A School History of England/Chapter 7

by C. R. L. Fletcher and Rudyard Kipling

Layout 2

 

 

 

CHAPTER VII

THE TUDORS AND THE AWAKENING OF ENGLAND, 1485–1603

The King’s Job

Once on a time was a King anxious to understand
What was the wisest thing a man could do for his land.
Most of his population hurried to answer the question,
Each with a long oration, each with a new suggestion.
They interrupted his meals, he wasn't safe in his bed from ‘em,
They hung round his neck and heels, and at last His Majesty fled from ‘em.
He put on a lepers cloak (people leave lepers alone),
Out of the window he broke, and abdicated his throne.
All that rapturous day, while his Court and his Ministers mourned him,
He danced on his own highway till his own Policemen warned him.
Gay and cheerful he ran (lepers don't cheer as a rule)
Till he found a philosopher-man teaching an infant school.
The windows were open wide, the King sat down on the grass,
And heard the children inside reciting ‘Our King is an ass’.
The King popped in his head, ‘Some people would call this treason,
But I think you are right, he said; ‘will you kindly give me your reason?’
Lepers in school are rare as Kings with a lepers dress on,
But the class didn't stop or stare; it calmly went on with the lesson:
‘The wisest thing, we suppose, that a man can do for his land,
Is the work that lies under his nose, with the tools that lie under his hand.’
The King whipped off his cloak, and stood in his crown before ‘em.
He said:—‘My dear little folk, Ex ore parvulorum
(Which is Latin for “Children know more than grown-ups would credit”)
You have shown me the road to go, and I propose to tread it.
Back to his Kingdom he ran, and issued a Proclamation,
‘Let every living man return to his occupation!’
Then he explained to the mob that cheered in his palace and round it,
‘I’ve been to look for a job, and Heaven be praised I’ve found it!’

The sixteenth century; an awakened world.Now we come to a very different part of history, the period when our own modern world began to be born. It was a dreadful period because the breaking up of the old ideas of religion, of geography and of trade was accompanied by great suffering to many classes and by the loss of many noble lives of those who clung to the old ideas. Struggle between old and new ideas.Yet it was also a splendid period because of the close union and understanding between the new Tudor kings and their people; because England armed herself to face dangers from foreign foes so resolutely that, at the end of it, she was the first sea-power in the world. And it was a time in which England produced a series of really great men in every walk of life. Men's minds were stirred up to think, and so the men with the greatest minds came to the front;

The old order changeth, yielding place to new,
And God fulfils Himself in many ways.

Wyclif had done little more than prepare the bed in which the seed was to be sown, the seed of knowledge and of the ‘Spirit which giveth life’. England was, as she is still, a deeply conservative country; our people were slow at taking up new ideas, and too much in love with money. They wanted kings who would give them peace and order, knock down the great nobles, restrict or even abolish the Pope's power. But they did not at first want ‘heresy’ or wish to break with the Catholic Church of their fathers.

Henry VII, 1485–1509; his task;Henry VII was a king admirably suited to carry out some of these wishes. If you gave him a name you would call him ‘Henry the Prudent’. He did not do as did the king in the poem on page 111, nor did any real king of whom I ever heard; but Henry tried hard to find out what a king's real ‘job’ should be, and he set to work to do it; moreover, he did his best to make Englishmen stop talking and fighting among themselves, and set them to work each at his own job. His claim to the throne was not a very good one, and his aim therefore was to ‘let sleeping dogs lie’; ‘Mind your own businesses, my dear subjects, and let me mind mine’, was what he would have said. His main task was to heal the wounds left by the civil war; and, in a reign of twenty-four years, he had almost completely healed them. There were at first some small insurrections, after-swells of the late storm, but they were put down with ease. his caution;Henry called few parliaments and asked for little money, his but heaped up treasure by other ways. He taxed rich people, though he had no legal right to do so; he carefully nursed trade and manufacture; and he imposed enormous fines on all big men who broke his laws, especially his laws which forbade them to keep large bands of retainers who would fight their quarrels. His ministers and privy councillors were either bishops or middle-class laymen; and the Privy Council became almost more important than Parliament. He cut off few heads, but chose them wisely, for those he did cut off were the most dangerous. A great monarchy was growing up in Spain as well as in France; even Germany was trying hard to be a united country. his love of peace.Henry watched them all, and made numerous treaties with them, but refused to be led into expense er adventures; above all he avoided wars. With Scotland he kept firm peace, the first real peace since 1290, and he married his daughter Margaret to King James IV; it was the great-grandson of this marriage who, as James I, finally united the two countries in 1603. As for the Church, it also seemed to be wrapped in profound peace; the mutterings against it were all under the surface.

