Chapter VI: England and Spain (1)

1582-1593

[Sidenote: The popular passion.]

The work of the Jesuits, the withdrawal of the Catholics from the churches, the panic of the Protestants, were signs that the control of events was passing from the hands of statesmen and diplomatists, and that the long period of suspense which Elizabeth's policy had won was ending in the clash of national and political passions. The rising fanaticism of the Catholic world was breaking down the caution and hesitation of Philip; while England was setting aside the balanced neutrality of her Queen and pushing boldly forward to a contest which it felt to be inevitable. The public opinion, to which Elizabeth was so sensitive, took every day a bolder and more decided tone. Her cold indifference to the heroic struggle in Flanders was more than compensated by the enthusiasm it roused among the nation at large. The earlier Flemish refugees found a home in the Cinque Ports. The exiled merchants of Antwerp were welcomed by the merchants of London. While Elizabeth dribbled out her secret aid to the Prince of Orange, the London traders sent him half-a-million from their own purses, a sum equal to a year's revenue of the Crown. Volunteers stole across the Channel in increasing numbers to the aid of the Dutch, till the five hundred Englishmen who fought in the beginning of the struggle rose to a brigade of five thousand, whose bravery turned one of the most critical battles of the war. Dutch privateers found shelter in English ports, and English vessels hoisted the flag of the States for a dash at the Spanish traders. Protestant fervour rose steadily among Englishmen as "the best captains and soldiers" returned from the campaigns in the Low Countries to tell of Alva's atrocities, or as privateers brought back tales of English seamen who had been seized in Spain and the New World, to linger amidst the tortures of the Inquisition, or to die in its fires. In the presence of this steady drift of popular passion the diplomacy of Elizabeth became of little moment. If the Queen was resolute for peace, England was resolute for war. A new daring had arisen since the beginning of her reign, when Cecil and Elizabeth stood alone in their belief in England's strength, and when the diplomatists of Europe regarded her obstinate defiance of Philip's counsels as "madness." The whole English people had caught the self-confidence and daring of their Queen.

[Sidenote: Spain.]

It was the instinct of liberty as well as of Protestantism that drove England forward to a conflict with Philip of Spain. Spain was at this moment the mightiest of European powers. The discoveries of Columbus had given it the New World of the West; the conquests of Cortes and Pizarro poured into its treasury the plunder of Mexico and Peru; its galleons brought the rich produce of the Indies, their gold, their jewels, their ingots of silver, to the harbour of Cadiz. To the New World the Spanish king added the fairest and wealthiest portions of the Old; he was master of Naples and Milan, the richest and most fertile districts of Italy; in spite of revolt he was still lord of the busy provinces of the Low Countries, of Flanders, the great manufacturing district of the time, and of Antwerp, which had become the central mart for the commerce of the world. His native kingdom, poor as it was, supplied him with the steadiest and the most daring soldiers that Europe had seen since the fall of the Roman Empire. The renown of the Spanish infantry had been growing from the day when it flung off the onset of the French chivalry on the field of Ravenna; and the Spanish generals stood without rivals in their military skill, as they stood without rivals in their ruthless cruelty.

[Sidenote: Philip.]

The whole too of this enormous power was massed in the hands of a single man. Served as he was by able statesmen and subtle diplomatists, Philip of Spain was his own sole minister; labouring day after day, like a clerk, through the long years of his reign, amidst the papers which crowded his closet; but resolute to let nothing pass without his supervision, and to suffer nothing to be done save by his express command. His scheme of rule differed widely from that of his father. Charles had held the vast mass of his dominions by a purely personal bond. He chose no capital, but moved ceaselessly from land to land; he was a German in the Empire, a Spaniard in Castille, a Netherlander in the Netherlands. But in the hands of Philip his father's heritage became a Spanish realm. His capital was fixed at Madrid. The rest of his dominions sank into provinces of Spain, to be governed by Spanish viceroys, and subordinated to the policy and interests of a Spanish minister. All local liberties, all varieties of administration, all national differences were set aside for a monotonous despotism which was wielded by Philip himself. It was his boast that everywhere in the vast compass of his dominions he was "an absolute king." It was to realize this idea of unshackled power that he crushed the liberties of Aragon, as his father had crushed the liberties of Castille, and sent Alva to tread under foot the constitutional freedom of the Low Countries. His bigotry went hand in hand with his thirst for rule. Catholicism was the one common bond that knit his realms together, and policy as well as religious faith made Philip the champion of Catholicism. Italy and Spain lay hushed beneath the terror of the Inquisition, while Flanders was being purged of heresy by the stake and the sword.

[Sidenote: Philip and Elizabeth.]

