The Destruction of the Armada. On 19 July, 1588, the longexpected Armada was first sighted off the Cornish coast. Repulsed in a series of engagements in the waters about Portsmouth and the Isle of Wight, the invaders started up the Channel to join Parma. When they reached Calais the English turned loose a number of fire ships, scattering the Spanish vessels in all directions; before they had time to recover, they were engaged by the English fleet in force and obliged to break and flee. The victors, however, were in no condition to pursue them, for their ammunition was exhausted, their provisions had run short, and what remained was spoiled a mishap due partly to the faulty and inadequate supply system of those days and partly to Elizabeth's parsimony. The "invincible Armada " sped north driven by a stiff gale, rounding the north of Scotland and the west of Ireland; about half of the original force finally reached Spain. Beside those lost in fighting, many were wrecked, of whom numbers, cast alive on the Scotch and Irish shores, were slain by the natives or by English officials. Wind and weather had fought against the proud Spaniard, yet, after all has been said, the result was chiefly due to the courage and skill of Elizabeth's seamen. Significance of the Repulse of the Armada. While the Armada had never seemed so formidable to English seamen as to the Catholic Powers of the Continent, its repulse marked a grandly significant moment in the history of England. It justified at home and abroad Elizabeth's wise policy of moderation. She had won her people with peace, light taxes, and the fostering of trade, and had prosecuted religious extremists only so far as necessities of State demanded. When the crisis came her subjects, forgetting their religious differences, flocked to the defense of their Sovereign and their Kingdom. And the victory was not only an indication, it was also a further cause of national unity. Achievement in a common national undertaking drew more closely together subjects of all shades of opinion. For the first time, too, it revealed to Christendom the greatness of English sea power and marked the beginning of the end of the Spanish sea power, one of the leading causes of Spanish ultimate downfall.

New Aggressions against Spain and the Final Stages of the Struggle with Philip II. — The younger generation were thirsting for great exploits. Not content with preying upon Spain's commerce and worrying her with occasional dashes against her coasts, they aspired to break up her dominion beyond the seas and to set up an English dominion in its place. At the head of this party stood Essex, a nephew of Leicester, and Raleigh, who wanted to override the older, wiser, and more cautious councilors like Burghley and Walsingham. A futile

expedition, in 1589, for the purpose of restoring a Portuguese claimant to the throne of Portugal is an instance of their extreme aggressive policy. In August, 1589, Henry III was assassinated, whereupon Henry of Navarre was able to fight his way to the throne, while the assistance which Philip II and Parma vainly sent to his opponents gave England and the Netherlands a happy respite. In 1593 Henry IV, as he now was, declared himself a Catholic; but this was only for State purposes, and, in 1598, by the Edict of Nantes he granted a generous toleration to Huguenots. Already, more than a year earlier, after Philip's forces captured Calais, he joined the English in an expedition which sacked Cadiz and destroyed the shipping in the harbor. This was the last great naval expedition of the reign against Spain. Burghley succeeded in persuading the Queen to make his son, Robert, Secretary of State, and the peace party was able to put a check upon the fiery Essex faction. Philip, in 1596 and 1597, sent fleets against England and Ireland successively, but neither reached its destination. In 1598 Henry IV concluded a peace with Spain which made Philip free to pursue his designs on England and the Netherlands, but he died the very same year, leaving a bankrupt and crumbling heritage.

Elizabeth's Last Years. The repulse of the Armada marked the climax of Elizabeth's glory. The years that followed were years of increasing loneliness and isolation. Her favorites and her trusted councilors dropped off one by one: Leicester in 1588; Walsingham in 1590; Burghley in 1598. The system which she represented had outlived its time; the old absolutism had served its turn, and new men and new policies were eagerly waiting their chance. The romance, too, of her life was ended; for even at Court her popularity declined with her fading charms. The admiration of the younger courtiers came to be more and more a pretense. Yet, old as she was, she refused to face the prospect of death or to provide for the succession, and clung to vain display till the last. Once when the Bishop of St. David's ventured to preach on the text, "Lord, teach us to number our days that we may apply our hearts unto wisdom," she burst out stormily: "He might have kept his arithmetic to himself, but I see that the greatest clerks are not the wisest men." Yet, too, there were times when she showed flashes of that tact and insight which had been so characteristic of her in her prime. In 1601 when Parliament forced

1 Essex was beheaded, in 1601, in consequence of an armed uprising against his Court opponents, to whom he attributed an humiliating sentence to imprisonment in his house, after he had burst into the royal presence unannounced on his return from Ireland, where he failed to deal effectively with a rebellion he was sent to quell. Elizabeth never recovered from the shock of signing his death warrant.

her to revoke some grants of monopolies, regarded as burdensome, she yielded very gracefully, and declared: "I have more cause to thank you all than you me; for, had I not received a knowledge from you, I might have fallen into the lap of an error only from lack of true information." Yet, when the subject had been raised four years earlier, she had expressed the hope that her loving subjects would not take away her prerogative, and had done nothing.

