Martin A. S. Hume

“ Never was nation more favoured in this respect than was England at this crisis of the world’s history. The conditions of the Queen’s birth compelled her to embrace the cause of religious freedom, whilst her intellect, her sex, and her versatility enabled her during a long course of years successfully to play off one continental rival against another, until she was strong enough openly to grasp and hold the balance. ”

“ That England should be governed by nobles, and that he should help the Queen to guide the governors, was in the divine order of things. He would do, and did, according to his lights, the best he could for all men; but that the ordinary citizen should claim a voice in deciding what was best for himself would have appeared to Cecil Utopian nonsense to be punished as treason. ”

“ At a time when the bulk of the English people cheerfully changed their faith four times in a generation to please their rulers, it would be absurd to hold up to especial obloquy a minister for having persecuted at one time a religion which at another time he professed. The final triumph of England in that struggle of giants was won by statesmen who, like their mistress, [xv] owed as much to what we should now call their failings as they did to their virtues. Their vacillation and tergiversation in the face of rigid and stolid opponents were main elements of their success. ”

“ Philip was in despair, and ordered his brother Don Juan to hurry to Flanders from Italy to pacify and withdraw the troops, and to conciliate the indignant Catholic Flemings at any cost. Don Juan scorned and hated the task—which he said a woman could do better than a soldier. He was full of a secret plan to dash over to England with the Spanish infantry from Flanders; and instead of obeying orders and going direct to his new government, he hurried to Spain for the purpose of persuading his brother to allow him to have his way. ”

“ When Warwick came back from his ruthless campaign against the peasants of Norfolk, flushed with an easy victory, the idol of a discontented and partly foreign soldiery, the time was ripe for him to strike his blow. Gardiner and Bonner were in the Tower, the Catholic party were being harried and persecuted throughout the country, the French and Scots in Scotland were now strong and invincible, the French fleet dominated the Channel, the town of Boulogne was known to be untenable; and, above all, an unpaid victorious soldiery looked to Warwick as their champion. ”

“ The English minister, and in her stronger moments the English Queen, were speaking more firmly now than ever they had dared to do since Elizabeth’s accession. For the first time the position was becoming defined. It was no longer France or Spain nationally that was the enemy of England: it was Catholic against Protestant the world over. Philip was as nervously anxious to avoid war as Elizabeth herself, and his need to do so much greater than hers; but if Protestantism was allowed to become strong, then his great empire must crumble, and the basis of his system disappear. ”

“ All Europe rang with the news of his ravages in the South Seas, and the shareholders, says Mendoza, “are beside themselves with joy.” But the feelings of peaceful English merchants, and of Burghley himself, were far different. They saw that Spain had been attacked wantonly, her mariners hanged, her treasure stolen without legal excuse, her sacred edifices ransacked, and it was felt that a war of retaliation was inevitable, in which all England would suffer for the dishonest profit of a few. ”

“ Essex, it was thought, would now hold sway and launch England upon a policy of warlike adventure. But Essex was himself hurrying to his doom; and Robert Cecil held firmly in his hand the strings of his great father’s [497] policy—a policy which was on the death of the Queen to bring a Scottish king to the English throne, and unite England and Spain again in a friendly alliance. The baseness and trickery that accompanied the reunion of the countries belong to the history of the reign of James, and formed no part of the plan of Lord Burghley or his mistress. ”

“ All unsuspecting still, De Spes was comforting himself with the reflection that the capture of Bailly was an unimportant incident; he urged Alba and the King to immediate action, fumed at the instructions he received to hold back Philip’s letters to Mary and Norfolk until he had orders to deliver them, and sneered at the timid delay. “As all of Lord Burghley’s jests have turned out well for him hitherto, he is ready to undertake anything, and has no fear of danger. They and the French together make great fun of our meekness.” ”

“ But in the party of reform Cecil was always the most conservative element. Other councillors might be, and were, driven hither and thither by bribery, by passion, by a desire to flatter the Queen’s caprice, by religious zeal or mere ineptitude, but Cecil was judicious, well-nigh incorruptible, prudent, patriotic, and clear-headed; and though he was often obliged to dissemble and give way, he always returned to his point. Protestant zeal must not hurry the Government too far, or too fast, against the sworn enemies of Protestantism. ”

“ The sacking of Cadiz had irretrievably ruined Philip’s prestige; but it had not deprived him of all material resources, heavy and ceaseless as had been the drain upon his treasury for the war in France. The Irish chiefs left him no peace from their importunities, and assured him again and again that with the aid of a few men the island might be his, and Elizabeth and the heretics at his mercy. Promises, sums of money, and slight succour were sent from time to time ”

“ It must not be forgotten that Mary Stuart, the young Queen of Scots, was married to Francis, the heir to the French throne, and that the disappearance of Elizabeth from the throne would almost inevitably have meant the complete dominion of both Scotland and England by the French. This would have rendered the position of Spain in the Netherlands untenable, and would have destroyed the Spanish commerce, and the fact explains Philip’s forbearance with Elizabeth in the earlier years of her reign. Both Cecil and the Queen were fully cognisant of the advantage they derived from the situation. ”

“ On the side of Philip had been gained the point that France was still a Catholic country; whilst to England it was to be credited that Protestantism was now a great force which demanded equality with the older form of belief, and, above all, that England was no longer in the leading strings of France or Spain, but had, in the forty years of dexterous balance under Elizabeth and Burghley, attained full maturity and independence, with the consciousness of coming imperial greatness. ”

“ The old statesman was thus cautiously and slowly going on his traditional way, hopeless though he must have been of the final result as regarded keeping peace with Spain. The long-continued preparations of the Armada were rapidly approaching completion; the Pope had been cajoled into promising funds unwillingly to aid Philip’s aims; the English Catholic refugees were eagerly awaiting the harvest of their efforts; the great, cumbrous machine for crushing England was already in motion, and no efforts of diplomacy could stop it. ”

“ In the meanwhile the plans for the invasion of England were gradually maturing in Philip’s slow mind. The raid of Drake’s fleet upon his colonies, and Leicester’s assumption of the sovereignty of the Netherlands, had at last convinced Philip, after nearly thirty years of hesitancy, that England must be coerced into Catholicism, or Spain must descend from its high estate. So long as the elevation of Mary Stuart meant a Guisan domination of England, with shifty James as his mother’s heir, it had not suited Philip to squander his much needed resources upon the overthrow of Elizabeth ”