The shadow of this gigantic power fell like a deadly blight over Europe. The new Protestantism, like the new spirit of political liberty, saw its real foe in Philip. It was Spain, rather than the Guises, against which Coligni and the Huguenots struggled in vain; it was Spain with which William of Orange was wrestling for religious and civil freedom; it was Spain which was soon to plunge Germany into the chaos of the Thirty Years War, and to which the Catholic world had for twenty years been looking, and looking in vain, for a victory over heresy in England. Vast in fact as Philip's resources were, they were drained by the yet vaster schemes of ambition into which his religion and his greed of power, as well as the wide distribution of his dominions, perpetually drew him. To coerce the weaker States of Italy, to command the Mediterranean, to keep a hold on the African coast, to preserve his influence in Germany, to support Catholicism in France, to crush heresy in Flanders, to despatch one Armada against the Turk and another against England, were aims mighty enough to exhaust even the power of the Spanish monarchy. But it was rather on the character of Philip than on the exhaustion of his treasury that Elizabeth counted for success in the struggle which had so long been going on between them. The king's temper was slow, cautious even to timidity, losing itself continually in delays, in hesitations, in anticipating remote perils, in waiting for distant chances; and on the slowness and hesitation of his temper his rival had been playing ever since she mounted the throne. The agility, the sudden changes of Elizabeth, her lies, her mystifications, though they failed to deceive Philip, puzzled and impeded his mind. The diplomatic contest between the two was like the fight which England was soon to see between the ponderous Spanish galleon and the light pinnace of the buccaneers.

[Sidenote: Philip's policy.]

But amidst all the cloud of intrigue which disguised their policy, the actual course of their relations had been clear and simple. In the earlier years of Elizabeth Philip had been driven to her alliance by his fear of France and his dread of the establishment of a French supremacy over England and Scotland through the accession of Mary Stuart. As time went on, the discontent and rising of the Netherlands made it of hardly less import to avoid a strife with the Queen. Had revolt in England prospered, or Mary Stuart succeeded in her countless plots, or Elizabeth fallen beneath an assassin's knife, Philip was ready to have struck in and reaped the fruits of other men's labours. But his stake was too vast to risk an attack while the Queen sat firmly on her throne; and the cry of the English Catholics, or the pressure of the Pope, failed to drive the Spanish king into strife with Elizabeth. But as the tide of religious passion which had so long been held in check broke over its banks the political face of Europe changed. Philip had less to dread from France or from an English alliance with France. The abstinence of Elizabeth from intervention in the Netherlands was neutralized by the intervention of the English people. Above all, the English hostility threatened Philip in a quarter where he was more sensitive than elsewhere, his dominion in the West.

[Sidenote: Spain and the New World.]

Foiled as the ambition of Charles the Fifth had been in the Old World, his empire had widened with every year in the New. At his accession to the throne the Spanish rule had hardly spread beyond the Island of St. Domingo, which Columbus had discovered twenty years before. But greed and enterprise drew Cortes to the mainland, and in 1521 his conquest of Mexico added a realm of gold to the dominions of the Emperor. Ten years later the great empire of Peru yielded to the arms of Pizarro. With the conquest of Chili the whole western coast of South America passed into the hands of Spain; and successive expeditions planted the Spanish flag at point upon point along the coast of the Atlantic from Florida to the river Plate. A Papal grant had conveyed the whole of America to the Spanish crown, and fortune seemed for long years to ratify the judgement of the Vatican. No European nation save Portugal disputed the possession of the New World, and Portugal was too busy with its discoveries in Africa and India to claim more than the territory of Brazil. Though Francis the First sent seamen to explore the American coast, his ambition found other work at home; and a Huguenot colony which settled in Florida was cut to pieces by the Spaniards. Only in the far north did a few French settlers find rest beside the waters of the St. Lawrence. England had reached the mainland even earlier than Spain, for before Columbus touched its shores Sebastian Cabot, a seaman of Genoese blood but born and bred in England, sailed with an English crew from Bristol in 1497, and pushed along the coast of America to the south as far as Florida, and northward as high as Hudson's Bay. But no Englishman followed on the track of this bold adventurer; and while Spain built up her empire in the New World, the English seamen reaped a humbler harvest in the fisheries of Newfoundland.

[Sidenote: The Sea-dogs.]

There was little therefore in the circumstances which attended the first discovery of the western continent that promised well for freedom. Its one result as yet was to give an enormous impulse to the most bigoted and tyrannical among the powers of Europe, and to pour the gold of Mexico and Peru into the treasury of Spain. But as the reign of Elizabeth went on the thoughts of Englishmen turned again to the New World. A happy instinct drew them from the first not to the southern shores that Spain was conquering, but to the ruder and more barren districts of the north. In 1576 the dream of finding a passage to Asia by a voyage round the northern coast of the American continent drew a west-country seaman, Martin Frobisher, to the coast of Labrador; and, foiled as he was in his quest, the news he brought back of the existence of gold mines there set adventurers cruising among the icebergs of Baffin's Bay. Elizabeth herself joined in the venture; but the settlement proved a failure, the ore which the ships brought back turned out to be worthless, and England was saved from that greed of gold which was to be fatal to the energies of Spain. But, failure as it was, Frobisher's venture had shown the readiness of Englishmen to defy the claims of Spain to the exclusive possession of America or the American seas. They were already defying these claims in a yet more galling way. The seamen of the southern and south-western coasts had long been carrying on a half-piratical war on their own account. Four years after Elizabeth's accession the Channel swarmed with "sea-dogs," as they were called, who sailed under letters of marque from Conde and the Huguenot leaders, and took heed neither of the complaints of the French Court nor of their own Queen's efforts at repression. Her efforts broke against the connivance of every man along the coast, of the very port officers of the Crown, who made profit out of the spoil which the plunderers brought home, and of the gentry of the west, whose love of venture made them go hand in hand with the sea-dogs. They broke above all against the national craving for open fight with Spain, and the Protestant craving for open fight with Catholicism. If the Queen held back from any formal part in the great war of religions across the Channel, her subjects were keen to take their part in it. Young Englishmen crossed the sea to serve under Conde or Henry of Navarre. The war in the Netherlands drew hundreds of Protestants to the field. Their passionate longing for a religious war found a wider sphere on the sea. When the suspension of the French contest forced the sea-dogs to haul down the Huguenot flag, they joined in the cruises of the Dutch "sea-beggars." From plundering the vessels of Havre and Rochelle they turned to plunder the galleons of Spain.

