A Student's History of England Volume II Part 5

[Footnote 16: A subsidy was a tax on lands and goods voted by Parliament to the Crown, resembling in many respects the modern income-tax.]

5. =A Puritan Parliament. 1571.=--In =1571= Elizabeth had to deal with a Puritan House of Commons. The House granted supplies, and wanted to impose new penalties on the Roman Catholics and to suppress ecclesiastical abuses. One of the members named Strickland, having proposed to ask leave to amend the Prayer Book, the Queen ordered him to absent himself from the House. The House was proceeding to remonstrate when Elizabeth, too prudent to allow a quarrel to spring up, gave him permission to return. She had her way, however, and the Prayer Book remained untouched. She was herself a better representative of the nation than the House of Commons, but as yet she represented it only as standing between two hostile parties; though she hoped that the time would come when she would have a strong middle party of her own.

6. =The Duke of Norfolk's Plot and Execution. 1571-1572.= For the present Elizabeth's chief enemies were the conspirators who were aiming at placing Mary on her throne. In April =1571= Ridolfi reached the Netherlands, and urged Alva to send a Spanish army to England. Alva was cautious, and thought the attempt dangerous unless Elizabeth had first been killed or captured. Philip was consulted, gave his approval to the murder, but afterwards drew back, though he ordered Alva to proceed with the invasion. In the meanwhile Cecil, who had just been made Lord Burghley, came upon traces of the plot.

Norfolk was arrested, and before the end of the year everything was known. Though the proposal of a marriage between Elizabeth and the Duke of Anjou had lately broken down, she now, in her anxiety to find support in France against Spain, entered into a negotiation to marry Anjou's brother, the Duke of Alencon, a vicious lad twenty-one years younger than herself. Then she was free to act. She drove the Spanish amba.s.sador out of England, and Norfolk was tried and convicted of treason. A fresh Parliament meeting in =1572= urged the queen to consent to the execution of Mary. Elizabeth refused, but she sent Norfolk to the block.

7. =The Admonition to Parliament. 1572.=--The rising in the North and the invitation to bring a Spanish army into England could not but fan the zeal of the Puritans. At the beginning of the reign they had contented themselves with calling for the abolition of certain ceremonies. A more decided party now added a demand for the abolition of episcopacy and the establishment of Presbyterianism and of the complete Calvinistic discipline. The leader of this party was Thomas Cartwright, a theological professor at Cambridge, the university which had produced the greater number of the reformers, as it now produced the greater number of Puritans. In =1570=, Cartwright was expelled from his Professorship. He sympathised with _An Admonition to Parliament_ written in =1572= by two of his disciples, and himself wrote _A Second Admonition to Parliament_, to second their views. Cartwright was far from claiming for the Puritans the position of a sect to be tolerated. He had no thought of establishing religious liberty in his mind. He declared the Presbyterian Church to be the only divinely appointed one, and asked that all Englishmen should be forced to submit to its ordinances.

The civil magistrate was to have no control over its ministers. All active religious feeling being enlisted either on the Papal or the Puritanical side, Elizabeth's reformed, but not Puritan, Church seemed likely to be crushed between two forces. It was saved by the existence of a large body of men who cared for other things more than for religious disputes, and who were ready to defend the Queen as ruler of the nation without any special regard for the ecclesiastical system which she maintained.

8. =Mariners and Pirates.=--Of all Elizabeth's subjects there were none who stood their country in such good stead in the impending conflict with Spain and the Papacy as the mariners. Hardy and reckless, they cared little for theological distinctions or for forms of Church government, their first instinct being to fill their own purses either by honest trade if it might be, or by piracy if that seemed likely to be more profitable. Even before Elizabeth's accession, the Channel and the seas beyond it swarmed with English pirates. Though the pirates cared nothing for the nationality of the vessels which they plundered, it was inevitable that the greatest loss should fall on Spain. Spain was the first maritime power in the world, and her galleons as they pa.s.sed up to Antwerp to exchange the silks and spices of the East for the commodities of Europe, fell an easy prey to the swift and well-armed cruisers which put out from English harbours. The Spaniards retaliated by seizing English sailors wherever they could lay their hands upon them, sometimes hanging them out of hand, sometimes destroying them with starvation and misery in fetid dungeons, sometimes handing them over to the Inquisition--a court the function of which was the suppression of heresy--in other words, to the torture-room or the stake.

