694. Elizabeth I vs The Catholics: A Treacherous Conspiracy (Part 4)

After ransacking Spanish treasure ships, would Elizabeth I betray Sir Francis Drake to her enemies? Who did she back in the French civil wars? And, with the help of English conspirators, would Mary Queen of Scots, incur a Spanish invasion, and see her rival Elizabeth assassinated? Join Tom and Dominic as they discuss Sir Francis Drake’s return to England, revolts in Europe, Catholic unrest, and the Throckmorton Plot to see the Queen of England murdered, and replaced with her royal cousin… This episode is sponsored by Anthropic, the team behind Claude. Try Claude for free today at Claude.ai/restishistory. *The Rest Is History LIVE: The Ultimate Victorian Adventure* The maddest expedition in history and it’s NEVER been heard before on the show: join Tom Holland & Dominic Sandbrook LIVE at the Southbank as they tell the bonkers story of Queen Victoria ordering one of history’s most daring assignments ever. ⁠⁠⁠⁠Tickets available for Friday 4th September⁠⁠⁠⁠, the Saturday show is SOLD OUT. Summer sale is here: get an annual membership for an extra 20% off with code SUMMER26. That's ad-free listening, every bonus episode, and full access to our exclusive members' series. Sale ends August 31st, so grab it before summer's over. https://therestishistory.com/club?utm_source=podcast&utm_medium=referral&utm_campaign=summersale26&utm_term=listeners&utm_content=epdescriptionsummer To read our new newsletter, sign up at: ⁠therestishistory.com/newsletters⁠ Advertise with us: ⁠[email protected] _______ Twitter: @TheRestHistory @holland_tom @dcsandbrook Video Editors: Jack Meek, Harry Swan + Adam Thornton Social Producer: Harry Balden Producers: Tabby Syrett & Aaliyah Akude Senior Producer: Callum Hill Executive Producer: Dom Johnson Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

• 0:04Speaker 00

  Hello everyone, and before today's show, I have incredibly exciting news for you about a live show. On Friday, the 4th of September, Dominic and I will be at the South Bank to do something that we have not done before. So you will be the first people to hear it. We are telling the story of what is the ultimate Victorian adventure. The date is 1868, the location is Abyssinia, and the Emperor of Abyssinia has been writing letters to Queen Victoria, who rather rudely has not replied to them. So the Emperor of Abyssinia,

• 0:45Speaker 00

  annoyed about this, has kidnapped a number of British subjects. In response, Britain sends an expedition to rescue the captives. And it is no exaggeration to say, it is massive. On this expedition, 13,000 soldiers, 40,000 animals, including 44 elephants, and the British even put down a railway line to transport everything. It's an incredible story, full of jaw-dropping events, ludicrous characters, lots of moustaches, lots of general Victorian shenanigans. And as I say, it is the first time that we have ever done it

• 1:28Speaker 00

  on The Rest is History. I don't want to blow our trumpet, but I think it's going to be an absolute Rest is History classic. So if you want to get a ticket for the ultimate Victorian adventure at the South Bank in London on Friday, the 4th of September, you know where to go. TheRestIsHistory.com.

• 1:52Speaker 01

  This episode is brought to you by the Gates Foundation. We have touched on the fall of the Roman Empire a few times on this show, haven't we? But what our listeners may not know is that among the causes that historians talk about, it's not just barbarian invasions, there's also talk of a disease which people call Roman fever, which I believe we know now as malaria.

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• 2:53Speaker 00

  This episode is supported by Anthropic, the team behind Claude. Now, history's biggest leaps started as hard questions that people didn't want asked.

• 3:04Speaker 01

  Yeah, there's a classic example of that at the end of the 15th century. And the hard question in particular was, what is out there beyond the Atlantic Ocean to the west? And as you will know, the man who found the answer to that question was the explorer Christopher Columbus. And he realizes, or rather, everybody else realizes, that there is a vast continent out there, and it is, of course, the Americas. So Anthropic knows the importance of questions, and it's why Anthropic is founded on one hard question above all. How can we ensure that the AI revolution really goes well for ordinary people?

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• 4:07Speaker 01

  The dragon, that our seas did raise his crest and brought back heaps of gold into his nest, unto his foes more terrible than thunder. Glory of his age, after ages, wonder, excelling all those that excelled before. It's feared we shall have none such any more. Affecting all, he sold and undertake, valiant, just, wise, mild, honest, godly, Drake. This man, when I was little, I did meet, as he was walking up Totnes's long street. He asked me whose I was, I answered him. He asked me if his good friend was within.

• 4:49Speaker 01

  A fair red orange in his hand he had, he gave it me, whereof I was right glad. Takes and kissed me, and praised, God bless my boy, which I record with comfort to this day. So that was a poem published in 1628 by a man from Devon, as you can tell from the reading.

• 5:13Speaker 00

  Yeah, you could.

• 5:14Speaker 01

  But interestingly, the first ever poet in Canada to write in English. So that's a lovely little gift there to our Rest is History Club member, Mark Carney, who will surely enjoy that.

• 5:28Speaker 00

  And to all our Canadian listeners as well.

• 5:30Speaker 01

  And now you've had some Canadian history. No more complaints for the rest of this year, please. So this bloke's name, the first ever poet in Canada to write in English, he was Robert Hayman. And he served between 1618 and 1628 as the governor of a short-lived English colony in Newfoundland. And his father had been the MP in Totnes, in Devon. And this was how, as a boy, the young Robert Hayman had come to meet Sir Francis Drake. And he had been given this orange by the great man. Of course, the orange, an exotic fruit.

• 6:06Speaker 00

  Red, he just calls it, doesn't he?

• 6:08Speaker 01

  Yeah, the red orange.

• 6:10Speaker 00

  It's really interesting. Yeah.

• 6:11Speaker 01

  That is a reminder of Francis Drake's exotic travels and his circumnavigation of the globe. And obviously, this bloke, Hayman, yeah, this is the kind of thing you'd remember all your life, because Drake, the preeminent, the paramount English hero of the age, perhaps of the entire century. And it's a tribute to the effect that Drake had on generations of English men and women. You know, the fact that he's embedded in the national imagination as a hero, really without peer.

• 6:43Speaker 00

  I think it's a very touching poem. I mean, kind of there's a quality of naivety to it, which is very affecting.

• 6:49Speaker 01

  Which I record with comfort to this day, you know? It's lovely.

• 6:53Speaker 00

  And tribute to kind of Drake's enduring fame, both at the time when Hayman is writing it, and in his childhood. And that fame is unsurprising, because in our previous episode, we followed Drake in his ship, the Golden Hind, around the world. The Golden Hind, only the second ship in history to have performed that circumnavigation. And when Drake returns to England, he is a national hero, not just because he has achieved the greatest feat of navigation in all English history, but also because he has robbed and humiliated the King of Spain. He has forced his way into what the Spaniards called the Mare Clausum,

• 7:32Speaker 00

  the closed sea, namely, the Pacific. He's ranged at will along the coastlines of Western America, Spain's great American empire. And he has plundered so much gold and silver, and been given so many clothes, that the total sum amounts to more than Elizabeth I. first's entire annual income. So maybe £400,000 in all. So a huge, huge amount of money.

• 8:03Speaker 01

  But to remind people, we ended last time with Drake arriving home in Plymouth in September 1580. And he is very anxious, isn't he? Because, if we remember, he is very much persona non grata in the courtyards of Spain. And he does not know how Elizabeth will react to his return. Will he be in the deepest of trouble?

• 8:27Speaker 00

  Yeah. So Elizabeth is notoriously cautious when it comes to foreign policy. She really hates anything that might threaten war. And the problem for Drake is that during his absence, going around the world, the power of the Spanish king has only grown, you know, his own incredible feats notwithstanding. So in January 1580, Philip had become the King of Portugal, as well of Spain. So this brings him not just Iberia, the whole of Iberia, but all of Portugal's empire, which, like Spain's, spans the world. And in the Low Countries, a rebellion against Philip's rule has been blazing there for over a decade. There, too, the fortunes of war seem to be turning in his favor. And this is because

• 9:12Speaker 00

  he has sent a very formidable new captain, which is, this is a guy who is Philip's own nephew, he's called Alexander Fornesi, and he is the Prince of Parma. And Parma is a name for listeners to remember, because his presence in the Low Countries with a battle trained army is going to be a very, very big factor in. The story of England's relations with Spain from this point on. And Palmer has been busy pacifying the revolt in the Low Countries, city by city. And every time he takes a city, his army of 30,000 men becomes that little bit more experienced. And they are parked there just across the sea from England.