[Sidenote: Drake.]

Their outrages tried Philip's patience; but his slow resentment only quickened into angry alarm when the sea-dogs sailed westward to seek a richer spoil. The Papal decree which gave the New World to Spain, the threats of the Spanish king against any Protestant who should visit its seas, fell idly on the ears of English seamen. Philip's care to save his new dominions from the touch of heresy was only equalled by his resolve to suffer no trade between them and other lands than Spain. But the sea-dogs were as ready to traffic as to fight. It was in vain that their vessels were seized, and the sailors flung into the dungeons of the Inquisition, "laden with irons, without sight of sun or moon." The profits of the trade were large enough to counteract its perils; and the bigotry of Philip was met by a bigotry as merciless as his own. The Puritanism of the sea-dogs went hand in hand with their love of adventure. To break through the Catholic monopoly of the New World, to kill Spaniards, to sell negroes, to sack gold-ships, were in these men's minds a seemly work for "the elect of God." The name of Francis Drake became the terror of the Spanish Indies. In Drake a Protestant fanaticism went hand in hand with a splendid daring. He conceived the design of penetrating into the Pacific, whose waters had till then never seen an English flag; and backed by a little company of adventurers, he set sail in 1577 for the southern seas in a vessel hardly as big as a Channel schooner, with a few yet smaller companions who fell away before the storms and perils of the voyage. But Drake with his one ship and eighty men held boldly on; and passing the Straits of Magellan, untraversed as yet by any Englishman, swept the unguarded coast of Chili and Peru, loaded his bark with the gold dust and silver ingots of Potosi, as well as with the pearls, emeralds, and diamonds which formed the cargo of the great galleon that sailed once a year from Lima to Cadiz. With spoils of above half-a-million in value the daring adventurer steered undauntedly for the Moluccas, rounded the Cape of Good Hope, and in 1580, after completing the circuit of the globe, dropped anchor again in Plymouth harbour.

[Sidenote: Conquest of Portugal.]

The romantic daring of Drake's voyage as well as the vastness of his spoil roused a general enthusiasm throughout England. But the welcome which he received from Elizabeth on his return was accepted by Philip as an outrage which could only be expiated by war. Sluggish as it was, the blood of the Spanish king was fired at last by the defiance with which the Queen listened to all demands for redress. She met a request for Drake's surrender by knighting the freebooter and by wearing in her crown the jewels he offered her as a present. When the Spanish ambassador threatened that "matters would come to the cannon," she replied "quietly, in her most natural voice, as if she were telling a common story," wrote Mendoza, "that if I used threats of that kind she would fling me into a dungeon." Outraged indeed as Philip was, she believed that with the Netherlands still in revolt and France longing for her alliance to enable it to seize them, the king could not afford to quarrel with her. But the victories and diplomacy of Parma were already reassuring Philip in the Netherlands; while the alliance of Elizabeth with the revolted Provinces convinced him at last that their reduction could best be brought about by an invasion of England and the establishment of Mary Stuart on its throne. With this conviction he lent himself to the plans of Rome, and waited only for the rising in Ireland and the revolt of the English Catholics which Pope Gregory promised him to despatch forces from both Flanders and Spain. But the Irish rising was over before Philip could act; and before the Jesuits could rouse England to rebellion the Spanish king himself was drawn to a new scheme of ambition by the death of King Sebastian of Portugal in 1580. Philip claimed the Portuguese crown; and in less than two months Alva laid the kingdom at his feet. The conquest of Portugal was fatal to the Papal projects against England, for while the armies of Spain marched on Lisbon Elizabeth was able to throw the leaders of the expected revolt into prison and to send Campian to the scaffold. On the other hand it raised Philip into a far more formidable foe. The conquest almost doubled his power. His gain was far more than that of Portugal itself. While Spain had been winning the New World her sister-kingdom had been winning a wide though scattered dominion on the African coast, the coast of India, and the islands of the Pacific. Less in extent, the Portuguese settlements were at the moment of even greater value to the mother country than the colonies of Spain. The gold of Guinea, the silks of Goa, the spices of the Philippines made Lisbon one of the marts of Europe. The sword of Alva had given Philip a hold on the richest trade of the world. It had given him the one navy that as yet rivalled his own. His flag claimed mastery in the Indian and the Pacific seas, as it claimed mastery in the Atlantic and Mediterranean.

[Sidenote: The marriage with Anjou.]