9. =Westward Ho!=--Every year the hatred between the mariners of Spain and England grew more bitter, and it was not long before English sailors angered the king of Spain by crossing the Atlantic to trade or plunder in the West Indies, where both the islands and the mainland of Mexico and South America were full of Spanish settlements. In those days a country which sent out colonies claimed the sole right of trading with them; besides which the king of Spain claimed a right of refusing to foreigners an entrance into his American dominions because, towards the end of the fifteenth century, Pope Alexander VI. being called on to mediate between Spain and Portugal, had drawn a line on the map to the east of which was to be the Portuguese colony of Brazil, whilst all the rest of America to the west of it was to be Spanish. From this the Spaniards reasoned that all America except Brazil was theirs by the gift of the Pope--which in their eyes was equivalent to the gift of G.o.d.

English sailors refusing to recognise this pretension, sailed to the Spanish settlements to trade, and attacked the Spanish officials who tried to prevent them. The Spanish settlers were eager to get negro slaves to cultivate their plantations, and Englishmen were equally eager to kidnap negroes in Africa and to sell them in the West Indies. A curious combination of the love of gain and of Protestantism sprang up amongst the sailors, who had no idea that to sell black men was in any way wrong. One engaged in this villanous work explained how he had been saved from the perils of the sea by 'Almighty G.o.d, who never suffers his elect to perish!' There was money enough to be got, and sometimes there would be hard fighting and the gain or loss of all.

[Ill.u.s.tration: Sir Francis Drake, in his 43rd year: from the engraving by Elstracke.]

10. =Francis Drake's Voyage to Panama. 1572.=--The n.o.blest of these mariners was Francis Drake. Sickened by one experience of the slave trade, and refusing to take any further part in it, he flew at the wealth of the Spanish Government. In =1572= he sailed for Nombre de Dios, on the Atlantic side of the isthmus of Panama. Thither were brought once a year gold and silver from the mines of Peru. In the governor's house Drake found a pile of silver bars. "I have now," he said to his men, "brought you to the mouth of the treasury of the world." He himself was wounded, and his followers, having little spirit to fight without their leader, were beaten off. "I am resolved," he said somewhat later to a Spaniard, "by the help of G.o.d, to reap some of the golden harvest which you have got out of the earth and sent to Spain to trouble the earth." It was his firm conviction that he was serving G.o.d in robbing the king of Spain.

Before he returned some Indians showed him from a tree on the isthmus the waters of the Pacific, which no civilised people except the Spaniards had ever navigated. Drake threw himself on his knees, praying to G.o.d to give him life and to allow him to sail an English vessel on those seas.

11. =The Seizure of Brill, and the Ma.s.sacre of St. Bartholomew.

1572.=--Exiles from the Netherlands took refuge on the sea from Alva's tyranny, and plundered Spanish vessels as Englishmen had done before. In =1572= a party of these seized Brill and laid the foundations of the Dutch Republic. They called on Charles IX. of France to help them, and he (being under the influence of Coligny, the leader of the Huguenots) was eager to make war on Spain on their behalf. Charles's mother, Catherine de Medicis, was, however, alarmed lest the Huguenots should grow too powerful, and frightened her son with a tale that they were conspiring against him. He was an excitable youth, and turned savagely on the Huguenots, encouraging a fearful butchery of them, which is known as the Ma.s.sacre of St.

Bartholomew, because it took place on August 24, which was St.

Bartholomew's day. Coligny himself was among the victims.

12. =The Growth of the Dutch Republic. 1572-1578.=--By this time the provinces of Holland and Zeeland had risen against Spain. They placed at their head the Prince of Orange with the t.i.tle of Stadtholder or Lieutenant, as if he had been still the lieutenant of the king of Spain whom he resisted. The rebels had but a scanty force wherewith to defend themselves against the vast armies of Spain. Alva took town after town, sacked them, and butchered man, woman and child within. In =1574= Leyden was saved from his attack.

