Philip II. of Spain 24

Philip II. of Spain 24

CHAPTER XIV

 

Philip’s ineffectual action against Elizabeth--The Desmond

rebellion--Philip’s conquest of Portugal--Recall of Alba and

Granvelle to Philip’s councils--Don Antonio, Prior of O

Crato--Death of Anne of Austria--Philip in Portugal--Flight of

Antonio--His reception in England and France--The Duke of

Alençon--Philip and Mary Stuart--James Stuart--Fresh proposals of

the Scottish Catholics to Philip--Philip and Granvelle’s views with

regard to England--Lennox and the Jesuits mismanage the

plot--Philip’s claim to the English crown--Expulsion of Mendoza

from England--The English exiles urge Philip to invade

England--Sixtus V.--Intrigues in Rome--The Babington plot.

 

 

Philip’s advisers had for many years been urging him to adopt reprisals

against Elizabeth for her treatment of him. We have seen why, on account

both of policy and necessity, he had not done so by a direct attack. His

indirect attempts at retaliation had been quite ineffectual. He had

subsidised Mary Stuart, he had found money for the northern rebellion,

he had listened to proposals for killing the Queen of England at his

cost, he had countenanced Stukeley’s wild plans for the capture of

Ireland, and he had attempted to avenge the English depredations on his

commerce by stopping English trade and persecuting English traders for

heresy. But in every case the result had been disastrous for him.

Elizabeth’s aid to the Protestants in Holland was bolder and more

effectual than ever, English sailors mocked at his attempts to stop

trade by ruining his own ports, and the Englishmen punished by the

Inquisition were avenged by increased severity against the Catholic

party in England and Ireland. But still he was constantly assured that

the only way to disarm Elizabeth against him was to “set fire to her own

doors” by arousing rebellion in Ireland and aggression of the Catholic

party in Scotland.

 

Dr. Sanders had induced the pope to interest himself in favour of James

Fitzmaurice, the brother of the Earl of Desmond, and had himself

obtained the title of the pope’s nuncio. They landed in Ireland with a

small Spanish and Italian force in June 1579, but Elizabeth, through

Walsingham’s spies, was well informed of the movement, and was quite

prepared to deal with it. Philip was willing that others should weaken

his enemy so long as no responsibility was incurred by him, and

Elizabeth was not further irritated against him. When, however,

Fitzmaurice and Sanders found themselves overmatched, and appeals were

made direct to Philip to aid them by sending an armed force to Ireland,

he demurred. Fitzmaurice was ready to promise anything for aid, and the

nuncio at Madrid did his best to inflame Philip’s religious zeal. But he

could not afford to come to open war with England, and, although he

consented to subscribe 25,000 ducats out of the revenues of the

archbishopric of Toledo if the pope would subscribe a similar amount,

and promised to find arms and ammunition, he provided that the fresh

expedition should sail from Spain under the papal flag and be organised

ostensibly by the nuncio. The commanders, moreover, were to be all

Italians, and the Spanish recruits were to be enlisted privately. The

semi-concealment was quite ineffectual in hoodwinking Elizabeth, and the

ill-starred little expedition was all slaughtered at Smerwick in Dingle

Bay (November 1580), as James Fitzmaurice’s force had been previously.

John of Desmond and the Italian commanders had assured Philip only a

month before the massacre, that they would require 8000 footmen and

large stores of arms before they could effect any useful end. But this

would have meant open war with England, and for this he was not

prepared. Once more he proved that his advisers were wrong, and that he

could only curb Elizabeth with overwhelming force, which he had neither

the means nor the desire to employ at the present juncture. He continued

to urge upon his new ambassador that she must be kept in a good humour

at all costs. It was not an easy task, for she was more defiant than

ever now. She knew Philip had his hands full, and the attempted invasion

of Ireland was made the most of for years by her, as an excuse for all

she did in Flanders and elsewhere to injure him. It was an unfortunate

move for Philip, as it afforded Elizabeth a good grievance against him,

and forced him into the weak position of having to justify his action by

throwing the responsibility upon the pope.

 

Philip had at this time (1579) special reasons for dreading an open

rupture with England, for he had for some time past been planning a

stroke which would, if successful, enormously increase his power for

harm at sea, in relation to both France and England. In August 1578

Sebastian of Portugal, the only son of Philip’s sister, Juana--as much a

victim of atavism as was his cousin, Don Carlos--perished in his mad

crusade against the Moors, and his successor on the throne was the aged,

childless cardinal, King Henry. He was recognised as being only a

stop-gap, and after him the claimants were numerous, mostly descended,

although in different degrees, from the king, Don Manoel. The Duchess of

Braganza was daughter of his son Duarte, Philip was son of the elder

daughter of Don Manoel, the Duke of Savoy was a son of the younger

daughter, Beatrix, whilst the children of Alexander Farnese were the

offspring of a younger sister of the Duchess of Braganza. The most

popular pretender, however, was Don Antonio, Prior of O Crato, an

illegitimate son of Luis, a younger son of Don Manoel.

 

The fundamental laws of Lamego, now believed to be apocryphal, but then

accepted as genuine, excluded foreigners from the throne, but Philip

asserted that a Spanish king was not a foreigner in Portugal, and began

his intrigues for the succession immediately after Sebastian’s death.