The conquest of Portugal therefore wholly changed Philip's position. It not only doubled his power and resources, but it did this at a time when fortune seemed everywhere wavering to his side. The provinces of the Netherlands, which still maintained a struggle for their liberties, drew courage from despair; and met Philip's fresh hopes of their subjection by a solemn repudiation of his sovereignty in the summer of 1581. But they did not dream that they could stand alone, and they sought the aid of France by choosing as their new sovereign the Duke of Alencon, who on his brother Henry's accession to the throne had become Duke of Anjou. The choice was only part of a political scheme which was to bind the whole of Western Europe together against Spain. The conquest of Portugal had at once drawn France and England into close relations, and Catharine of Medicis strove to league the two countries by a marriage of Elizabeth with the Duke of Anjou. Such a match would have been a purely political one, for Elizabeth was now forty-eight, and Francis of Anjou had no qualities either of mind or body to recommend him to the Queen. But the English ministers pressed for it, Elizabeth amidst all her coquetries seemed at last ready to marry, and the States seized the moment to lend themselves to the alliance of the two powers by choosing the Duke as their lord. Anjou accepted their offer, and crossing to the Netherlands, drove Parma from Cambray; then sailing again to England, he spent the winter in a fresh wooing.

[Sidenote: Its failure.]

But the Duke's wooing still proved fruitless. The schemes of diplomacy found themselves shattered against the religious enthusiasm of the time. While Orange and Catharine and Elizabeth saw only the political weight of the marriage as a check upon Philip, the sterner Protestants in England saw in it a victory for Catholicism at home. Of the difference between the bigoted Catholicism of Spain and the more tolerant Catholicism of the court of France such men recked nothing. The memory of St. Bartholomew's day hung around Catharine of Medicis; and the success of the Jesuits at this moment roused the dread of a general conspiracy against Protestantism. A Puritan lawyer named Stubbs only expressed the alarm of his fellows in his "Discovery of a Gaping Gulf" in which England was to plunge through the match with Anjou. When the hand of the pamphleteer was cut off as a penalty for his daring, Stubbs waved his hat with the hand that was left, and cried "God save Queen Elizabeth." But the Queen knew how stern a fanaticism went with this unflinching loyalty, and her dread of a religious conflict within her realm must have quickened the fears which the worthless temper of her wooer cannot but have inspired. She gave however no formal refusal of her hand. So long as coquetry sufficed to hold France and England together, she was ready to play the coquette; and it was as the future husband of the Queen that Anjou again appeared in 1582 in the Netherlands and received the formal submission of the revolted States, save Holland and Zealand. But the subtle schemes which centred in him broke down before the selfish perfidy of the Duke. Resolved to be ruler in more than name, he planned the seizure of the greater cities of the Netherlands, and at the opening of 1583 made a fruitless effort to take Antwerp by surprise. It was in vain that Orange strove by patient negotiation to break the blow. The Duke fled homewards, the match and sovereignty were at an end, the alliance of the three powers vanished like a dream. The last Catholic provinces passed over to Parma's side; the weakened Netherlands found themselves parted from France; and at the close of 1583 Elizabeth saw herself left face to face with Philip of Spain.

[Sidenote: The Puritans and the Crown.]

Nor was this all. At home as well as abroad troubles were thickening around the Queen. The fanaticism of the Catholic world without was stirring a Protestant fanaticism within the realm. As Rome became more and more the centre of hostility to England, patriotism itself stirred men to a hatred of Rome; and their hatred of Rome passed easily into a love for the fiercer and sterner Calvinism which looked on all compromise with Rome, or all acceptance of religious traditions or usages which had been associated with Rome, as treason against God. Puritanism, as this religious temper was called, was becoming the creed of every earnest Protestant throughout the realm; and the demand for a further advance towards the Calvinistic system and a more open breach with Catholicism which was embodied in the suppression of the "superstitious usages" became stronger than ever. But Elizabeth was firm as of old to make no advance. Greatly as the Protestants had grown, she knew they were still a minority in the realm. If the hotter Catholics were fast decreasing, they remained a large and important body. But the mass of the nation was neither Catholic nor Protestant. It had lost faith in the Papacy. It was slowly drifting to a new faith in the Bible. But it still clung obstinately to the past; it still recoiled from violent change; its temper was religious rather than theological, and it shrank from the fanaticism of Geneva as it shrank from the fanaticism of Rome. It was a proof of Elizabeth's genius that alone among her counsellors she understood this drift of opinion, and withstood measures which would have startled the mass of Englishmen into a new resistance.

[Sidenote: The High Commission.]