Elizabeth's Death (24 March, 1603). — Elizabeth died 24 March, 1603, in the forty-sixth year of a reign, which, judged by its achievements, was most notable. She maintained the established religion without civil war and kept England from being absorbed either by the House of Valois or the House of Hapsburg. By preventing the question of the succession from being decided prematurely, she peacefully prepared the way for the Scotch Protestant line and the union of two countries that naturally belonged together. While she kept England out of war she diverted its energies into trade, exploration, and colonization, thus helping to lay the foundations of its future greatness. She was blessed with a long reign in which she labored to educate her people into a sense of unity and national self-consciousness. She trusted to time which, though it was ruthless to her as a woman, blessed her policy.

FOR ADDITIONAL READING

M. A. S. Hume, Treason and Plot (1901) deals with the struggles of the Roman Catholics for supremacy in the last years of Elizabeth. E. P. Cheyney, A History of England from the Defeat of the Armada to the Death of Elizabeth (vol. I, 1914) is the most thorough account of the history of the period.

See also the references for ch. XXIV above.

CHAPTER XXVI

ELIZABETHAN ENGLAND (1558-1603)

The Strength of the Later Elizabethan Monarchy. After Elizabeth had weathered the storms of the first part of her reign, the Monarchy seemed to be even stronger than under her triumphant father. Necessity, sentiment, and gratitude all contributed to this apparent result. The Protestants of every shade of opinion had been forced to support her through fear of civil war and foreign invasion. They clung to her against Mary Stuart, backed by France and the Papacy and, at length, by Spain. After Mary's death the moderate Catholics ranged themselves on Elizabeth's side against the Spanish invasion and the conquest which it threatened to involve. The sentiment of chivalrous devotion to a woman, although it took absurdly extravagant forms, particularly at Court, was another real source of strength that the Queen, not from vanity alone, knew how to foster. Finally, the gentry and the commercial and trading classes were bound to the throne by ties of material interest and gratitude. Henry VII had done much for them; Henry VIII, continuing his father's policy, had shared with them the spoils of the monasteries and contributed to their prosperity in other ways; under Elizabeth came peace, economical rule, depredations against Spain, and the expansion of trade, together with the glorious deliverance of 1588.

Opposition and Sources of Weakness. Nevertheless, forces were already at work which indicated that absolutism was tottering. A new order of things was inevitable, though it was precipitated by the advent of the Stuart dynasty. The very services rendered by the Tudors, and particularly by Elizabeth, had put the subjects of the realm in a position to assert themselves. They no longer feared the old nobility who had oppressed them in the past and had been responsible for the terrible disorders of the fifteenth century; they were no longer threatened with a Catholic successor; the combination between France and Scotland had been broken by the union of the English and Scotch crowns; Spain had been repulsed and the Romanist party

had shrunk to a faction of plotters who were looked at askance by the loyal members of their own communion; and Ireland, long a storm center, seemed for the moment quelled.' The grievances, actual and potential, against which the disaffected could now assert themselves, were both religious and political. While religious strife practically ceased after the Armada, the extreme Protestants had not been crushed; they were only waiting more auspicious times. Since the bishops and their followers among the clergy turned to the Crown for support and sought to strengthen their position by exalting the royal prerogative, their opponents turned to Parliament, combining with those whose grievances were primarily political, with those who were opposed to arbitrary taxation and to the jurisdiction of the extraordinary courts which had grown up under the Tudors. In order to follow the conflict in the two following reigns, it is necessary to understand the situation in Church and State on the eve of the struggle.

The Royal Supremacy over the Church. The Sovereign was supreme governor over all ecclesiastical persons and causes, and, directly or indirectly, controlled the legislation, administration, and revenues of the Church. Convocation was summoned and dissolved by the Crown, and none of its acts were valid without the royal assent, while the administration of ecclesiastical finances 2 and justice was under royal control from the fact that the bishops were appointees of the Crown. The regular Church courts were those of the Archdeacon, the Bishop, and the Archbishop. Their competence extended over temporal as well as spiritual causes; for, in addition to sacrilege, heresy, perjury, and immorality, probate and divorce fell within their scope.3 Appeals in the last instance went to the High Court of Delegates, composed of judges appointed by the Sovereign whenever need arose.^ Until 1641, however, the ordinary ecclesiastical courts were practically superseded by the Court of High Commission, empowered by the Act of Supremacy to exercise ecclesiastical jurisdiction, to inquire into and punish heresy and other offenses of a like nature. At first its energies were devoted to enforcing the Acts of Supremacy and Uniformity against the Romanists; but, when it came to be used against the Protestants as well, it began to be hated more and more, until it was finally suppressed. Moreover, its procedure was most oppres

1 In 1602 by Essex's successor Lord Mountjoy.

2 Among various revenues derived from the clergy were first fruits and tenths, clerical subsidies voted in Convocation, and occasional benevolences.

* Their jurisdiction over matrimonial and testamentary cases was taken away in 1857.

4 In 1833 its duties were transferred to the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council.