Duke of Savoy; and Philibert, after having succeeded in distracting the attention of the enemy, and leading them to expect him in Champagne, turned suddenly into Picardy, and invested the town of St. Quentin. The garrison must soon have yielded, had not Coligny, the Admiral of France, broken through the siege lines and carried in reinforcements. Time was thus gained, and the constable, eager to save a strong place, the possession of which would open to the Spaniards the road to Paris, advanced with all the force which he could collect, not meaning to risk a battle, but to throw provisions and further supplies of men into St. Quentin. Montmorency had but 20,000 men with him. His levies consisted of the reserved force of the kingdom—princes, peers, knights, gentlemen, with their personal retinues, the best blood in France. It was such an army as that which lost Agincourt, and a fate not very different was prepared for it.
On the 10th of August, the constable was forced by accident into an engagement, in which he had the disadvantage of position as well as of numbers. Mistaken movements caused a panic in the opening of the battle, and the almost instant result was a confused and hopeless rout. The Duke d'Enghien fell on the field with four thousand men; the constable himself, the Duke de Montpensier, the Duke de Longueville, the Marshal St. André, three hundred gentlemen, and several thousand common soldiers, were taken; the defeat was irretrievably complete, and to the victors almost bloodless. The English did not share in the glory of the battle, for they were not present; but they arrived two days after to take part in the storming of St. Quentin, and to share, to their shame, in the sack and spoiling of the town. They gained no honour; but they were on the winning side. The victory was credited to the queen as a success, and was celebrated in London with processions, bonfires, and Te Deums.
Nor was the defeat at St. Quentin the only disaster which the French arms experienced. Henry sent in haste to Italy for the Duke of Guise to defend Paris, where Philibert was daily expected. Guise was already returning after a failure less conspicuous, but not less complete, than that of the constable. The pope had received him on his arrival with enthusiasm, but the promised papal contingent for the campaign had not been provided; the pope was contented to be the soul of the enterprise of which France was to furnish the body. Guise advanced alone for the conquest of Naples, and he found himself, like De Lautrec in 1528, baffled by an enemy who would not meet him in the field, and obliged to waste his time and the health of his army in a series of unsuccessful sieges, till in a few months the climate had done Alva's work. The French troops perished in thousands, and Guise at last drew off his thinned ranks and fell back on Rome. Here the news of St. Quentin reached him, and the duke, leaving Paul to his fate, amid a storm of mutual reproaches, hurried back to his own country.
The pontiff had now no resource but to yield; and the piety of the Spaniards, whom he had compelled against their will to be his enemies, softened the ignominy of his compelled submission. Cardinal Caraffa and the Duke of Alva met at Cava, where, in a few words, it was agreed that his holiness should relinquish his alliance with France, and cease to trouble the Colonnas. Alva, on his side, restored the papal towns which he had taken; he went to Rome to ask pardon on his knees, in Philip's name, for the violence which he had used to his spiritual father; and the pope gave him gracious absolution.
This bad business, which had tried Mary so severely, was thus well finished, and on the 6th of October London was again illuminated for the peace between the king and the papacy. But the shadow which had been thrown on Pole was maliciously permitted to remain unremoved; on him, perhaps from personal ill-feeling, Paul visited his own disappointment. With the return of peace there was no longer any plausible reason for the recall of the legation; Peto was dead, having survived his unpropitious honours but a few months: yet, unmoved by Pole's entreaties, the pope refused to permit him to resume his legatine functions, except so far as they were inherent in the archbishopric. The odious accusation of heresy was not withdrawn; and the torturing charge was left to embitter the peace of mind, and poison the last days of the most faithful servant of the church who was then living.[607]
And again, though there was peace with the pope, there was still war with France; there was still war with Scotland. The events which had taken place in Scotland will be related hereafter. It is enough for the present to say that the Scots had been true as usual to their old allies; no sooner was an English army landed in France, than a Scotch army was wasting and burning on the Border. A second force had to be raised and kept in the field to meet them, and the scantily supplied treasury was soon empty.
Money had to be found somewhere. The harvest, happily, had been at last abundant, and wheat had fallen from fifty shillings a quarter to four or five. The country was in a condition to lend, and a commission was sent out for a forced loan, calculated on the assessment of the last subsidy. Lists of the owners of property in each county were drawn out, with sums of money opposite to their names, and the collectors were directed "to travail by all the best ways they might for obtaining the sums noted." Persons found conformable were to receive acknowledgments. Should "any be froward" they were to find securities to appear when called on before the privy council, or to be arrested on the spot and sent to London.[608] A hundred and ten thousand pounds were collected under the commission, in spite of outcry and resistance;[609] but it was not enough for the hungry consumption of the war, and the court was driven to call a parliament.