The Perez party had managed to get the old Duke of Alba disgraced and

sent into arrest on an absurdly inadequate charge of conniving at his

son’s marriage against the king’s wish, and De Granvelle had remained in

honourable exile from Spain for many years. But when the great task of

winning Portugal had to be undertaken, Philip knew that glib, brilliant

Perez, with his biting tongue and ready pen, was not the instrument he

wanted; so the stern soldier and the crafty statesman were recalled to

their master’s councils. It was a black day for Perez, although he

probably did not realise at the time how fatal it was to be. During the

short reign of the cardinal-king, money and intrigue were lavished on

all hands to corrupt and terrorise the Portuguese nobles to Philip’s

side; the aged king himself was finally worried into his grave by

pressure exerted upon him to approve of Philip’s claim, and when he

died, the council of regency left by him were by various means coerced

into accepting the King of Spain as their sovereign. But not so the

Portuguese people or the clergy; they clung, almost all of them, to the

Prior of O Crato, the popular native claimant, ambitious, ready, and

sanguine, for the Portuguese bitterly hated the Spaniards, and the true

native heiress, the Duchess of Braganza, was timid and unready; and

before Philip and Alba could arrive Antonio was acclaimed the national

sovereign. Around him all that was patriotic grouped itself, and for a

short time he ruled as king. Philip was moving on to Portugal with that

“leaden foot” of which he was so proud, and by the autumn of 1580 he had

reached Badajoz, on the frontier. Here he fell ill of the mysterious

disease we call influenza, which was afflicting Europe at the time. His

devoted fourth wife, Anne, who accompanied him, prayed that her life

might be taken for his. Her prayer was heard. She died (October 25) and

Philip lived, but the loss deepened his gloom, and in the two years that

he was away from Madrid his yellow beard turned nearly white, and he

came back an old and broken man. How his icy heart turned to his

children at the time may be seen by the letters he constantly wrote to

his elder girls during his absence, full of love and tenderness.

However weary and sad he might be, no courier was allowed to leave

without playful accounts of his adventures, and kindly little messages

to the three orphan children of his last wife. Soon two out of the three

followed their mother to the grave, and only three-year-old Philip was

left as his father’s heir.

 

Relentlessly Alba swept down upon Lisbon, as years before he had pounced

upon the Netherlands, and crushed the life out of Portuguese patriotism.

There was no question of creed to stiffen men’s backs here, no William

of Orange to organise and lead them. The yielding Portuguese were made

of different stuff from the stubborn “beggars of the sea,” and Alba rode

roughshod over them with but little resistance. King Antonio was soon a

fugitive, hunted from town to town, holding out for a few weeks in one

fortress, only to be starved into another, proclaimed a bastard and a

rebel, with a great price upon his head; and yet he wandered for eight

months amongst the mountains, safe from betrayal by the peasants whose

native king he was. In the meanwhile Philip was solemnly accepted as

king by the Portuguese Cortes at Thomar (April 3, 1581) with all the

pomp of ancient ceremonial. He was in the deep mourning which he wore

for the rest of his life, and he tells his little girls in a letter at

the time how his heart turned away from the finery which accompanied

him. Then slowly he came to Lisbon to be crowned, whilst the defeated

Antonio fled to France and thence to England, to be a thorn in his side

for the rest of his life.

 

The accession of power thus accruing to Philip was a great blow both to

England and France. Granvelle’s management of affairs had been so

masterly that all legal forms had been complied with in Portugal; the

regents and the Cortes had acknowledged Philip as king, and Elizabeth

and Catharine had no excuse for open interference, although what could

be done by private intrigue was effected. Catharine, indeed, had set up

a nebulous far-fetched claim of her own to the Portuguese crown, to

obtain some _locus standi_ in the affair, but this did not prevent her

from opening her arms to the other claimant, Don Antonio, when he

arrived in France. He came to England in July 1581, and was made much of

by the queen. In vain did Mendoza, Philip’s ambassador, demand his

surrender as a rebel. Elizabeth said that she had not yet made up her

mind to help him, though he was no rebel, but King of Portugal, but she

had quite decided not to surrender him to be killed. He was too valuable

a card in her hand for her to let him go, and she made the most of him.

Elizabeth’s and Catharine’s first retort to Philip’s assumption of the

Portuguese sovereignty was a pretence of cordial friendship for each

other, and the resumption of active negotiations for Elizabeth’s

marriage with Alençon. Orange was determined to attract once more to his

side the Flemish Catholics, whom Parma’s diplomacy had estranged from

the rebel cause. He considered that the best way to do this was to

invest Alençon--a Catholic prince--with the sovereignty of the States.

Elizabeth would not allow the French as a nation to gain a footing in

Flanders, but her plan was to make Alençon dependent upon her in hopes

of a marriage, to disarm his brother by the same means, and to secure

that any French interference with Flanders must be of Huguenots, under

her control. It suited Catharine to play the game for the purpose of

reducing Philip to extremities in Flanders, and rendering him less able

to resist attack in Portugal, whilst giving him no excuse for an open

quarrel with the French nation. All the