Holland is below the sea-level, and the Dutch cut the d.y.k.es which kept off the sea, and when the tide rushed in, sent flat-bottomed vessels over what had once been land, and rescued the town from the besiegers. Alva, disgusted at his failure, returned to Spain. In =1576= his successor Requesens died. Spain, with all the wealth of the Indies pouring into it, was impoverished by the vastness of the work which Philip had undertaken in trying to maintain the power of the Roman Catholic Church in all western Europe. The expenses of the war in the Netherlands exhausted his treasury, and on the death of Requesens, the Spanish army mutinied, plundered even that part of the country which was friendly to Spain, and sacked Antwerp with barbarous cruelty. Then the whole of the seventeen provinces of the Netherlands drove out the Spaniards, and bound themselves by the Pacification of Ghent into a confederate Republic. In =1578= Alexander, duke of Parma, arrived as the Spanish governor. He was a great warrior and statesman, and he won over the Catholic provinces of the southern Netherlands to his side. By the Union of Utrecht the Prince of Orange formed a new confederate republic of the seven northern provinces, which were mainly Protestant.

13. =Quiet Times in England. 1572-1577.=--The Spaniards were no longer able to interfere in England. Elizabeth was equally safe from the side of France. In =1574= Charles IX. died, and was succeeded by Elizabeth's old suitor Anjou as Henry III. There were fresh civil wars which gave him enough to do at home. In =1573= Elizabeth sent aid to the party of the young king in Scotland, and suppressed the last remnants of Mary's party there. In England she pursued her old policy. Men might think what they would, but they must not discuss their opinions openly. There must be as little preaching as possible, and when the clergy began to hold meetings called prophesyings for discussion on the Scriptures, she ordered Grindal, who had succeeded Parker as Archbishop of Canterbury, to suppress them, and on his refusal in =1577= suspended him from his office, and put down the prophesyings herself.

14. =Drake's Voyage. 1577-1580.=--Elizabeth had no sympathy with the heroic Netherlanders, who fought for liberty and conscience, but she had sympathy with the mariners who by fair means or foul brought treasure into the realm. In =1577= Drake sailed for that Pacific which he had long been eager to enter. Pa.s.sing through the Straits of Magellan, he found himself alone on the unknown ocean with the 'Pelican,' a little ship of 100 tons. He ranged up the coast of South America, seizing treasure where he landed, but never doing any cruel deed. The Spaniards, not thinking it possible that an English ship could be there, took the 'Pelican' for one of their own vessels, and were easily caught. At Tarapaca, for instance, Drake found a Spaniard asleep with bars of silver by his side. At another landing place he found eight llamas laden with silver. So he went on, till he took a great vessel with jewels in plenty, thirteen chests of silver coin, eighty pounds' weight of gold, and twenty-six tons of silver. With all this he sailed home by way of the Cape of Good Hope, arriving in England in =1580=, being the first commander who had circ.u.mnavigated the globe.[17] The king of Spain was furious, and demanded back the wealth of which his subjects had been robbed. Elizabeth gave him good words, but not a penny of money or money's worth.

[Footnote 17: Magellan died on the way, though his ship completed the voyage round the world.]

[Ill.u.s.tration: Armour as worn during the reign of Elizabeth: from the bra.s.s of Francis Clopton, 1577, at Long Melford, Suffolk.]

15. =Ireland and the Reformation. 1547.=--Since the death of Henry VIII. the management of Ireland had been increasingly difficult. An attempt had been made in the reign of Edward VI. to establish the reformed religion. All that was then done had been overthrown by Mary, and what Mary did was in turn overthrown by Elizabeth. As yet, however, the orders of the English Government to make religious changes in Ireland were of comparatively little importance. The power of the Government did not reach far, and even in the districts to which it extended there was none of that mental preparation for the reception of the new doctrines which was to be found in England.

The Reformation was accepted by very few, except by English officials, who were ready to accept anything to please the Government. Those who clung to the old ways, however, were not at all zealous for their faith, and there was as yet no likelihood that any religious insurrection like the Pilgrimage of Grace or the rising in the North would be heard of in Ireland. The lives of the Celtic chiefs and the Anglo-Norman lords were pa.s.sed in blood-shedding and looseness of life, which made them very unfit to be champions of any religion whatever.

