CHAPTER V.

THE FATE OF MARY STUART.

Elizabeth's statesmen were well aware that the sharp prosecution of the seminarist priests was not enough to put an end to it. With reference to the laity, the Lord Treasurer, however strict in other respects, recommends to his sovereign quite a different mode of proceeding. We should never proceed to capital punishment of such men: we should rather mitigate the oath imposed on them: in particular we should never force the nobles to a final decision between their religious inclinations and their political duties, never drive them to despair. But at the same time he gives a warning against awakening any hope in them that their demands could ever be satisfied, for this would only make them more obstinate. And on no consideration should arms be put into their hands. 'We do not wish to kill them, we cannot coerce them, but we dare not trust them.' Nothing would be more dangerous than to assume a confidence which was not really felt.

Even before this the Privy Council had recommended the Queen to employ Protestants only in the government of her State, and to exclude all Catholics from a share in it.[250] The before-mentioned 'Advice' of Lord Burleigh is remarkable for extending the Protestant interest and adding a popular one to it. He thinks it intolerable that the copyholders and tenants of the Catholic lords, even when they fulfil their obligations in all other respects, experience bad treatment from them on account of religion: it is impossible to let many thousand true subjects be dependent on such as have hostile intentions. The plan Henry VIII had once entertained, of diminishing the authority of the Lords, is now brought by the High Treasurer at this crisis once more into vivid recollection. The Queen is to bind the Commons to herself, to win over their hearts. And Burleigh advises allowing the followers of dissenting Protestant Churches, especially the Puritans, to worship as they please: in preaching and catechising they are more zealous than the Episcopalians, very far more successful in converting the people, and indispensable for weakening the popish party. We see how the necessity of the war acts on home affairs. The chief minister favoured the elements which were forcing their way out through the existing forms of the state.

In this general strain on men's minds their eyes once more turned to the Queen of Scots in her captivity. What would there have been at all to fear at other times from a princess under strong custody and cut off from all the world? But in the excitement of that age she could even so be still an object of apprehension. Her personal friends had from the first not seen a great mischance in her enforced residence in England. For by blameless conduct she refuted the evil report which had followed her thither from Scotland; and her right as heiress of the crown came to the knowledge of the whole nation.[251]. In the days at which we have arrived we know with certainty that her presence in the country formed a great lever for Catholic agitation. A report found in the papal archives has been published, by which it is clear how much support men promised themselves from her for every resolute undertaking.[252] This document says that since she has numberless partisans, and although in prison has uninterrupted communication with them, she will always find means, when the time comes, of giving them notice of the approaching opportunity: she is resolved to encounter every hardship, nay even death itself, for the great cause.[253]

Occupied with measures of defence on all sides, the English government had already long been considering how to meet this danger. This was the very reason why Elizabeth's marriage was so often spoken of with popular approbation: if she had children, Mary's claims would lose their importance. Gradually however every man had to confess to himself that this was not to be expected, and on other grounds hardly to be wished. Then men thought how to solve the difficulty in another way.

The chief danger was this: if an attempt on Elizabeth's life succeeded, the supreme authority would devolve on Mary, who was on the spot, who cherished entirely opposite views, and would have at once realised them:—the thought occurred as early as 1579 of declaring by formal act of parliament that all persons by whom the reigning Queen should be in any way endangered or injured should forfeit any claim they might have to the crown;[254] terms which though general were in reality directed only against the Queen of Scots; at that time the proposal was not carried into effect.

The negociations are not yet completely cleared up which were carried on with Mary in 1582-3 for her restoration in Scotland. The English once more repeated their old demand, that Mary should even now ratify the treaty of Edinburgh, and annul all that had been done in violation of it by her first husband or by herself. She was further not merely to renounce every design against the security and peace of England, but to pledge herself to oppose it: and in general, as long as Elizabeth was alive, to put forward no claim to the English throne: whether she had such a right after Elizabeth's death the parliament of England was to decide.[255] Here too the old view came into the foreground: Parliament was to be made the judge of hereditary right. The negociation failed owing to the Scotch intrigues of these years, in which the intention rather was to assert the claim of inheritance with the strong hand.

And from day to day new attempts on Elizabeth's life came to light. In 1584 Francis Throckmorton, who took part in these very schemes, was executed: in 1585 Parry also, who confessed having been in connexion with Mary's plenipotentiary in France, and who had come over to assassinate Queen Elizabeth. Writings were spread abroad in which those about her were called on to imitate, against this female Holofernes, the example set in the book of Judith.

Protestant England in the danger of its sovereign saw its own. In all churches prayers were offered for her safety. The most remarkable proof of this temper is contained in an association of individuals for defending the Queen, which was at that time subscribed to far and wide through the country. It begins with a statement that, to promote certain claims on the crown, the Queen's life was threatened in a highly treasonable manner, and enters into a union in God's name, in which each man pledges himself to the others, to combat with word and deed, and even to pursue with arms, all who should make any attempt on the Queen's person; and not to rest till these wretches were completely destroyed. If the attempt was so far successful as to raise a claim to the crown, they pledged themselves never to recognise such a claim: whoever broke this oath and separated himself from the association should be treated by the other members as a perjurer.[256]

The main object of this association was to cut off all prospect of the succession from any attempt in favour of the Queen of Scots: a great part of the nation pledged itself to reject a claim made good in this manner as exceptionable in every respect. The Parliament of 1585, many of whose members belonged to the association, not merely confirmed it formally: it now also expressly enacted, that persons in whose favour a rebellion should be attempted, and an attack on the Queen undertaken, should lose their right to the crown: if they themselves took part in any such plots, they were to forfeit their life. The Queen was empowered to appoint a commission of at least twenty-four members to judge of this offence.

