CHAP. XXXIII. ELIZABETH DECLINES A WAR TO RESIST PHILIP IN PORTU- XXXIII. WHEN the states of Holland in 1582, as their dif- CHAP. ficulties increased, solicited Elizabeth to take the government and defence of their country, the prospect of personal and national aggrandizement, from the union of the Netherlands with the English crown, might have tempted an ambitious mind to an acceptance of the proposal. But Elizabeth, contrary to the wishes of her most favored counsellor, declined the invitation, from her aversion to usurp the rights of another,' as well as from her desire not to pledge her government, until the last necessity, to an inveterate warfare with the Spanish power. She permitted them to have occasional supplies, with the hope of their obtaining equitable conditions of peace and safety, from their antient but oppressing That her moral delicacy on this point did not satisfy Leicester, we see from his letter of 8th March 1582, to earl Shrewsbury: Touching the matter of the Low Countries, I cannot say much; but this much with grief I think on-to see such a country REFUSED as that is For to her majesty they wholly and simply offered themselves before monsieur was accepted. But her majesty's goodness was such that she would not possess what appertains to another. Few princes have so good conscience.' Lodge Illus. 2. p. 262. II. BOOK Sovereign;' and by her refusal, left the splendid prize to be obtained by the heir presumptive of France; who, by undertaking the enterprise, opened a new career of aggrandizement to his nation, which if his abilities had not been inferior to the great emergency, or if his life had not been unexpectedly abbreviated, might have realized in that age, one of the favorite schemes of the French revolutionists, and of Napoleon, to the unceasing peril of the British islands, by extending the sovereignty of France to the Rhine and the Zuyder Sea.3 He was inaugurated duke of Brabant; but his military efforts were defeated by the Prince of Parma, and in his 2 Norris was allowed to be there with some English troops and adventurers, whom the States employed advantageously in Friesland. Camd. p. 231. Our valuable antiquary imputes the new habits of drunkenness in England to have been an importation from the Netherlands by these soldiers: The English, who of all the northern nations had been least drinkers, and most commended for their sobriety, learned, by these Netherland wars, to drown themselves with immoderate drinking; and by drinking to others healths, to impair their own. Ever since, the vice has so spread itself over the whole nation, that in our days the first restrains thereof by severity of laws came forth.' ib. 231. What the moist climate led the Dutch to practise, and our troops to imitate there, was continued by them from habit when they returned home, where the cause or excuse for it had no existence. The act of 4 Jac. 1. c. 5. imposed a fine of five shillings on every person convicted of drunkenness. 3 The duc d'Alençon went from England with great honors to Antwerp; but the English serving in these parts so little liked the idea of fighting for French power, that six hundred of the best soldiers went over to the Spanish army, and a part of them were of great use to the prince of Parma. Camd. 242. Lord Talbot describes a singular instance of intrepidity in a British seaman on this occasion: The evening before Alençon embarked, lord Howard went to see that the ships were in readiness. Being aboard, in the night, by the forgetfulness of a boy, the ship was set on fire in the gun-room. Before it was espied, it had almost got to the powder. By great chance, a man of lord Howard's laid himself flat in the flame, and tumbled [rolled himself] in it, and so stayed the fire from the powder, till water came, otherwise it had blown up the ship, and all that were aboard. He was scorched both hands and face, and his garments burnt. It is thought her majesty will well reward him for his labor. It was one of the greatest ships.' Lodge's Illustr. v. 2. p. 259. XXXIII. future campaign he sickened and died—an important CHAP. allotment of events-for it not only prevented that enlargement of the French kingdom, which might have ruined England; but also left the succession of its crown, suddenly open to Henry IV., and thereby to the secure establishment, at that time, of the Protestant reformation in the southern districts of France. The death of don Henry, who had succeeded Sebastian, presented to her a similar temptation to intermeddle with Portugal, to which Catherine de Medicis was making genealogical pretensions; which Philip was advancing, with more right of descent, greedily to seize, and from which don Antonio, the nearest native prince, had been recently expelled, by the every-where employed and indefatigable duke of Alva; while the pope himself In December 1583, the duke was alarmed with an intimation that 10,000 crowns had been offered to a man to assassinate him. Stafford, Lett. Murd. 386. Catherine, his mother, went to him in January 1584, to persuade him to her purposes; but tho he entertained her kindly,' yet, in the end she could do nothing of that she came for.' ib. 390. At the end of the following spring he died. He was buried at St. Denis, with the greatest magnificence, state, and honor, that ever any brother of France had.' Lett. 21st June, ib. 405; and his loss turned the spleen of Catherine against Spain. Sir Edward Stafford wrote, The queen mother is the most venomed woman against the Spaniards that ever I heard of; for that she thinketh that the beginning of her son's sickness hath begun by these matters of the Low Countries, she sweareth, by some small oaths, that she will be revenged, and for that intent would fain animate her son, but as yet he is not stirred.' ib. 410. Camden, p. 232. Don Henry was a cardinal when Sebastian fell, on 4th August 1578, when the King of Fez, whom he was supporting, while the usurping Moor also died during the battle, of a fever. Henry only reigned two years. On 16th March 1580, a friend observed to Shrewsbury, that the Portuguese had armed 20,000 soldiers against Philip; and that if this king were allowed to have Portugal in quiet, with their East Indies and his West Indies, he might embrace and crush the whole world.' Lodge Illust. 