ENGLAND AND SPAIN
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.]
The loyalty of the Catholics decided the fate of Philip's scheme. Even
if Parma's army succeeded in landing, its task was now an impossible
one. Forty thousand Spaniards were no match for four millions of
Englishmen, banded together by a common resolve to hold England against
the foreigner. But to secure a landing at all, the Spaniards had to be
masters of the Channel. Parma might gather his army on the Flemish
coast, but every estuary and inlet was blocked by the Dutch cruisers.
The Netherlands knew well that the conquest of England was planned only
as a prelude to their own reduction; and the enthusiasm with which
England rushed to the conflict was hardly greater than that which
stirred the Hollanders. A fleet of ninety vessels, with the best Dutch
seamen at their head, held the Scheldt and the shallows of Dunkirk, and
it was only by driving this fleet from the water that Parma's army could
be set free to join in the great enterprise. The great need of the
Armada therefore was to reach the coast of Flanders. It was ordered to
make for Calais, and wait there for the junction of Parma. But even if
Parma joined it, the passage of his force was impossible without a
command of the Channel; and in the Channel lay an English fleet resolved
to struggle hard for the mastery. As the Armada sailed on in a broad
crescent past Plymouth, the vessels which had gathered under Lord
Howard of Effingham slipped out of the bay and hung with the wind upon
their rear. In numbers the two forces were strangely unequal, for the
English fleet counted only eighty vessels against the hundred and
forty-nine which composed the Armada. In size of ships the disproportion
was even greater. Fifty of the English vessels, including the squadron
of the Lord Admiral and the craft of the volunteers, were little bigger
than yachts of the present day. Even of the thirty Queen's ships which
formed its main body, there were but four which equalled in tonnage the
smallest of the Spanish galleons. Sixty-five of these galleons formed
the most formidable half of the Spanish fleet; and four galleys, four
galleasses armed with fifty guns apiece, fifty-six armed merchantmen,
and twenty pinnaces made up the rest. The Armada was provided with 2500
cannons, and a vast store of provisions; it had on board 8000 seamen and
more than 20,000 soldiers; and if a court-favourite, the Duke of Medina
Sidonia, had been placed at its head, he was supported by the ablest
staff of naval officers which Spain possessed.
[Sidenote: The fight with the Armada.]
Small however as the English ships were, they were in perfect trim; they
sailed two feet for the Spaniards' one; they were manned with 9000 hardy
seamen, and their Admiral was backed by a crowd of captains who had won
fame in the Spanish seas. With him were Hawkins, who had been the first
to break into the charmed circle of the Indies; Frobisher, the hero of
the North-West passage; and above all Drake, who held command of the
privateers. They had won too the advantage of the wind; and, closing in
or drawing off as they would, the lightly-handled English vessels, which
fired four shots to the Spaniards' one, hung boldly on the rear of the
great fleet as it moved along the Channel. "The feathers of the
Spaniard," in the phrase of the English seamen, were "plucked one by
one." Galleon after galleon was sunk, boarded, driven on shore; and yet
Medina Sidonia failed in bringing his pursuers to a close engagement.
Now halting, now moving slowly on, the running fight between the two
fleets lasted throughout the week, till on Sunday, the twenty-eighth of
July, the Armada dropped anchor in Calais roads. The time had come for
sharper work if the junction of the Armada with Parma was to be
prevented; for, demoralized as the Spaniards had been by the merciless
chase, their loss in ships had not been great, and their appearance off
Dunkirk might drive off the ships of the Hollanders who hindered the
sailing of the Duke. On the other hand, though the numbers of English
ships had grown, their supplies of food and ammunition were fast running
out. Howard therefore resolved to force an engagement; and, lighting
eight fire-ships at midnight, sent them down with the tide upon the
Spanish line. The galleons at once cut their cables, and stood out in
panic to sea, drifting with the wind in a long line off Gravelines.
Drake resolved at all costs to prevent their return. At dawn on the
twenty-ninth the English ships closed fairly in, and almost their last
cartridge was spent ere the sun went down.
[Sidenote: Flight of the Armada.]