• 9:55Speaker 00

  And what makes this all the more alarming is that Philip is clearly intent on probing the defences of Elizabeth's own kingdoms, which includes Ireland as well as England and Wales. And in fact, when Drake returns, an invasion force of Spanish troops is still in the field of Ireland and Catholic priests, including two Jesuits, are on the loose in England. So this is the kind of the, the alarms that we talked about in our, our second episode. These are still current when Drake returns. So it's not surprising that Drake, when he's informed this by his wife and by the mayor of Plymouth, who have rode out to the Golden Hind to talk to him. He must be worried that Elizabeth is going to go for the, the, the course of appeasement,

• 10:37Speaker 00

  that she will hand the treasure back to Spain and effectively sacrifice Drake himself.

• 10:43Speaker 01

  And lots of sort of foreign policy realists would advise that that's the sensible course because you always, you know, you, you, you have to accommodate to the greater power.

• 10:53Speaker 00

  Yes. And among these people who are pressing Elizabeth to get rid of Drake, of course, is Philip's ambassador to her court, a guy called Bernardino de Mendoza. And he is a very, very menacing foe. He's patrician, he's haughty, he is very zealously Catholic. And he is playing the part of a Soviet ambassador in London in kind of 1957.

• 11:18Speaker 01

  Right.

• 11:18Speaker 00

  He is all about the subversion of Elizabeth's regime. And when he sends a message to Elizabeth saying, I want to come and protest about Drake. And Elizabeth says, no, I'm not seeing you. Mendoza sends Elizabeth a very blunt warning. A war is easily begun, but not so soon ended. And this of course is playing on, you know, Elizabeth knows this. And so too, to be fair, does William Cecil, Lord Burghley, her number two, effectively her prime minister, because he's a man who very much loves to give the forces of popery a bloody nose. He is the, you know, the great guardian of Protestant England. But he thinks Drake just isn't worth the hassle. You know, come on, he's, he's not worth it.

• 12:00Speaker 00

  Let's try and keep our powder dry and not get into a massive bust up with the Spanish over him.

• 12:05Speaker 01

  But there are lots of people in Elizabeth's council who say, hold on. You know, this bloke is a patriotic hero, he's a Protestant hero, you know, you should back him. Domestic opinion and ideological solidarity are more important than bowing the knee to proud, haughty Spain.

• 12:23Speaker 00

  And profit. So all of these things kind of merge. So let's look at Francis Walsingham, Elizabeth's spy chief. He is an investor in Drake's expedition. And so obviously, if the treasure is kept, he stands to make an enormous profit. But of course, I mean, he's backed Drake for ideological as well as for, for financial reasons.

• 12:45Speaker 01

  Right.

• 12:45Speaker 00

  And there are two other key members of the Privy Council, both of them great favourites of Elizabeth, both of them investors in Drake's expedition. One of them, we talked about in our previous episode, and this is Sir Christopher Hatten. And his emblem is Golden Hind.

• 13:00Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 13:00Speaker 00

  So Drake has named his ship, the Golden Hind, after that emblem. Now, there is a slight problem with Hatten, namely that Drake had executed Hatten's secretary, Thomas Doughty.

• 13:10Speaker 01

  Right. And lots of listeners will be, will be curious about this.

• 13:14Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 13:15Speaker 01

  Does Sir Christopher Hatten care more about this bloke who'd been his right-hand man and his secretary? Or does he care more about having a ship named after himself and loads of money?

• 13:24Speaker 00

  What do you think?

• 13:25Speaker 01

  I'm a people person. You know, I'm a loyal person. I think I'd care more about my secretary.

• 13:30Speaker 00

  Would you? I don't believe you for a minute.

• 13:32Speaker 01

  Ah, come on.

• 13:34Speaker 00

  Of course, Hatten is, I mean, he's a little, you know, the, the Doughty's relatives are on the scene and are petitioning him. But when Hatten is told how much money Drake has brought back, he goes, brilliant, let's keep him. This is fantastic.

• 13:46Speaker 01

  I never liked Doughty anyway.

• 13:48Speaker 00

  I never liked him. He was a rubbish secretary.

• 13:49Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 13:50Speaker 00

  And the other person, the other key player, who's a massive favourite of Elizabeth's, who is a big Drake fan, is someone who we haven't mentioned yet in this series. We did mention him in our series on the young Elizabeth. And this is Robert Dudley, who is the Earl of Leicester.

• 14:04Speaker 01

  Oh.

• 14:05Speaker 00

  He's kind of Elizabeth's ultimate favourite, had been her childhood friend. He's very handsome, he's very haughty, he's very dashing. Elizabeth loves all those kind of characteristics in a man. And Leicester had been a very likely candidate to marry Elizabeth in the early years of her reign, according to public opinion. I think in reality, Elizabeth was never going to marry him, but it was widely thought that she wanted to. By this point, there's no prospect of Elizabeth marrying Leicester at all, but he remains very much a kind of key player at court. She's very, very fond of him. He's a very domineering figure at court. And like Walsingham, he's a hardline Protestant. I mean, basically, he is a Puritan.

• 14:42Speaker 01

  Right.

• 14:43Speaker 00

  So I would say the uber Protestant, the Puritan wing of the Privy Council, they are all in favour of Drake. And that is partly because they've invested in his voyage, but it is also very ideological. And so the result is that the Privy Council is split and effectively it is therefore down to Elizabeth. The big question, which way will she jump? And the answer reaches Drake a few weeks after his arrival in Plymouth. And she sends him a letter and says, fear not for your safety. Bring me some of the loot. And so Drake gets a, a train of pack horses and he loads them down with gold and silver that he's plundered from the Spanish and he heads for London. And when he arrives there, the Queen grants him a six-hour interview and she is obviously

• 15:26Speaker 00

  dazzled by the treasure that he's brought back from his adventures. But I think she is also very smitten by Drake himself. She loves his stories, the Straits of Magellan, New Albion, the Spice Islands. You know, she loves a valiant Chevalier. So she admires his boldness, his courage, his kind of sea dog swagger. He is Lord Flashheart in the Blackadder series. I think he makes her go a little weak at the knees. And so she decides, I think Drake's great. He's brought me lots of treasure. I want to keep it. And I, you know, I'm going to give Drake a massive reward. Now, obviously this is tricky. It's a delicate, tight rope to tread. If she's going to reward Drake, she wants to do it in a way that doesn't make it obvious

• 16:11Speaker 00

  and offend the Spanish too much. But she pulls it off absolutely brilliantly. So what she does, she tells Drake officially, register the treasure that you've taken and have it sent to the Tower. But unofficially, she tells him, look, siphon off £10,000 of this £400,000. And just to put it, you know, that is more than her entire annual income. So £10,000 is a colossal fortune. I mean, enormous.

• 16:39Speaker 01

  I mean, super rich level, millions upon millions upon millions.

• 16:44Speaker 00

  And also I think this reflects very well on both Drake and, and Elizabeth. She winks at his quietly taking £14,000 for his men. So they are all going to profit massively as well.

• 16:53Speaker 01

  Wow. Yeah.

• 16:54Speaker 00

  And Drake also very quietly donates £100,000 directly to the Queen. And again, all this is being done off the books. It's, you know, behind the scenes. Mendoza, you know, I mean, he strongly suspects what's going on, but he doesn't have proof. And Elizabeth handles him with a very, very cool display of duplicity. He is demanding all this time, I want to see you, I want to complain about this. And she retorts to him, well, I will not see you until you have given me a full account of this Spanish invasion that you have launched of my kingdom in Ireland.