2. p. 225. The duchess of Braganza, as the grand-daughter of the preceding king Emmanuel, was the next heir; but Philip, who claimed under his mother, a daughter of the same Emmanuel, obtained the crown by his superior force. On 27th June 1581, earl Sussex stated to Burghley the arrival of don 6 II. BOOK claimed the kingdom as lapsing to him, because its last sovereign, Henry, had been a cardinal.o Antonio came to England, to interest Elizabeth to assist him to rescue his country from its subjugation by Spain. Elizabeth honorably received and bountifully relieved him as a kinsman; but declined involving her nation in a war to expel Philip from his new possession. Catherine wished the queen to support him; yet it was more to embarrass her with Philip, than to benefit the Portuguese aspirant. Antonio [in London], which the queen would have to be secret, tho indeed it be openly spoken of. Seeing he landed in France first, I think his first coming here is not without the consent of that king.' Lodge p. 255. The Jesuits, in their Imago, speak bitterly of Antonio. 6 Hist. Portug. His relationship with her was thro the duke of Lancaster, son of Edward III. Camd. p 232. The card. Granville, in his letter of 6 July 1580, mentions that don Antonio had been proclaimed king, par quelques gens viles et menu peuple.' Granv. Lett. This Spanish minister mentions with delight, that in his passage thro France, from Artois to Paris, thence to Orleans, and all about towards Nantz, there was not a town, village or castle, from which the new religion had not been taken away, and the old one re-established.' Lett. 11 July 1580. On May 1581, we find Antonio at Tunis, ready to sail to Portugal with an armament, to rescue it from Philip. Sidney's Letters, v. 1. p. 294. Camd. p. 232. Catherine about this time, notwithstanding her power, could not, even with the king's aid, command the appointment of an abbess at Puissy. Our ambassador on 12 Dec. 1583, thus described her defeat, and the amusing turbulence of even holy nuns. 'Their abbess being dead, they fell to chuse another. Seventy-five voices were for an old woman, one of the nuns, and but 25 for the madame de Perron, the marshal of Retz's sister. Yet the king and queen-n other favoring her, would needs have her to be chosen; and for that intent, sent old Lansac thither, to whom they made very shrewd answers. After, the queen-mother came herself, and would place her in her seat of abbess. The nuns that were against her, came out of their chamber against the queen; insomuch that a day or two after, she made great complaint to my wife of the nuns, and of their evil and disdainful using of her; and assured her that she would be revenged of them. She [the queen] went to them again, but they would not open the gates to her. She was fain to make some of her guard to dig a hole under the wall, and get in, to open her the gates. This being done, the nuns, seeing the yard full of guards, every one shut herself up in their chambers, and looking out of the windows, told the queen, that with her pardon, they would be starved there first, afore they would lose their accustomed liberties. XXXIII. Elizabeth withstood all solicitations to engage her CHAP. people in a war of difficulty and uncertainty for a foreign succession. She was personally kind both to him and to his children; and limiting her favor to her private beneficence, until one late effort, he died without attaining the regal dominion to which he pretended." But this forbearance towards the Spanish king neither lessened his determination and attempts, nor those of his confederate, the pope, nor of their conspirators and agents, to dispossess and destroy her. To foment disaffection, and to prepare for insurrections, when the long-planned foreign invasion should take place, were still the persisting efforts of their secret missionaries and more infatuated adherents. For ten years after the northern rebellion, which they had before excited, notwithstanding all the treasonable practices which were afloat, only five papists had been put to death." "The next day they fell upon madame du Perron, and BEAT HER as long as she could stand, as the author of their harm. The king, upon that, sent his guard thither, and took out two or three of the headiest nuns, and put them in divers houses, in keeping abroad.' Lett. in Murdin, p. 384. So that, tho Catherine and Charles could massacre, without much difficulty, 10,000 Huguenots, they could not so easily master 75 nuns ! The following MS. letters are in the British Museum: Nero. B. 1. concerning dou Antonio. On 9 Oct. 1581, Lopez reports to him Elizabeth's favorable disposition towards him. p. 251. In 1586, the same agents stated to the English government the distresses of Antonio and his son Emmanuel. p. 267. On 12 Sept. 1587, don Botelho, his agent at Middleburg, presses lord Leicester for the promised supply of money for raising troops. p. 269. On 12 Nov. 1594, Elizabeth wrote to Antonio, assuring him of the continuance of her friendship, and sent it by his son don Christopher. p. 276. The next year closed his unsuccessful hopes; for on 12 Sept. 1595, this son informed the queen from Paris, of the death of his father, and asks her protection for himself and for his brother Emmanuel. p. 278. 10 Camd. 240. The attempts and projects to assassinate her, were more numerous than were made public. On 24 December 1586, we |