The ‘New Learning’ founded on Greek.Yet before Henry died, the ‘New Learning’, which was to lead to the Reformation, was in full swing in England. Great scholars like John Colet and Thomas More were reading the Scriptures in their original Greek, and finding out how very much the Roman Church differed from the earliest forms of Christianity. The study of Greek had begun at both universities, and English scholars were continually travelling to Germany and Italy.

Henry VIII, 1509–47; his early years.In 1509 Henry died, and was succeeded by his son Henry VIII, aged eighteen, a most splendid young man, of great natural cleverness and devoted to the New Learning, but devoted also to every sort of game, pleasure and extravagance. For the business of the State he at first cared nothing; ‘Oh, go and talk to my Chancellor about that, he would say. Cardinal Wolsey; his foolish extravagance.His Chancellor was the cunning Thomas Wolsey, afterwards Cardinal, Archbishop of York and Legate (i.e. special agent) of the Pope. Wolsey got all power into his own hands and managed things badly. He allowed his master to waste the treasures heaped up by Henry VII; and, when the King called Parliaments, they growled at this extravagance, and refused to vote the huge sums for which he asked them. War with Scotland, battle of Flodden, 1513.He plunged into foreign politics, and made a foolish war with France, which at once broke the long peace with Scotland; for James IV invaded England with a huge army, which was defeated by Henry’s general, the Earl of Surrey, at Flodden Field (1513). Wolsey realized that the Church was in danger, both from the New Learning and from the growing outcry against its riches, and he was most anxious to put off any open attack on it; but as for reform, he had no plans.

The Reformation in Germany, 1517; it begins to influence England, 1520–30.The storm broke first in Germany, where, in 1517, the simple monk, Martin Luther, began by attacking some of the more scandalous abuses of the Church, and ended, a year or two later, by declaring the Pope to be ‘Antichrist’. Henry VIII professed himself to be deeply shocked at this, wrote a book in defence of the Catholic doctrines, and forbade Englishmen to read Luther's books. But these books, and many others upon the same side, could not be kept out of England, and nothing could prevent eager young men from reading them. By the year 1527 there was a small but vigorous body of scholars in England who were prepared to attack the teaching of the old Church as well as its riches. The first ‘Protestants’.These were soon to be called ‘Protestants’; as yet men called them ‘heretics’. Their main cry was for the Bible as the ground of all Christian teaching; ‘away with everything that cannot be found in the Bible.’

Henry seeks a divorce, 1527.Until 1527 the Government sternly repressed every movement against the Pope. Then a purely political event caused it to turn round. King Henry wanted to divorce his wife Katharine, a Spanish princess, who had been the wife of his brother Arthur. Arthur had died in 1501. The Pope had allowed Henry to marry Katharine, although many people had doubted whether such a marriage could possibly be lawful. Only one child of this marriage, Princess Mary, born 1516, had survived, and Henry thought, or professed to think, that this was a ‘Judgement of God’ on him. Anne Boleyn.Also he wanted to marry some one else, the Lady Anne Boleyn, one of Queen Katharine’s court ladies. He applied to the Pope for a divorce. Popes were in the bad habit of doing these little jobs to please kings; but Pope Clement VII would not do this. King Charles of Spain and Germany, called the ‘Emperor’, was the nephew of Queen Katharine; he was much the most powerful monarch in Europe, and Clement dared not offend him. Henry and Pope Clement VII, 1527–9So the Pope, and Wolsey for him, shifted and twisted and turned and promised, but could not give the King of England his wishes.

Suddenly, to the surprise of all his courtiers, of all England, of all Europe, Henry roared out, ‘Pope! What do I care for the Pope? Call my Parliament!’

The Parliament of 1529–36.It was the year 1529. The King was thirty-eight years old, and quite unknown to his people, except from the rumours of his extravagance. Union of king and people.Suddenly he appeared before them as their leader and friend, prepared to do all, and more than all, on which their hearts were set. The nation had hardly dared to whisper its desire to curb the Pope and the Church; here was a king who shouted it aloud!

Do not think that I praise Henry VIII. It was a selfish and wicked motive that started the idea in his mind. What I say is that, once the idea was started, he would have all the kings of Europe against him, and no friend but his own people; and so King and people now became one as they had never been before.

What the nation desired.Very few Englishmen were as yet prepared to accept any new sort of Church; most of them hated the idea of ‘heresy’. Henry hated it also, and continued to the end of his life to burn a few extreme heretics. King and people wished no more than to abolish the power of the Pope in England, to strip the Church of its enormous wealth, and yet to remain ‘good Catholics’. Was this possible? History was to prove that it was not; once the Pope was pulled down in England a ‘Reformation’ of all the Church in England must follow, in spite of any effort to prevent it. Henry just managed to stave off this reformation while he lived.