• 17:27Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 17:28Speaker 00

  And it helps that by this point, so we're in November, the rebellion in Ireland has been crushed. So the Spanish task force has been wiped out at a place called Smurwick. So that is now dead and buried. So Elizabeth's hand is slightly stronger. And Mendoza, of course, is not going to apologise for it. So there is a standoff and that absolutely suits Elizabeth. She does licence the return of £30,000 to Spanish merchants who can prove legitimate claims against Drake, which of course they have to come to London to do. So there are lots who don't do that. But otherwise, she just says, I've investigated this and I have discovered that Drake has no charge to answer.

• 18:08Speaker 00

  And in particular, the accusation that he captured a treasure ship is absolute rubbish. And I am shocked. Shocked that the Spanish ambassador should be propagating such lies.

• 18:22Speaker 01

  So this is very much your Cold War parallel.

• 18:24Speaker 00

  Yes.

• 18:24Speaker 01

  You know, this is like a Soviet and American ambassador saying, well, actually you are the people who are meddling and going on interventionist adventures. And I'm actually really horrified that you would make these allegations about us when we are so clearly devoted to, you know, peace and freedom and whatever.

• 18:40Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 18:40Speaker 01

  And in fact, they're both like busily intervening in each other's affairs and in their client states and all that.

• 18:45Speaker 00

  Absolutely. And I think Elizabeth can get away with this because the Pacific is so far away. It is so fantastically distant. There isn't really any evidence. And the truth is, she was never going to return such a windfall because she is too mean, too short of money, you know, she's not going to look a gift horse in the mouth.

• 19:03Speaker 01

  So remember, you said the 400,000 was bigger than her entire annual income, right?

• 19:08Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 19:08Speaker 01

  I mean, this is a point at which the great issue for the monarchy in the 16th and 17th centuries is raising money. So for her, a windfall like this, it would be suicidal. It would be insane to give that away. You're always going to keep it.

• 19:21Speaker 00

  Also, she knows from Drake, because Drake has found out this for himself, that one of the reasons why the Spanish forces under Palmer in the Low Countries are starting to do better is because technological advances in South America are fueling increased silver attraction from the great mines there.

• 19:39Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 19:40Speaker 00

  So there is an increased flow of silver, which is being fed back to Spain and ultimately to Philip's war against Protestantism. And this war against Protestantism is actively raging in the Low Countries, but it is also funding the Cold War against Protestant England. And so I think Elizabeth feels, well, if Philip is benefiting from all this silver in his Cold War against me, why shouldn't I use his silver against him? And actually, not just the Cold War, she shipped some of the silver to the Dutch rebels in the Low Countries. You know, this sense of proxy battles being fought, again, that's kind of very American Soviet in the Cold War, isn't it?

• 20:19Speaker 01

  Yeah, completely.

• 20:20Speaker 00

  This is a big moment because cautiously, you know, in her kind of classic crabbed and evasive manner, Elizabeth has taken the side of the most hawkish elements in her privy council, so Leicester and Walsingham and Hatton and so on. And she is actually not afraid to signal this publicly by deploying, you know, her incredible genius for theatre, for giving her subjects scenes that will then glow in their collective hearts. So on the first of April 1581, Elizabeth meets Drake on board the Golden Hind, which has docked in Deptford down the Thames from London.

• 21:04Speaker 00

  And there she has him knighted. And it's hard to overemphasise what an insane honour this is for a yeoman's son. Elizabeth is very stingy about handing out knighthoods. So for instance, Walsingham, who is her chief secretary, her spy chief, he'd only been knighted in 1577 after years of service. And he is from the kind of background that would entitle him to a knighthood. Drake is absolutely not. He's the grandson of a yeoman farmer. And it is a brilliant occasion and it seems like the whole of London has turned out for it. Drake is now the great public hero of the English crowds. And the spectators who've gathered in Deptford, they get so excited that loads of them try to pile over the gangplank onto the ship.

• 21:48Speaker 00

  And the gangplank gives way and they all drop into the mud. And this is great fun, great excitement had by all. And on board the Golden Hind, Elizabeth, very coyly, but ostentatiously loses a garter. And the whole proceeding is a massive profugation to the Spanish.

• 22:06Speaker 01

  I maintain, by the way, that this would make an excellent Carry On film.

• 22:11Speaker 00

  I think it would make, Kate Blanchett, I think, missed a trick by not losing her garter on the Golden Hind. I'd say, I think it would also make a tremendous patriotic stirring epic. Anyway, so the question is, why has the inveterately cautious Elizabeth taken such a bold and flamboyant step? Now, we've said, she is clearly very impressed with Drake. She thinks he's tremendous. You know, she's always inviting him in for chats. But I think she is also playing four dimensional chess. And she is very good at playing four dimensional chess and her move works on a kind of couple of levels. So first of all, it obviously plays well with her subjects. Drake is the great national hero and Elizabeth knows that by having him knighted, it gilds her own brand.

• 22:55Speaker 00

  And this is really important because she has to worry that war is threatening. England does remain riven by sectarian divisions and its future as a Protestant kingdom hangs by the single thread that is Elizabeth's own life. And so, you know, she's always getting intelligence briefings from Walsingham saying that there are assassins out there. So she wants to, she wants to woo her subjects. You know, she wants to make herself the great beloved of the English people. And so therefore it is desperately important to her to project a sense of her rule as something glamorous and golden and self-confident, to kind of portray herself as Gloriana.

• 23:35Speaker 00

  And to that end, having Drake knighted works superbly because to this day, I think, the image of Elizabeth personally dubbing Drake a knight on the deck of the Golden Hind remains one of the great iconic scenes of English history.

• 23:54Speaker 01

  Overseas listeners won't get this, but when we were growing up in the sort of seventies and eighties, there were these books called Ladybird books that everybody in England read. They were the guides to history. And this is your classic Ladybird book illustration, isn't it?

• 24:05Speaker 00

  Yes.

• 24:05Speaker 01

  You know, people cheering with great ruffs, huzzards from the crowd. They didn't have the people falling in the mud.

• 24:11Speaker 00

  No.

• 24:11Speaker 01

  Yeah, good Queen Best who looks gorgeous, knighting a very handsome swashbuckling Francis Drake, makes you proud to be English.

• 24:18Speaker 00

  And unfortunately, it didn't actually happen. Elizabeth didn't dub Drake herself, but she got a Frenchman.

• 24:24Speaker 01

  Oh my God. This is literally the worst moment in the history of the podcast.

• 24:29Speaker 00

  A guy called Monsieur de Marchemont to do it. But obviously Elizabeth wouldn't have asked Marchemont to knight Drake had she not been confident that Marchemont would do it. And it was also Marchemont who picks up Elizabeth's fallen garter, which she'd coyly let slip. And it's all very flirty. So it's, you know, it's a proper entente cordiale between England and France. And so here, I think, is another reason for all these tremendous theatrics aboard the Golden Hind. Elizabeth is sending a public message to Spain about the strength of her relationship with France. And listeners who heard our second episode, which was all about the St Bartholomew's Day massacre, may find this odd.

• 25:12Speaker 00

  Why is a Protestant queen flirting with the ambassador of a Catholic country in which only a decade before thousands of Protestants had been massacred in pogroms across the country and most particularly in the capital in France? And it's a very good question. And to answer it, we just need to do a quick retrospective to look at what has been happening in France since that terrible day on St Bartholomew's Day in August 1572. Because France, like Spain, is always a preponderant influence on English foreign policy. What happens across the channel in France, the great European superpower alongside Spain, matters enormously.

• 25:57Speaker 00

  And basically, nothing good has been happening because the massacre had resulted only in further bloodshed, only in further war.

• 26:05Speaker 01

  All right. So let's have a look at the situation in France. So basically, we have three rival factions and each of them annoyingly is led by somebody called Henri.

• 26:15Speaker 00

  Henry. You say it's annoying. I think it's quite fun. So they're, they're called les trois Henri in France, the three Henrys. And I, I think that rather getting stressed about the fact that they're all called Henry, I think we should lean into it.