The writs went out at the beginning of December, accompanied with the usual circulars; to which the queen added a promise, that if the mayors and sheriffs[610] would consult her wishes she would remember their services. In a second address she said her pleasure was that when the privy council, or any of them within their jurisdiction, should recommend "men of learning and wisdom," their directions should "be regarded and followed."[611] Yet there was not perhaps any wish to have the House of Commons unfairly packed. Mary desired, probably with sincerity, "to have the assembly of the most chiefest men in the realm for advice and counsel."
How the parliament would have acted in the circumstances under which the meeting was anticipated, is very uncertain. The intense unpopularity of the war had been little relieved by the victory at St. Quentin, and the general state of suffering made a fresh demand for money infinitely grievous. But between the issue of the writs and the 20th of January a blow had fallen on England which left room for no other thought.
For the last ten years the French had kept their eyes on Calais. The recovery of Boulogne was an insufficient retaliation for the disgrace which they had suffered in the loss of it, while the ill success with which the English maintained themselves in their new conquest, suggested the hope, and proved the possibility, of expelling them from the old. The occupation of a French fortress by a foreign power was a perpetual insult to the national pride; it was a memorial of evil times; while it gave England inconvenient authority in the "narrow seas." Scarcely a month had passed since Mary had been on the throne, without a hint from some quarter or other to the English government to look well to Calais; and the recent plot for its surprise was but one of a series of schemes which had been successively formed and abandoned.
In 1541 the defences of Guisnes, Hammes, and Calais, had been repaired by Henry VIII. The dykes had been cleared and enlarged, the embankments strengthened, and the sluices put in order.[612] But in the wasteful times of Edward, the works had fallen again into ruin; and Mary, straitened by debt, by a diminished revenue, and a supposed obligation to make good the losses of the clergy, had found neither means nor leisure to attend to them.
In the year 1500, the cost of maintaining the three fortresses was something less than £10,000 a-year;[613] and the expense had been almost or entirely supported by the revenue of the Pale. The more extended fortifications had necessitated an increase in the garrison; two hundred men were now scarcely sufficient to man the works;[614] while, owing to bad government, and the growing anomaly of the English position, the wealthier inhabitants had migrated over the frontiers, and left the Pale to a scanty, wretched, starving population, who could scarcely extract from the soil sufficient for their own subsistence.[615] While the cost of the occupation was becoming greater, the means of meeting it became less. The country could no longer thrive in English hands, and it was time for the invaders to begone.
The government in London, however, seemed, notwithstanding warnings, to be unable to conceive the loss of so old a possession to be a possibility; and Calais shared the persevering neglect to which the temporal interests of the realm were subjected. The near escape from the Dudley treason created a momentary improvement. The arrears of wages were paid up, and the garrison was increased. Yet a few months after, when war was on the point of being declared, there were but two hundred men in Guisnes, a number inadequate to defend even the castle; and although the French fleet at that time commanded the Channel, Calais contained provisions to last but for a few weeks.[616] Lord Grey, the governor of Guisnes, reported in June, after the declaration, that the French were collecting in strength in the neighbourhood, and that unless he was reinforced, he was at their mercy. A small detachment was sent over in consequence of Grey's letter; but on the 2nd of July Sir Thomas Cornwallis informed the queen that the numbers were still inadequate. "The enemy," Cornwallis said, "perceiving our weakness, maketh daily attempts upon your subjects, who are much abashed to see the courage of your enemies, whom they are not able to hurt nor yet defend themselves." He entreated that a larger force should be sent immediately, and maintained in the Pale during the war. The charge would be great, but the peril would be greater if the men were not provided; and as her majesty had been pleased to enter into the war, her honour must be more considered than her treasure.[617]
The arrival of the army under Pembroke removed the immediate ground for alarm; and after the defeat of the French, the danger was supposed to be over altogether. The queen was frightened at the expenses which she was incurring, and again allowed the establishment to sink below the legitimate level. Lord Wentworth was left at Calais with not more than five hundred men. Grey had something more than a thousand at Guisnes, but a part only were English; the rest were Burgundians and Spaniards. More unfortunately also, a proclamation had forbidden the export of corn in England, from which Calais had not been excepted. Guisnes and Hammes depended for their supplies on Calais, and by the middle of the winter there was an actual scarcity of food.[618]
Up to the beginning of December, notwithstanding, there were no external symptoms to create uneasiness; military movements lay under the usual stagnation of winter, and except a few detachments on the frontiers of the Pale, who gave trouble by marauding excursions, the French appeared to be resting in profound repose. On the 1st of December, the governor of Guisnes reported an expedition for the destruction of one of their outlying parties, which had been accomplished with ominous cruelty.