These resolutions and unions were of a compass extending far beyond the present occasion, however weighty. How important the ecclesiastical contest had become in all questions concerning the supreme temporal power! That the deposition of Queen Elizabeth, pronounced by the Pope, had no effect was due to the Protestant tendencies of the country, and to the fact that her hereditary claim had been hitherto unassailed. But now it was a similar hereditary claim, made by Queen Mary, not, it is true, formally recognised, but also not rejected, on which the partisans of this princess based their chief hope. Mary herself, who always combined the most vivid dynastic feelings with her religious inclinations, in her letters and statements does not lay such stress on anything as on the unconditional validity of her claim to inherit the throne. When for instance her son rejected the joint government which she proposed to him, she remarked with striking acuteness that this involved an infringement of the maxims of hereditary right; since he rejected her authorisation to share in the government, and recognised as legitimate the refusal of obedience she had experienced from her rebellious subjects. Once she read in a pamphlet that people denied Queen Elizabeth the power to name a successor who was not of the Protestant faith: she wrote to her that the supreme power was of divine right, and raised high above all these considerations, and warned her against opinions of that kind which were avowed by some near her, and which might lead to the elective principle and become dangerous to herself. This could not fail to have an exactly opposite effect on Elizabeth. She was again threatened through the strict dynastic right that she also enjoyed: she needed some other additional support. Despite all inclination to the contrary, she decided to look for it in the Parliament. She likewise aimed at making Mary submit the validity of her claim to its previous decision. She could not but be thankful that her subjects pledged themselves not to recognise any right to the succession which was to be asserted by an attack on her life; she ratified the act by which Parliament gave these feelings a legal form. It is obvious how powerfully the rights of Parliament were thus advanced as against the absolute claim of the hereditary monarchy. In the course of the development of events this was to be the case in a still higher degree.

Mary rejected with horror the suspicion that she could take part in an attempt on Elizabeth's life: she wished to enrol herself in the Association for her security.[257] And who could have failed to believe at least that the threats against her own right and life, in case of a second attempt at assassination, would deter her partisans as well as herself from any thought of it! For they well understood the energy with which the Parliament knew how to vindicate its laws.

But it is vain to try to bridle men's passions by showing them their results. If the attempt on the Queen's life succeeded, cceeded this Parliament of course would be annihilated as well as the Queen herself, and another order of things begin.

In the seminary at Rheims the priests persuaded an English emigrant, called Savage, who had served in the army of the Prince of Parma, that he could not better secure himself eternal happiness than by ridding the world of the enemy of religion who was excommunicated by the holy father. Another English emigrant, Thomas Babington, a young man of education and ambition, in whom throbbed the pulse of chivalrous devotion to Mary, was informed of this design by a priest of the seminary, and was fired with a kind of emulation which has something highly fantastic about it. Thinking that so great an enterprise ought not to be confided to one man, he sought and found new confederates for it; when the murder was effected, and the Spanish troops landed, he was to be the man who with a hundred sturdy comrades would free his Catholic Queen from prison and lead her to her throne. Mendoza at that time (and indeed by Mary's recommendation, as she tells us) was Spanish ambassador in France: he was in communication with Babington and strengthened him in his purpose. Of all the distinguished men of the age Mendoza is perhaps the one who took up most heartily the idea of uniting the French and Spanish interests, and advocated it most fervently. King Philip II was also informed of the design. He now, as he had done fifteen years before, declared his intention, if it succeeded, of making the invasion simultaneously from Spain and Flanders. The Queen's murder, the rising of the Catholics, and at the same moment a twofold invasion with trained troops would have certainly been enough to produce a complete revolution. The League was still victorious in France: Henry III would have been forced to join it: the tendencies of the strictest Catholicism would have gained a complete triumph.

If we enquire whether Mary Stuart knew of these schemes, and had a full understanding with the conspirators, there can be no doubt at all of it. She was in correspondence with Babington, whom she designates as her greatest friend. The letter is still extant in which she strengthens him in his purpose of calling forth a rising of the Catholics in the different counties, and that an armed one, with reasons for it true and false, and tells him how he may liberate herself. She reckons on a fine army of horse and foot being able to assemble, and making itself master of some harbours in which to receive the help expected not merely from Flanders and Spain, but also from France. In the letter we even come upon one passage which betrays a knowledge of the plot against Elizabeth's life; there is not a word against it, rather an approbation of it, though an indirect one.[258]

And we have yet another proof of her temper and views at this time lying before us. As the zeal of the Catholics for her claim to the succession might be weakened by the fact that her son in Scotland, on whom it naturally devolved, after all the hopes cherished on his behalf, still remained Protestant, she reverted to an idea that had once before passed through her mind: she pledged herself to bring matters in Scotland to such a point that her son should be seized and delivered into the hands of the King of Spain: he was then to be instructed in the Catholic faith and embrace it; if James had not done so at the time of her death, her claim on England was to pass to Philip II. Day and night, so she said, she bewailed her son's being so stiffnecked in his false faith: she saw that his succession in England would be the ruin of the country.

So it stands written in her letters: it is undeniable: but was that really her last and well-considered word? Was it her real wish that Elizabeth should be killed, her son disinherited notwithstanding her dynastic feelings, and that Philip II should become King of England? Were the Catholic-Spanish tendencies of Elizabeth's predecessor, Queen Mary Tudor, so completely reproduced in her?