Hard as the fight had been, it seemed far from a decisive one. Three
great galleons indeed had sunk in the engagement, three had drifted
helplessly on to the Flemish coast, but the bulk of the Spanish vessels
remained, and even to Drake the fleet seemed "wonderful great and
strong." Within the Armada itself however all hope was gone. Huddled
together by the wind and the deadly English fire, their sails torn,
their masts shot away, the crowded galleons had become mere
slaughter-houses. Four thousand men had fallen, and bravely as the
seamen fought, they were cowed by the terrible butchery. Medina himself
was in despair. "We are lost, Senor Oquenda," he cried to his bravest
captain; "what are we to do?" "Let others talk of being lost," replied
Oquenda, "your Excellency has only to order up fresh cartridge." But
Oquenda stood alone, and a council of war resolved on retreat to Spain
by the one course open, that of a circuit round the Orkneys. "Never
anything pleased me better," wrote Drake, "than seeing the enemy fly
with a southerly wind to the northwards. Have a good eye to the Prince
of Parma, for, with the grace of God, I doubt not ere it be long so to
handle the matter with the Duke of Sidonia, as he shall wish himself at
St. Mary Port among his orange trees." But the work of destruction was
reserved for a mightier foe than Drake. The English vessels were soon
forced to give up the chase by the running out of their supplies. But
the Spanish ships had no sooner reached the Orkneys than the storms of
the northern seas broke on them with a fury before which all concert and
union disappeared. In October fifty reached Corunna, bearing ten
thousand men stricken with pestilence and death. Of the rest some were
sunk, some dashed to pieces against the Irish cliffs. The wreckers of
the Orkneys and the Faroes, the clansmen of the Scottish Isles, the
kernes of Donegal and Galway, all had their part in the work of murder
and robbery. Eight thousand Spaniards perished between the Giant's
Causeway and the Blaskets. On a strand near Sligo an English captain
numbered eleven hundred corpses which had been cast up by the sea. The
flower of the Spanish nobility, who had been sent on the new crusade
under Alonzo da Leyva, after twice suffering shipwreck, put a third time
to sea to founder on a reef near Dunluce.
[Sidenote: Its effect on England.]
"I sent my ships against men," said Philip when the news reached him,
"not against the seas." It was in nobler tone that England owned her
debt to the storm that drove the Armada to its doom. On the medal that
commemorated its triumph were graven the words, "The Lord sent his wind,
and scattered them." The pride of the conquerors was hushed before their
sense of a mighty deliverance. It was not till England saw the broken
host "fly with a southerly wind to the north" that she knew what a
weight of fear she had borne for thirty years. The victory over the
Armada, the deliverance from Spain, the rolling away of the Catholic
terror which had hung like a cloud over the hopes of the new people, was
like a passing from death unto life. Within as without, the dark sky
suddenly cleared. The national unity proved stronger than the religious
strife. When the Catholic lords flocked to the camp at Tilbury, or put
off to join the fleet in the Channel, Elizabeth could pride herself on a
victory as great as the victory over the Armada. She had won it by her
patience and moderation, by her refusal to lend herself to the
fanaticism of the Puritan or the reaction of the Papist, by her sympathy
with the mass of the people, by her steady and unflinching preference of
national union to any passing considerations of safety or advantage. For
thirty years, amidst the shock of religious passions at home and abroad,
she had reigned not as a Catholic or as a Protestant Queen, but as a
Queen of England, and it was to England, Catholic and Protestant alike,
that she could appeal in her hour of need. "Let tyrants fear," she
exclaimed in words that still ring like the sound of a trumpet, as she
appeared among her soldiers. "Let tyrants fear! I have always so behaved
myself that under God I have placed my chiefest strength and safeguard
in the loyal hearts and goodwill of my subjects! And therefore I am come
among you, as you see, resolved in the midst and heat of the battle to
live and die amongst you all." The work of Edward and of Mary was
undone, and the strife of religions fell powerless before the sense of a
common country.
[Sidenote: Its European results.]
Nor were the results of the victory less momentous to Europe at large.
What Wolsey and Henry had struggled for, Elizabeth had done. At her
accession England was scarcely reckoned among European powers. The
wisest statesmen looked on her as doomed to fall into the hands of
France, or to escape that fate by remaining a dependency of Spain. But
the national independence had grown with the national life. France was
no longer a danger, Scotland was no longer a foe. Instead of hanging on
the will of Spain, England had fronted Spain and conquered her. She now
stood on a footing of equality with the greatest powers of the world.
Her military weight indeed was drawn from the discord which rent the
peoples about her, and would pass away with its close. But a new and
lasting greatness opened on the sea. She had sprung at a bound into a
sea-power. Her fleets were spreading terror through the New World as
through the Old. When Philip by his conquest of Portugal had gathered
the two greatest navies of the world into his single hand, England had
faced him and driven his fleet from the seas. But the rise of England
was even less memorable than the fall of Spain. That Spain had fallen
few of the world's statesmen saw then. Philip thanked God that he could
easily, if he chose, "place another fleet upon the seas," and the
despatch of a second armada soon afterwards showed that his boast was a
true one. But what had vanished was his mastery of the seas. The defeat
of the Armada was the first of a series of defeats at the hands of the
English and the Dutch. The naval supremacy of Spain was lost, and with
it all was lost; for an empire so widely scattered over the world, and
whose dominions were parted by intervening nations, could only be held
together by its command of the seas. One century saw Spain stripped of
the bulk of the Netherlands, another of her possessions in Italy, a
third of her dominions in the New World. But slowly as her empire broke,
the cause of ruin was throughout the same. It was the loss of her
maritime supremacy that robbed her of all, and her maritime supremacy
was lost in the wreck of the Armada.