16. =Ireland under Edward VI. and Mary. 1547-1558.=--The real difficulty of the English Government in Ireland lay in its relations with the Irish tribes, whether under Celtic chiefs or Anglo-Norman lords. At the end of the reign of Edward VI. an attempt had been made to revert to the better part of the policy of Henry VIII., and the heads of the tribes were entrusted by the government with powers to keep order in the hope that they would gradually settle down into civilisation and obedience. Such a policy required almost infinite patience on the part of the Government, and the Earl of Suss.e.x, who was Lord Deputy under Mary, began again the old mischief of making warlike attacks upon the Irish which he had not force or money enough to render effectual. It was Mary and not a Protestant sovereign who first sent English colonists to occupy the lands of the turbulent Irish in King's County and Queen's County--then much smaller than at present. A war of extermination at once began. The natives ma.s.sacred the intruders and the intruders ma.s.sacred the natives, till--far on in Elizabeth's reign--the natives had been all slaughtered or expelled. There was thus introduced into the heart of Ireland a body of Englishmen who, no doubt, were far more advanced in the arts of life than the Irish around them, but who treated the Irish with utter contempt, and put them to death without mercy.

17. =Elizabeth and Ireland. 1558-1578.=--From the time of the settlement of King's and Queen's Counties all chance of a peaceable arrangement was at an end. Elizabeth had not money enough to pay an army capable of subduing Ireland, nor had the Irish tribes sufficient trust in one another to unite in national resistance.

There was, in fact, no Irish nation. Even Shan O'Neill, the most formidable Irish opponent of the English Government, who was predominant in the North during the early part of Elizabeth's reign, failed because he tried to reduce the other Ulster chiefs to subjection to himself, and in =1567= was overthrown by the O'Donnells, and not by an English army. When the English officials gained power, they were apt to treat the Irish as if they were vermin to be destroyed. New attempts at colonisation were made, but the Irish drove out the colonists, and Ireland was in a more chaotic state than if it had been left to its own disorder.

18. =The Landing at Smerwick, and the Desmond Rising.

1579-1583.=--Elizabeth's servants were the more anxious to subdue Ireland by the process of exterminating Irishmen, because they believed that the Irish would welcome Spaniards if they came to establish a government in Ireland hostile to Elizabeth. On the other hand, the English Catholics, and especially the English Catholic clergy in exile on the Continent, fancied, wrongly, that the Irish were fighting for the papacy, and not for tribal independence, or, rather, for bare life, which tribal independence alone secured. In =1579= Sir James Fitzmaurice landed with a few men at Dingle, under the authority of the Pope, but was soon defeated and slain. In =1580= a large number of Spaniards and Italians landed at Smerwick, but was overpowered and slaughtered by Lord Grey, the Lord Deputy.

Then the Earl of Desmond, the head of a branch of the family of Fitzgerald, all-powerful in Munster, rose. The insurrection was put down, and Desmond himself slain, in =1583=. It is said that in =1582= no less than 30,000 perished--mostly of starvation--in a single year. It is an English witness who tells us of the poor wretches who survived, that 'out of every corner of the woods and glens they came creeping forth upon their hands, for their legs could not bear them; they spoke like ghosts crying out of their graves; they did eat the dead carrions, happy where they could find them.'

19. =The Jesuits in England. 1580.=--In England the landing of a papal force at Smerwick produced the greater alarm because Parma (see p. 450) had been gaining ground in the Netherlands, and the time might soon come when a Spanish army would be available for the invasion of England. For the present what the Government feared was any interruption to the process by which the new religion was replacing the old. In =1571= there had been an act of Parliament in answer to the Papal Bull of Deposition (see p. 442), declaring all who brought Bulls into the country, and all who were themselves reconciled to the see of Rome, or who reconciled others to be traitors, but for a long time no use was made by Elizabeth of these powers. The Catholic exiles, however, had witnessed with sorrow the gradual decay of their religion in England, and in =1568= William Allen, one of their number, had founded a college at Douai (removed in =1578= to Reims) as a seminary for missionaries to England. It was not long before seminary priests, as the missionaries were called, began to land in England to revive the zeal of their countrymen, but it was not till =1577= that one of them, Cuthbert Mayne, was executed, technically for bringing in a copy of a Bull of a trivial character, but really for maintaining that Catholics would be justified in rising to a.s.sist a foreign force sent to reduce England to obedience to the Papacy. There were, in fact, two rival powers inconsistent with one another. If the Papal power was to prevail, the Queen's authority must be got rid of. If the Queen's power was to prevail, the Pope's authority must be got rid of. In =1580= two Jesuits, Campion and Parsons, landed. They brought with them an explanation of the Bull of Deposition, which practically meant that no one need act on it till it was convenient to do so.

They went about making converts and strengthening the lukewarm in the resolution to stand by their faith.

20. =The Recusancy Laws. 1581.=--Elizabeth in her dread of religious strife had done her best to silence religious discussion and even religious teaching. Men in an age of religious controversy are eager to believe something. All the more vigorous of the Protestants were at this time Puritans, and now the more vigorous of those who could not be Puritans welcomed the Jesuits with joy. There were never many Jesuits in England, but for a time they gave life and vigour to the seminary priests who were not Jesuits. In =1581= Parliament, seeing nothing in what had happened but a conspiracy against the Crown, pa.s.sed the first of the acts which became known as the Recusancy laws. In addition to the penalties on reconciliation to Rome and the introduction of Bulls, fines and imprisonment were to be inflicted for hearing or saying ma.s.s, and fines upon lay recusants--that is to say, persons who refused to go to church. Catholics were from this time frequently subjected to torture to drive them to give information which would lead to the apprehension of the priests.

Campion was arrested and executed after cruel torture; Parsons escaped. If the Government and the Parliament did not see the whole of the causes of the Jesuit revival, they were not wrong in seeing that there was political danger. Campion was an enthusiast. Parsons was a cool-headed intriguer, and he continued from the Continent to direct the threads of a conspiracy which aimed at Elizabeth's life.

[Ill.u.s.tration: Hall of Burghley House, Northamptonshire, built about 1580: from Drummond's _Histories of n.o.ble British Families_, vol.

i.]

21. =Growing Danger of Elizabeth. 1580-1584.=--Elizabeth was seldom startled, but her ministers were the more frightened because the power of Spain was growing. In =1580= Philip took possession of Portugal and the Portuguese colonies, whilst in the Netherlands Parma was steadily gaining ground. Elizabeth had long been nursing the idea of the Alencon marriage (see p. 446), and in =1581= it seemed as if she was in earnest about it. She entertained the Duke at Greenwich, gave him a kiss and a ring, then changing her mind sent him off to the Netherlands, where he hoped to be appointed by the Dutch to the sovereignty of the independent states. In the spring of =1582= a fanatic, Jaureguy, tried to murder the Prince of Orange at Philip's instigation. Through the summer of that year Parsons and Allen were plotting with Philip and the Duke of Guise, for the a.s.sa.s.sination of Elizabeth, on the understanding that as soon as Elizabeth had been killed, Guise was to send or lead an army to invade England. They hoped that such an army would receive a.s.sistance from Scotland, where the young James had become the tool of a Catholic intriguer whom he made Duke of Lennox. Philip, however, was too dilatory to succeed. In August James was seized by some Protestant Lords, and Lennox was soon driven from the country.

In =1583= there was a renewal of the danger. The foolish Alencon, wishing to carve out a princ.i.p.ality for himself, made a violent attack on Antwerp and other Flemish towns which had allied themselves with him, and was consequently driven from the country; whilst Parma, taking advantage of this split amongst his enemies, conquered most of the towns--Antwerp, however, being still able to resist. He now held part of the coast line, and a Spanish invasion of England from the Netherlands once more became feasible. In November =1583= a certain Francis Throgmorton, having been arrested and racked, made known to Elizabeth the whole story of the intended invasion of the army of Guise. In January =1584= she sent the Spanish amba.s.sador, Mendoza, out of England. On June 29 Balthazar Gerard a.s.sa.s.sinated the Prince of Orange.

22. =The a.s.sociation. 1584-1585.=--Those who had planned the murder of the Prince of Orange were planning the murder of Elizabeth. In their eyes she was a usurper, who by main force held her subjects from all hope of salvation by keeping them in ignorance of the teaching of the true Church, and they accordingly drew the inference that it was lawful to murder her and to place Mary on her throne.

They did not see that they had to do with a nation and not with a queen alone, and that, whether the nation was as yet Protestant or not, it was heart and soul with Elizabeth against a.s.sa.s.sins and invaders. In November =1584=, at the instigation of the Council, the ma.s.s of Englishmen--irrespective of creed--bound themselves in an a.s.sociation not only to defend the Queen, but, in case of her murder, to put to death the person for whose sake the crime had been committed--or, in other words, to send Mary to the grave instead of to the throne. In =1585= this a.s.sociation, with considerable modifications, was confirmed by Parliament. At the same time an act was pa.s.sed banishing all Jesuits and seminary priests, and directing that they should be put to death if they returned.

23. =Growth of Philip's Power. 1584-1585.=--In the meantime Philip's power was still growing. The wretched Alencon died in =1584=, and a far distant cousin of the childless Henry III., Henry king of Navarre, who was a Huguenot, became heir to the French throne. Guise and the ardent Catholics formed themselves into a league to exclude Huguenots from the succession, and placed themselves under the direction of the king of Spain. A civil war broke out once more in =1585=, and if the league should win (as at first seemed likely) Philip would be able to dispose of the resources of France in addition to his own. As Guise had now enough to do at home, Philip took the invasion of England into his own hands. He had first to extend his power in the Netherlands. In August the great port of Antwerp surrendered to Parma. The Dutch had offered to make Elizabeth their sovereign, and, though she had prudently refused, she sent an army to their aid, but neutralised the gift by placing the wretched Leicester at its head, and by giving him not a penny wherewith to pay his men. In =1586=, after an attempt (after Alencon's fashion) to seize the government for himself, Leicester returned to England, having accomplished nothing. What Elizabeth did not do was done by a crowd of young Englishmen who pressed over to the Netherlands to fight as volunteers for Dutch freedom. The best known of these was Sir Philip Sidney, whose head and heart alike seemed to qualify him for a foremost place amongst the new generation of Englishmen. Unhappily he was slain in battle near Zutphen. As he lay dying he handed a cup of water untasted to another wounded man. 'Thy necessity,' he said to him, 'is greater than mine.' Parma took Zutphen, and the territory of the Dutch Republic--the bulwark of England--was the smaller by its loss. By sea England more than held her own, and in =1586= Drake returned from a voyage to the West Indies laden with spoils.

24. =Babington's Plot, and the Trial of Mary Stuart. 1586.=--The Spanish invasion being still delayed, a new plot for murdering Elizabeth was formed. A number of young Catholics (of whom Anthony Babington was the most prominent) had been allowed to remain at Court by Elizabeth, who was perfectly fearless. Acting under the instructions of a priest named Ballard, they now sought basely to take advantage of their easy access to her person to a.s.sa.s.sinate her. They were detected and executed, and Walsingham, the Secretary of State who conducted the detective department of the government, discovered, or said that he had discovered, evidence of Mary Stuart's approving knowledge of the conspiracy. Elizabeth's servants felt that there was but one way of saving the life of the queen, and that was by taking the life of her whose existence made it worth while to a.s.sa.s.sinate Elizabeth. Mary was brought to trial and condemned to death on a charge of complicity in Babington's plot.

When Parliament met it pet.i.tioned Elizabeth to execute the sentence.

Elizabeth could not make up her mind. She knew that Mary's execution would save herself and the country from enormous danger, but she shrank from ordering the deed to be done. She signed the warrant for Mary's death, and then asked Mary's gaoler Paulet to save her from responsibility by murdering his prisoner. On Paulet's refusal she continued her vacillations, till the Council authorised Davison, Walsingham's colleague in the Secretaryship, to send off the warrant without further orders.

25. =Execution of Mary Stuart. 1587.=--On February 8, =1587=, Mary Stuart was beheaded at Fotheringhay. Elizabeth carried out to the last the part which she had a.s.sumed, threw the blame on Davison, dismissed him from her service, and fined him heavily. After Mary's death the attack on England would have to be conducted in open day.

It would be no advantage to Philip and the Pope that Elizabeth should be murdered if her place was to be taken, not by Mary, but by Mary's Protestant son, James of Scotland.

CHAPTER x.x.x

ELIZABETH'S YEARS OF TRIUMPH. 1587-1603

LEADING DATES

Reign of Elizabeth, 1558-1603

Drake singes the King of Spain's beard 1587 The defeat of the Armada 1588 The rising of O'Neill 1594 The taking of Cadiz 1596 Ess.e.x arrives in Ireland 1599 Mountjoy arrives in Ireland 1600 The Monopolies withdrawn 1601 Conquest of Ireland, and death of Elizabeth 1603

1. =The Singeing of the King of Spain's Beard. 1587.=--After Mary's execution Philip claimed the crown of England for himself or his daughter the Infanta Isabella, on the plea that he was descended from a daughter of John of Gaunt, and prepared a great fleet in the Spanish and Portuguese harbours for the invasion of England. In attempting to overthrow Elizabeth he was eager not merely to suppress English Protestantism, but to put an end to English smuggling and piracy in Spanish America, and to stop the a.s.sistance given by Englishmen to the Netherlanders who had rebelled against him. Before his fleet was ready to sail Drake appeared off his coast, running into his ports, burning his store-ships, and thus making an invasion impossible for that year (=1587=). Drake, as he said on his return, had singed the king of Spain's beard.

2. =The Approach of the Armada. 1588.=--The Invincible Armada,[18]

as some foolish Spaniards called Philip's great fleet, set out at last in =1588=. It was to sail up the Channel to Flanders, and to transport Parma and his army to England. Parma's soldiers were the best disciplined veterans in Europe, while Elizabeth's were raw militia, who had never seen a shot fired in actual war. If, therefore, Parma succeeded in landing, it would probably go hard with England. It was, therefore, in England's interest to fight the Armada at sea rather than on land.

[Footnote 18: 'Armada' was the Spanish name for any armed fleet.]

[Ill.u.s.tration: Sir Martin Frobisher, died 1594: from a picture belonging to the Earl of Carlisle.]

3. =The Equipment of the Armada. 1588.=--Even at sea the odds were in appearance against the English. The Spanish ships were not indeed so much larger than the largest English vessels as has often been said, but they were somewhat larger, and they were built so as to rise much higher out of the water, and to carry a greater number of men. In fact, the superiority was all on the English side. In great military or naval struggles the superiority of the victor is usually a superiority of intelligence, which shows itself in the preparation of weapons as much as in conduct in action. The Spanish ships were prepared for a mode of warfare which had hitherto been customary. In such ships the soldiers were more numerous than the sailors, and the decks were raised high above the water, in order that the soldiers might command with their muskets the decks of smaller vessels at close quarters. The Spaniards, trusting to this method of fighting, had not troubled themselves to improve their marine artillery. The cannon of their largest ships were few, and the shot which they were capable of firing was light. Philip's system of requiring absolute submission in Church and State had resulted in an uninventive frame of mind in those who carried out his orders. He had himself shown how little he cared for ability in his selection of an admiral for his fleet. That post having become vacant by the death of the best seaman in Spain, Philip ordered the Duke of Medina Sidonia to take his place. The Duke answered--with perfect truth--that he knew nothing about the sea and nothing about war; but Philip, in spite of his candour, bade him go, and go he did.

4. =The Equipment of the English Fleet. 1588.=--Very different was the equipment of the English fleet. Composed partly of the queen's ships, but mainly of volunteers from every port, it was commanded by Lord Howard of Effingham, a Catholic by conviction. The very presence of such a man was a token of a patriotic fervour of which Philip and the Jesuits had taken no account, but which made the great majority of Catholics draw their swords for their queen and country. With him were old sailors like Frobisher, who had made his way through the ice of Arctic seas, or like Drake, who had beaten Spaniards till they knew their own superiority. That superiority was based not merely on greater skill as sailors, but on the possession of better ships. English shipbuilders had adopted an improved style of naval architecture, having constructed vessels which would sail faster and be more easily handled than those of the older fashion, and--what was of still greater importance--had built them so as to carry more and heavier cannon. Hence, the English fleet, on board of which the number of sailors exceeded that of the soldiers, was in reality--if only it could avoid fighting at close quarters--far superior to that of the enemy.