The laws against the Pope, 1529–36.The Parliament of 1529 sat for seven years, and when it rose a new England had begun. How the new laws against the Church were forced through the House of Lords no one knows; one fears it was by terror and threats, for nearly all the bishops and certainly all the abbots would be against them; and of the forty-five lay peers, a strong minority must have hated serious changes. But the House of Commons, almost to a man, welcomed these changes; and that House then represented the sober country gentlemen and the sober merchants of England.

One by one all the powers of the Pope were shorn away, the power of making laws for themselves was taken from the clergy, the Church was declared to be independent of any foreign influence, but wholly dependent on the Crown. Every one was obliged to swear that the King was the ‘Head of the Church’. Archbishop Cranmer.The new Archbishop of Canterbury, Thomas Cranmer, pronounced the divorce from Katharine, and married his King to Anne Boleyn; the Princess Mary was set aside, and when Anne's daughter, the Princess Elizabeth, was born, she was declared heir to the throne. Monasteries dissolved.All the smaller monasteries were dissolved and their lands handed over to the Crown; Henry gave most of them to his courtiers and to Important country gentlemen, and so a new set of nobles, newly enriched from Church lands and entirely dependent on the King, rapidly came to the front.

Thomas Cromwell; fierce measures against the old Church and the old nobles.Many of the best men in England were deeply shocked at these changes, even some who had been prepared to go a long way in reforming the abuses of the Church. But Henry and his savage minister, Thomas Cromwell, struck down every one who stood in their path. The Courtenays and Poles, descended from Edward IV, were imprisoned, or driven into exile, or had their heads cut off. Sir Thomas More, once the King’s intimate friend, and Bishop Fisher of Rochester, both men of European fame for their learning and piety, were the most distinguished victims. Pilgrimage of Grace, 1536.In the North of England, in 1536, a fierce insurrection broke out called the ‘Pilgrimage of Grace’; the rebels cried out for the restoration of the monasteries, for in that wild country the monks had been the only doctors and their houses had been open to all travellers. The rising was put down with great cruelty, for Henry was

 

 

naturally a cruel man, and he was now drunk with pride and power.

Birth of Prince Edward, 1537.He had already beheaded his second wife Anne, and married his third, Jane Seymour; she bore to him in 1537 a son, afterwards Edward VI, and died a few days afterwards. In the last seven years of his life he married three more wives, one of whom he divorced, another he beheaded, and the third survived him.

The new land-owners.In 1539 the remaining monasteries, even the greatest, were dissolved and, as a result, the great abbots ceased to attend Parliament. Some of their wealth was used to found schools and professorships at Oxford and Cambridge, and to create six new bishoprics; but most of it went to the nobles and gentlemen. Thus, within three years, nearly a quarter of the land of England had got new owners. All the great offices of state had been wholly taken away from churchmen, and were now in the hands of these new nobles. The Confessions of Faith.New ‘Confessions of Faith’ (declaring what was the true teaching of the Church of England) were published; first the ‘Ten Articles’, then the ‘Six Articles’; the former was a step in the direction of the German Protestantism; the latter was very nearly the old Catholic faith but without the Pope; and I must repeat that it was this midway position which, as late as Henrys own death, most people in England preferred.

The English Bible.But Henry had ordered an English translation of the Bible to be placed in every parish church for every one to read, and in 1544 he allowed the Litany to be said in English; this was really the beginning of our beloved Prayer Book. And, once lay Englishmen began to read the Bible for themselves, they would not long be content to believe in confession to a priest or in the miracle of the Mass (both of which were taught in the Six Articles).

Danger of foreign invasion on behalf of the Pope.Now all these changes were carried through under continued danger from abroad, for of course the Pope had declared Henry to be deposed, and called on all Catholic princes to go and depose him. Much of the danger was from the old alliance of France and Scotland, but far more from the power of Spain, Germany and Flanders, now all in the hands of the Emperor, Charles V. Henry arms his people.Threats of invasion were incessant, but Henry armed his people to the teeth, and, at the end of Henry his reign, had a navy of seventy ships ready for action. He built castles all round his southern and eastern coasts, and was always making great guns to put in them. He knew that the few remaining descendants of Edward III were plotting to upset his throne, especially the exiled Reginald Pole, a great favourite of the Pope. He had already sliced off the heads of all his royal cousins whom he could catch. Who should succeed Henry?With the approval of his Parliament, he had settled that the crown should go after his death to his son Edward; if Edward had no children, to Mary; then, if Mary had no children, to Elizabeth; lastly, if all three of his children died without direct heirs, it was to go to the heirs of his younger sister, Mary, Duchess of Suffolk, not to those of his elder sister, Margaret, Queen of Scotland. He hated Scotland as bitterly as Edward I, and continued the Border wars as fiercely until his death in 1547.