I think we can hardly maintain this with full historic certainty. Mary Stuart was not altogether animated by hot religious zeal: if she had been, how could she formerly have left the Protestant lords in possession of power so long as she did, and even have once thought of marrying Leicester with his Protestant views? Her son affirmed that he possessed letters from her, in which she approved of his religious views and confirmed him in them. It was not religious conviction and the abhorrence of any other faith, as in Mary Tudor, but her dynastic right and her self-confidence as sovereign that were the active and predominant motives in all the actions of Mary Stuart. And if there are contradictions in her utterances, we cannot hold her capable, like Catharine Medici, of taking up and secretly furthering two opposite plans at the same time; her different tendencies appear consecutively, not simultaneously, in exact accordance with her impulses. For Mary Stuart was never quiet an instant: even in her prison she shared in the movement of the world; her brain never ceased working; she was brooding over her circumstances, her distress and her hope, how to escape the one and realise the other: sometimes indeed there came a moment of resignation, but only soon to pass away again. She throws all her thoughts into her letters which, even if they are aiming at some object close at hand, are at the same time ebullitions of the moment, passionate effusions, productions of the imagination rather than of the understanding. Who could think such a letter possible as that in which she once sought to inform Elizabeth of the evil reports about her which the Countess of Shrewsbury made, and recounted a mass of scandalous anecdotes she had heard from her. The communication was meant to ruin the countess: Mary did not remark that it must also draw down the Queen's hatred on herself. No one would have dared even to lay the letter before the Queen. Mary's was a passionate nature, endowed with literary gifts: she let her pen run on without saying anything she did not really think at the instant, but without remembering in the least what lay beyond her momentary mood. Who will hold women of this character strictly to what stands in their letters? These are often as inconsiderate and contradictory as their words.

While Mary was writing the above-mentioned letters, she was completely taken up with the proposals made to her. She guarded herself from inserting anything that could hinder their being carried into effect: by the eventual transfer of her son's claims to the foreign King, all opposition on the part of zealous Catholics would be done away. Her hopes and wishes hurried her away with them, so that she lost sight of the danger in which she thus placed herself. And was she not a Queen, raised above the law? Who would take it on himself to attack her?

Mary Stuart was then under the charge of a strict Puritan, Sir Amyas Paulet, of whom she complained that he treated her as a criminal prisoner and not as a queen. The government now allowed a certain relaxation in the external circumstances of her custody, but not in the strictness of the superintendence. There hardly exists another instance of such a striking contrast between projects and facts. Mary composes these letters full of far-ranging and dangerous schemes in the deepest secrecy, as she thinks, and has them carefully re-written in cipher: she has no doubt that they reach her friends safely by a secret way: but arrangements are made so that every word she writes is laid before the man whose business it is to trace out conspiracies, Walsingham, the Secretary of State. He knows her ciphers, he even sees the letters that come for her before she does: while she reads them with haste and in hope of better fortune at hand, he is only waiting for her answer to use it against her as a decisive proof of her guilt.

Walsingham now found himself in possession of all the threads of the conspiracy; as soon as that letter to Babington was in his hands, he delayed no longer to arrest the guilty persons: they confessed, were condemned and executed. By further odious means—the prisoner being removed from her apartments on some pretence and the rooms then searched—possession was obtained of other papers which witnessed against her. Then the question could be laid before the Privy Council whether she should now be brought to trial and sentenced in due form.

Who had given the English Parliament any right to make laws which should be binding on a foreign queen, and in virtue of which, if she transgressed them, she could be punished with death? In fact these doubts were raised at the time.[259] Against them it was alleged that Mary, who had been forced to abdicate by her subjects and deprived of her dignity, could not be regarded any longer as a queen: while a deposed sovereign is bound by the laws of the land in which he resides. If she was still a queen, yet she was subject to the feudal supremacy of England, and because of her claim to its crown also subject to its sovereignty—two arguments that contradict each other, one of a feudal, the other of a popular character and closely connected with the idea of popular sovereignty. Whether the one or the other convinced any person, we do not hear; it was moreover not a matter for argument any longer.

For how could anything else be expected but that the judicial proceedings prepared several years before would now be put in force? A law had been passed calculated for this case, if it should occur. The case had occurred, and was proved by legal evidence. It was necessary for the satisfaction of the country and Parliament—and Walsingham laid particular stress on this—that the matter should be examined with full publicity.

The commission provided for in the Act of Parliament was named: it consisted of the chief statesmen and lawyers of the country. In Fotheringhay, whither the prisoner had now been brought, the splendid ancestral seat of the princes of the house of York, at which many of them were buried, they met together in the Hall on the 14th October. Mary let herself be induced to plead by the consideration that she would be held guilty, if she did not make any defence: it being understood that it was with the reserve that she did not by this give up any of the rights of a free sovereign. Most of the charges against her she gradually admitted to be true, but she denied having consented to a personal attempt on Elizabeth's life. The court decided that this made no essential difference. For the rebellion which Mary confessed to having favoured could not be conceived of apart from danger to the Queen of England's life as well as her government.[260] The court pronounced that Mary was guilty of the acts for which the punishment of death had been enacted in the Parliamentary statute.

We cannot regard this as a regular criminal procedure, for judicial forms were but little observed; it was the decision of a commission that the case had occurred in which the statute passed by Parliament found its application. Parliament itself, then just summoned, had the proceedings of the Commission laid before it and approved their sentence.

