Edward VI. The bishops almost unanimously refused to conform,
and a clean sweep was made of the episcopal bench. An eminently
safe and scholarly archbishop was found in Matthew Parker,
who had not made himself notorious by resistance to authority
even under Mary. The lower clergy were more amenable; the
two hundred who alone are said to have been ejected should
perhaps be multiplied by five; but even so they were not
one in seven, and these seven were clergy who had been promoted
in Mary’s reign, or who had stood the celibate and other
tests of 1553–1554. Into the balance must be thrown the
hundreds, if not thousands, of zealots who had fled abroad
and returned in 1558–1559. The net result was that a few
years later the lower house of convocation only rejected by
one vote a very puritanical petition against vestments and other
“popish dregs.”
The next step was to expand the principle of England for
the English into that of Britain for the British, and Knox’s
reformation in 1559–1560 provided an opportunity
for its application. By timely and daring intervention
in Scotland Elizabeth procured the expulsion of the
Elizabeth and Scotland.
French bag and baggage from North Britain, and that
French avenue to England was closed for ever. The logic of this
plan was not applied to Ireland; there it was to be Ireland for
the English for many a generation yet to come; and so Ireland
remained Achilles’ heel, the vulnerable part of the United Kingdom.
The Protestant religion was forced upon the Irish in a
foreign tongue and garb and at the point of foreign pikes; and
national sentiment supported the ancient faith and the ancient
habits in resistance to the Saxon innovations. In other directions
the expansion of England, the third stage in the development of
Elizabeth’s policy, was more successful. The attractions of the
Spanish Main converted the seafaring folk of south-west England
into hardy Protestants, who could on conscientious
Struggle against the Spanish dominion
at sea.
as well as other grounds contest a papal allocation
of new worlds to Spain and Portugal. Their monopoly
was broken up by Hawkins, Drake, Frobisher, Raleigh,
and scores of others who recognized no peace beyond
the line; and although, as far as actual colonies went,
the results of Elizabeth’s reign were singularly meagre, the idea
had taken root and the ground had been prepared. In every
direction English influence penetrated, and Englishmen before
1603 might be found in every quarter of the globe, following
Drake’s lead into the Pacific, painfully breaking the ice in search
of a north-east or a north-west passage, hunting for slaves in the
wilds of Africa, journeying in caravans across the steppes of
Russia into central Asia, bargaining with the Turks on the
shores of the Golden Horn, or with the Greeks in the Levant,
laying the foundations of the East India Company, or of the
colonies of Virginia and Newfoundland.
This expansion was mainly at the expense of Spain; but at first Spain was regarded as Elizabeth’s friend, not France. France had a rival candidate for Elizabeth’s throne in Mary Stuart, the wife of the dauphin who soon (1559) became king as Francis II.; and Spanish favour Mary, queen of Scots. was sought to neutralize this threat. Fortunately for Elizabeth, Francis died in 1560, and the French government passed into the hands of Catherine de’ Medici, who had no cause to love her daughter-in-law and the Guises. France, too, was soon paralysed by the wars of religion which Elizabeth judiciously fomented with anything but religious motives. Mary Stuart returned to Scotland with nothing but her brains and her charms on which to rely in her struggle with her people and her rival. She was well equipped in both respects, but human passions spoilt her chance; her heart turned her head. Elizabeth’s head was stronger and she had no heart at all. When Mary married Darnley she had the ball at her feet; the pair had the best claims to the English succession and enjoyed the united affections of the Catholics. But they soon ceased to love one another, and could not control their jealousies. There followed rapidly the murders of Rizzio and Darnley, the Bothwell marriage, Mary’s defeat, captivity, and flight into England (1568). It was a difficult problem for Elizabeth to solve; to let Mary go to France was presenting a good deal more than a pawn to her enemies; to restore her by force to her Scottish throne might have been heroic, but it certainly was not politics; to hand her over to her Scottish foes was too mean even for Elizabeth; and to keep her in England was to nurse a spark in a powder-magazine. Mary was detained in the hope that the spark might be carefully isolated.
But there was too much inflammable material about. The
duke of Norfolk was a Protestant, but his convictions were
weaker than his ambition, and he fell a victim to
Mary’s unseen charms. The Catholic north of England
was to rise under the earls of Westmorland and
Rebellion of 1569 and ex-communi-cation of Elizabeth.
Northumberland, who objected to Elizabeth’s seizure
of their mines and jurisdictions as well as to her proscription
of their faith; and the pope was to assist
with a bull of deposition. Norfolk, however, played the coward;
the bull came nearly a year too late, and the rebellion of the earls
(1569) was easily crushed. But the conspiracies did not end,
and Spain began to take a hand. Elizabeth, partly in revenge
for the treatment of Hawkins and Drake at San Juan de Ulloa,
seized some Spanish treasure on its way to the Netherlands
(Dec. 1569). Alva’s operations were fatally handicapped by
this disaster, but Philip was too much involved in the Netherlands
to declare war on England. But his friendship for Elizabeth
had received a shock, and henceforth his finger
may be traced in most of the plots against her, of which
the Ridolfi conspiracy was the first. It cost Norfolk
his head and Mary more of her scanty liberty. Elizabeth
also began to look to France, and in 1572, by the
treaty of Blois, France instead of Spain became England’s
ally, while Philip constituted himself as Mary’s
patron. The massacre of St Bartholomew placed a severe strain
upon the new alliance, but was not fatal to it. A series of
prolonged but hollow marriage negotiations between Elizabeth
and first Anjou (afterwards Henry III.) and then Alençon
(afterwards duke of Anjou) served to keep up appearances.
But the friendship was never warm; Elizabeth’s relations with
the Huguenots on the one hand and her fear of French designs
on the Netherlands on the other prevented much cordiality.
But the alliance stood in the way of a Franco-Spanish agreement,
limited Elizabeth’s sympathy with the French Protestants, and
enabled her to give more countenance than she otherwise might
have done to the Dutch.
Gradually Philip grew more hostile under provocation; slowly he came to the conclusion that he could never subdue the Dutch or check English attacks on the Spanish Main without a conquest of England. Simultaneously the counter-Reformation began its attacks; the The Jesuit missions. “Jesuit invasion” took place in 1580, and Campion went to the block. A papal and Spanish attempt upon Ireland in the same year was foiled at Smerwick. But more important was Philip’s acquisition of the throne of Portugal with its harbours, its colonies and its marine. This for the first time gave him a real command of the sea, and at least doubled the chances of a successful attack upon England. But Philip’s mind moved slowly and only on provocation. It took a year or two to satisfy him that Portugal was really his; not until 1583 was the fleet of the pretender Don Antonio destroyed in the Azores. The victor, Santa Cruz, then suggested an armada against England, but the English Catholics could not be brought into line with a Spanish invasion. The various attempts to square James VI. of Scotland had not been successful, and events in the Netherlands and in France disturbed Philip’s calculations. But his purpose was now probably fixed. After the murder of William the Silent (1584) Elizabeth sided more openly with the Dutch; the Spanish ambassador Mendoza was expelled from England Execution of Mary, queen of Scots, 1587. for his intrigues with Elizabeth’s enemies (1586); and on the discovery of Babington’s plot Elizabeth yielded to the demand of her parliament and her ministers for Mary’s execution (1587); her death removed the only possible centre for a Catholic rebellion in case of a Spanish attack. It also removed Philip’s last doubts;