Henry’s character.Thus you will say I have drawn for you the picture of a monster of cruelty and selfishness? Yes, Henry was just that. But he was also something much more. He was a great patriot, a great Englishman. He taught Englishmen to rely on themselves and their ships; and he taught future English kings to rely on their people. He shivered in pieces the foreign yoke that had bound the Church of England since Saint Augustine had preached

Sufferings of the poor.in the open air to the early King of Kent. Great suffering accompanied these great changes; and they were thoroughly bad for the moral character of the generation which saw them. The new landowners were men who thought only of riches, and turned out the tenants of the old monks by the score, and by the hundred. A swarm of beggars was let loose over the country, beggars to whom the monks had given daily doles of bread and beer. Savage laws of whipping and forced labour had to be passed to keep these men in order. Greed of the rich.Moreover, since the discovery by the Spaniards of rich gold and silver mines in America, money had come into Europe in great floods, and this had sent up the price of all goods at a fearful rate; all trade seemed uncertain; great fortunes might be suddenly made, and as suddenly lost. So the strong and the clever (and often the wicked) prospered, and the weak and the old-fashioned people were ruined.

Edward VI, 1547–53.The six years’ reign of the boy Edward VI (1547–53) only made all this social misery worse. Every one had been afraid of Henry VIII; no one was afraid of a child of ten, though he was a clever and strong-willed child. Scramble of the new nobles for riches and power.The result was that the government became a nobles for scramble for wealth and power among the new nobles, the Seymours, Dudleys, Russells, Herberts, Greys and many more who had been enriched with abbey lands. It was the fear of losing these lands and the desire of confiscating for themselves what remained of Church property that drove these men, quite against the wishes of sober people, to force on a reformation of the teaching of the Church. They degrade the Reformation.The result in the long run was good, because the Protestant faith did then first get a lawful footing in England; but the result for the moment was bad, because moderate men began to mistrust a Reformation which seemed to be bound up with greed for spoil and with contempt for all the past traditions of England. At the same time the leaders of the new Protestant Church were all men of high character; Cranmer, Ridley, Latimer and Hooper, all Bishops of King Edward, all died for their faith in the next reign.

The two Prayer Books of Edward VI, 1549 and 1552.However much we may rightly abuse the greedy nobles, we can never wholly regret a reign which first gave us the Prayer Book in English and substituted the Communion for the Mass. Cranmer prepared two successive Prayer Books, the second (1552) somewhat more Protestant than the first of 1549, and it was the second which, with very slight alterations, became our present Prayer Book in the reign of Elizabeth. In Edward’s reign also the marriage of priests was allowed, and the Statutes for burning heretics were abolished. In his reign too, alas, the beautiful stained-glass windows, statues and pictures were removed from most of our churches, whose walls were now covered with whitewash.

The Duke of Somerset, Protector.Edward's first Regent or ‘Protector’ was his mother's brother, Edward Seymour, Duke of Somerset; a man of much higher character than most of the nobles, but rash and hot-headed, and quite unfit to lead the nation. His quarrel with Scotland, 1548.He continued Henry’s vindictive quarrel with Scotland, won a great victory at Pinkie, and drove the Scots once more into the arms of France. Their girl-queen, Mary Stuart, who might have been a bride for our boy-king, was sent for safety to France and married to the French King’s son. The Duke of Northumberland, 1550–3.Somerset was soon upset by a much more violent person, the ruffian John Dudley, Duke of Northumberland, who pushed on the Reformation at greater speed for purely selfish ends, and disgusted all sober men with it. Violence of the Reformers.He brought in a lot of foreign Protestants and gave them places in the English Church; he brought in foreign troops to be his bodyguard, bullied the Princess Mary (who was the natural head of the Catholic party), thrust all the leading Catholics into prison, and tossed the remaining Church lands to his fellow nobles.

Edward VI very ill.But Edward, who had always been very delicate, began early in 1553 to draw near his end. Mary's succession was sure, and, though no one knew exactly what line she would take in religious matters, it was certain that she would stop the violent progress of the Reformation, and quite certain that she would kill Northumberland. His death, 1553.So the Duke persuaded the dying boy-king, now sixteen, to make a will, passing over both his sisters, and leaving the crown to his cousin, Jane Grey.Lady Jane Grey, heiress of the Suffolk line and recently married to one of Northumberland’s sons. When Edward died in July, Jane was actually proclaimed Queen in London.

But not a cheer was raised by the crowd, and the whole nation rose as one man for the injured Princess Mary. Within nine days Jane was a prisoner in the Tower, where a few months afterwards she was executed, and Mary rode into London with her sister Elizabeth at her side.

Mary I, 1553–8; her character.Mary’s reign of five years and four months is the greatest tragedy in our history. She was a good woman, passionately attached to the Catholic faith and to the memory of her mother. She was learned, clever and of lofty courage. But she was a Spaniard at heart and never an Englishwoman. Like a Spaniard she was vindictive, and, unfortunately, she had deep wrongs to avenge.