"I advertised your grace," Lord Grey wrote to the queen, "how I purposed to make a journey to a church called Bushing, strongly fortified by the enemy, much annoying this your majesty's frontier. It may please your majesty, upon Monday last, at nine of the clock at night, having with me Mr. Aucher marshal of Calais, Mr. Alexander captain of Newnham Bridge, Sir Henry Palmer, my son,[619] and my cousin Louis Dives, with such horsemen and footmen as could be conveniently spared abroad in service, leaving your majesty's pieces in surety, I took my journey towards the said Bushing, and carried with me two cannon and a sacre, for that both the weather and the ways served well to the purpose, and next morning came hither before day. And having before our coming enclosed the said Bushing with two hundred footmen harquebuziers, I sent an officer to summon the same in the king's highness' and your majesty's name; whereunto the captain there, a man of good estimation, who the day before was sent there with twelve men by M. Senarpont, captain of Boulogne, answered that he was not minded to render, but would keep it with such men as he had, which were forty in number or thereabouts, even to the death; and further said, if their fortune was so to lose their lives, he knew that the king his master had more men alive to serve, with many other words of French bravery. Upon this answer, I caused the gunners to bring up their artillery to plank, and then shot off immediately ten or twelve times. But yet for all this they would not yield. At length, when the cannon had made an indifferent breach, the Frenchmen made signs to parley, and would gladly have rendered; but I again, weighing it not meet to abuse your majesty's service therein, and having Sir H. Palmer there hurt, and some others of my men, refused to receive them, and, according to the law of arms, put as many of them to the sword as could be gotten at the entry of the breach, and all the rest were blown up with the steeple at the rasing thereof, and so all slain."[620]
The law of arms forbade the defence of a fort not rationally defensible; but it was over hardly construed against a gallant gentleman. Grey was a fierce, stern man. It was Grey who hung the priests in Oxfordshire from their church towers. It was Grey who led the fiery charge upon the Scots at Musselburgh, and with a pike wound, which laid open cheek, tongue, and palate, he "pursued out the chase," till, choked by heat, dust, and his own blood, he was near falling under his horse's feet.[621]
Three weeks passed, and still the French had made no sign. On the 22nd an indistinct rumour came to Guisnes that danger was near. The frost had set in; the low damp ground was hard, the dykes were frozen; and in sending notice of the report to England, Grey said that Calais was unprovided with food; Guisnes contained a few droves of cattle brought in by forays over the frontier,[622] but no corn. On the 27th, the intelligence became more distinct and more alarming. The Duke of Guise was at Compiègne. A force of uncertain magnitude, but known to be large, had suddenly appeared at Abbeville. Something evidently was intended, and something on a scale which the English commanders felt ill prepared to encounter. In a hurried council of war held at Calais, it was resolved to make no attempt to meet the enemy in the field until the arrival of reinforcements, which were written for in pressing haste.[623]
But the foes with whom they had to deal knew their condition, and were as well aware as themselves that success depended on rapidity. Had the queen paid attention to Grey's despatch of the 22nd there was time to have trebled the garrison and thrown in supplies; but it was vague, and no notice was taken of it. The joint letter of Grey and Wentworth written on the 27th, was in London in two days, and there were ships at Portsmouth and in the Thames, which ought to have been ready for sea at a moment's warning. Orders were sent to prepare; the Earl of Rutland was commissioned to raise troops; and the queen, though without sending men, sent a courier with encouragements and promises. But when every moment was precious, a fatal slowness, and more fatal irresolution hung about the movements of the government. On the 29th Wentworth wrote again, that the French were certainly arming and might be looked for immediately. On the 31st, the queen, deceived probably by some emissary of Guise, replied, that "she had intelligence that no enterprise was intended against Calais or the Pale," and that she had therefore countermanded the reinforcements.[624]
The letter containing the death sentence, for it was nothing less, of English rule in Calais was crossed on the way by another from Grey, in which he informed the queen that there were thirty or forty vessels in the harbour at Hambletue, two fitted as floating batteries, the rest loaded with hurdles, ladders, and other materials for a siege. Four-and-twenty thousand men were in the camp above Boulogne; and their mark he knew to be Calais. For himself, he would defend his charge to the death; but help must be sent instantly, or it would be too late to be of use.
