Copy Book Archive

The Ridolfi Plot The Pope and the King of Spain decide that the time has come to rid England of her troublesome Queen, Elizabeth I.

In two parts

1570
Queen Elizabeth I 1558-1603
Music: Anonymous (English) and John Dowland

By Scipione Pulzone (1544–1598), via Wikimedia Commons. Licence: Public domain. Source

About this picture …

Pope Pius V, painted by Scipione Pulzone (1544–1598) in around 1566-1572. Pius was ultimately behind the Ridolfi Plot, having hired Ridolfi to spy for him, and having called openly for rebellion. In a letter to English Catholics, he declared any Pope of Rome’s right “to pull up, destroy, scatter, disperse, plant and build, so that he may preserve His faithful people (knit together with the girdle of charity) in the unity of the Spirit”. King Philip II of Spain warned the Pope that this would put English Catholics, and Elizabeth, in an impossible situation, but his advice went unheeded.

The Ridolfi Plot

Part 1 of 2

In 1558 Mary I of England, a Catholic married to King Philip II of Spain, died. Her crown passed to her Protestant half-sister Elizabeth I, dashing the hopes of Philip and of Pope Pius V for a united Catholic Europe. When Elizabeth began helping persecuted Protestants in the Spanish Netherlands, it was the last straw.

IN 1568, King Philip II of Spain borrowed £400,000 from Genoa to fund his government of the Spanish Netherlands, and help the Governor, Fernando Álvarez de Toledo, 3rd Duke of Alba, to reinvigorate the Inquisition there.* But as Philip’s ships entered the Channel, French Huguenots came to the aid of their Dutch neighbours and drove the ships to port in England. Elizabeth impounded Philip’s gold for her Treasury, the latest in a series of provocations by the English Queen, frustrating Philip, Charles IX in France, and Pope Pius V in Italy, in their bid to create a united, Catholic Europe.

So in 1570, Pope Pius took steps. A year before, the Northern Earls’ Rising had failed to unseat Elizabeth and put her Catholic cousin, Mary Queen of Scots, on her throne.* Pius now wrote to English Catholics giving them carte blanche to rebel against Elizabeth,* and engaged his trusted agent Roberto Ridolfi, a Florentine banker with connections throughout Europe, to finish what the earls had started.

Jump to Part 2

The Spanish Netherlands was formed in 1556 when Philip II of Spain, son of the Holy Roman Emperor Charles V, inherited the government of the Seventeen Provinces of the Netherlands, which had been in the Hapsburg family since 1482. In 1581, a revolt led to the breakaway Dutch Republic to the east under William, Prince of Orange, with its capital at Amsterdam (William’s great-grandson became King William III of England in 1689). The capital of the Spanish Netherlands was Brussels.

Mary Queen of Scots (Elizabeth’s cousin) was currently under house arrest in England, having been turned out of Scotland in 1567 in favour of her infant son James VI following one too many scandals. See Mary Queen of Scots. Mary and Elizabeth were cousins once removed: Elizabeth was Henry VIII’s daughter, and Mary was the granddaughter of Henry VIII’s sister Margaret.

The Bull ‘Regnans in Excelsis’ of April 27th, 1570, excommunicated Elizabeth and anyone loyal to her, declared that she was not the rightful ruler of England, and commanded ‘Do not dare obey her orders, mandates and laws’. It was a blessing on revolution. For the full text, see Papal Encyclicals Online.

Précis

During the reign of Elizabeth I, Catholic France and Spain pursued a particularly severe crackdown on religious dissent. Elizabeth harboured many victims in England, and in 1570 Pope Pius V and the King of Spain conspired to have her deposed and replaced with her Catholic cousin, Mary Queen of Scots, engaging banker Roberto Ridolfi as their chief agent. (57 / 60 words)

Part Two

© Eric Jones, Geograph. Licence: CC BY-SA 2.0. Source

About this picture …

As photographer Eric Jones tells us, Plas Du in Llanarmon on the northwest corner of Wales was a manor house belonging to Thomas Owen, High Sheriff of Caernarvonshire. Thomas was a Catholic, who took Pius V’s threat of excommunication very seriously and was imprisoned in Caernarvon Castle for withholding allegiance to Elizabeth. His brother Hugh was involved in the Ridolfi plot, escaping to Antwerp in the Spanish Netherlands after it failed, but returning to play a part in the Gunpowder Plot of 1605 against Elizabeth’s successor, James I.

RIDOLFI’s brief, assisted by smooth-talking diplomat Giovan Luigi ‘Chiappino’ Vitelli, was to coordinate discontent among English courtiers with a planned invasion from Philip’s Spanish Netherlands, led by the Duke of Alba. Simultaneously, Elizabeth was to be arrested and imprisoned, or worse; but her cousin Thomas Howard, Duke of Norfolk, jailed for his part in the Northern Rebellion, would be Queen Mary’s consort.* England would become a Catholic country again, under Spain’s inquisitorial eye.

For a secret agent, however, Ridolfi was altogether too much of a chatterbox. His boasts to the horrified Duke of Tuscany were instantly relayed to Elizabeth, though they only confirmed what her own spies had already wormed out of the Spanish ambassador. The plot was uncovered, and Howard was executed; Ridolfi was conveniently out of the country. Yet neither King Philip nor Pius’s successors were discouraged, and the Continental conspirators were soon devising another, still bolder plan to bring England into European conformity: the ‘Grand and Felicitous’ Spanish Armada.*

Copy Book

Mary was already married to James Hepburn, her third husband, currently imprisoned for conspiring with Mary to murder her second husband Henry Stuart, Lord Darnley. See Mary Queen of Scots. Mary’s first husband, King Francis II of France, had died of natural causes. Norfolk himself had been married and widowed three times. For the sake of the bigger picture, the Pope had declared himself ready to overlook all this, and even the fact that Norfolk was technically a Protestant.

See The Spanish Armada.

Précis

The Ridolfi Plot centred on getting English subjects to kidnap Queen Elizabeth, while Spain invaded from the Netherlands. However, the plot was discovered after Roberto Ridolfi let his tongue run away with him. The failure of the plot did not, however, mean the end of attempts by the European powers to remove Elizabeth. (53 / 60 words)

Suggested Music

1 2

Michill's Galliard

Anonymous (English) (before 1420)

Performed by The Early Music Consort of London, directed by David Munrow.

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Galliard

John Dowland (1563-1626)

Performed by The Early Music Consort of London, directed by David Munrow.

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