But her policy was wider than her acts. The growing Puritanism of the clergy stirred her wrath above measure, and she met the growth of "nonconforming" ministers by conferring new powers in 1583 on the Ecclesiastical Commission. From being a temporary board which represented the Royal Supremacy in matters ecclesiastical, the Commission was now turned into a permanent body wielding the almost unlimited powers of the Crown. All opinions or acts contrary to the Statutes of Supremacy and Uniformity fell within its cognizance. A right of deprivation placed the clergy at its mercy. It had power to alter or amend the statutes of colleges or schools. Not only heresy and schism and nonconformity, but incest or aggravated adultery were held to fall within its scope; its means of enquiry were left without limit, and it might fine or imprison at its will. By the mere establishment of such a court half the work of the Reformation was undone. The large number of civilians on the board indeed seemed to furnish some security against the excess of ecclesiastical tyranny. Of its forty-four commissioners, however, few actually took any part in its proceedings; and the powers of the Commission were practically left in the hands of the successive Primates. No Archbishop of Canterbury since the days of Augustine had wielded an authority so vast, so utterly despotic, as that of Whitgift and Bancroft and Abbot and Laud. The most terrible feature of their spiritual tyranny was its wholly personal character. The old symbols of doctrine were gone, and the lawyers had not yet stepped in to protect the clergy by defining the exact limits of the new. The result was that at the commission-board at Lambeth the Primates created their own tests of doctrine with an utter indifference to those created by law. In one instance Parker deprived a vicar of his benefice for a denial of the verbal inspiration of the Bible. Nor did the successive Archbishops care greatly if the test was a varying or a conflicting one. Whitgift strove to force on the Church the Calvinistic supralapsarianism of his Lambeth Articles. Bancroft, who followed him, was as earnest in enforcing his anti-Calvinistic dogma of the divine right of the episcopate. Abbot had no mercy for Erastians. Laud had none for anti-Erastians. It is no wonder that the Ecclesiastical Commission, which these men represented, soon stank in the nostrils of the English clergy. Its establishment however marked the adoption of a more resolute policy on the part of the Crown, and its efforts were backed by stern measures of repression. All preaching or reading in private houses was forbidden; and in spite of the refusal of Parliament to enforce the requirement of them by law, subscription to the Three Articles was exacted from every member of the clergy. For the moment these measures were crowned with success. The movement which Cartwright still headed was checked; Cartwright himself was driven from his Professorship; and an outer uniformity of worship was more and more brought about by the steady pressure of the Commission. The old liberty which had been allowed in London and the other Protestant parts of the kingdom was no longer permitted to exist. The leading Puritan clergy, whose nonconformity had hitherto been winked at, were called upon to submit to the surplice, and to make the sign of the cross in baptism. The remonstrances of the country gentry availed as little as the protest of Lord Burleigh himself to protect two hundred of the best ministers from being driven from their parsonages on a refusal to subscribe to the Three Articles.

[Sidenote: Martin Marprelate.]

But the political danger of the course on which the Crown had entered was seen in the rise of a spirit of vigorous opposition, such as had not made its appearance since the accession of the Tudors. The growing power of public opinion received a striking recognition in the struggle which bears the name of the "Martin Marprelate controversy." The Puritans had from the first appealed by their pamphlets from the Crown to the people, and Archbishop Whitgift bore witness to their influence on opinion by his efforts to gag the Press. The regulations made by the Star-Chamber in 1585 for this purpose are memorable as the first step in the long struggle of government after government to check the liberty of printing. The irregular censorship which had long existed was now finally organized. Printing was restricted to London and the two Universities, the number of printers was reduced, and all applicants for license to print were placed under the supervision of the Company of Stationers. Every publication too, great or small, had to receive the approbation of the Primate or the Bishop of London. The first result of this system of repression was the appearance, in the very year of the Armada, of a series of anonymous pamphlets bearing the significant name of "Martin Marprelate," and issued from a secret press which found refuge from the Royal pursuivants in the country-houses of the gentry. The press was at last seized; and the suspected authors of these scurrilous libels, Penry, a young Welshman, and a minister named Udall, died, the one in prison, the other on the scaffold. But the virulence and boldness of their language produced a powerful effect, for it was impossible under the system of Elizabeth to "mar" the bishops without attacking the Crown; and a new age of political liberty was felt to be at hand when Martin Marprelate forced the political and ecclesiastical measures of the Government into the arena of public discussion.

[Sidenote: The gathering of the Armada.]

The strife between Puritanism and the Crown was to grow into a fatal conflict, but at the moment the Queen's policy was in the main a wise one. It was no time for scaring and disuniting the mass of the people when the united energies of England might soon hardly suffice to withstand the onset of Spain. On the other hand, strike as she might at the Puritan party, it was bound to support Elizabeth in the coming struggle with Philip. For the sense of personal wrong and the outcry of the Catholic world against his selfish reluctance to avenge the blood of its martyrs had at last told on the Spanish king, and in 1584 the first vessels of an armada which was destined for the conquest of England began to gather in the Tagus. Resentment and fanaticism indeed were backed by a cool policy. The gain of the Portuguese dominions made it only the more needful for Philip to assert his mastery of the seas. He had now to shut Englishman and heretic not only out of the New World of the West but out of the lucrative traffic with the East. And every day showed a firmer resolve in Englishmen to claim the New World for their own. The plunder of Drake's memorable voyage had lured fresh freebooters to the "Spanish Main." The failure of Frobisher's quest for gold only drew the nobler spirits engaged in it to plans of colonisation. North America, vexed by long winters and thinly peopled by warlike tribes of Indians, gave a rough welcome to the earlier colonists; and after a fruitless attempt to form a settlement on its shores Sir Humphry Gilbert, one of the noblest spirits of his time, turned homewards again to find his fate in the stormy seas. "We are as near to heaven by sea as by land," were the famous words he was heard to utter ere the light of his little bark was lost for ever in the darkness of the night. But an expedition sent by his brother-in-law, Sir Walter Raleigh, explored Pamlico Sound; and the country they discovered, a country where in their poetic fancy "men lived after the manner of the Golden Age," received from Elizabeth, the Virgin Queen, the name of Virginia.

[Sidenote: Scotland and Philip.]