The afternoon of the same day, December 31, he added, in a postscript, that flying companies of the French were at that moment before Guisnes; part of the garrison had been out to skirmish, but had been driven in by numbers; the whole country was alive with troops.
The next morning (January 1, 1558) Wentworth reported to the same purpose, that, on the land side, Calais was then invested. The sea was still open, and the forts at the mouth of the harbour on the Rysbank were yet in his hands. Heavy siege cannon, however, were said to be on their way from Boulogne, and it was uncertain how long he could hold them.
The defences of Calais towards the land, though in bad repair, had been laid out with the best engineering skill of the time. The country was intersected with deep muddy ditches; the roads were causeways, and at the bridges were bulwarks and cannon. Guisnes, which was three miles from Calais, was connected with it by a line of small forts and "turnpikes." Hammes lay between the two, equidistant from both. Towards the sea the long line of low sandhills, rising in front of the harbour to the Rysbank, formed a natural pier; and on the Rysbank was the castle, which commanded the entrance and the town. The possession of the Rysbank was the possession of Calais.
The approaches to the sandhills were commanded by a bulwark towards the south-west called the Sandgate, and further inland by a large work called Newnham Bridge. At this last place were sluices, through which, at high water, the sea could be let in over the marshes. If done effectually, the town could by this means be effectually protected; but unfortunately, owing to the bad condition of the banks, the sea water leaked in from the high levels to the wells and reservoirs in Calais.
The night of the 1st of January the French remained quiet; with the morning they advanced in force upon Newnham Bridge. An advanced party of English archers and musketeers who were outside the gate were driven in, and the enemy pushed in pursuit so close under the walls that the heavy guns could not be depressed to touch them. The English, however, bored holes through the gates with augers, fired their muskets through them, and so forced their assailants back. Towards Hammes and Guisnes the sea was let in, and the French, finding themselves up to their waists in water, and the tide still rising, retreated on that side also. Wentworth wrote in the afternoon in high spirits at the result of the first attack. The brewers were set to work to fill their vats with fresh water, that full advantage might be taken of the next tide. Working parties were sent to cut the sluices, and the English commander felt confident that if help was on the way, or could now be looked for, he could keep his charge secure. But the enemy, he said, were now thirty thousand strong; Guise had taken the Sandgate, and upwards of a hundred boats were passing backwards and forwards to Boulogne and Hambletue, bringing stores and ammunition.[625] If the queen had a body of men in readiness, they would come without delay. If she was unprepared, "the passages should be thrown open," and "liberty be proclaimed for all men to come that would bring sufficient victuals for themselves;" thus, he "was of opinion that there would be enough with more speed than would be made by order."
So far Wentworth had written. While the pen was in his hand, a message reached him, that the French, without waiting for their guns, were streaming up over the Rysbank, and laying ladders against the walls of the fort. He had but time to close his letter, and send his swiftest boat out of the harbour with it, when the castle was won, and ingress and egress at an end. The same evening, the heavy guns came from Boulogne, and for two days and nights the town was fired upon incessantly from the sandbank, and from "St. Peter's Heath."
The fate of Calais was now a question of hours; Wentworth had but 500 men to repel an army, and he was without provisions. Calais was probably gone, but Guisnes might be saved; Guisnes could be relieved with a great effort out of the Netherlands. On the night of the 4th, Grey found means to send a letter through the French lines to England. "The enemy," he said, "were now in possession of Calais harbour, and all the country between Calais and Guisnes." He was now "clean cut off from all relief and aid which he looked to have;" and there "was no other way for the succour of Calais" and the other fortresses, but "a power of men out of England or from the king's majesty, or from both," either to force the French into a battle or to raise the siege. Come what would, he would himself do the duty of a faithful subject, and keep the castle while men could hold it.[626]
The court, which had been incredulous of danger till it had appeared, was now paralysed by the greatness of it. Definite orders to collect troops were not issued till the 2nd of January. The Earl of Rutland galloped the same day to Dover, where the musters were to meet, flung himself into the first boat that he found, without waiting for them, and was half-way across the Channel when he was met by the news of the loss of the Rysbank.[627] Rutland therefore returned to Dover, happy so far to have escaped sharing the fate of Wentworth, which his single presence could not have averted. The next day, the 3rd, parties of men came in slowly from Kent and Sussex; but so vague had been the language of the proclamation, that they came without arms; and although the country was at war with France, there were no arms with which to provide them, either in Deal, Dover, or Sandwich. Again, so indistinct had been Rutland's orders, that although a few hundred men did come in at last tolerably well equipped, and the Prince of Savoy had collected some companies of Spaniards at Gravelines, and had sent word to Dover for the English to join him, Rutland was now obliged to refer to London for permission to go over. On the 7th, permission came; it was found by that time, or supposed to be found, that the queen's ships were none of them seaworthy, and an order of the council came out to press all competent merchant ships and all able seamen everywhere, for the queen's service.[628] Rutland contrived at last, by vigorous efforts, to collect a few hoys and boats, but the French had by this time ships of war in co-operation with them, and he could but approach the French coast near enough to see that he could venture no nearer, and again return.[629]
He would have been too late to save Calais at that time, however, even if he had succeeded in crossing.