[Sidenote: The counter-attack on Spain.]
If Philip met the shock with a calm patience, it at once ruined his
plans in the West. France broke again from his grasp. Since the day of
the Barricades Henry the Third had been virtually a prisoner in the
hands of the Duke of Guise; but the defeat of the Armada woke him to a
new effort for the recovery of power, and at the close of 1588 Guise was
summoned to his presence and stabbed as he entered by the royal
bodyguard. The blow broke the strength of the League. The Duke of
Mayenne, a brother of the victim, called indeed the Leaguers to arms;
and made war upon the king. But Henry found help in his cousin, Henry of
Navarre, who brought a Huguenot force to his aid; and the moderate
Catholics rallied as of old round the Crown. The Leaguers called on
Philip for aid, but Philip was forced to guard against attack at home.
Elizabeth had resolved to give blow for blow. The Portuguese were
writhing under Spanish conquest; and a claimant of the crown, Don
Antonio, who had found refuge in England, promised that on his landing
the country would rise in arms. In the spring of 1589 therefore an
expedition of fifty vessels and 15,000 men was sent under Drake and Sir
John Norris against Lisbon. Its chances of success hung on a quick
arrival in Portugal, but the fleet touched at Corunna, and after burning
the ships in its harbour the army was tempted to besiege the town. A
Spanish army which advanced to its relief was repulsed by an English
force of half its numbers. Corunna however held stubbornly out, and in
the middle of May Norris was forced to break the siege and to sail to
Lisbon. But the delay had been fatal to his enterprise. The country did
not rise; the English troops were thinned with sickness; want of cannon
hindered a siege; and after a fruitless march up the Tagus Norris fell
back on the fleet. The coast was pillaged, and the expedition returned
baffled to England. Luckless as the campaign had proved, the bold
defiance of Spain and the defeat of a Spanish army on Spanish ground
kindled a new daring in Englishmen while they gave new heart to Philip's
enemies. In the summer of 1589 Henry the Third laid siege to Paris. The
fears of the League were removed by the knife of a priest, Jacques
Clement, who assassinated the king in August; but Henry of Navarre, or,
as he now became, Henry the Fourth, stood next to him in line of blood,
and Philip saw with dismay a Protestant mount the throne of France.
[Sidenote: Henry the Fourth.]
From this moment the thought of attack on England, even his own warfare
in the Netherlands, was subordinated in the mind of the Spanish king to
the need of crushing Henry the Fourth. It was not merely that Henry's
Protestantism threatened to spread heresy over the West. Catholic or
Protestant, the union of France under an active and enterprising ruler
would be equally fatal to Philip's designs. Once gathered round its
king, France was a nearer obstacle to the reconquest of the Netherlands
than ever England could be. On the other hand, the religious strife, to
which Henry's accession gave a fresh life and vigour, opened wide
prospects to Philip's ambition. Far from proving a check upon Spain, it
seemed as if France might be turned into a Spanish dependency. While the
Leaguers proclaimed the Cardinal of Bourbon king, under the name of
Charles the Tenth, they recognized Philip as Protector of France. Their
hope indeed lay in his aid, and their army was virtually his own. On the
other hand Henry the Fourth was environed with difficulties. It was only
by declaring his willingness to be "further instructed" in matters of
faith, in other words by holding out hopes of his conversion, that he
succeeded in retaining the moderate Catholics under his standard. His
desperate bravery alone won a victory at Ivry over the forces of the
League, which enabled him to again form the siege of Paris in 1590. All
recognized Paris as the turning-point in the struggle, and the League
called loudly for Philip's aid. To give it was to break the work which
Parma was doing in the Netherlands, and to allow the United Provinces a
breathing space in their sorest need. But even the Netherlands were of
less moment than the loss of France; and Philip's orders forced Parma
to march to the relief of Paris. The work was done with a skill which
proved the Duke to be a master in the art of war. The siege of Paris was
raised; the efforts of Henry to bring the Spaniards to an engagement
were foiled; and it was only when the king's army broke up from sheer
weariness that Parma withdrew unharmed to the north.