But this did not bring the affair to an end. Queen Elizabeth deferred the execution of the judgment. For in relation to such a matter she occupied quite a different position from that of Parliament.

From more than one quarter she was reminded that, by carrying out the sentence, she would violate the divine right of kings; since this implied that subjects could not judge, or lay their hands on, sovereigns. How unnatural if a queen like herself should set her hand to degrade the diadem.[261]

In the Privy Council some were of opinion that, as Mary could not be regarded as the author of the last plot, but only as privy to it, closer imprisonment would be a sufficient punishment for her. Elizabeth caught at this idea. The Parliament, she thought, might now formally annul Mary's claim to the English throne, declare it to be high treason to maintain it any longer, and high treason also to attempt to liberate her from prison: this would deter her partisans from an attempt then become hopeless, and also satisfy foreign nations. But it was urged in reply, that now to repudiate Mary Stuart's claim for the first time would be equivalent to recognising its original validity; and an English law would make no impression either on Mary or on her partisans. The remembrance of what had happened in Scotland revived again; of Darnley's murder, which men imputed to her without hesitation: she was compared to Johanna I of Naples who had taken part in her husband's murder: it was said, Mary has doubled her old guilt by attempts against the sacred person of the Queen; after she had been forgiven, she has relapsed into the same crime, she deserves death on many grounds.[262]

Spenser, in the great poem which has made him immortal, has depicted the conflict of accusations and excuses which this cause called forth. One of his allegorical figures, Zeal, accuses the fair and splendid lady, then on her trial, of the design of hurling the Queen from her throne, and of inciting noble knights to join in this purpose. The Kingdom's Care, Authority, Religion, Justice, take part with him. On the other side Pity, Regard for her high descent and her family, even Grief herself, raise their voices, and produce a contrary impression. But Zeal once more renews his accusation: he brings forward Adultery and Murder, Impiety and Sedition, against her. The Queen sitting upon the throne in judgment recognises the guilt of the accused, but shrinks from pronouncing the word: men see tears in her eyes; she covers her face with her purple robe.

Spenser appears here, as he usually does, an enthusiastic admirer of his Queen. But neither should we see hypocrisy in Elizabeth's scruples, which sprang much more from motives which touched her very nearly. She kept away from all company: she was heard to break her solitary meditation by uttering old proverbs that applied to the present case. More than once she spoke with the deputation of Parliament which pressed for a decision. What she mainly represented to them was, how hard it was for her, after she had pardoned so many rebellions, and passed over so much treason in silence, to let a princess be punished, who was her nearest blood-relation: men would accuse her, the Virgin Queen, of cruelty: she prayed them to supply her with another means, another expedient: nothing under the sun would be more welcome to her. The Parliament firmly insisted that there was no other expedient; it argued in detailed representations that the deliverance of the country depended on the execution of the sentence. The Queen's own security, the preservation of religion and of the state, made it absolutely necessary. Mary's life was the hope of all the discontented, whose plots were directed only to the object of enabling her to ascend the throne of England, to destroy the followers of the true religion, and expel the nobility of the land—that is the Protestant nobility. And must not satisfaction be given to the Association which was pledged to pursue a new attempt against the Queen's life even to death? 'Not to punish the enemy would be cruel to your faithful subjects: to spare her means ruin to us.'

Meanwhile they came upon the traces of a new attempt. In presence of the elder French ambassador, Aubespine, a partisan of the Guises, mention was made of the necessity of killing Elizabeth in order to save Mary at the last moment. One of his officers spoke with a person who was known in the palace, and who undertook to pile up a mass of gunpowder under Elizabeth's chamber sufficient to blow it into the air; he was led to hope for rewards from Guise and his brother Mayenne, whose interests would have been greatly promoted by such a deed.[263] But this time too Elizabeth was made acquainted with the design before it came to maturity. She ascribed her new danger to the silence, if not to the instigation, of the ambassador, the friend of the Guises: in its discovery she saw the hand of God. 'I nourish,' she exclaims, 'the viper that poisons me;—to save her they would have taken my life: am I to offer myself as a prey to every villain?'[264] At a moment when she was especially struck with the danger which threatened her from the very existence of her rival, after a conversation with the Lord Admiral, she had the long-prepared order for the execution brought to her, and signed it with quick and resolute strokes of the pen.

The observation of Parliament, that her safety and the peace of the country required her enemy's death, at last gained the upper hand with her as well. But this did not imply that her conflicting feelings were completely silenced. She was haunted in her dreams by the idea of the execution. She had once more recourse to the thought that some serviceable hand might spare her the last authorisation, by secretly executing the sentence of the judges—an act which seemed to be justified even by the words of the Association; the demand was made in due form to the Keeper of the prisoner, Sir Amyas Paulet; he rejected it—and how could anything else have been expected from the conscientious Puritan—with an expression of his astonishment and indignation. Elizabeth had commissioned Secretary Davison, when she signed the order, to have it sealed with the Great Seal. Her idea seems to have been that, when all the forms had been duly complied with, she might the more easily get a secret execution, or that at some critical moment it might be at once performed; but she still meant to keep the matter in her own hand: for the custom was, before the last step, to once more ask her approval. But Davison, who marked her hesitation, did not think it advisable at this moment. Through Hatton he acquainted Lord Burleigh with the matter, and Burleigh put the question to the other members of the Privy Council: they took it on themselves to despatch the order, signed and sealed as it now was, without further delay to Fotheringhay.[265]

On the 8th of February 1587 it was executed on Mary in the very hall where the sittings of the court had been held. As compared with Elizabeth's painful disquiet, who shrank from doing what she held to be necessary, and when she at last did it wished it again undone and thought she could still recall it, the composure and quiet of soul, with which Mary submitted to the fate now finally decided, impresses us very deeply The misfortune of her life was her claim to the English crown. This led her into a political labyrinth, and into those entanglements which were connected with her disastrous marriage, and then, through its combination with the religious idea, into all the guilt which is imputed to her more or less justly. It cost Mary her country and her life. Even on the scaffold she reminded men of her high rank which was not subject to the laws: she thought the sentence of heretics on her, a free queen, would be of service to the kingdom of God. She died in the royal and religious ideas in which she had lived.