The day preceding, the 6th of January, after a furious cannonade, Guise had stormed the castle. The English had attempted to blow it up when they could not save it, but their powder train was wetted, and they failed. The Spaniards, for once honourably careful of English interests, came along the shore from Gravelines alone, since no one joined them from England, and attempted in the face of overwhelming odds to force their way into the town; but they were driven back, and Wentworth, feeling that further resistance would lead to useless slaughter, demanded a parley, and after a short discussion accepted the terms of surrender offered by Guise. The garrison and the inhabitants of Calais, amounting in all, men, women, and children, to 5000 souls, were permitted to retire to England with their lives, and nothing more. Wentworth and fifty others were to remain prisoners; the town, with all that it contained, was to be given up to the conquerors.
On these conditions the English laid down their arms and the French troops entered. The spoil was enormous, and the plunder of St. Quentin was not unjustly revenged; jewels, plate, and money were deposited on the altars of the churches, and the inhabitants, carrying with them the clothes which they wore, were sent as homeless beggars in the ensuing week across the Channel.
Then only, when it was too late, the queen roused herself. As soon as Calais had definitely fallen, all the English counties were called on by proclamation to contribute their musters. Then all was haste, eagerness, impetuosity; those who had money were to provide for those who had none, till "order could be taken."
On the 7th of January, the vice-admiral, Sir William Woodhouse, was directed to go instantly to sea, pressing everything that would float, and promising indemnity to the owners in the queen's name. Thirty thousand men were rapidly on their way to the coast; the weather had all along been clear and frosty, with calms and light east winds, and the sea off Dover was swiftly covered with a miscellaneous crowd of vessels. On the 10th came the queen's command for the army to cross to Dunkirk, join the Duke of Savoy, and save Guisnes.
But the opportunity which had been long offered, and long neglected, was now altogether gone; the ships were ready, troops came, and arms came, but a change of weather came also, and westerly gales and storms. On the night of the 10th a gale blew up from the south-west which raged for four days: such vessels as could face the sea, slipped their moorings, and made their way into the Thames with loss of spars and rigging; the hulls of the rest strewed Dover beach with wrecks, or were swallowed in the quicksands of the Goodwin.
The effect of this last misfortune on the queen was to produce utter prostration. Storms may rise, vessels may be wrecked, and excellent enterprises may suffer hindrance, by the common laws or common chances of things; but the queen in every large occurrence imagined a miracle; Heaven she believed was against her. Though Guisnes was yet standing, she ordered Woodhouse to collect the ships again in the Thames, "forasmuch as the principal cause of their sending forth had ceased;"[630] and on the 13th she counter-ordered the musters, and sent home all the troops which had arrived at Dover.[631]
Having given way to despondency, the court should have communicated with Grey, and directed him to make terms for himself and the garrisons of Guisnes and Hammes. In the latter place there was but a small detachment; but at Guisnes were eleven hundred men, who might lose their lives in a desperate and now useless defence. The disaster, however, had taken away the power of thinking or resolving upon anything.
It must be said for Philip that he recognised more clearly and discharged more faithfully the duty of an English sovereign than the queen or the queen's advisers. Spanish and Burgundian troops were called under arms as fast as possible; and when he heard of the gale he sent ships from Antwerp and Dunkirk to bring across the English army. But when his transports arrived at Dover they found the men all gone. Proclamations went out on the 17th to call them back;[632] but two days after there was a counter-panic and a dread of invasion, and the perplexed levies were again told that they must remain at home. So it went on to the end of the month; the resolution of one day alternated with the hesitation of the next, and nothing was done.
The queen's government had lost their heads. Philip having done his own part, did not feel it incumbent on him to risk a battle with inferior numbers, when those who were more nearly concerned were contented to be supine. Guisnes, therefore, and its defenders, were left to their fate.