The Reformation in danger.Yet, if Protestantism were to triumph in the long run, something of the fearful cruelty she was going to inflict upon it was necessary; for moderate men had hitherto mainly seen it as the religion of a gang of selfish nobles seeking to divide all the riches of England among themselves. Nine-tenths of England preferred anything—almost the Pope—to Northumberland and his land-grabbing crew. At the least, they wanted a return to the state of things at the end of Henry’s reign. ‘No foreigners,’ was the cry, ‘England and English Church for the English.’

Mary no Englishwoman; her marriage to Philip of Spain.But Mary cared little for her countrymen, cared only for her Church; she was determined to restore the state of things which had existed at the beginning, not at the end, of her father's reign; to restore the Pope and all his works, and to do this by making the closest alliance with the Emperor Charles and his son Philip, whom she determined, against all good advice, to marry. In six months she had terrified her people; in two years she had completely lost their hearts; in six years she had wrecked for ever the Catholic faith in the minds of intelligent Englishmen.

Catholic faith set up again.She hurled all the leaders of the Reformed Church into prison at once, and set about re-establishing the Catholic services everywhere. The greedy nobles, one and all, now professed themselves to be good Catholics, and them she dared not touch. The one thing they feared was to lose their new grants of the abbey lands. They knew the Queen was bent upon restoring the monasteries, and the laws for burning heretics, which had been abolished in the reign of Edward VI; but she was not able to persuade her Parliaments to do the latter until the end of 1554, and the lands she was never able to touch at all. But Reginald Pole, long an exile and now a Cardinal, came over as ‘Legate’ of the Pope, and in the Popes name absolved England from the guilt of heresy. Mary had already been married to Prince Philip of Spain.

The Protestant martyrs, 1555–8.The burnings of the Protestant martyrs began early in 1555, and, in less than three years, nearly three hundred persons were burned at the stake. The burnings were nearly all in the south-eastern counties, which shows us that Protestantism had got the strongest hold on what were then the richest and most Intelligent parts of England; the north and west long remained Catholic. The four great Protestant Bishops, Cranmer, Ridley, Latimer and Hooper, were among the victims; but three-fourths of these victims were persons in quite humble life. The people of those days were well used to look on at all sorts of cruel tortures at executions, and were quite unfeeling on the subject; but the high courage with which these martyrs met their terrible deaths made an impression that has never been forgotten. So it was the reign of ‘Bloody Mary’, not that of Edward VI, that was the true birthday of Protestantism in England.

A ‘Spanish job’; hatred of Englishmen for Spain.And no great Englishman approved of the burnings; it was only the Spanish councillors and the Queen herself who urged them on. It was felt to be ‘a foreigners’ job’, and the hatred for Spain and all its works soon came to outweigh the old hatred for France.

Loss of Calais, 1558.This hatred became much more fierce when Philip dragged England into one of his frequent wars with France, and when the cunning Frenchmen seized the opportunity to make a spring upon Calais (which we had held since Edward Ill), and captured it. The loss of Calais seemed an indelible shame. All the last two years of Mary’s reign, revolts were on the point of breaking out. French ships full of English Protestant exiles prowled in the Channel and harried Spanish and English trade. No heir was born to the throne, though Mary, who was slowly dying of dropsy, kept hoping for a baby. Philip showed her no love and little civility. Death of Mary, 1558.Her reign had been a nightmare of terror, and it closed amid loss, ruin, pestilence and famine.

Elizabeth, 1558-1603.The Princess Elizabeth, who then came to the throne in November 1558, was a very different person to her sister. Her life had been several times in great danger during Mary's reign, and the Spanish councillors had often urged Mary to put her to death. Her character.She was a woman of the most strangely varied character; extraordinarily stingy and mean, extraordinarily brave and fierce (not cruel); passionately fond of her country, and English to the backbone; so jealous that she could not bear her courtiers to look at another woman; so vain of her beauty that even in old age she covered herself with gorgeous dresses and ridiculous Jewels; by turns a scold, a flirt, a cheat and a heroine. But, somehow or other, she made her people follow, obey and worship her, till at last she became a sort of crowned spirit and guardian angel of the whole nation, which felt that it had grown to full manhood and power under her protecting care. ‘Gloriana.’Men called her ‘Gloriana’.

Her danger and that of England.Her position and that of her people was, at her accession, one of great danger. England was entirely without allies, and, owing to the bad management of the two last reigns, almost bankrupt. Catholic Europe and many Catholics in England considered that the Queen had no right to the throne, for they had never approved of her father's marriage to Anne Boleyn. Mary Stuart, Queen of Scots.The true Queen of England, they thought, was Mary Queen of Scots. So thought that young and beautiful lady herself, and, in Elizabeth's first year, Mary became Queen of France as well. Indeed, the prospect of the union of France, Scotland and England in one hand thoroughly frightened King Philip of Spain, and made him for many years more friend than foe to Elizabeth.