[Sidenote: England and Henry.]
England was watching the struggle of Henry the Fourth with a keen
interest. The failure of the expedition against Lisbon had put an end
for the time to any direct attacks upon Spain, and the exhaustion of the
treasury forced Elizabeth to content herself with issuing commissions to
volunteers. But the war was a national one, and the nation waged it for
itself. Merchants, gentlemen, nobles fitted out privateers. The sea-dogs
in ever-growing numbers scoured the Spanish Main. Their quest had its
ill chances as it had its good, and sometimes the prizes made were far
from paying for the cost of the venture. "Paul might plant, and Apollos
might water," John Hawkins explained after an unsuccessful voyage, "but
it is God only that giveth the increase!" But more often the profit was
enormous. Spanish galleons, Spanish merchant-ships, were brought month
after month to English harbours. The daring of the English seamen faced
any odds. Ten English trading vessels beat off twelve Spanish
war-galleys in the Straits of Gibraltar. Sir Richard Grenville in a
single bark, the Revenge, found himself girt in by fifty men-of-war,
each twice as large as his own. He held out from afternoon to the
following daybreak, beating off attempt after attempt to board him; and
it was not till his powder was spent, more than half his crew killed,
and the rest wounded, that the ship struck its flag. Grenville had
refused to surrender, and was carried mortally wounded to die in a
Spanish ship. "Here die I, Richard Grenville," were his last words,
"with a joyful and a quiet mind, for that I have ended my life as a good
soldier ought to do, who has fought for his country and his queen, for
honour and religion." But the drift of the French war soon forced
Elizabeth back again into the strife. In each of the French provinces
the civil war went on: and in Britanny, where the contest raged
fiercest, Philip sent the Leaguers a supply of Spanish troops. Normandy
was already in Catholic hands, and the aim of the Spanish king was to
secure the western coast for future operations against England.
Elizabeth pressed Henry the Fourth to foil these projects, and in the
winter of 1591 she sent money and men to aid him in the siege of Rouen.
[Sidenote: Henry's conversion.]
To save Rouen Philip was again forced to interrupt his work of conquest
in the Netherlands. Parma marched anew into the heart of France, and
with the same consummate generalship as of old relieved the town without
giving Henry a chance of battle. But the day was fast going against the
Leaguers. The death of their puppet-king, Charles the Tenth, left them
without a sovereign to oppose to Henry of Navarre; and their scheme of
conferring the crown on Isabella, Philip's daughter by Elizabeth of
France, with a husband whom Philip should choose, awoke jealousies in
the house of Guise itself, while it gave strength to the national party
who shrank from laying France at the feet of Spain. Even the Parliament
of Paris, till now the centre of Catholic fanaticism, protested against
setting the crown of France on the brow of a stranger. The politicians
drew closer to Henry of Navarre, and the moderate Catholics pressed for
his reconciliation to the Church as a means of restoring unity to the
realm. The step had become so inevitable that even the Protestants were
satisfied with Henry's promise of toleration; and in the summer of 1593
he declared himself a Catholic. With his conversion the civil war came
practically to an end. It was in vain that Philip strove to maintain the
zeal of the Leaguers, or that the Guises stubbornly kept the field. All
France drew steadily to the king. Paris opened her gates in the spring
of 1594, and the chief of the Leaguers, the Duke of Mayenne, submitted
at the close of the year. Even Rome abandoned the contest, and at the
end of 1595 Henry received solemn absolution from Clement the Eighth.
From that moment France rose again into her old power, and the old
national policy of opposition to the House of Austria threw her weight
into the wavering balance of Philip's fortunes. The death of Parma had
already lightened the peril of the United Provinces, but though their
struggle in the Low Countries was to last for years, from the moment of
Henry the Fourth's conversion their independence was secure. Nor was the
restoration of the French monarchy to its old greatness of less moment
to England. Philip was yet to send an armada against her coasts; he was
again to stir up a fierce revolt in northern Ireland. But all danger
from Spain was over with the revival of France. Even were England to
shrink from a strife in which she had held Philip so gloriously at bay,
French policy would never suffer the island to fall unaided under the
power of Spain. The fear of foreign conquest passed away. The long
struggle for sheer existence was over. What remained was the
Protestantism, the national union, the lofty patriotism, the pride in
England and the might of Englishmen, which had drawn life more vivid and
intense than they had ever known before from the long battle with the
Papacy and with Spain.
END OF VOL. IV
TRANSCRIBER'S NOTES:
The following words used an oe ligature in the original:
manoeuvres
manoeuvring