History of the United Netherlands, 1587b | Page 3

be immortal glory, and she will be placed among the number

of the many martyrs whose blood has been shed in the kingdom of
England, and be crowned in Heaven with a diadem more precious than
the one she wore on earth, nevertheless one cannot repress one's natural
emotions. I believe firmly that this cruel deed will be the concluding
crime of the many which that Englishwoman has committed, and that
our Lord will be pleased that she shall at last receive the chastisement
which she has these many long years deserved, and which has been
reserved till now, for her greater ruin and confusion."--[Parma to Philip
IL, 22 March. 1587. (Arch. de Simancas, MS.)]--And with this, the
Duke proceeded to discuss the all important and rapidly-preparing
invasion of England. Farnese was not the man to be deceived by the
affected reluctance of Elizabeth before Mary's scaffold, although he
was soon to show that he was himself a master in the science of
grimace. For Elizabeth--more than ever disposed to be friends with
Spain and Rome, now that war to the knife was made inevitable--was
wistfully regarding that trap of negotiation, against which all her best
friends were endeavouring to warn her. She was more ill-natured than
ever to the Provinces, she turned her back upon the Warnese, she
affronted Henry III. by affecting to believe in the fable of his envoy's
complicity in the Stafford conspiracy against her life.
"I pray God to open her eyes," said Walsingham, "to see the evident
peril of the course she now holdeth . . . . If it had pleased her to have
followed the advice given her touching the French ambassador, our
ships had been released . . . . but she has taken a very strange course by
writing a very sharp letter unto the French King, which I fear will cause
him to give ear to those of the League, and make himself a party with
them, seeing so little regard had to him here. Your Lordship may see
that our courage doth greatly increase, for that we make no difficulty to
fall out with all the world . . . . . I never saw her worse affected to the
poor King of Navarre, and yet doth she seek in no sort to yield
contentment to the French King. If to offend all the world;" repeated
the Secretary bitterly, "be it good cause of government, then can we not
do amiss . . . . . I never found her less disposed to take a course of
prevention of the approaching mischiefs toward this realm than at this
present. And to be plain with you, there is none here that hath either
credit or courage to deal effectually with her in any of her great
causes."

Thus distracted by doubts and dangers, at war with her best friends,
with herself, and with all-the world, was Elizabeth during the dark days
and months which, preceded and followed the execution of the Scottish
Queen. If the great fight was at last to be fought triumphantly through,
it was obvious that England was to depend upon Englishmen of all
ranks and classes, upon her prudent and far-seeing statesmen, upon her
nobles and her adventurers, on her Anglo-Saxon and Anglo-Norman
blood ever mounting against, oppression, on Howard and Essex, Drake
and Williams, Norris, and Willoughby, upon high-born magnates,
plebeian captains, London merchants, upon yeomen whose limbs were
made in England, and upon Hollanders and Zeelanders whose fearless
mariners were to swarm to the protection of her coasts, quite as much
in that year of anxious expectation as upon the great Queen herself.
Unquestionable as were her mental capacity and her more than
woman's courage, when fairly, brought face, to face with the danger, it
was fortunately not on one man or woman's brain and arm that
England's salvation depended in that crisis of her fate.
As to the Provinces, no one ventured to speak very boldly in their
defence. "When I lay before her the peril," said Walsingham, "she
scorneth at it. The hope of a peace with Spain has put her into a most
dangerous security." Nor would any man now assume responsibility.
The fate of Davison--of the man who had already in so detestable a
manner been made the scape-goat for Leicester's sins in the
Netherlands, and who had now been so barbarously sacrificed by the
Queen for faithfully obeying her orders in regard to the death-warrant,
had sickened all courtiers and counsellors for the time. "The late severe,
dealing used by her Highness towards Mr. Secretary Davison," said
Walsingham to Wilkes, "maketh us very circumspect and careful not to
proceed in anything but wherein we receive direction from herself, and
therefore you must not find it strange if we now be