On Thursday, the 13th, the Duke of Guise appeared before the gates. The garrison could have been starved out in a month, but Guise gave England credit for energy, and would not run the risk of a blockade. To reduce the extent of his lines, Grey abandoned the town, burnt the houses, and withdrew into the castle. The French made their approaches in form. On the morning of Monday the 17th they opened fire from two heavily armed batteries, and by the middle of the day they had silenced the English guns, and made a breach which they thought practicable. A storming party ventured an attempt: after sharp fighting the advanced columns had to retreat; but as they drew back the batteries re-opened, and so effectively, that the coming on of night alone saved the English from being driven at once, and on the spot, from their defences. The walls were of the old sort, constructed when the art of gunnery was in its infancy, and brick and stone crumbled to ruins before the heavy cannon which had come lately into use.
Under shelter of the darkness earthworks were thrown up, which proved a better protection; but the French on their side planted other batteries, and all Tuesday and Wednesday the terrible bombardment was continued. The old walls were swept away; the ditch was choked with the rubbish, and was but a foot in depth; the French trenches had been advanced close to its edge, and on Wednesday afternoon (January 19), twelve companies of Gascons and Swiss again dashed at the breaches. The Gascons were the first; the Swiss followed "with a stately leisure;" and a hand-to-hand fight began all along the English works. The guns from a single tower which had been left standing causing loss to the assailants, it was destroyed by the batteries. The fight continued till night, when darkness as before put an end to it.
The earthworks could be again repaired, but the powder began to fail, and this loss was irreparable. Lord Grey, going his rounds in the dark, trod upon a sword point, and was wounded in the foot. The daylight brought the enemy again, who now succeeded in making themselves masters of the outer line of defence. Grey, crippled as he was, when he saw his men give way, sprung to the top of the rampart, "wishing God that some shot would take him." A soldier caught him by the scarf and pulled him down, and all that was left of the garrison fell back, carrying their commander with them into the keep. The gate was rammed close, but Guise could now finish his work at his leisure, and had the English at his mercy. He sent a trumpeter in the evening to propose a parley, and the soldiers insisted that if reasonable terms could be had, they should be accepted. The extremity of the position was obvious, and Grey, as we have seen, was no stranger to the law of arms in such cases. Hostages were exchanged, and the next morning the two commanders met in the French camp.
Better terms were offered by Guise than had been granted to Calais—Grey, Sir Henry Palmer, and a few officers should consider themselves prisoners; the rest of the garrison might depart with their arms, and "every man a crown in his purse." Grey, however, demanded that they should march out with their colours flying; Guise refused, and after an hour's discussion they separated without a conclusion.
But the soldiers were insensible to nice distinctions; if they had the reality, they were not particular about the form. Grey lectured them on the duties of honour; for his part, he said, he would rather die under the red cross than lose it. The soldiers replied that their case was desperate; they would not be thrust into butchery or sell their lives for vain glory. The dispute was at its height when the Swiss troops began to lay ladders to the walls; the English refused to strike another blow; and Grey, on his own rule, would have deserved to be executed had he persisted longer.
Guise's terms were accepted. He had lived to repay England for his spear wound at Boulogne, and the last remnant of the conquests of the Plantagenets was gone.
Measured by substantial value, the loss of Calais was a gain. English princes were never again to lay claim to the crown of France, and the possession of a fortress on French soil was a perpetual irritation. But Calais was called the "brightest jewel in the English crown." A jewel it was, useless, costly, but dearly prized. Over the gate of Calais had once stood the insolent inscription:—
"Then shall the Frenchmen Calais win,
When iron and lead like cork shall swim:"
and the Frenchmen had won it, won it in fair and gallant fight.
If Spain should rise suddenly into her ancient strength and tear Gibraltar from us, our mortification would be faint, compared to the anguish of humiliated pride with which the loss of Calais distracted the subjects of Queen Mary.(Back to Content)
The queen would probably have found the parliament which met on the 20th of January little better disposed towards her than its predecessor. The subsidy which should have paid the crown debts had gone as the opposition had foretold, and the country had been dragged after all into the war so long dreaded and so much deprecated. The forced loan of £100,000 had followed, and money was again wanted.
But ordinary occasions of discontent disappeared in the enormous misfortune of the loss of Calais; or rather, the loss of Calais had so humbled the nation in its own eyes, that it expected to be overrun with French armies in the approaching summer. The church had thriven under Mary's munificence, but every other interest had been recklessly sacrificed. The fortresses were without arms, the ships were unfit for service, the coast was defenceless. The parliament postponed their complaints till the national safety had been provided for.