• 26:30Speaker 01

  Okay. Well, you're easily pleased, Tom. I mean, what's all I say?

• 26:32Speaker 00

  There was a film made in France in the seventies called The Three Henrys. You know, we always say this about Tudor politics, but there was a kind of Game of Thrones element to it. I think it would actually make a really good drama.

• 26:46Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 26:47Speaker 00

  So there are these three factions. They're each led by a guy called Henri or Henry. The first of these is the Huguenots, who are bloodied and diminished in the wake of the various pogroms and massacres that happened on St Bartholomew's Day in 1572. But they haven't gone away. So they've lost Paris, they've lost the North, but they remain strong in the South. And their leader is Henry Henri, the King of Navarre. And he was the guy whose marriage, six days before the massacre, had drawn all the various Protestant nobles to Paris where they could then be massacred. And Henry himself, the King of Navarre, had been effectively taken prisoner, kept under house arrest and obliged to renounce his Protestantism.

• 27:30Speaker 00

  But then in 1576, he'd been able to escape the court and had immediately resumed his loyalty to Protestantism. And he's very, very impressive. He's very smart. He's very personable. He's military able. And spoiler alert, in the long run, he is going to triumph and emerge as Henry IV, the most popular king in all of French history, the only king who the French revolutionaries do not kind of chuck out during the revolution. I mean, I, who would play him? Pedro Pascal perhaps?

• 28:03Speaker 01

  Oh my god. So that's faction number one. Pedro Pascal is leading them. He's the king in Navarre. Brilliant. That's the Huguenots. Faction number two, we're going to go to the other end of the spectrum, aren't we? We're going to go to the absolute kind of ultra Catholics, right?

• 28:18Speaker 00

  Yes. So this is the Catholic League, which had been founded by the Duke of Guise, who was the Second Henry, who we talked a lot about in our first two episodes. So he's the absolute darling of the Catholic diehards and the mob in Paris especially.

• 28:33Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 28:33Speaker 00

  He has this tremendous aura of martial glamour, which has been massively enhanced by the fact that he, like his dad, has been given a scar across his face, the result of a saber wound that he'd suffered in battle in 1575. And he is by now effectively the ruler of France. He commands the largest armies. He is the effective master of Paris. And he's put the monarchy itself in his shade. And he is ambitious, basically not only to bring France under his control, and perhaps his enemies, say, directly under his rule, you know, there are all kinds of rumours, he wants to make himself king and seize the throne. But he also aspires to seize the thrones of England and Scotland.

• 29:18Speaker 00

  And the reason why he can realistically dream of this is because he is the cousin of Mary, Queen of Scots. And so if he can depose Elizabeth and marry Mary, he will absolutely be quids in.

• 29:34Speaker 01

  He'd get both. So who's playing him?

• 29:37Speaker 00

  I don't know, Mads Mikkelsen perhaps?

• 29:39Speaker 01

  Because you're just thinking Scar, are you?

• 29:41Speaker 00

  I'm thinking Scar. I'm thinking Gaunt, kind of faintly Machiavellian, but impressive.

• 29:45Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 29:45Speaker 00

  I mean, he's a smart, you know?

• 29:47Speaker 01

  Le Chiffre from Casino Royale. Brilliant.

• 29:49Speaker 00

  Yes. Do you think, I mean, I think he'd be quite good.

• 29:52Speaker 01

  Yeah, fine. I mean, you're the casting director. And so our Third Henry is the actual king of France.

• 29:59Speaker 00

  Yes.

• 29:59Speaker 01

  Who is attempting somehow to unite his kingdom torn apart by these two factions. And he's-

• 30:06Speaker 00

  Henry the Third.

• 30:07Speaker 01

  Yeah, Henri III. And he is the younger brother of the bloke who was king in the massacre, who was Charles. And he's a dashing, unusually for a French king. So we've done a lot of French kings on this podcast, who've turned out to be useless and spineless and, you know, physically weird in one way or another. This bloke is actually fine.

• 30:25Speaker 00

  Well, he'd been very dashing as a young prince, and he'd won various victories over the Huguenots. And then he had a kind of mad spell as king of Poland.

• 30:33Speaker 01

  Never made that choice.

• 30:35Speaker 00

  And then he'd succeeded his brother, and so he'd had to dash back.

• 30:39Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 30:39Speaker 00

  To take over the throne. And he is dashing, but he also has suspiciously flamboyant tastes. So a bit like Edward the Second in England, he's a great one for a favourite, a mignon. And so this generates all kinds of dark rumours of sodomy and crossdressing and various other things that Catholic kings are not supposed to get up to. And whether these rumours are true or not, he doesn't have any children. And so this is another reason why the Duke of Guise, you know, it seems plausible that he might be suspecting to replace Henry the Third and his dynasty.

• 31:18Speaker 01

  Oh, right. Who's playing him, by the way?

• 31:22Speaker 00

  Andrew Scott.

• 31:23Speaker 01

  That's superb.

• 31:24Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 31:24Speaker 01

  Okay. So this is a great film.

• 31:27Speaker 00

  Yeah, it would be. They should make it. So if Mads Mikkelsen is going to replace Andrew Scott on the throne of France.

• 31:35Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 31:35Speaker 00

  He needs to get rid of the Valois dynasty, the ruling dynasty. But the Valois dynasty isn't completely doomed. So the French king may not have a son, but he does have a younger brother. And this is a guy called François Francis, and he is the Duke of Anjou. And he is the fourth of four brothers, and the only one who hadn't been a king, which he massively resents for understandable reasons. He's physically quite unprepossessing. He's got smallpox when he was eight, and it left him with a pitted face and bandy legs and a twisted spine. But he's a tremendous, he's a very smart, active, calculating guy and very personable. He's a devout Catholic, but not aggressively so. So he'd been perfectly

• 32:20Speaker 00

  happy to ally himself with Henry of Navarre, Pedro Pascal.

• 32:24Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 32:24Speaker 00

  The Huguenot leader. And he's kind of the standard bearer for a new trend in politics, not just in France, but across Europe, which is to prioritise political stability over confessional allegiances, over kind of religious identities. And so to his admirers, he is a pragmatist. He is a man whom the Protestants can do business with. But to his detractors, among whom you would include the Duke of Guise and the Catholic League, he's a trimmer. And the word that hostile Catholics give to him, he is a politique. He is someone who places politics over loyalty to God.

• 33:07Speaker 01

  Right.

• 33:08Speaker 00

  But it's this quality, you know, his quality as a politique, that in 1578 had opened the door to the Duke of Anjou, who at this point is 23, had given him the opportunity to court a woman who is 22 years his elder. And this is none other than our own beloved Queen, Elizabeth the First, good Queen Bess.

• 33:35Speaker 01

  Wow. I was gonna say, he's clearly going to be played by Emmanuel Macron. But we should draw a veil over that. So Elizabeth the First, I mean, this issue of who she's going to marry has hung over her ever since she became queen.

• 33:47Speaker 00

  Yeah, and it's still current. It's still rumbling on.

• 33:49Speaker 01

  And she has had a number of suitors, hasn't she, including the current king of France? So Anjou's elder brother. But this guy, Francis of Anjou, he actually comes to England in person to try to woo her. And that's a very big step.

• 34:06Speaker 00

  He's the only one who's done it, to be fair.

• 34:07Speaker 01

  But it didn't work. Although Elizabeth quite likes him.

• 34:11Speaker 00

  Well, she thinks, she really likes him. I think she's genuinely fond of him. She calls him her frog. Whether that's because he looks like a frog, or whether it's because the word frog is, the English are already starting to use that as a term for the French at this point, is unclear.

• 34:28Speaker 01

  Right.