It is undeniable that Elizabeth was taken by surprise at this news: she was heard sobbing as though a heavy misfortune had befallen herself. It may be that her grief was lightened by a secret satisfaction: who would absolutely deny it? But Davison had to atone for taking the power into his own hands by a long imprisonment: the indispensable Burleigh hardly obtained pardon. In the city on the other hand bells were rung and bonfires kindled. For the universal popular conviction agreed with the judgment of the court, that Mary had tried to deliver the kingdom into the hands of Spaniards.

CHAPTER VI.

THE INVINCIBLE ARMADA.

Hostilities had been going on a long while, arising at first from the privateering which filled the whole of the Western Ocean. The English traders held it to be their right to avenge every injustice done them on their neighbours' coasts—for man has, they said, a natural desire of procuring himself satisfaction—and so turned themselves into freebooters. Through the counter operations of the Spaniards this private naval war became more and more extensive, and then also gradually developed more glorious impulses, as we see in Francis Drake, who at first only took part in the mere privateering of injured traders, and afterwards rose to the idea of a maritime rivalry between the nations. It was an important moment in the history of the world when Drake on the isthmus of Panama first caught sight of the Pacific, and prayed God for His grace that he might sail over this sea some day in an English ship—a grace since granted not merely to himself but also in the richest measure to his nation. Many companies were formed to resume the voyages of discovery already once begun and then again discontinued. And as the Spaniards based their exclusive right to the possession of the other hemisphere on the Pope's decision, Protestant ideas, which mocked at this supremacy of the Romish See over the world, now contributed also to impel men to occupy lands in these regions. This was always effected in the main by voluntary efforts of wealthy mercantile houses, or enterprising members of the court and state, to whom the Queen gave patents of authorisation. In this way Walter Ralegh, in his political and religious opposition to the Spaniards, founded an English colony on the transatlantic continent, in Wingandacoa: the Queen was so much pleased at it that she gave the district a name which was to preserve the remembrance of the quality she was perhaps proudest of: she called it Virginia.[266]

But at last she formally undertook the naval war; it was at the same time a motive for the league with the Hollanders, who could do excellent service in it: by attacking the West Indies she hoped to destroy the basis of the Spanish greatness.

Francis Drake was commissioned to open the war. When, in October 1585, he reached the Islas de Bayona on the Gallician coast, he informed the governor, Don Pedro Bermudez, that he came in his Queen's name to put an end to the grievances which the English had had to suffer from the Spaniards. Don Pedro answered, he knew nothing of any such grievances: but, if Drake wished to begin war, he was ready to meet him.

Francis Drake then directed his course at once to the West Indies. He surprised St. Domingo and Carthagena, occupied both one and the other for a short time, and levied heavy contributions on them. Then he brought back to England the colonists from Virginia, who were not yet able to hold their own against the natives. The next year he inflicted still more damage on the Spaniards. He made his way into the harbour of Cadiz, which was full of vessels that had either come from both the Indies or were proceeding thither: he sank or burnt them all. His privateers covered the sea.

Often already had the Spaniards planned an invasion of England. The most pressing motive of all lay in these maritime enterprises. The Spaniards remarked that the stability and power of their monarchy did not rest so much on the strong places they possessed in all parts of the world as on the moveable instruments of dominion by which the connexion with them was kept up; the interruption of the communication, caused by Francis Drake and his privateers, between just the most important points on the Spanish and the Netherlandish coasts, seemed to them unendurable: they desired to rid themselves of it at any price. And to this was now added the general cry of vengeance for the execution of the Queen of Scots, which was heard from the pulpit in the presence of the King himself. But this was not the only result of that event. The life of Queen Mary and her claim to the succession had always stood in the way of Spanish ambition: now Philip II could think of taking possession of the English throne himself. He concluded a treaty with Pope Sixtus V, under which he was to hold the crown of England as a fief of the Holy See, which would thus, and by the re-establishment of the Church's authority, have also attained to the revival of its old feudal supremacy over England.[267]

Once more the Spanish monarchy and the Papacy were closely united in their spiritual and political claims. Sixtus V excommunicated the Queen afresh, declared her deposed, and not merely released her subjects from their oath of allegiance, but called on every man to aid the King of Spain and his general the Duke of Parma against her.