On the 26th, a committee, composed of thirty members of both houses, met to consider the crisis.[633] "That no way or policy should be undevised or not thought upon," they divided themselves into three sub-committees; and after three days' separate consultation the thirty met again, and agreed to recommend the heaviest subsidy which had been ever granted to an English sovereign, equivalent in modern computation to an income-tax of 20 per cent, for two years. If levied fairly such a tax would have yielded a large return. Michele, the Venetian, says that many London merchants were worth as much as £60,000 in money; the graziers and the merchants had made fortunes while the people had starved. But either from hatred of the government, or else from meanness of disposition, the money-making classes generally could not be expected to communicate the extent of their possessions. The landowners, truly or falsely, declared that, "for the most part, they received no more rent than they were wont to receive," "yet, paying for everything, they provided thrice as much by reason of the baseness of the money."[634] It was calculated that the annual proceeds of the subsidy would be no more than £140,000;[635] and even this the House of Commons declared that the country would not bear for more than one year. They did not choose perhaps to leave the queen at liberty to abuse their confidence by giving her the full grant to squander on the clergy. They were unanimous that the country must and should be defended. They admitted that the sum which they were ready to vote would fall short of the indispensable outlay; nevertheless, when the report of the committee was laid before them they cut it down to half. They agreed to give four shillings in the pound for one year, and to pay it all at Midsummer. "They entreated her majesty to stay the demanding of more" until another session of parliament. Should circumstances then require it, they promised that they would add whatever might be necessary; but, for the present, "if any invasion should be in the realm, or if the enemy should seek to annoy them at home, they would have to employ themselves with all their powers, which would not be without their great charges."[636]
The resolution of parliament decided the council in the course which they must pursue with respect to Calais. Philip, unable to prevent the catastrophe alone, proposed to take the field at once with a united army of English and Spaniards, to avenge it, and effect a recapture. He laid his plans before the council. The council, in reply, thanked his majesty for his good affection towards the realm; they would have accepted his offer on their knees had it been possible, but the state of England obliged them to decline. The enemy, after the time which had been allowed them, "would be in such strength that it was doubtful if by force alone they could be expelled." If England sent out an army, it could not send less than twenty thousand men; and the troops would go unwillingly upon a service for which they had no heart, at a time of year when they were unused to exposure. Before the year was out £150,000 at the lowest would have to be spent in keeping the musters of the country under arms. The navy and the defences of the coast and of the isles, would cost £200,000, without including the losses of cannon and military stores at Guisnes and Calais, which would have to be made good. The campaign which Philip proposed could not cost less than a further £170,000; and so much money could not be had "without the people should have strange impositions set upon them, which they could not bear." There was but "a wan hope of recovering Calais," and "inconveniences might follow" if the attempt was made and failed.[637]
"The people have only in their heads," the council added, "the defence of the realm by land and sea." The hated connection with Spain had produced all the evils which the opponents of the marriage had foretold, and no good was expected from any enterprise pursued in common with Philip. Prone as the English were to explain events by supernatural causes, they saw, like the queen, in the misfortunes which had haunted her, an evidence that Heaven was not on her side, and they despaired of success in anything until it could be undertaken under better auspices. They would take care of themselves at home, and they would do no more. In reducing the subsidy, the Commons promised to defend the country "with the residue of their goods and life," to "provide every man armour and weapons according to his ability," and to insist by a special law that it should be done.[638]
Every peer, knight, or gentleman, with an income above £1000 a-year, was called on to furnish sixteen horses, with steel harness, forty corslets, coats of mail, and morions, thirty longbows, with sheaves of arrows, and as many steelcaps, halberds, blackbills, and haquebuts. All English subjects, in a descending scale, were required to arm others or arm themselves according to their property.[639]
In the levies of the past summer, men had shrunk from service, and muster-masters, after the fashion of Falstaff, had taken bribes to excuse them. On the present occasion no excuse was to be taken, and every able-bodied man, of any rank, from sixteen to sixty, was to be ready to take arms when called upon, and join his officers, under pain of death.[640] With these essential orders, the business of the legislature ended, and parliament was prorogued on the 7th of March till the following November.
The chief immediate difficulty was to find money for present necessities. The loan was gone. The subsidy would not come in for six months. Englefield, Waldegrave, Petre, Baker, and Sir Walter Mildmay, were formed into a permanent committee of ways and means, with instructions to sit daily "till some device had been arrived at."[641] Sir Thomas Gresham was sent again to Antwerp to borrow £200,000, if possible, at fourteen per cent.[642] The queen applied in person for a loan to the citizens of London. For security, she offered to bind the crown lands, "so assuredly as they themselves could cause to be devised;"[643] and she promised, further, that, if she could legally do it, she would dispense in their favour with the statute for the limitation of usury.