It was in England only that Philip could maintain his exclusive right to the New World of the West; it was through England only that he could strike a last and fatal blow at the revolt of the Netherlands. And foiled as his plans had been as yet by the overthrow of the Papal schemes, even their ruin had left ground for hope in England itself. The tortures and hangings of the Catholic priests, the fining and imprisonment of the Catholic gentry, had roused a resentment which it was easy to mistake for disloyalty. The Jesuits with Parsons at their head pictured the English Catholics as only waiting to rise in rebellion at the call of Spain, and reported long lists of nobles and squires who would muster their tenants to join Parma's legions on their landing. A Spanish victory would be backed by insurrection in Ireland and attack from Scotland. For in Scotland the last act of the Papal conspiracy against Elizabeth was still being played. Though as yet under age, the young king, James the Sixth, had taken on himself the government of the realm, and had submitted to the guidance of a cousin, Esme Stuart, who had been brought up in France and returned to Scotland a Catholic and a fellow-plotter with the Guises. He succeeded in bringing Morton to the block; and the death of the great Protestant leader left him free to enlist Scotland in the league which Rome was forming for the ruin of Elizabeth. The revolt in Ireland had failed. The work of the Jesuits in England had just ended in the death of Campian and the arrest of his followers. But with the help of the Guises Scotland might yet be brought to rise in arms for the liberation of Mary Stuart, and James might reign as co-regent with his mother, if he were converted to the Catholic Church. The young king, anxious to free his crown from the dictation of the nobles, lent himself to his cousin's schemes. For the moment they were foiled. James was seized by the Protestant Lords, and the Duke of Lennox, as Esme Stuart was now called, driven from the realm. But James was soon free again, and again in correspondence with the Guises and with Philip. The young king was lured by promises of the hand of an archduchess and the hope of the crowns of both England and Scotland. The real aim of the intriguers who guided him was to set him aside as soon as the victory was won and to restore his mother to the throne. But whether Mary were restored or no it seemed certain that in any attack on Elizabeth Spain would find helpers from among the Scots.

[Sidenote: The League.]

Nor was the opportunity favourable in Scotland alone. In the Netherlands and in France all seemed to go well for Philip's schemes. From the moment of his arrival in the Low Countries the Prince of Parma had been steadily winning back what Alva had lost. The Union of Ghent had been broken. The ten Catholic provinces were being slowly brought anew under Spanish rule. Town after town was regained. From Brabant Parma had penetrated into Flanders; Ypres, Bruges, and Ghent had fallen into his hands. Philip dealt a more fatal blow at his rebellious subjects in the murder of the man who was the centre of their resistance. For years past William of Orange had been a mark for assassin after assassin in Philip's pay, and in 1584 the deadly persistence of the Spanish king was rewarded by his fall. Reft indeed as they were of their leader, the Netherlanders still held their ground. The union of Utrecht stood intact; and Philip's work of reconquest might be checked at any moment by the intervention of England or of France. But at this moment all chance of French intervention passed away. Henry the Third was childless, and the death of his one remaining brother, Francis of Anjou, in 1584 left the young chief of the house of Bourbon, King Henry of Navarre, heir to the crown of France. Henry was the leader of the Huguenot party, and in January 1585 the French Catholics bound themselves in a holy league to prevent such a triumph of heresy in the realm as the reign of a Protestant would bring about by securing the succession of Henry's uncle, the cardinal of Bourbon. The Leaguers looked to Philip for support; they owned his cause for their own; and pledged themselves not only to root out Protestantism in France, but to help the Spanish king in rooting it out throughout the Netherlands. The League at once overshadowed the Crown; and Henry the Third could only meet the blow by affecting to put himself at its head, and by revoking the edicts of toleration in favour of the Huguenots. But the Catholics disbelieved in his sincerity; they looked only to Philip; and as long as Philip could supply the Leaguers with men and money, he felt secure on the side of France.

[Sidenote: Elizabeth attacks Philip.]

The vanishing of all hope of French aid was the more momentous to the Netherlands that at this moment Parma won his crowning triumph in the capture of Antwerp. Besieged in the winter of 1584, the city surrendered after a brave resistance in the August of 1585. But heavy as was the blow, it brought gain as well as loss to the Netherlanders. It forced Elizabeth into action. She refused indeed the title of Protector of the Netherlands which the States offered her, and compelled them to place Brill and Flushing in her hands as pledges for the repayment of her expenses. But she sent aid. Lord Leicester was hurried to the Flemish coast with eight thousand men. In a yet bolder spirit of defiance Francis Drake was suffered to set sail with a fleet of twenty-five vessels for the Spanish Main. The two expeditions had very different fortunes. Drake's voyage was a series of triumphs. The wrongs inflicted on English seamen by the Inquisition were requited by the burning of the cities of St. Domingo and Carthagena. The coasts of Cuba and Florida were plundered, and though the gold fleet escaped him, Drake returned in the summer of 1586 with a heavy booty. Leicester on the other hand was paralyzed by his own intriguing temper, by strife with the Queen, and by his military incapacity. Only one disastrous skirmish at Zutphen broke the inaction of his forces, while Elizabeth strove vainly to use the presence of his army to force Parma and the States alike to a peace which would restore Philip's sovereignty over the Netherlands, but leave them free enough to serve as a check on Philip's designs against herself.

[Sidenote: The Catholic Plots.]