• 34:29Speaker 00

  And the reason that Monsieur de Marchemont, the guy who picked up Elizabeth's garter and knighted Drake, was in London, was because he was there kind of acting as Anjou's kind of agent, his kind of marriage broker. Now, the problem for Elizabeth is that the reaction among her Protestant subjects to the notion, the prospect, that she might marry a French Catholic prince is one of absolute horror. So much so that in 1579, when Anjou had been in London in person, and had been out for a romantic bard trip on the Thames with Elizabeth, it's likely that a boatman committed an assassination attempt on Anjou. The thing was so embarrassing that it was all covered up, but it almost certainly was an attempt

• 35:14Speaker 00

  to have Anjou killed. And also in 1579, a lawyer by the name of John Stubbs, a Puritan, had written a pamphlet which compared Anjou to a serpent and Elizabeth to Eve.

• 35:26Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 35:27Speaker 00

  Except, you know, there's an issue with comparing Elizabeth to Eve. And so Stubbs had promptly added, she is also our Adam and sovereign lord or lordly lady of this land. So the kind of wrestling with the fact that Elizabeth is a woman rather than a man. But he'd gone all in against Anjou as a potential husband for Elizabeth, said that Elizabeth was risking a second Saint Bartholomew's Day massacre in London. So that's very punchy. And so unsurprisingly, Elizabeth was furious, and Stubbs ends up having his right hand chopped off for inciting sedition. So that's a measure of, you know, you push Elizabeth too far. There's no nonsense about freedom of speech. You know, she's not having that.

• 36:07Speaker 01

  But some of her closest advisers, Chief Crone is very, very opposed to the idea of this French marriage, aren't they? So Walsingham, Robert Dudley.

• 36:18Speaker 00

  Yeah, the Earl of Leicester. Yeah. And also on the Catholic side, there are also, there's massive opposition. So William Allen, the guy who had founded all the seminaries on the continent and kept sending Catholic priests over to England to try and subvert Elizabeth's regime, kind of Elizabeth's greatest enemy among the English emigres, he thinks it's monstrous as well. And he explains it in terms of what he sees as the monstrousness of Elizabeth's depravity. So he writes a pamphlet in which he goes all in that Elizabeth is the little whore, the daughter of the great whore, Amber Lynn. And he said that, he claimed that her desire for Anjou was to the disgrace of Prince's majesty and the

• 36:59Speaker 00

  whole nation's reproach by unspeakable and incredible variety of lust. But it has to be emphasised, all of this is nonsense. The fact that Elizabeth is ready to accept Anjou's blandishments owes nothing to lust, nor even to her undoubted fondness for him. Because at stake are the needs of her kingdom, as Elizabeth understands them. She is using her virginity as a diplomatic tool. And if Elizabeth is facing a showdown with Spain, such a menacing enemy.

• 37:35Speaker 00

  Then Elizabeth thinks, I might as well try and do all that I can to build bridges with the other great Catholic superpower, namely France. But even having said that, France isn't really the focus of her calculations. The real focus of her calculations is what's going on in the Low Countries, which by this point is it's an absolute dumpster fire. And why is it such a nightmare? What does the Duke of Anjou have to do with it? In what way might Anjou be a solution to the problem? Well, we need to move from France to the Low Countries and see what the state of play is there. So first of all, there is very good reason why ideological reason, religious reason, why Elizabeth and Protestants in England more generally should be alarmed by events in the Netherlands.

• 38:20Speaker 00

  We kind of compared it to, it's the Protestant Gaza. It's, it's something that's calculated to alarm co-religionists in England.

• 38:30Speaker 01

  To remind people, this is where the local Protestants are in revolt against their Spanish overlords.

• 38:35Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 38:35Speaker 01

  And this war has been raging, fought very brutally. And the comparison with Gaza, it's become this kind of international story that strikes rage and fear and shock and outrage into the hearts of English Protestants.

• 38:51Speaker 00

  And Protestants look at, at the way that the Spanish troops in the Low Countries are repressing this revolt. And they say, you know, this is war crimes, it's genocide, it's absolute horror. These are the forces of Antichrist trampling down the godly and fertilizing the soil with their blood. And of course, it offers Protestants in England a glimpse of what their fate would be should Palmer and his 30,000 Spanish troops manage to cross the seas and land in England. And it's unsettling for them, especially because Protestantism in the Low Countries is something that's grown up organically. It's something that's kind of, it's, it's, it's not been top down as it was in England. So to quote Jonathan Israel, the great scholar of, of the Low Countries in this period,

• 39:36Speaker 00

  it had worked essentially from the bottom upwards instead of from government circles downwards. And so this had won in the Low Countries, a kind of very unusually broad based sense of legitimacy, much broader than, than it had been in England. And it had made a clash with the very Catholic Philip of Spain kind of inevitable. Because Philip is ruling them, he, he is the Lord of the Netherlands. It's part of the kind of inheritance that he'd had from his father, Charles V, the great Habsburg emperor. And so over the course of the 1560s, Philip had gone in really hard. So in 1565, he'd insisted on the full enforcement of heresy laws. In 1567, he'd sent a Spanish army to start pacifying the, the rebellious Protestant cities in the Low Countries.

• 40:20Speaker 00

  Thousands of Protestants had been executed as heretics. And in 1568, open warfare had broken out between the Spanish and the rebels against Philip's rules. And the fortunes of war had been seesawing this way and that for over a decade, when the rebels in 1579 put out feelers to the Duke of Anjou. And their question is, would he accept the sovereignty of the Low Countries in place of Philip the Second? So they're not offering the crown, there isn't a kind of crown of the Low Countries, but they're saying, would you become the Lord of the Low Countries in place of Philip? And Anjou says, yeah, absolutely, I would. I'd love to, that would be great. You know, he, he, all his brothers have been kings of France, he hasn't, so why shouldn't he go and be?

• 41:03Speaker 00

  And there'd been protracted negotiations and finally he had signed on the dotted line. And in January 1581, Anjou had been officially proclaimed the prince and the Lord of the Netherlands. And in June 1581, a crucial moment in the history of kind of revolution more generally in Europe and the West, so including America. The states generals in the Low Countries had issued an act of abjuration, formally renouncing the rule of the King of Spain and his heirs. So it's a kind of huge ideological turning point, a kind of pivot point.

• 41:35Speaker 01

  First time this has happened, right?

• 41:37Speaker 00

  Kind of, basically, yeah.

• 41:39Speaker 01

  That an assembly speaking for the people says, we are casting off our...

• 41:43Speaker 00

  Yeah. So, so you know, you can see how this would reverberate. And in February 1582, Anjou has been in England, but he thinks that, charming though Elizabeth is, she's playing hard to get, it's becoming pretty clear, she's not going to marry me after all. Rather than hang around in England, I am going to cross the sea and go to the Low Countries and rule there as their lord. And so he leaves England and Elizabeth, as it turns out for the last time, she rides with him through Kent, and then he takes ship from Dover and he heads to the Low Countries. Now, the engagement between Elizabeth and Anjou is not broken off. And again, just to emphasize, this isn't because she fancies him, it's for reasons of anti-Spanish diplomacy.

• 42:27Speaker 00

  She wants Anjou in the Netherlands because although he's a French Catholic, he's a better bet to be Lord of the Netherlands for England than Philip of Spain is.

• 42:40Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 42:40Speaker 00

  And actually, having him establish his rule successfully in the Low Countries would secure a host of English objectives. So it would result in the removal of Palmer and his terrifying Spanish army. I mean, that would be brilliant. It would also restore trade links between the Low Countries and England, and it's been one of the themes of The Rest Is History over years, that England's trade links with the Low Countries in the Middle Ages and in the 16th century are crucial. The wool that goes to Bruges and Ghent and above all Antwerp.

• 43:09Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 43:10Speaker 00

  Really, really matters. And of course, there's the, the whole kind of Gaza thing, the fact that Protestants in England and Protestants in the Low Countries, there's a natural sympathy between them and therefore securing freedom of worship for the Protestants, which the Duke of Anjou has guaranteed, would be an absolute win for them. And so this is why, you know, Elizabeth had been courting Anjou, it's why she'd co-opted Marchimont to, to knight Drake. She's signaling to both sides in the Low Countries, her support for Anjou as king in Philip's place. And also, of course, she is, you know, as we said, she's bunging the Dutch rebels, a whole load of cash as well, that has come from, from Drake's voyage around the world. So if only this can work out, it'll be brilliant for Elizabeth.

• 43:53Speaker 00

  You know, in all kinds of strategic ways, it will be a victory. Unfortunately for her, it does not work out. And what will prove to be her last engagement is actually doomed. Because even as Anjou arrives in the Low Countries, there is there an undertow of discontent. And two crucial states in the Low Countries have refused to accept him from the start. And these are Zealand and the largest of the rebel states, Holland. They say, we are not having Anjou. And Holland and Zealand are essentially the heartlands of the Protestant resistance. And they just do not want a Catholic prince.

• 44:34Speaker 01

  Right.

• 44:34Speaker 00

  Even if he comes with Elizabeth's seal of approval. And meanwhile, Anjou, he doesn't really just want to be a lord, he wants to be the king of the Netherlands. And so he's becoming increasingly annoyed by all the restrictions that have been placed on him by the Dutch rebels. And in January 1583, he launches an attempted coup in Antwerp, which is the great economic ideological powerhouse of the Low Countries. It's by far the richest city in Europe, quite possibly the world. It's as large as Paris, it's much larger than London. It's the great marketplace of this emerging global economy. And so if Anjou can seize control of Antwerp, then he will have a lot of cash behind him.

• 45:19Speaker 00

  And perhaps he, he really can set about making himself king rather than just Lord of the Low Countries. Unfortunately for him, it goes horribly wrong. His militia are wiped out in what becomes known as the French Fury. And as a result of that defeat, his prospects in the Low Countries are doomed. And by June, he has left for France and he never returns. And he goes back to mummy Catherine de Mediterie, very formidable figure. And she is completely withering and she says to him, would to God you had died young, you would not then have been the cause of death of so many brave gentlemen.

• 45:53Speaker 01

  Wow, that's harsh.

• 45:54Speaker 00

  So any mothers out there wanting parenting tips for sons who let, who let them down.

• 46:00Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 46:01Speaker 00

  Listen and learn. And Elizabeth also reacts very harshly. She breaks off the engagement. So that attempt to secure the defeat of the Spanish in the Low Countries is blocked. Anjou is, you know, he's not going to establish his rule there. And all the while, she's been maneuvering to get Anjou in place in, in the Netherlands. Her Catholic enemies likewise have been on maneuvers. And even as Elizabeth, in the eyes of her Privy Council and government, are fixed on the Low Countries, a new conspiracy is brewing in France. And it's a new conspiracy, but it is conspiracy with goals that will be very familiar to people who've been listening to our early episode.

• 46:42Speaker 00

  These goals are a Catholic invasion of England, the toppling of Elizabeth, the replacement of Elizabeth as Queen by Mary Stuart.

• 46:52Speaker 01

  Ooh.

• 46:52Speaker 00

  And as Burleigh's head of intelligence in London puts it, writing to Lord Burleigh as the first kind of whiff of this conspiracy starts reaching the noses of Burleigh's intelligence agents, the enemy sleeps not.

• 47:10Speaker 01

  Ominous. So come back after the break to find out what happens with this new conspiracy.

• 47:21Speaker 00

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• 47:24Speaker 01

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• 47:44Speaker 00

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• 49:59Speaker 01

  Welcome back, everybody, to The Rest Is History. It is June 1583. Picture the scene. We are in Paris, a meeting of some of the worst people in the world, led by the Duke of Guise. So this is, he's been played, if you recall, by Mads Mikkelsen. He is the leader of the Catholic League in France. He is the cousin of Mary, Queen of Scots. He is a man who has committed, who has been committed for years to the overthrow of Elizabeth Tudor, Elizabeth I, and indeed Protestantism in England. So an absolutely terrible man. And Tom, as we look on this through the eyes of the heroes of this story, Lord Burghley and Sir Francis Walsingham,

• 50:44Speaker 01

  it's like the opening of The Naked Gun, isn't it? When you've got the Ayatollah and you've got Mikhail Gorbachev and you've got Colonel Gaddafi and all these other villains that Frank Drebin of Police Squad has to confront. This is basically the scene, because who are the people who are there apart from this, apart from the Duke of Guise?

• 51:02Speaker 00

  So Guise is there. He's got his military and spiritual advisers. And if you're a devout Protestant, you know, the military and spiritual advisers of the Duke of Guise are terrible people. William Allen, the head of the English Catholics in exile.

• 51:14Speaker 01

  No, he's a bad man. Yeah.

• 51:15Speaker 00

  The Pope's nuncio in Paris.

• 51:18Speaker 01

  Oh, come on. Guess worse.

• 51:21Speaker 00

  And the Archbishop of Glasgow, a guy called James Beaton, who is effectively functioning as Mary Stuart's ambassador in Paris. So the Mary Queen of Scots.

• 51:31Speaker 01

  What a chamber of horrors.

• 51:33Speaker 00

  Yeah. I mean, if you're Walsingham, this is all your nightmares in one room. So Guise has been hankering to invade England for ages. We talked about this earlier. You know, if he's the cousin of Mary, Queen of Scots, so if he can marry Mary, Queen of Scots, it'd be brilliant. He'll become King of England and maybe King of Scotland as well. But what makes him push the venture now is that he has secured the backing of two crucial allies. The first of these is the Pope, so hence the presence of the nuncio there, but also crucially of Mendoza, who is the choleric and very aggressively anti-Protestant Spanish ambassador in London, who we met earlier in this episode. So with the backing of the Pope and the Spanish ambassador

• 52:15Speaker 00

  in England, things are looking very promising. And a very detailed plan is drawn up at this meeting. And it's decided that 12,000 troops will set sail from France for northwest England. So that's Lancashire, which is the most Catholic region of England. And funds will have been sent ahead of the invasion to encourage the Catholics in Lancashire to prepare themselves for revolt. And these funds are to be provided by Guise himself, but also by Philip II and by the Pope. So the kind of unholy trinity from the point of view of Burghley and Walsingham. Meanwhile, a second, smaller force will cross the Channel and land in Sussex. So that is in

• 52:57Speaker 00

  southern England. And here, they will team up with the Earls of Northumberland and Arendal, who are both Catholic and both have castles located conveniently nearby the projected landing place for this invasion force. And the sign of how seriously Guise is taking all this, this isn't just a pipe dream. He really is intending that it should go ahead, is that the following month after this meeting, where the plans have been drawn up, he heads to Normandy, where he is, you know, he sets himself preparing for this Channel crossing. Now, none of this will work without good intelligence. And so at this stage of the preparations for the invasion,

• 53:36Speaker 00

  the plans are mostly being conducted in the shadows. And Guise is sponsoring a number of agents. And some of these, he is sending undercover across the Channel, and others are already resident in England and being controlled from the French Embassy in London. And the key agent among these agents who are already in England is a young Catholic gentleman called Francis Throckmorton. He's very well born. He's well connected. His uncle had served Elizabeth as her ambassador to both Scotland and France. But unfortunately, Francis's own family has fallen on hard times. So Francis's father is a lawyer and a royal official, but

• 54:21Speaker 00

  he died in 1580 with a kind of accusation of corrupt dealings hanging over his head and a massive fine that's been kind of levied against him. So this is a very bad patrimony for Francis to inherit. And on top of that, Francis has been secretly raised by his mother as a Catholic. So he's skint and a Catholic. In other words, exactly the kind of person who is liable to become an agent for Guise, because it serves his ideological, but also his financial interests.

• 54:53Speaker 01

  Right.

• 54:54Speaker 00

  And it's Throckmorton who links up Mary Stuart, who is under house arrest in Yorkshire at the time, so Mary, Queen of Scots, the conspirators in London and the conspirators in Paris. So he is the kind of the go-between between them all.

• 55:08Speaker 01

  Right. Hence the Throckmorton plot, as it's later known. So the conspiracy in London, the headquarters of this conspiracy, effectively the Spanish Embassy, I guess, the Spanish ambassador, Mendoza, we already talked about him. He's this sort of, I mean, he's like a figure from a kind of Protestant casting agency.

• 55:26Speaker 00

  Yeah, nightmare.

• 55:27Speaker 01

  Yeah, exactly. He hates Elizabeth. He hates Sir Francis Drake. He hates England. He's just a terrible person. And then the other person is the French ambassador, and he is called Michel de Castelnu, and he is much more calculating and smoother and more subtle, isn't he, than the Spanish guy?

• 55:44Speaker 00

  Yes. And he's been there a long time. So he'd been sent in 1572 and charged specifically with smoothing Anglo-French relations after the Saint Bartholomew's Day massacre. So he's been chosen for his emolliency among other qualities. And he's done a very good job. And so by 1583, he's got, you know, over a decade's worth of experience in handling relations with Elizabeth and her government. And Elizabeth is not an easy woman to handle. I mean, you know, she plays the game very well. But the whole while, I'm sad to say, Castelnu has been in close contact with Mary, Queen of Scots, who is writing to him using a cipher.

• 56:21Speaker 01

  Right.

• 56:21Speaker 00

  And amazingly, a cache of her letters were found as recently as 2024 in the Bibliothèque Nationale de France. And they show conclusively that Mary, Queen of Scots, you know, is not a passive bystander in this. You know, she's not just a cipher being used by Guise for his own interest. She was actually an active conspirator in this plot.

• 56:44Speaker 01

  Yeah. So this has been debated by historians for decades, for centuries.

• 56:50Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 56:50Speaker 01

  Was Mary effectively framed? You know, was she being used by more Machiavellian people? Was she naive? Or was, you know, did she join in the plots? Was she an, exactly, an active agent in the conspiracy? And basically, this recent evidence suggests there's no question whatsoever.

• 57:09Speaker 00

  Yes, it does.

• 57:11Speaker 01

  She knew exactly what she was doing. She'd rolled up her sleeves. She got stuck in.

• 57:14Speaker 00

  Yeah. And so a result of this, the residency of the French ambassador, Salisbury Court, which is a house, a very grand house on Fleet Street. This makes it a kind of key focus of the conspiracy that is being hatched by Gies. You know, he essentially, it's the nerve centre for operations within England itself.

• 57:33Speaker 01

  Right.

• 57:34Speaker 00

  However, Walsingham, the great spy chief of Elizabeth, all along, has had moles in the French Embassy in Salisbury Court. And one of them goes by the codename of Henry Faggot.

• 57:47Speaker 01

  Great codename.

• 57:48Speaker 00

  And the identity of this mole is very controversial. So in 1991, the great historian of these topics, John Bossy, he published a book arguing that this mole, Henry Faggot, had actually been a very, very famous name in Renaissance philosophy. And this was a Neapolitan friar who had turned a kind of philosopher of nature. He'd become a hermetic magician. And the name of this guy is Giordano Bruno.

• 58:20Speaker 01

  Oh, yeah. Very big name. Yeah.

• 58:22Speaker 00

  So Bruno ends up becoming a pantheist. He is a skeptic about the Trinity. He doubts the divinity of Christ. So, you know, the full smorgasbord of heresies. And he very groovily argued for an infinite universe and the possibility of life in outer space. So a big fan of the idea of aliens. And he would end up being burned in 1600 in Rome by the Inquisition. And there is a famous statue of Bruno there. And he's kind of celebrated as a martyr for freedom of speech. I mean, I don't think he was really that. His beliefs were kind of too, too Renaissance, really, you know, by our lights, too strange. But

• 59:03Speaker 00

  he's a very powerful, charismatic, fascinating figure. So it's amazing, the possibility that he was Walsingham's mole in Salisbury Court. And if Henry Faggot was Bruno, then as Hugh Trevor Roper in his review of Bossy's book said, he'd chosen his pseudonym with prescient, grim humour, because of course, faggots would be used to burn him.

• 59:25Speaker 01

  Of course. But why would he, why would he have done it? For money? For?

• 59:30Speaker 00

  I suppose it would have been for money. You know, he is there. He's in the right place at the right time. He is serving as the French Ambassador's secretary in 1583. But it has to be said that Bossy's argument has not been universally accepted. In fact, I think probably most historians don't accept it. And the reason for that is that the evidence is entirely circumstantial. You know, it's just, you could say it's all just coincidence. But whoever Faggot is, he is the one who first fingers Throckmorton as a spy to Walsingham. And so Walsingham then recruits another mole in the embassy, and we have no idea who this was, but it's someone who is much closer to Castelno than whoever Faggot was. And

• 1:00:12Speaker 00

  he provides Walsingham with copies of the actual correspondence between Mary and Castelno. And by June 1583, so this is exactly the time when Gies is convening his meeting in Paris to plot the invasion. Mary is already anxious that Walsingham is on to Throckmorton. And she writes, using her cipher, to the French Embassy, to the ambassador there, to say as much. And, you know, she's, she's not wrong, because Walsingham is indeed monitoring Throckmorton's meetings with Castelno, and also with Mendoza. So even as the plot is going ahead, Walsingham is watching every last step.

• 1:00:52Speaker 01

  And then he pounces, doesn't he? He waits and waits and waits, then he pounces on the 7th of November. And actually, Throckmorton is, they catch him red-handed.

• 1:01:02Speaker 00

  Yeah, encoding a letter to Mary.

• 1:01:04Speaker 01

  Coding a letter, and they arrest, and they burst in and arrest him.

• 1:01:07Speaker 00

  Yeah. And so he's taken to the tower, where he is put to the rack. He's very brave. He refuses to speak. I mean, he suffers excruciating torture. But Walsingham, he says, notwithstanding the great show that he has made of a Roman resolution, I, in other words, he's prepared to suffer death rather than speak his mind. Walsingham says, he will. He's suffered too much pain. You know, he, one of the more chilling things about Walsingham, he understands the psychology of pain. And he's right, because three days later, you know, by which time Throckmorton's been given time to recover, the prisoner is led back to the rack. And the sight of it, you know, he just gives way. He falls to his knees. He makes his confession.

• 1:01:52Speaker 00

  And all the details of the plot come out, the involvement of Gies, of Castelno in the French Embassy, of Mendoza in the Spanish Embassy, and crucially, of Mary, Queen of Scots. And it's the last confession, the confession that Mary has been corresponding in treasonous tones with him, that causes Throckmorton the most agony. So he cries out, now I have betrayed her, who was dearest to me in this world. And since I have failed my faith towards her, I care not if I were hanged. And that's just as well, because he is hanged.

• 1:02:25Speaker 01

  Well, more than hanged. I mean, it's worse than hanging, right?

• 1:02:28Speaker 00

  Yeah. So he's tried in May 1584. And he does retract his confession. And he says, you know, I only made it because I'd suffered such pain. But it doesn't help. He is convicted for treason, of course. And so therefore, he suffers a traitor's fate. He's hung, drawn and quartered at Tyburn on the 10th of July. And he dies refusing to ask for the Queen's forgiveness, which traditionally people would do, because then their relatives and heirs would be treated better. He refuses to do that. From Walsingham's point of view, it's, you know, it's been brilliant. It's been a completely triumphant feat of spycraft. And it has massive, massive consequences.

• 1:03:07Speaker 01

  So let's look at the consequences. And let's go through the various people who were involved in the plot, as it were, the Ayatollah, Mikhail Gorbachev, and so on. And, and what the consequences are for them. So let's start with the Duke of Gies. So this is the Mads Mikkelsen character. So he, at first, after Throckmorton's unmasking, that doesn't throw him. He continues with his planning, doesn't he?

• 1:03:29Speaker 00

  Yeah. So Mary, Queen of Scots, manages to get a letter through to him. And she is very keen that the plot should carry on. And she, you know, she had been Queen of France. And so she kind of has investments left from her dowry. And she says, well, you could use money from that to help continue fund the plot. And, you know, that's what Gies wants to hear. So he says, fine, okay, we'll carry on. But then the plot does get knocked on the head. And it's nothing that Walsingham or the English do. It's the fact that on the 10th of June 1584, the Duke of Anjou, so Elizabeth's frog, you know, this guy who'd been courting him, the guy who had messed up being the Lord of the Netherlands, he dies from malaria at the age of 29. And this, this is fateful, because it means

• 1:04:14Speaker 00

  with the Duke of Anjou, Henry III, so Andrew Scott, the King of France, he has no heir. So with his death, the House of Alwa will go extinct. And the next in line is Henry of Navarre, Pedro Pascal, who is the Huguenot, the Protestant.

• 1:04:32Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:04:33Speaker 00

  And this is plainly intolerable. So just as it's intolerable for Protestants in England, that Elizabeth should be succeeded by the Catholic Mary, so is it intolerable for Gies and the Catholics in France, that Henry III should be succeeded by the Protestant Henry of Navarre. So his entire focus now is on ensuring that this will never happen. And so the kingdom collapses back into civil war. It's known in France as the War of the Three Henrys, which I think is one of the great, the great names for a war at any time. And basically, France will be so consumed by its own agonies, that no one there is going to have much time for affairs in England. So that basically is the French now knocked

• 1:05:15Speaker 00

  out of calculations. There remains, of course, the Spanish, and in particular, Mendoza, the Spanish ambassador, who's up to his eyeballs in all this plotting. And so on the 19th of January 1584, he was summoned to meet the Privy Council. And Walsingham, in his fluent Italian, lists six charges of conspiracy against him, and informs him that he is going to be expelled. Mendoza very angrily and menacingly denies the charges. And he says, Don Bernardino Mendoza was born not to disturb kingdoms, but to conquer them.

• 1:05:52Speaker 01

  Wow.

• 1:05:53Speaker 00

  However, that said, he is being expelled. He has no choice but to pack his bags. And this is a decisive moment in Anglo Spanish relations, because no one is sent to replace him. Effectively, England and Spain now have no diplomatic relations. And so it is becoming much harder for the two sides to communicate. So that's Mendoza gone.

• 1:06:15Speaker 01

  Right. So what about the best known person in this conspiracy? The person on whom the conspiracy really hinges? What about Mary, Queen of Scots?

• 1:06:24Speaker 00

  Well, she denies all the charges against her. And she insists quite correctly that she had written none of the letters carried by Throckmorton, because they'd been written by her secretaries. And she says, I knew absolutely nothing about them. There is also a problem for Walsingham and Burghley, should they want to prosecute Mary. Because remember that Throckmorton, at his trial, had said that he had confessed under duress because of the pain of the rack. And, you know, under English law, that invalidates his evidence. And of course, always lurking in the background is the biggest problem of all, which is that

• 1:07:01Speaker 00

  Mary is a sovereign queen, and that therefore, Elizabeth refuses to countenance the possibility of her being executed. And also, Mary can quite reasonably say, well, I can't be accused of treason, because as a sovereign queen, how can I possibly be a subject of Elizabeth? And, you know, that is a very valid legal point.

• 1:07:25Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:07:25Speaker 00

  And this all along has been the great imponderable problem for Burghley and Walsingham. Mary, left alive, is clearly a massive, massive threat to Elizabeth. The fact that she is Catholic, and Elizabeth's most obvious heir, is a constant incentive to Catholic dissidents to try and assassinate Elizabeth, or otherwise remove her from the throne. But Elizabeth will not countenance her removal. And the legal apparatus for doing it doesn't exist. But the impact of the Throckmorton plot on Burghley and Walsingham is absolutely massive, because they are now absolutely set on eliminating Mary, Queen of Scots, no matter what it costs.

• 1:08:08Speaker 01

  Right.

• 1:08:09Speaker 00

  No matter what the legal costs, no matter what the diplomatic costs, no matter what the costs in terms of their relationship with their royal mistress, Elizabeth Tudor. The immediate priority for them is massively to tighten the security around Mary, to ensure that she can't get letters out. And so to this end, she's placed under much stricter confinement. She's given a much stricter and sterner governor. Her correspondence networks are systematically throttled. And the result of this is that she no longer has access to the outside world.

• 1:08:41Speaker 00

  But that's not enough because Burghley and Walsingham, they really need to find a way to bring Mary to trial, to sentence, to execution. And it is with these goals in mind that in the wake of Throckmorton's execution, Burghley and Walsingham draw up a really remarkable document. And this is what comes to be called the Bond of Association. And it begins with a very simple but ingenious provision. And this provision is that anyone who is responsible for the death of Elizabeth will be ineligible to succeed her. And this will become law. Mary isn't mentioned by name, but she doesn't need to be mentioned by name. It's obviously targeted at her.

• 1:09:23Speaker 00

  And by the time this bond of association is signed off by the Privy Council at a meeting in Hampton Court on the 19th of October, 1584, a further crucial provision has been added. And this states that anyone who is responsible for the death of Elizabeth will be put to death whether they were aware of the assassination plot or not. So just to spell out what that means.

• 1:09:47Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:09:47Speaker 00

  If a Catholic assassin kills Elizabeth with the aim of putting Mary, Queen of Scots, on the English throne, Mary will be subject to death, even if she didn't know anything about the assassination plot.

• 1:10:01Speaker 01

  And is it just aimed at Mary, do you think? Or is it aimed at other people as well?

• 1:10:05Speaker 00

  No, it's just aimed at Mary.

• 1:10:06Speaker 01

  Right.

• 1:10:06Speaker 00

  And the Privy Council, when they sign this off as law, they know that and they also know that effectively they are formally committing themselves to a kind of lynch law. And they then send it out into the streets of London and the kingdom beyond. And thousands and thousands of loyal Englishmen and women add their signatures to this bond of association. And if they're illiterate, then they sign it with their cross. And amazingly, on the 5th of January, 1585, Mary, Queen of Scots herself, puts her name to this bond.

• 1:10:39Speaker 01

  See, I think that's smart politics from her.

• 1:10:41Speaker 00

  Yeah, it is, isn't it? Because she can feel the noose is tightening around her neck. And so she wants to do all that she can to loosen it.

• 1:10:49Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:10:49Speaker 00

  But the question is, you know, will she succeed? And what of what remains her preeminent ambition, namely to replace Elizabeth on the throne of England? You know, can she really be trusted to give up on that? And what do all of these developments, you know, the expulsion of Mendoza, the issue of this kind of lynch law? What does this mean for England's relations with Spain? So the diplomatic relations have been broken.

• 1:11:20Speaker 01

  Yep.

• 1:11:21Speaker 00

  The flames of Protestant revolt are blazing in the Low Countries. There is no end to that conflict in sight. On top of that, top sea dog, Sir Francis Drake, he is very much on the scene. And he has been pressing Elizabeth and the Privy Council to let him have another crack at the Spanish. So I think it is no exaggeration to say that the drumbeat of war is sounding.

• 1:11:45Speaker 01

  Wow. Drake's drum is sounding and the Tudor Cold War is hotting up. Very, very exciting. And next week it will be red hot, it'll be white hot, in fact.

• 1:11:54Speaker 00

  Scorching hot.

• 1:11:55Speaker 01

  Incredibly hot. All sorts of drama to come because we are, of course, approaching one of the most dramatic moments in English history. So imagine that you wanted to hear those episodes straight away, next week's episodes. Is there any way you could do that? Well, the good news is there is. You could be a member of the Rest is History Club. You could be a member of our own Throckmorton plot. And if you're not already a conspirator, the way to join the sinister enterprise is to head to therestishistory.com. That's the way, that's the only way. But people don't know this, Tom, but this is the only way that you can get all the amazing benefits, genuinely incredible benefits.

• 1:12:32Speaker 00

  We've never mentioned that before, have we?

• 1:12:33Speaker 01

  Never. And it's important to point that out for the first time. Dominic, I have even more exciting news because we are running a summer sale. And so for a limited time, if you want to sign up to the Rest is History Club, listen about the dinosaurs and a host of other supplementary benefits, then you will get an extra 20% off an annual membership using the code SUMMERTWENTYSIX. And this is only valid until the 31st of August. So hurry, hurry, hurry while stocks last. Anyway, listen, do all those things. Listen to the series, join the club. It'd be brilliant. And we'll see you next time for the Road to the Spanish Armada. Goodbye.

• 1:13:11Speaker 00

  Bye bye.

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