The religious settlement of England.He therefore in 1558 implored Elizabeth to keep England Catholic and to marry some decent Catholic Prince. But her sister's reign had killed Catholicism in the hearts of all the best and most vigorous of the younger men in England; she knew this, and so, though she dreaded the extreme Protestants and loved the gorgeous services of the old Church, she rightly decided that she must reign as a Protestant Queen. A Protestant Queen.Yet the difficulties of settling the new Church were enormous; she had to make bishops of men who had fled abroad to escape death; and many of the most eager Protestants now objected to bishops altogether, while many more disliked even the very moderate services of the Prayer Book of 1552. Such men were the germ of the party soon to be called ‘Puritans’, and, in later days, ‘Dissenters’ or ‘Nonconformists’. Moderation, then, was the Queen's watchword; to build up a Church which should offend as few, and please as many as possible. William Cecil, Lord Burghley.Her great adviser for forty years was the wise William Cecil, afterwards Lord Burghley, the most far-seeing and moderate of men. And the Queen and Cecil and their Parliament had, in five years—say by 1563—built the Church upon such broad foundations that it has remained, with few changes, our own ‘Church of England’ until this day. The Prayer Book.Laws were passed in Parliament making Elizabeth ‘Supreme Governor’ of this Church, making the Prayer Book (very slightly altered from the edition of 1552) the only lawful service book, and publishing the present ‘Thirty-nine Articles’ as the Confession of Faith. The Thirty-nine Articles.Year by year more and more people rallied to this Church, and Parliament was able to pass stronger and stronger laws against those who refused to conform to it, whether Catholics or Puritans.

Plots against the Queen's life.All her reign, but especially for the first twenty-eight years of it, the Queen was in constant danger of being murdered by some extreme Catholic agent of the Pope. Such men called her ‘heretic’, ‘bastard’, ‘usurper’ and other ugly names. There was plot after plot, and the Catholics, perhaps not unnaturally, considered the traitors who were executed for these plots to be martyrs, not murderers. But, as each plot failed, the main result was to drive all moderate Catholics into the English Church; for most of them, much as they had deplored the ‘heresy’ of their Queen, were patriots at heart.

Stinginess of the Queen.Elizabeth hated war, partly because she had a shrewd idea that England was hardly strong or rich enough to engage in a great foreign war, but still more because she simply couldn't bear to pay her soldiers and sailors. In fact, she expected her subjects to fight her battles for her by taking service with rebellious Scottish, French or Spanish subjects, while she pretended to be at peace with the sovereigns of those countries. She helps foreigners to rebel, but secretly.But she was often obliged to send small, and almost secret expeditions to help these rebels. Philip of Spain, for instance, was engaged in a long and desperate attempt to suppress Protestantism in the ‘Low Countries’ (the modern Belgium and Holland), and our Queen was constantly sending aid to the Protestants there, though never openly till 1585, by which time the The Dutch.‘Dutch Republic’ had been born there, and had become the most valuable ally of England. It was the same story in France, where a strong Protestant party, continually fed by underhand help from England, kept up a civil war for thirty years. All this weakened the two great Catholic powers, and made Elizabeth stand out more and more as the champion of European Protestantism.

On the whole, however, her reign is mainly occupied with two long duels, that with Mary, Queen of Scots, 1560-87, and that with the King of Spain, which began to be severe about 1570 and lasted till her death.

The long rivalry with Mary Stuart.The beautiful Mary Stuart returned, a widowed Queen, to Scotland in 1561 to find that Elizabeth had already helped the Scottish nobles to overthrow the French power and the Catholic Church at one blow. The Reformation in Scotland.The new Church that was then set up in Scotland was called the ‘Presbyterian’, from its government by ‘presbyters’ or elders instead of bishops, and was far more violently Protestant than ours. The English Puritans.This is important to remember because, to those English Puritans who wanted to abolish bishops and the Prayer Book in our own Church, the example of Scotland was always present. Mary was a clever woman, but quite without principles, and far more reckless than her English rival. She honestly believed herself to be rightful Queen of England, but she found it hard work to keep her own crown, and in six years she had lost it. For she was always an object of suspicion to the Scottish nobles, both as a Catholic and as a Frenchwoman at heart. She married her cousin, Lord Darnley, in 1565, and bore him a son, who afterwards, as James I, united the two crowns of Britain. Then, in 1567, Mary allowed her husband to be murdered and married his murderer, the Earl of Bothwell. Flight of Mary to England, 1568.Scotland rose in wrath, deposed and imprisoned her, crowned her baby son, and had him brought up as a Protestant king. A year later Mary escaped from prison and fled to England, demanding aid from her rival Elizabeth.