Negociations for peace however were still being carried on in 1587 between Spanish and English plenipotentiaries. It was mainly the merchants of London and Antwerp that urged it; and as the Spaniards at that time had manifestly the best of the struggle, were masters of the lower Rhine and the Meuse, had invaded Friesland, had besieged and at last taken Sluys in despite of all resistance, we can understand how the English plenipotentiaries were moved to unexpected concessions. They would have consented to the restoration of the Spanish supremacy over the northern Netherlands, if Philip would have granted the inhabitants freedom of conscience. Alexander of Parma brought forward a proposal, to make, it is true, their return to Catholicism obligatory, but with the assurance that no Inquisition should be set over them, nor any one punished for his deviation from the faith. Even if the negociation was not meant to be completely in earnest, it is worth remarking on what rock it was wrecked. Philip II would neither grant such an assurance, which in its essence involved freedom of conscience, nor grant this itself completely in a better form. His strength lay precisely in his maintaining the Catholic system with unrelenting energy: by this he secured the attachment of the priests and the zealous laity. And how could he, at a moment when he was so closely united with the Pope, and could reckon on the millions heaped up in the castle of St. Angelo for his enterprise, so completely deviate from the strictness of exclusive belief. He thought he was within his right when he refused any religious concession, seeing that every other sovereign issued laws prescribing the religion of his own territories.[268]

If the war was to be continued, Alexander of Parma would have wished that all his efforts should be first directed against Vliessingen, where there was an English garrison; from the harbour there England itself could be attacked far more easily and safely. But it was replied in Spain that this enterprise was likewise very extensive and costly, while it would bring about no decisive result. And yet Alexander himself too held an invasion of England to be absolutely necessary; his reports largely contributed to strengthen the King in this idea; Philip decided to proceed without further delay to the enterprise that was needful at the moment and opened world-wide prospects for the future.

He took into consideration that the monarchy at this moment had nothing to fear from the Ottomans who were fully occupied with a Persian war, and above all that France was prevented from interfering by the civil strife that had broken out. This has been designated as the chief aim of Philip's alliance with the Guises, and it certainly may have formed one reason for it. Left alone, with only herself to rely on (so the Spaniards further judged), the Queen of England would no longer be an object of fear: she had no more than forty ships; once in an engagement off the Azores, in the Portuguese war, the English had been seen to give way for the first time: if it came to a sea-fight, the vastly superior Spanish Armada would without doubt prove victorious. But for a war on land also she was not prepared, she had no more than six thousand real soldiers in the country, with whom she could neither meet nor resist the veteran troops of Spain in the open field. They had only to march straight on London; seldom was a great city, which had remained long free from attack, able to hold out against a sudden assault: the Queen would either be forced to make a peace honourable to Spain, or would by a long resistance give the King an opportunity of forming out of the Spanish nobility, which would otherwise degenerate in indolence at home, a young troop of brave warriors. He would have the Catholics for him and with their help gain the upper hand, he would make himself master of the strong places, above all of the harbours; all the nations of the world could not take them from him again; he would become lord of the ocean, and thus lord and master of the continent.[269]

Philip II would have preferred to begin the work as early as the autumn of 1587. He hoped at that time that Scotland, where the Catholic lords and the people showed a lively sympathy with Queen Mary's fate, would be thrown open to him by her son, who was supposed to wish to avenge her death. But to others this seemed not so certain; in especial the experienced Admiral Santa Cruz called the King's attention to the perils the fleet might incur in those seas: they would have to contend with contrary winds, and the disadvantage of short days and thick mists. Santa Cruz did not wish to endanger his fame, the only thing he had earned during a long life, by an ill-timed or very venturous undertaking. He held an invasion of England to be more difficult than most other enterprises, and demanded such preparations as would make the victory certain. While they were being made he died, after having lost his sovereign's favour. His successor, the duke of Medina Sidonia, whom the King chose because he had distinguished himself at the last defence of Cadiz, did not make such very extensive demands; but the fleet, which was fitted out under him and by him, was nevertheless, though not in number of ships (about 130), yet in tonnage, size, and number of men on board (about 22,000) the most important that had ever been sent to sea by any European power. All the provinces of the Pyrenean peninsula had emulously contributed to it: the fleet was divided into a corresponding number of squadrons; the first was the Portuguese, then followed the squadrons of Castille, Andalusia, Biscay, Guipuzcoa, and then the Italian—for ships and men had come also in good number from Italy. The troops were divided like the squadrons; there was a 'Mass in time of war' for each province.

With not less zeal did men arm in the Netherlands; the drum beat everywhere in the Flemish and Walloon provinces, all roads were covered with military trains. In the Netherlands too there were a great number of Italians, Corsicans and inhabitants of the States of the Church and Neapolitans, in splendid accoutrements; there were the brothers of the grand duke of Tuscany and of the duke of Savoy: King Philip had even allowed the son of a Moorish prince to take part in the Catholic expedition. Infantry and cavalry also had come from Catholic Germany.

It was a joint enterprise of the Spanish monarchy and a great part of the Catholic world, headed by the Pope and the King, to overthrow the Queen who was regarded as the Head, and the State which was regarded as the main support, of Protestantism and the anti-Spanish policy.

We do not find any detailed and at the same time authentic information as to the plan of the invasion; a Spanish soldier and diplomatist however, much employed in the military and political affairs of the time, and favoured with the confidence of the highest persons, J. Baptista de Tassis, gives us an outline, which we may accept as quite trustworthy. We know that in Antwerp, Nieuport, and Dunkirk, with the advice of Hanseatic and Genoese master-builders, transports had been got ready for the whole force: from Nieuport (to which place also were brought the vessels built at Antwerp) 14,000 men were to be conveyed across to England, and from Dunkirk 12,000. But where were they to effect a junction with each other and with the Spaniards? Tassis assures us that they had selected for this purpose the roadstead of Margate on the coast of Kent, a safe and convenient harbour;[270] there immediately after the Spanish armada had arrived, or as nearly as possible at the same time with it, the fleet of transports from the Netherlands also was to make the shore, and Alexander of Parma was then to assume the command in chief of the whole force and march straight on London.

