Ridolfi Plot Exposure and Norfolk Execution 1572
Who Fought
History & Significance
The Ridolfi plot was a Catholic plot in 1571 to overthrow Queen Elizabeth I of England and replace her with Mary, Queen of Scots. The plot was hatched and planned by Roberto Ridolfi, an international banker who was able to travel between Brussels, Rome and Madrid to gather support without attracting too much suspicion.
Thomas Howard, 4th Duke of Norfolk, a Roman Catholic with a Protestant education, a second cousin of Queen Elizabeth's and the wealthiest landowner in the country, had been proposed as a possible husband for Mary since her imprisonment in 1568. This suited Norfolk, who had ambitions and felt Elizabeth persistently undervalued him. In pursuit of his goals, he agreed to support the Northern Rebellion, though he quickly lost his nerve. Norfolk was imprisoned in the Tower of London for nine months and only freed under house arrest when he confessed all and begged for mercy. Pope Pius V, in his 1570 papal bull Regnans in Excelsis, excommunicated the Protestant Elizabeth and permitted all faithful Catholics to do all they could to depose her. The majority of English Catholics ignored the bull, but in response to it, Elizabeth became much harsher to Catholics and their sympathisers.
John Milsom has proposed that Tallis' Spem in alium, was commissioned to have covert political and allegorical meaning by the Earl of Arundel or the Duke of Norfolk, as the text originates from the Book of Judith that concerns the slaying of Holofernes in order to save Israel. This would have made it an allegory for an eventual assassination of Elizabeth. Despite the allegorical association, and Spem in alium appearing in the Nonsuch palace catalogue for its presumed performance with Arundel or Norfolk in attendance, there is no evidence that Tallis was involved in the plot himself.
Roberto Ridolfi, a Florentine banker and ardent Roman Catholic, had been involved in the planning of the Northern rebellion and had been plotting to overthrow Elizabeth as early as 1569. With the failure of the rebellion, he concluded that foreign intervention was needed to restore Catholicism and bring Mary to the English throne, and so he began to contact potential conspirators. Mary's advisor, John Lesley, the Bishop of Ross, gave his assent to the plot as the way to free Mary. The plan was to have the Duke of Alba invade from the Netherlands with 10,000 men, foment a rebellion of the northern English nobility, murder Elizabeth, and marry Mary to Thomas Howard. Ridolfi optimistically estimated half of all English peers were Catholic and could muster in excess of 39,000 men.
Documents from the Vatican and Spanish archives confirm that Howard had privately declared himself a Catholic to secure the support of the Pope and Philip II. Knowing that Pius V would not authorize another marriage between Mary and a Protestant (the Pope had already shown his indignation at the marriage between Mary and the Protestant Earl of Bothwell since at that time he was considered the prime suspect in the murder of the Scottish queen's second husband, Henry Stewart, Lord Darnley), Ridolfi acted as an intermediary by personally traveling to Rome to present to Pius with letters and verbal assurances—authorized by Norfolk—stating that the Duke was a secret Catholic who had only conformed to the Church of England for political survival. The Pope, although remaining cautious because both Howard and Mary had already been married three times, gave his approval to the marriage plan and the plot, seeing it as an opportunity to restore Catholicism in England if Elizabeth fell and the Duke and Mary ascended to the throne.
The ground they fought on
The site of Ridolfi Plot Exposure and Norfolk Execution 1572 lies on Eocene claystone, bedrock that formed in the Eocene. The rock here is claystone.
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