Foiled as she was in securing a check on Philip in the Low Countries, the Queen was more successful in robbing him of the aid of the Scots. The action of King James had been guided by his greed of the English Crown, and a secret promise of the succession sufficed to lure him from the cause of Spain. In July 1586 he formed an alliance, defensive and offensive, with Elizabeth, and pledged himself not only to give no aid to revolt in Ireland, but to suppress any Catholic rising in the northern counties. The pledge was the more important that the Catholic resentment seemed passing into fanaticism. Maddened by confiscation and persecution, by the hopelessness of rebellion within or of deliverance from without, the fiercer Catholics listened to schemes of assassination to which the murder of William of Orange lent a terrible significance. The detection of Somerville, a fanatic who had received the Host before setting out for London "to shoot the Queen with his dagg," was followed by measures of natural severity, by the flight and arrest of Catholic gentry and peers, by a vigorous purification of the Inns of Court where a few Catholics lingered, and by the despatch of fresh batches of priests to the block. The trial and death of Parry, a member of the House of Commons who had served in the royal household, on a similar charge fed the general panic. The leading Protestants formed an association whose members pledged themselves to pursue to the death all who sought the Queen's life, and all on whose behalf it was sought. The association soon became national, and the Parliament met together in a transport of horror and loyalty to give it legal sanction. All Jesuits and seminary priests were banished from the realm on pain of death, and a bill for the security of the Queen disqualified any claimant of the succession who instigated subjects to rebellion or hurt to the Queen's person from ever succeeding to the Crown.

[Sidenote: Death of Mary Stuart.]

The threat was aimed at Mary Stuart. Weary of her long restraint, of her failure to rouse Philip or Scotland to her aid, of the baffled revolt of the English Catholics and the baffled intrigues of the Jesuits, Mary had bent for a moment to submission. "Let me go," she wrote to Elizabeth; "let me retire from this island to some solitude where I may prepare my soul to die. Grant this and I will sign away every right which either I or mine can claim." But the cry was useless, and in 1586 her despair found a new and more terrible hope in the plots against Elizabeth's life. She knew and approved the vow of Anthony Babington and a band of young Catholics, for the most part connected with the royal household, to kill the Queen and seat Mary on the throne; but plot and approval alike passed through Walsingham's hands, and the seizure of Mary's correspondence revealed her connivance in the scheme. Babington with his fellow-conspirators was at once sent to the block, and the provisions of the act passed in the last Parliament were put in force against Mary. In spite of her protests a Commission of Peers sate as her judges at Fotheringay Castle; and their verdict of "guilty" annihilated under the provisions of the statute her claim to the Crown. The streets of London blazed with bonfires, and peals rang out from steeple to steeple at the news of Mary's condemnation; but in spite of the prayer of Parliament for her execution and the pressure of the Council Elizabeth shrank from her death. The force of public opinion however was now carrying all before it, and after three months of hesitation the unanimous demand of her people wrested a sullen consent from the Queen. She flung the warrant signed upon the floor, and the Council took on themselves the responsibility of executing it. On the 8th of February 1587 Mary died on a scaffold which was erected in the castle-hall at Fotheringay as dauntlessly as she had lived. "Do not weep," she said to her ladies, "I have given my word for you." "Tell my friends," she charged Melville, "that I die a good Catholic."

[Sidenote: Philip and England.]

The blow was hardly struck before Elizabeth turned with fury on the ministers who had forced her hand. Cecil, who had now become Lord Burghley, was for a while disgraced, and Davison, who carried the warrant to the Council, was sent to the Tower to atone for an act which shattered the policy of the Queen. The death of Mary Stuart in fact seemed to have removed the last obstacle out of Philip's way. It had put an end to the divisions of the English Catholics. To the Spanish king, as to the nearest heir in blood who was of the Catholic Faith, Mary bequeathed her rights to the Crown, and the hopes of her more passionate adherents were from that moment bound up in the success of Spain. The blow too kindled afresh the fervour of the Papacy, and Sixtus the Fifth offered to aid Philip with money in his invasion of the heretic realm. But Philip no longer needed pressure to induce him to act. Drake's triumph had taught him that the conquest of England was needful for the security of his dominion in the New World, and for the mastery of the seas. The presence of an English army in Flanders convinced him that the road to the conquest of the States lay through England itself. Nor did the attempt seem a very perilous one. Allen and his Jesuit emissaries assured Philip that the bulk of the nation was ready to rise as soon as a strong Spanish force was landed on English shores. They numbered off the great lords who would head the revolt, the Earls of Arundel and Northumberland, who were both Catholics, the Earls of Worcester, Cumberland, Oxford, and Southampton, Viscount Montacute, the Lords Dacres, Morley, Vaux, Wharton, Windsor, Lumley, and Stourton. "All these," wrote Allen, "will follow our party when they see themselves supported by a sufficient foreign force." Against these were only "the new nobles, who are hated in the country," and the towns. "But the strength of England is not in its towns." All the more warlike counties were Catholic in their sympathies; and the persecution of the recusants had destroyed the last traces of their loyalty to the Queen. Three hundred priests had been sent across the sea to organize the insurrection, and they were circulating a book which Allen had lately published "to prove that it is not only lawful but our bounden duty to take up arms at the Pope's bidding and to fight for the Catholic faith against the Queen and other heretics." A landing in the Pope's name would be best, but a landing in Philip's name would be almost as secure of success. Trained as they were now by Allen and his three hundred priests, English Catholics "would let in Catholic auxiliaries of any nation, for they have learned to hate their domestic heretic more than any foreign power."