All that Philip II had ever thought or planned was thus concentrated as it were into one focus. The moment was come when he could subdue England, become master of the European world, and re-establish the Catholic faith in the form in which he professed it. When the fleet (on the 22nd July 1588) sailed out of Corunna, and the long-meditated, long-prepared, enterprise was now set in action, the King and the nation displayed deep religious emotion: in all the churches of the land prayers were offered up for forty days; in Madrid solemn processions were arranged to our Lady of Atocha, the patroness of Spain: Philip II spent two hours each day in prayer. He was in the state of silent excitement which an immense design and the expectation of a great turn in a man's fortune call forth. Scarcely any one dared to address a word to him.

It was in these very days that people in England first really became conscious of the danger that threatened them. A division of the fleet under Henry Seymour was watching, with Dutch assistance, the two harbours held by the prince of Parma: the other and larger division, just returned from Spain and on the point of being broken up, made ready at Plymouth, under the admiral, Howard of Effingham, to receive the enemy. Meanwhile the land forces assembled, on Leicester's advice,[271] in the neighbourhood of London. The old feudal organisation of the national force was once more called into full activity to face this danger. Men saw the gentry take the field at the head of their tenants and copyholders, and rejoiced at their holding together so well. It was without doubt an advantage, that the threatened attack could no longer be connected with a right of succession recognised in the country; it appeared in its true character, as a great invasion by a foreign power for the subjugation of England. Even the Catholic lords came forward, among them Viscount Montague (who had once, alone in the Upper House, opposed the Supremacy, and had also since not reconciled himself to the religious position of the Queen), with his sons and grandsons, and even his heir-presumptive who, though still a child, bestrode a war-horse; Lord Montague said, he would defend his Queen with his life, whoever might attack her, king or pope. No doubt that these armings left much to be desired, but they were animated by national and religious enthusiasm. Some days later the Queen visited the camp at Tilbury: with slight escort she rode from battalion to battalion. A tyrant, she said, might be afraid of his subjects: she had always sought her chief strength in their good will: with them she would live and die. She was everywhere received with shouts of joy: psalms were sung, and prayers offered up in which the Queen joined.

For, whatever may be men's belief, in great wars and dangers they naturally turn their eyes to the Eternal Power which guides our destiny, and on which all equally feel themselves dependent. The two nations and their two chiefs alike called on God to decide in their religious and political conflict. The fortune of mankind hung in the balance.

On the 31st July, a Sunday, the Armada, covering a wide extent of sea, came in sight of the English coast off the heights of Plymouth. On board the fleet itself it was thought most expedient to attempt a landing on the spot, since there were no preparations made there for defence and the English squadron was not fully manned. But this was not in the plan, and would, especially if it failed, have incurred a heavy responsibility. Medina Sidonia was only empowered and prepared to accept battle by sea if the English should offer it. His galleys, improved after the Venetian pattern, and especially his galleons (immense sailing ships which carried cannon on their different decks on all sides), were without doubt superior to the vessels of the English. When the latter, some sixty sail strong, came out of the harbour, he hung out the great standard from the fore-mast of his ship as a signal for all to prepare for battle. But the English admiral did not intend to let matters come to a regular naval fight. He was perfectly aware of the superiority of the Spanish equipment and had even forbidden boarding the enemies' vessels. His plan was to gain the weather-gauge of the Armada, and inflict damage on them in their course, and throw them into disorder. The English followed the track of the Armada in four squadrons, and left no advantage unimproved that might offer. They were thoroughly acquainted with this sea, and steered their handy vessels with perfect certainty and mastery: the Spaniards remarked with dissatisfaction that they could at pleasure advance, attack, and again break off the engagement. Medina Sidonia was anxious above all things to keep his Armada together: after a council of war he let a great ship which lagged behind fall into the hands of the enemy, as her loss would be less damaging than the breaking up of the line which would result from the attempt to save her: he sent round his sargentes mayores to the captains to tell them not to quit the line on pain of death.[272]

On the whole the Spaniards were not discontented with their voyage, when after a week of continuous skirmishing they, without having sustained any very considerable losses, had traversed the English channel, and on Saturday the 6th August passed Boulogne and arrived off Calais: it was the first point at which they had wished to touch. But now to cross to the neighbouring coast of England, as seems to have been the original plan, became exceedingly difficult, because the English fleet guarded it, and the Spanish galleons were less able in the straits than elsewhere to compete with those swift vessels, It was also being strengthened every moment; the young nobility emulously hastened on board. But neither could the admiral proceed to Dunkirk, as the harbour was then far too narrow to receive his large ships, and his pilots were afraid of being carried to the northward by the currents. He anchored in the roadstead east of Calais in the direction of Dunkirk.

He had already previously informed the Duke of Parma that he was on the way, and had then, immediately before his arrival at Calais, despatched a pilot to Dunkirk, to request that he would join him with a number of small vessels, that they might better encounter the English, and bring with him cannon balls of a certain calibre, of which he began to fall short.[273] It is clear that he still wished to undertake from thence, if supported according to his views, the great attempt at a disembarkation which he was commissioned to effect. But Alexander of Parma, whom the first message had found some days before at Bruges, had not yet arrived at Dunkirk when the second came: the preparations for embarking were only then just begun for the first time; and they could scarcely venture actually to embark, as English and Dutch ships of war were still ever cruising before the harbour.

