The Gunpowder Plot (History/16th/17th Century History) Read Online Free PDF Page A

activity to his government. On 1 February 1601 the Spanish Council of State reported to Philip III that Constable – named as a great confidant of James – had indeed arrived in Rome, with (it was believed) the consent of the king. 18 The Pope had meanwhile been regaled with the delicious fable that James might be converted to his mother’s faith, and even more grandly that if the papacy and Spain joined forces to secure the English succession, then both England and Scotland might at last return to the old faith. This chimed with the strong view of the Jesuits that in monarchical Europe ‘it was absolutely essential to capture the sovereign’. Persons stated this line forthrightly in his vast correspondence, even in a letter to the Earl of Angus in January 1600: ‘the happiest day that could ever shine to me in this life, were to see both our Realms united together under one Catholic governor.’ Angus and James both fathomed the deeper meaning; no conversion, no succession was the implication. Persons at this time was prepared to allow the view that Constable might be sent to sound out James, but the Pope now retreated from giving his consent. He was more concerned that Philip III should quickly opt for whom he wished to succeed Elizabeth, and the Council of State approved of the papal refusal to give a brief to Constable because they feared that James’s Protestantism was fixed. Was it possible that the poet-envoy just might be gulled with feigned protestations of conversion in order that James should have the Pope in his pocket?
    Clement VIII resisted being an instrument for the policy of the Jesuits and the Spanish monarchy. His settlement of the Archpriest controversy in England had led him to rebuke the former for intemperance, and as the pontiff who had absolved Henri IV he was anxious to find a candidate for the English throne who would be acceptable to France as well as Spain and the English Catholic laity. Lady Arabella Stuart had been considered, but given the delicacy of the situation with her it was still easier to negotiate with James. In 1602 Clement VIII made him a firm offer of support on condition that Prince Henry was raised as a Catholic. Other less elevated men than the Pope had also to assess their positions in the fading light of the last Tudor. One such was Hugh Owen, the renegade Welsh spy master for the archdukes and Spain, who had had his pension renewed by Philip III in 1601 because the king looked to him to nurture the Spanish cause in England. Not the easiest task, especially since the Infanta Isabella – now married to Archduke Albrecht and so co-ruler of the Spanish Netherlands – was herself highly sceptical of any such proposition. Owen in secret reviewed the matter again, taking account of papal preferences, the attitude of the secular priests in England, as well as the majority of the laity. Towards the end of 1602 he received a clandestine visit from his brother Robert, a canon in the French church, and sent by the French government on a brief to pull together measures on the succession. Their exchanges on the political shape of things-to-come were soon marginalized by the long anticipated death of Elizabeth in March 1603, at which point, since she left no heir and no formally designated successor, any Catholic effort to establish a regime friendly to Catholics (if not Catholic) could not be treason. But it was James VI who became king, being better prepared than anyone else, aided by Sir Robert Cecil and the privy council. The country willed it although some well-placed individuals showed no great enthusiasm, and the intervention of the Earl of Northumberland in his approach to the council, many retainers in tow, certainly upset Cecil and those who stood beside him. This success for James was achieved without any foreign aid and more crucially ‘without the need for any active help from his Catholic supporters at home’. It swamped any prospect of real change for them. Blood