[Sidenote: Philip and France.]

What truth there was in the Jesuit view of England time was to prove. But there can be no doubt that Philip believed it, and that the promise of a Catholic rising was his chief inducement to attempt an invasion. The operations of Parma therefore were suspended with a view to the greater enterprise and vessels and supplies for the fleet which had for three years been gathering in the Tagus were collected from every port of the Spanish coast. Only France held Philip back. He dared not attack England till all dread of a counter-attack from France was removed; and though the rise of the League had seemed to secure this, its success had now become more doubtful. The king, who had striven to embarrass it by placing himself at its head, gathered round him the politicians and the moderate Catholics who saw in the triumph of the new Duke of Guise the ruin of the monarchy; while Henry of Navarre took the field at the head of the Huguenots, and won in 1587 the victory of Coutras. Guise restored the balance by driving the German allies of Henry from the realm; but the Huguenots were still unconquered, and the king, standing apart, fed a struggle which lightened for him the pressure of the League. Philip was forced to watch the wavering fortunes of the struggle, but while he watched, another blow fell on him from the sea. The news of the coming Armada called Drake again to action. In April 1587 he set sail with thirty small barks, burned the storeships and galleys in the harbour of Cadiz, stormed the ports of the Faro, and was only foiled in his aim of attacking the Armada itself by orders from home. A descent upon Corunna however completed what Drake called his "singeing of the Spanish king's beard." Elizabeth used the daring blow to back some negotiations for peace which she was still conducting in the Netherlands. But on Philip's side at least these negotiations were simply delusive. The Spanish pride had been touched to the quick. Amidst the exchange of protocols Parma gathered seventeen thousand men for the coming invasion, collected a fleet of flat-bottomed transports at Dunkirk, and waited impatiently for the Armada to protect his crossing. The attack of Drake however, the death of its first admiral, and the winter storms delayed the fleet from sailing. What held it back even more effectually was the balance of parties in France. But in the spring of 1588 Philip's patience was rewarded. The League had been baffled till now not so much by the resistance of the Huguenots as by the attitude of the king. So long as Henry the Third held aloof from both parties and gave a rallying point to the party of moderation the victory of the Leaguers was impossible. The difficulty was solved by the daring of Henry of Guise. The fanatical populace of Paris rose at his call; the royal troops were beaten off from the barricades; and on the 12th of May the king found himself a prisoner in the hands of the Duke. Guise was made lieutenant-general of the kingdom, and Philip was assured on the side of France.

[Sidenote: The Armada sails.]

The revolution was hardly over when at the end of May the Armada started from Lisbon. But it had scarcely put to sea when a gale in the Bay of Biscay drove its scattered vessels into Ferrol, and it was only on the nineteenth of July 1588 that the sails of the Armada were seen from the Lizard, and the English beacons flared out their alarm along the coast. The news found England ready. An army was mustering under Leicester at Tilbury, the militia of the midland counties were gathering to London, while those of the south and east were held in readiness to meet a descent on either shore. The force which Parma hoped to lead consisted of forty thousand men, for the Armada brought nearly twenty-two thousand soldiers to be added to the seventeen thousand who were waiting to cross from the Netherlands. Formidable as this force was, it was far too weak by itself to do the work which Philip meant it to do. Had Parma landed on the earliest day he purposed, he would have found his way to London barred by a force stronger than his own, a force too of men in whose ranks were many who had already crossed pikes on equal terms with his best infantry in Flanders. "When I shall have landed," he warned his master, "I must fight battle after battle, I shall lose men by wounds and disease, I must leave detachments behind me to keep open my communications; and in a short time the body of my army will become so weak that not only I may be unable to advance in the face of the enemy, and time may be given to the heretics and your Majesty's other enemies to interfere, but there may fall out some notable inconveniences, with the loss of everything, and I be unable to remedy it." What Philip really counted on was the aid which his army would find within England itself. Parma's chance of victory, if he succeeded in landing, lay in a Catholic rising. But at this crisis patriotism proved stronger than religious fanaticism in the hearts of the English Catholics. The news of invasion ran like fire along the English coasts. The whole nation answered the Queen's appeal. Instinct told England that its work was to be done at sea, and the royal fleet was soon lost among the vessels of the volunteers. London, when Elizabeth asked for fifteen ships and five thousand men, offered thirty ships and ten thousand seamen, while ten thousand of its train-bands drilled in the Artillery ground. Every seaport showed the same temper. Coasters put out from every little harbour. Squires and merchants pushed off in their own little barks for a brush with the Spaniards. In the presence of the stranger all religious strife was forgotten. The work of the Jesuits was undone in an hour. Of the nobles and squires whose tenants were to muster under the flag of the invader not one proved a traitor. The greatest lords on Allen's list of Philip's helpers, Cumberland, Oxford, and Northumberland, brought their vessels up alongside of Drake and Lord Howard as soon as Philip's fleet appeared in the Channel. The Catholic gentry who had been painted as longing for the coming of the stranger, led their tenantry, when the stranger came, to the muster at Tilbury.

[Sidenote: The two fleets.]