Alexander Farnese's failure to effect a junction with Medina Sidonia has been always traced to personal motives; it was even said in England, at a later time, that Queen Elizabeth had offered him the hand of Lady Arabella Stuart, which might open the way to the English throne for himself. It is true that his enterprises in the Netherlands appeared to lie closest to his heart; even Tassis, who was about his person, remarks that he carried on his preparations more out of obedience than with any zeal of his own. But the chief cause why the two operations were not better combined lay in their very nature. The geographical relation of the Spanish monarchy to England would have required two separate invasions, the one from the Pyrenean peninsula, the other from the Netherlands. The wish to combine the forces of such distant countries in a single invasion made the enterprise, especially when the means of communication of the period were so inadequate, overpoweringly helpless. Wind and weather had been little considered in the scheme. In both those countries immense materials of war had been collected with extreme effort; they had been brought within a few miles of sea of each other, but combine they could not. Now for the first time came to light the full superiority which the English gained from their corsair-like and bold method of war, and their alliance with the Dutch. It was seen that a sudden attack would suffice to break the whole combination in pieces: Queen Elizabeth was said to have herself devised the plan and its arrangement.

The Armada was still lying at anchor in line of battle, waiting for news from Alexander Farnese, when in the night between Sunday and Monday (7th to 8th August) the English sent some fire-ships, about eight in number, against it. They were his worst vessels which Lord Howard gave up for this purpose, but their mere appearance produced a decisive result. Medina Sidonia could not refuse his ships permission to slip their anchors, that each might avoid the threatening danger: only he commanded them to afterwards resume their previous order. But things wore a completely different appearance the following morning. The tide had carried the vessels towards the land, a direction they did not want to take; now for the first time the attacks of the English proved destructive to them: part of the ships had become disabled: it was completely impossible to obey the admiral's orders that they should return to their old position. Instead of this, unfavourable winds drove the Armada against its will along the coast; in a short time the English too gave up the pursuit of the enemy, who without being quite beaten was yet in flight, and abandoned him to his fate. The wind drove the Spaniards on the shoals of Zealand: once they were in such shallow water that they were afraid of running aground: some of their galleons in fact fell into the hands of the Dutch. Fortunately for them the wind veered round first to the W.S.W., then to the S.S.W., but they could not even then regain the Channel, nor would they have wished it; only by the longest circuit, round the Orkney Islands, could they return to Spain.

A storm fraught with ruin had lowered over England: it was scattered before it discharged its thunder. So completely true is the expression on a Dutch commemorative medal, 'the breath of God has scattered them' (flavit et dissipati sunt).

Philip II saw the Armada, which he had hoped would give the dominion of the world into his hand, return home again in fragments without having, we do not say accomplished but even, attempted anything worth the trouble. He did not therefore renounce his design. He spoke of his wish to fit out lighter vessels, and entrust the whole conduct of the expedition to the Prince of Parma. The Cortes of Castille requested him not to put up with the disgrace incurred, but to chastise this woman: they offered him their whole property and all the children of the land for this purpose. But the very possibility of great enterprises belongs only to one moment: in the next it is already gone by.

First the Spanish forces were drawn into the complications existing in France. The great Catholic agitation, which had been long fermenting there, at last gained the upper hand, and was quite ready to prepare the way for Philip II's supremacy. But Queen Elizabeth thought that the day on which France fell into his hands would be the eve of her own ruin. She too therefore devoted her best resources to France, to uphold Philip II's opponent. When Henry IV, driven back to the verge of the coast of Normandy, was all but lost, he was by her help put in a position to maintain his cause. At the sieges of the great towns, in which he was still often threatened with failure, the English troops in several instances did excellent service. The Queen did not swerve from her policy even when Henry IV saw himself compelled, and found it compatible with his conscience, to go over to Catholicism. For he was clearly thus all the better enabled to re-establish a France that should be politically independent, in opposition to Spain and at war with it; and it was exactly on this opposition that the political freedom and independence of England herself rested. Yet as his change of religion had been disagreeable to the Queen, so was also the peace which he proceeded to make; she exerted her influence against its conclusion. But as by it the Spaniards gave up the places they occupied on the French coasts, which in their possession had menaced England as well, she could not in reality be fundamentally opposed to it.

These great conflicts on land were seconded by repeated attacks of the English and Dutch naval power, by which it sometimes seemed as if the Spanish monarchy would be shaken to its foundations. Elizabeth made an attempt to restore Don Antonio to the throne from which Philip II had driven him. But the minds of the Portuguese themselves were very far from being as yet sufficiently prepared for a revolt: the enterprise failed, in an attack on the suburbs of Lisbon. The war interested the English most deeply. Parliament agreed to larger and larger grants: from two-fifteenths and a single subsidy (about £30,000), which was its usual vote, it rose in 1593 to three subsidies and six-fifteenths; the towns gladly armed ships at their own expense, and sailors enough were found to man them: the national energy turned towards the sea. And they obtained some successes. In the harbour of Corunna they destroyed the collected stores, which were probably to have served for renewing the expedition. Once they took the harbour of Cadiz and occupied the city itself: more than once they alarmed and endangered the West Indies. But with all this nothing decisive was effected; the Spanish monarchy maintained an undoubted ascendancy in Europe, and the exclusive possession of the other hemisphere: it was the Great Power of the age. But over against it England also now took up a strong and formidable position.