CHAP III.] POLICY OF THE GUISES. 77 The Emperor, in order to find employment for the French arms, and prevent them from being directed against himself, would willingly have embroiled France and England in a war; and during the revolt of Guienne, he endeavoured to persuade the Protector Somerset to revive the pretensions of England to that province.18 But although the policy of France, directed by the Guises, was well calculated to provoke hostility, yet the factions with which England was then distracted, as well as the dangerous intrigues of his own family, made Somerset desirous of peace. To foment hostilities between England and Scotland was the natural policy of the Guises, as well from considerations of religion as from the far more powerful motive of family interest. After the accession of Edward VI. the reformed religion had been established in England; and the views of Somerset, a zealous Protestant, were directed to extend the reformation to Scotland, where there was already a considerable Protestant party, and by a marriage between Edward VI. and Mary, the young Queen of Scots, to effect a union of the two crowns. This, however, would have been fatal to the ambition of the Guises, who were desirous of forming a marriage between their young niece and the Dauphin Francis, son of Henry II. And as a union between England and Scotland would have deprived France of a means she had often employed to harass and weaken the former country through the latter, they did not find much difficulty in persuading the French King to refuse the ratification of a treaty concluded at London, March 11th 1547, respecting Boulogne, and for regulating the affairs of Scotland.19 The Scotch Parliament and the Regent Arran had also declined to ratify the previous treaty between Henry VIII. and Francis I., in which Scotland had been included. Party differences in that country were hot and rancorous. The adherents of the reformed religion were for the English marriage and alliance, while the Roman Catholics found their rallying point in France. The latter party had been led by the savage and bigoted Cardinal Beatoun, detested by the Protestants for his cruelty, and even by the Roman Catholic nobles for his overbearing arrogance, which at length caused his destruction. A private affront to Norman Lesly, son of the Earl of Rothes, led that young minded him of the difference between the electoral princes of Germany and the Spanish grandees, and pointed to his father's behaviour towards the former as an example, Philip replied, that there was also a great difference between him and his father, the latter being only the son of a king, while he was the son of an 18 Thuanus, liv. v. (t. i. p. 164). 78 BOULOGNE SURRENDERED TO FRANCE. [Book III. nobleman to effect his assassination in the castle of Saint Andrews, a little before the conclusion of the treaty just alluded to. Mary of Guise the Queen-mother, now the head of the Catholic party, in vain attempted to secure the conspirators, who, though only 150 in number, succeeded in holding the castle of Saint Andrews against her forces; upon which, she applied to her brothers for assistance, and with the aid of twenty-one French galleys and some troops, Saint Andrews was forced to capitulate, July 3rd 1547. Meanwhile the Protector Somerset, advancing with an army of 18,000 men, inflicted a terrible defeat on the Regent Arran, who had much superior forces, at the battle of Pinkey, September 10th 1547. Somerset was prevented from pursuing his victory by domestic disturbances in England, which compelled his return; but this defeat diminished the consideration of the Regent Arran, and increased the influence of the Queen-mother. She saw no safety except in a French alliance, and through the influence of her brothers she succeeded in arranging a marriage between her daughter Mary and the Dauphin Francis. The prospect of securing the crown of Scotland in his family induced Henry II., although at peace with England, to send some troops to the assistance of the Scotch. Mary, the young Queen of Scots, was carried into France for her education till the time should arrive for the consummation of the marriage; and 6000 French troops which had been landed in Scotland assisted in repulsing the attacks of the English. The latter having rejected a summons to desist from these hostilities, · France in 1549 declared open war. A French fleet, under the command of Leo Strozzi, a Florentine refugee, issuing from Havre de Grâce, defeated the English fleet near Guernsey. Towards the end of August, Henry II. in person approached Boulogne with an army and captured some of the neighbouring forts; but the siege of Boulogne itself was deferred till the following year. The French arms were assisted by the distracted state of England. The Earl of Warwick and his party, who had succeeded to the power of Somerset, though they had condemned the Protector for desiring a peace with France, found themselves compelled to adopt that measure; and a treaty was signed, March 24th 1550, by which Boulogne was surrendered to the French for 400,000 crowns, instead of the 2,000,000 stipulated by the treaty of 1546.20 It was indeed too expensive to be kept. During this period the religious persecutions in France were continued with the utmost severity. The policy of the Guises, 20 Rymer, t. xv. p. 211; King Edward VI.'s Journal (Mar. 24th 1549). CHAP. III.] DEATH OF POPE PAUL III. 79 and the despotism which with the Constable was an instinct, united in favour of persecution; and Diana, who had been personally affronted by an enthusiastic reformer, inclined the same way. The splendid fêtes given in Paris at the coronation of Henry's queen, Catherine de' Medici, in June 1549, were concluded by an auto-da-fè, in which four wretches convicted of Lutheranism were burnt at a slow fire. The hunting down of heretics was profitable to the French courtiers. They were put on the same footing as usurers, and it was not unusual for a favourite to obtain a royal brevet granting him the estates of such persons, throughout an entire province.21 The Protestants lost at this time one of their best friends and protectors, Margaret, Queen of Navarre, who died at Bigorre, December 21st 1549. Her daughter, Jeanne d'Albret, though evangelically inclined, was yet too young to afford them much assistance. Pope Paul III., who had attained the great age of eighty-two, expired a little before (November 10th). He may be said to have fallen a victim to his ambition, the ruling passion of so many Popes. During the latter months of his life he had attempted to mollify the Emperor by concessions; he had first suspended, and then dissolved, the Council of Bologna (September 1549), but had obtained nothing by this conduct. Fearing that Parma would fall like Piacenza, into the hands of the Emperor, he had brought that duchy into direct dependance on the Holy See, offering his grandson, Ottavio Farnese, the Duchy of Castro, in exchange for it. But to this arrangement Ottavio would not accede, and with his brothers actually entered into a league with Ferdinand Gonzaga, their father's murderer, for the purpose of recovering Parma. This news threw the aged Pope into so violent a fit of rage, that he fell senseless on the floor; and though he survived three weeks, it can hardly be doubted that the agitation of his spirits contributed to hasten his end. He had occupied the chair of St. Peter fifteen years, and was esteemed for his talent and sagacity. The conclave which assembled for the election of Paul's successor, agitated by the intrigues of France, the Imperial party and the Farnese family, lasted three months. The new Pope was at length chosen by a sort of accident, or caprice. Five or six car "Vieilleville, liv. iii. c. 19. The Pope had in the summer demanded back Piacenza from the Emperor, and on Charles's refusal, the Nuncio, with a rhetoric amounting to blasphemy, cited the Pope, the Emperor, and Granvella to appear within six months before the throne of God, where he also wished to be himself, that, as he could not find justice on earth, he might obtain a hearing before the great Judge. Letter of Marillac, June 20th 1549, in Ribier, t. ii. p. 217. 80 ELECTION OF POPE JULIUS III. [Book III. dinals were standing round the altar of the chapel, discussing the difficulties of the election, when Cardinal del Monte suddenly exclaimed, "Choose me, and you shall be my companions and favourites." 23 His election was effected, and Del Monte, who had been chamberlain to Julius II., assumed the title of Julius III. The Roman prelates of that day were not in general remarkable for morality, but of all the Sacred College, Del Monte, a profligate and a cynic, was, perhaps, the most unfit for the office to which he had been called. One of his first acts was to make the keeper of his ape a cardinal; a young man whose relations to his patron cannot be named. Some cardinals asking Julius what great merits he had found in this person to justify such an elevation? he retorted with an audacious modesty, " And pray what qualities did you observe in me deserving of the tiara?" Del Monte, who as President of the Council of Trent, had taken the lead in transferring that assembly to Bologna, was naturally obnoxious to the Emperor; yet, as Julius III., he preferred the Imperial alliance to that of France, and one of his earliest measures was to conciliate Charles by authorizing the re-opening of the Council at Trent. The Emperor had summoned a Diet to meet at Augsburg on the 25th of June 1550, and in May he left Brussels to repair thither with his son Philip. He was now much more embittered against the Protestants than he had appeared to be during the Smalcaldic war; or rather, perhaps he thought it no longer necessary to retain the mask. The German reformers might infer from his proceedings in the Netherlands what they had to expect in the event of his obtaining absolute power. Before leaving that country he established there the Spanish Inquisition; and he published at Brussels a most cruel and tyrannical edict against the Protestants (April 29th). To buy, sell, or possess, any Protestant books, to hold any secret meetings for discussing the Scriptures, to speak against the worship of the Virgin and saints, was prohibited on pain of death, and confiscation of property. As it was suspected that the enthusiasm of women might cause them to despise death by decapitation, the penalty prescribed for the male sex, it was ordained that females guilty of these offences should be buried alive, or, in case of pertinacity, burnt at a slow fire. The power of the inquisitors was augmented, and informers were encouraged in their hateful office, by receiving a part of the property of the victims.24 Under this horrible decree, a mother who had not denounced her son for reading the Bible, was buried alive at Mons. " Ranke, Popes, vol. i. p. 276. 24 Edict in Sleidan, lib. xxii, sub init. CHAP. III.] DIET OF AUGSBURG, 1550. 81 The Diet of Augsburg was opened July 26th. There was a very full attendance of prelates, but of temporal princes, only Duke Albert of Bavaria, and Henry the younger, of Brunswick, were present in person; the rest sent representatives. The town was so filled with Spanish soldiers that the assembly obtained the name of "the Armed Diet." Charles was able to announce in his speech the consent of the Pope to the re-opening of the Council at Trent. That Council, however, would be useless unless the Protestants could be brought to submit to its decrees; and to enforce this submission was one of the Emperor's objects in summoning the Diet. He regarded most of the princes and states of Germany as being now either subdued, or attached to his policy from inclination; and in the latter class he ranked the Elector Maurice, who had always shown himself subservient to his views. But Maurice had now attained the object of his wishes, and with the duplicity and ambition natural to him, he was disposed to take a very different view of matters, than when he needed the Emperor's assistance to despoil his kinsman. He was sagacious enough to perceive that it was Charles's object to establish in Germany an absolute and hereditary tyranny, as he had done in his paternal dominions; in which case the Elector's own power and authority would dwindle to a mere name, and perhaps be entirely extinguished. He saw that Protestantism was the chief safeguard for the political privileges of the German princes; he had reason to suspect that the Emperor would not tolerate that faith any longer than he was compelled; in his heart, too, Maurice preferred the Protestant faith to the Roman Catholic. Moreover, he was not without cause for personal enmity against the Emperor. He felt that he had been deceived by Charles respecting the treatment of his father-in-law, the Landgrave of Hesse; and his pride at all events, if not his affection for his relative, had been wounded by the neglect with which all his entreaties and remonstrances on that subject had been received. To be the head, moreover, of the Protestant party was a more glorious part than to be the mere lieutenant of the Emperor; and the reproaches of his brethren in religion, if they did not afflict his conscience, mortified at least his self-esteem. But he had a very difficult game to play. He was aware that he had become an object of suspicion to the Protestants, without whose assistance he could not hope to stand against the Emperor; while, on the other hand, any steps he might take to gain their support would be sure to awaken the suspicion and anger of Charles. Maurice met these difficulties with that uncommon mixture of boldness and duplicity which marked his character: he |