Mary in custody in England; her plots.That clever lady pretended to pity Mary, but kept her safe, at first as a sort of guest, soon as a prisoner for nineteen dreary years. No wonder that Mary soon began to plot against Elizabeth's life, and to implore the aid of every Catholic power in Europe. The one insurrection of Elizabeth's reign, that of the North of England in 1569, was got up in order to put Mary on the throne. Her trial and death, 1587.At last, in despair, Elizabeth's wisest councillors implored her to bring Mary to trial; and in 1587, the Scottish Queen was tried, condemned and beheaded in Fotheringay Castle.

Spain will avenge her.This was an open challenge on the part of England to Catholic Europe. Mary had made a will in which she passed over her son, left Philip of Spain heir to both her crowns and implored him to avenge her. He was ready to do so, for he had long been tired of Elizabeth’s secret aid to his rebels, and exasperated at the failure of the plotters to kill the English Queen. So he prepared to send against us a great fleet, known to history as the ‘Spanish Armada’.

The English Navy,Now Henry VII and Henry VIII had been the real makers of the English navy, for they had been the first kings to build big ships which could sail anywhere and fight anybody. And Henry VIII had paid very special attention to guns and gunnery. He had also been the true father of English merchant shipping, and had encouraged his subjects to trade to distant parts of the world. and English merchant-ships.All merchant-ships in those days carried guns, for they always had to be ready for a tussle with pirates. So, though the Spanish fleet was perhaps twice as numerous as the English Royal navy, the number of fighting ships that England could put to sea far outnumbered those that Spain could send into the Channel. And our men were going to fight, not only for Queen and faith, but for home and wives and children; to fight too on their own shores, every tide and shoal of which was well known to them.

Spanish America; Portuguese India.When Spain had discovered America and the Portuguese had found the way round the Cape of Good Hope to India, each tried to exclude all other nations from the seas they had explored, from the lands they had discovered, and from the trades they had opened up. And a Pope had had the astounding insolence to divide these seas, countries, and trades between the Spaniards and Portuguese, giving the Western World to Spain, the Eastern to Portugal. English sailors in America.Englishmen, when they abolished the Pope, naturally laughed at this exclusion; they meant to take, and did take English goods to all countries where they could find a market for them, and this rough deep-sea game went on all through the reigns of Edward and Mary. In the reign of Elizabeth it became the game of Englishmen. You can imagine some simple English sailor lad, who had perhaps never done more than a few coasting voyages from one little port of Devon to another, opening his eyes to the wonders of the Tropics as he sails in Drake's voyage round the world, 1577–80.Francis Drake's great voyage in the Golden Hind, across the Atlantic, across the Equator, south and ever south till the Strait of Magellan opens the door into the Pacific; then north again, picking up here and there some rich Spanish merchant-ship as a prize; then across through innumerable spice islands to the Indian Ocean, and so round the Cape of Good Hope and home; home to his own wind-swept Channel and the dear cliffs by Plymouth. This was in 1580—the first English Voyage round the World, the third only of such voyages in recorded history; honour to Sir Francis Drake!

With Drake in the Tropics.

South and far south below the Line,
 Our Admiral leads us on,
Above, undreamed-of planets shine—
 The stars we knew are gone.
Around, our clustered seamen mark
 The silent deep ablaze
With fires, through which the far-down shark.
 Shoots glimmering on his ways.

The sultry tropic breezes fail
 That plagued us all day through;
Like molten silver hangs our sail,
 Our decks are dark with dew.
Now the rank moon commands the sky,
 Ho! Bid the watch beware
And rouse all sleeping men that lie
 Unsheltered in her glare.

How long the time ‘twixt bell and bell!
 How still our lanthorns burn!
How strange our whispered words that tell
 Of England and return!
Old towns, old streets, old friends, old loves,
 We name them each to each,
While the lit face of Heaven removes
 Them farther from our reach.

Now is the utmost ebb of night
 When mind and body sink,
And loneliness and gathering fright
 O'erwhelm us, if we think—
Yet, look, where in his room apart,
 All windows opened wide,
Our Admiral thrusts away the chart
 And comes to walk outside.

 

 

Kindly, from man to man he goes,
 With comfort, praise, or jest,
Quick to suspect our childish woes,
 Our terror and unrest.
It is as though the sun should shine—
 Our midnight fears are gone!
South and far south below the Line,
 Our Admiral leads us on!

Drake, Hawkins, Raleigh, Grenville, Cavendish and a hundred more of gallant English merchants and sailors pushed their ships and their trade into every corner of Spanish America; and of course the Spaniards hanged many of them as pirates and burned others as heretics. Remonstrances to the English Queen were of little use, for she was often able to reply to Philip, ‘Then why is your Majesty encouraging plots against my life and helping my rebels in Ireland?’