To this last appeal the corporation responded with a loan of £20,000, at twelve per cent.; the Merchant Adventurers contributed £18,000 more; and Gresham sent from Flanders from time to time whatever he could obtain. In this way dockyards and armouries were set in activity, and the castles on the coast were repaired.
Yet with the masses the work of arming went forward languidly. The nation was heavy at heart, and it was in vain that the noblemen and gentlemen endeavoured to raise men's spirits; the black incubus of the priesthood sat upon them like a nightmare. The burnings had been suspended while parliament was in session. On the 28th of March the work began again, and Cuthbert Simson, the minister of a protestant congregation, was put to death in Smithfield, having been first racked to extort from him the names of his supporters;[644] on the same day Reginald Pole, to clear himself of the charge of heresy, sent a fresh commission to Harpsfeld, to purge the diocese of Canterbury;[645] and the people, sick to their very souls at the abominable spectacles which were thrust before them, sank into a sullen despondency.
The musters for Derbyshire were set down at fifteen hundred. Lord Shrewsbury raised four hundred from among his own dependents on his estates. The magistrates declared that, owing to dearth, want, and waste of means in the war of the last year, the "poor little county" could provide but one hundred more.
The musters in Devonshire broke up and went to their homes. The musters in Lincolnshire mutinied. The ringleaders in both counties were immediately hanged;[646] yet the loyalty was none the greater. The exiled divines in Germany, believing that the people were at last ripe for insurrection, called on them to rise and put down the tyranny which was crushing them. Goodman published a tract on the obedience of subjects, and John Knox blew his "First Blast against the Monstrous Regimen of Women." The queen, as if the ordinary laws of the country had no existence, sent out a proclamation that any one who was found to have these books in his or her possession, or who, finding such books, did not instantly burn them, should be executed as a rebel by martial law.[647] "Affectionate as I be to my country and countrymen," said Sir Thomas Smith, "I was ashamed of both; they went about their matters as men amazed, that wist not where to begin or end. And what marvel was it? Here was nothing but firing, heading, hanging, quartering and burning, taxing and levying. A few priests in white rochets ruled all, who with setting up of six-foot roods and rebuilding of roodlofts, thought to make all sure."
With the summer, fever and ague set in like a pestilence, "God did so punish the realm," said Sir Thomas Smith again, "with quartan agues, and with such other long and new sicknesses, that in the last two years of the reign of Queen Mary, so many of her subjects was made away, what with the execution of sword and fire, what by sicknesses, that the third part of the men of England were consumed."[648] In the spring, the queen, misled by the same symptoms which had deceived her before, had again fancied herself enceinte. She made her will in the avowed expectation that she was about to undergo the perils of childbearing. She wrote for her husband to come to her. She sent the fleet into the Channel, and laid relays of horses along the roads to London from Dover and from Harwich, that he might choose at which port to land.
Philip so far humoured the fancy, which he must have known to be delusive, that he sent the Count de Feria to congratulate her. Her letter, he said, contained the best news which he had heard since the loss of Calais. But the bubble broke soon. Mary had parted from her husband on the 5th of the preceding July, and her suspense, therefore, was not long protracted. It is scarcely necessary to say in what direction her second disappointment vented itself.
Cranmer alone hitherto had suffered after recantation; to others, pardon had continued to be offered to the last moment. But this poor mercy was now extinguished. A man in Hampshire, named Bembridge, exclaimed at the point of execution that he would submit; a form was produced on the spot, which Bembridge signed, and the sheriff, Sir Richard Pexall, reprieved him by his own authority. But a letter of council came instantly to Pexall, that "the queen's majesty could not but find it very strange" that he had saved from punishment a man condemned for heresy: the execution was to proceed out of hand; and "if the prisoner continued in the Catholic faith, as he pretended," "some discreet and learned man might be present with him in his death, for the aiding of him to die God's servant."[649] Bembridge was accordingly burnt, and the sheriff, for the lenity which he had dare to show, was committed to the Fleet. Whole detachments of men and women were again slaughtered in London; and the queen, exasperated at the determination with which the populace cheered the sufferers with their sympathy, sent out a proclamation forbidding her subjects to approach, touch, speak to, or comfort heretics on their way to execution, under pain of death. Shortly after, a congregation of Protestants were detected at a prayer-meeting in a field near the city; thirteen were taken as prisoners before Bonner, and seven were burnt at Smithfield together on the 28th of June. The people replied to the queen's menaces by crowding about the stake with passionate demonstrations of affection, and Thomas Bentham, a friend of Lever the preacher, when the faggots were lighted, stood out in the presence of the throng, and cried: