As early as April 1581, Mary Stuart had renewed her approaches to Spain through the Archbishop of Glasgow in Paris. “Things were now,” she said, “better disposed than ever in Scotland for a return to its former condition … and English affairs could be dealt with subsequently. The King, her son, was quite determined to return to the Catholic religion, and much inclined to an open rupture with the Queen of England.” She begged for armed aid from Philip, to be landed first in Ireland, and to enter Scotland at a given signal after the alliance between Scotland and Spain had been signed. Nothing came of this at the time; and after several other attempts on the part of Mary to get into touch with the Spaniards, she became distrustful of her Ambassador (Archbishop Beton) and other intermediaries, and contrived in November to communicate with Mendoza direct. She had heard that all the priests who flocked into Scotland and England looked to him for guidance, and that through them he had sent a message to the Scottish Catholics, saying that everything now depended upon Scotland’s reverting to the old faith. The English Catholic nobles then at liberty had, at Mendoza’s instance, formed a society with this object, and secretly sent two priests to sound James and D’Aubigny, and to promise that they would raise the north of England, release Mary, and secure the English succession to James. They brought back a favourable reply, which the ambassador at once conveyed to Allen and Persons on the continent. This was late in the autumn of 1581, and Mendoza looked coldly upon Burghley’s new advances, for he was now the centre of the plot to overthrow Elizabeth by means of the Scottish Catholics, a plot in which, against his will, he was obliged to make use of the Jesuit missionaries, who themselves at first had no idea of the Spanish political aims that underlay the conversion of Scotland to Catholicism.
Side by side with the Jesuits, Creighton, Persons, and Holt, who were employed in the political movement, were others who had been sent to England and were intended purely for spiritual work. They had been extremely successful in their propaganda, and had once more infused spirit into the English Catholic party. This could not be done without the printing and dissemination of books, as well as preaching, and the spies of the Council were directed to track to earth the priests who were at the bottom of the movement. Nearly every writer upon the subject has taken for granted that Lord Burghley was at the bottom of the persecution which followed. Such, however, does not appear to have been the case. As we have seen, the Lord Treasurer insisted upon some uniformity in the practice of the Anglican Church, but he must have known that many of his closest friends, and the colleagues upon whom he depended in the Council, were Catholics, and his lifelong tendency was to a political union with Spain, the champion of Catholic Christendom. He was determined, it is true, to crush treason to the Queen and the institutions of the country, no matter who suffered; and when Catholicism meant revolution he harried it fiercely; but he was no persecutor for the sake of religion itself,[463] and the cruel torture and execution of Campion, Sherwin, and Briant,[464] during Alençon’s visit to England (1st December 1581), for denying the Queen’s supremacy, were almost certainly prompted in the main by Walsingham, Knollys, and the Puritans, who were in a fever of apprehension lest the marriage with Alençon would lead to toleration of the Catholic faith. The men actually executed were not in fact employed in the political portion of the propaganda at all, but were honest religious missionaries; but they, and the scores of other Catholics who were swept into prison at the time, were useful object lessons for Walsingham and Leicester, whose aims, as we have seen, were in direct opposition to those of Burghley.[465] The latter, indeed, was at the very time of the execution approaching Mendoza with suggestions for an alliance with Spain, which were coldly received for the reasons already explained.