The Spanish Armada, 1588.Philip had, in fact, delayed his attack too long; he had no idea how strong England had grown in the thirty years of Elizabeth's reign. And though he was now King of Portugal as well as Spain, and master of all the gold mines of America, he was as stingy as Elizabeth. Even in this critical year 1588, his ‘Armada’ was not nearly big enough to win, and it was very badly equipped as a fighting force, his ships did not carry enough gunpowder, and most of their provisions were rotten. Still, the terror was great In many English hearts as the Spaniards swept up Channel in the last half of July. For one long hot week our light and swift sailing ships hung round their flanks, knocking their spars to pieces at long range, almost without the loss of a single English life or gun. The object of the Spaniards was to avoid fighting until they came off the Dutch coast, for there was a large Spanish army collected in the River Scheldt, under the great General Parma, ready to be ferried across to the mouth of the Thames. But before the Spaniards reached the Straits of Dover their fleet had been half crippled by the English guns; and, when they were off Calais, a lot of boats smeared with pitch and full of gunpowder were set on fire and set adrift among them. This so terrified the Spanish Admiral that he put his whole fleet about and fled into the North Sea. Then great gales arose and drove them northward and ever northward. Many were wrecked, the remainder lumbered round Scotland and southward again round Ireland; perhaps half or one-third, and these mostly mere hulks, arrived at length in the harbours of Spain; the winds and waves and rocks had finished what the English guns had begun:—

Long, long in vain the waiting mothers kneel
In the white palaces of far Castile,
Weep, wide brown eyes that watch along the shore,
Your dark-haired lovers shall return no more;
Only it may be, on the rising tide,
The shattered hull of one proud bark may glide,
To moor at even on a smooth bay's breast,
Where the South mountains lean toward the West,
A wraith of battle with her broken spars,
Between the water’s shimmer and the stars.^[1]

England and Protestantism saved.Our country, and, with her, the great cause of freedom and Protestantism, were saved. Spain was now known to be mainly a bugbear to frighten children, and England and Elizabeth ruled the waves.

The last years of Elizabeth, 1589–1603.The great Queen lived for fifteen years after her victory, and her enemy, Philip, lived for ten. She never realized how complete that victory had been; when her best councillors and her bravest sailors urged her to follow it up and blow the Spanish once and for all out of the seas, she utterly refused. She allowed occasional raids on the Spanish coasts and colonies, and one of these took the city and burned the great dockyard of Cadiz; but pay for a big war she would not; though, in a big war, swift victory was all but certain, and would have produced a lasting peace. Her last years were very lonely; she had never married; the great men who had helped her to make England a first-rate power, Burghley, Walsingham, Drake, Grenville, had died before her. Her successor.The rising generation was all looking towards her successor, and that could only be King James of Scotland, whom she cordially hated, and whom she knew to be incapable of continuing her work. The Church of England, which she had nursed, was indeed safe; but the Puritan party within it was growing, and was strong even in Parliament. All this foretold that seventeenth-century England would have plenty of troubles to face, though no such dangers from foreign foes and religious strife as had threatened it during the seventy years of Elizabeth's life and the forty-five of her reign. She died at Richmond in the seventieth year of her age in 1603.

Greater, perhaps, than all the other glories of the reign of Elizabeth is the glory that, in her early years, was born at a little town

‘in the heart of a sleepy Midland shire’

(Warwickshire) the greatest poet of all time, William Shakespeare. Elizabeth used to boast that she was ‘mere English’; Shakespeare, whose genius sought the subjects of his plays in all countries and in all periods of history, was at heart, and in his art, as mere English as his Queen. His characters may wear the dresses, and bear the names of ancient Romans, of Bohemians, Danes or Moors, but their language and their thoughts are those of the Englishmen of Shakespeare's own day.

‘Together.’

When Horse and Rider each can trust the other everywhere,
It takes a fence and more than a fence to pound that happy pair;
For the one will do what the other demands, although he is beaten and blown,
And when it is done, they can live through a run that neither could face alone.

When Crew and Captain understand each other to the core,
It takes a gale and more than a gale to put their ship ashore;
For the one will do what the other commands, although they are chilled to the bone,
And both together can live through weather that neither could face alone.

When King and People understand each other past a doubt,
It takes a foe and more than a foe to knock that country out;
For the one will do what the other one asks as soon as the need is known,
And hand in hand they can make a stand which neither could make alone!

This wisdom had Elizabeth and all her subjects too,
For she was theirs and they were hers, as well the Spaniard knew;
For when his grim Armada came to conquer the Nation and Throne,
Why, back to back they met an attack that neither could face alone!

It is not wealth nor talk nor trade nor schools nor even the Vote,
Will save your land when the enemy’s hand is tightening round your throat.
But a King and a People who thoroughly trust each other in all that is done
Can sleep on their bed without any dread—for the world will leave ’em alone!

 

1. Sir James Rennell Rodd: Oxford Prize Poem, 1880, ‘Raleigh’.