Part 62

Frobisher explored the coasts of Labrador and Greenland. Sir Francis Drake, who plundered the treasure ships of Spain wherever he found them, sailed into the Pacific, spent a winter in or near the harbor of San Francisco, and ended his voyage by circumnavigating the globe. (See map facing p. 222.) In the Far East, London merchants had established the East India Company, the beginning of English dominion in Asia; while in Holland, Sir Philip Sydney gave his lifeblood for the cause of Protestantism.

393. Literature and Natural Philosophy.

It was an age, too, not only of brave deeds but of high thoughts. Shakespeare, Spenser, and Jonson were making English literature the noblest of all literatures. Furthermore, Shakespeare had no equal as a teacher of English history. His historical plays appealed then, as they do now, to every heart. At his touch the dullest and driest records of the past are transformed and glow with color, life, movement, and meaning. On the other hand, Francis Bacon, son of Sir Nicholas Bacon, of Elizabeth's council, was giving a wholly different direction to education. In his new system of philosophy, he taught men that in order to use the forces of nature they must learn by observation and experiment to know nature herself; "for," said he, "knowledge is power."

On the value of Shakespeare's Historical Plays, see S298, note 1; S313, note 2; and S410. In his tract on "The Greatest Birth of Time," in 1582.

394. Mary Queen of Scots claims the Crown (1561).

For England it was also an age of great and constant peril. Elizabeth's entire reign was undermined with plots against her life and against the life of the Protestant faith. No sooner was one conspiracy detected and suppressed than a new one sprang up. Perhaps the most formidable of these was the effort which Mary Stuart, Queen of Scots, made to supplant her English rival. Shortly after Elizabeth's accession, Mary's husband, the King of France, died. She returned to Scotland (1561) and there assumed the Scottish crown, at the same time asserting her right to the English throne.

See Genealogical Table (p. 207). Mary's claim was based on the fact that the Pope had never recognized Henry VIII's marriage to Anne Boleyn, Elizabeth's mother, as lawful, while she, herself, as the direct descendant of Henry's sister, Margaret, stood next in succession.

395. Mary marries Darnley; his Murder.

A few years later Mary married Lord Darnley. He became jealous of Rizzio, her private secretary, and, with the aid of accomplices, seized him in her presence, dragged him into an antechamber, and there stabbed him. The next year Darnley was murdered. It was believed that Mary and the Earl of Bothwell, whom she soon married, were guilty of the crime. The people rose and cast her into prison, and forced her to abdicate in favor of her infant son, James VI, who eventually became King of England and Scotland (1603).

396. Mary escapes to England (1568); plots against Elizabeth and Protestantism.

Mary escaped and fled to England. Elizabeth, fearing she might pass over to France and stir up war, confined her in Bolton Castle, Yorkshire. During her imprisonment in another stronghold, to which she had been transferred, she was accused of being implicated in a plot for assassinating the English Queen and seizing the reins of government in behalf of herself and the Jesuits (S378).

It was, in fact, a time when the Protestant faith seemed everywhere marked for destruction. In France evil counselors had induced the King to order a massacre of the Reformers, and on St. Batholomew's Day thousands were slain. The Pope, misinformed in the matter, ordered a solemn thanksgiving for the slaughter, and struck a gold medal to commemorate it. Philip II of Spain, whose cold, impassive face scarcely ever relaxed into a smile, now laughed outright. Still more recently, William the Silent, who had driven out the Catholics from a part of the Netherlands, had been assassinated by a Jesuit fanatic. Meanwhile the Pope had excommunicated Queen Elizabeth (1570) and had released her subjects from allegiance to her. A fanatic nailed this bull of excommunication to the door of the Bishop of London's palace. This bold act, for which the offender suffered death, brought matters to a crisis.

Englishmen felt that they could no longer remain halting between two opinions. They realized that now they must resolve to take their stand by the Queen or else by the Pope. Parliament at once retaliated against the Pope by passing two stringent measures which declared it high treason for any one to deny the Queen's right to the crown, to name her successor, to denounce her as a heretic, or to say or do anything which should "alienate the hearts and minds of her Majesty's subjects from their dutiful obedience" to her. Later, the "Association," a vigilance committee, was formed by a large number of the principal people of the realm to protect Elizabeth against assassination. Not only prominent Protestants but many Catholic noblemen joined the organization to defend the Queen at all hazards.

397. Elizabeth beheads Mary, 1587.

The ominous significance of these events had their full effect on the English Queen. Aroused to a sense of her danger, she signed the Scottish Queen's death warrant, and Mary, after nineteen years' imprisonment, was beheaded at Fotheringay Castle.

Fotheringay Castle, Northamptonshire, demolished by James I.

As soon as the news of her execution was brought to Elizabeth, she became alarmed at the political consequences the act might have in Europe. With her usual duplicity she bitterly upbraided the minister who had advised it, and throwing Davidson, her secretary, into the Tower, fined him 10,000 pounds, the payment of which reduced him to beggary.

Not satisfied with this, Elizabeth even had the effrontery to write a letter of condolence to Mary's son, James VI, declaring that his mother had been beheaded by mistake! Yet facts prove that Elizabeth had not only determined to put Mary to death, but that she had urged those who held Mary prisoner to kill her privately.

See "Elizabeth" in the "National Dictionary of (British) Biography."

398. The Spanish Armada.

Mary was hardly under ground when a new and greater danger threatened the country. At her death, the Scottish Queen, disgusted with her mean-spirited son James, bequeathed her dominions, including her claim to the English throne, to Philip II of Spain (S370). He was then the most powerful sovereign in Europe, ruling over a territory equal to that of the Roman Empire in its greatest extent.

James had deserted his mother and accepted a pension from Elizabeth.

Philip II, with the encouragement of the Pope, and with the further help of the promise of a very large sum of money from him, resolved to invade England, conquer it, annex it to his possessions, and restore the religion of Rome. To accomplish this, he began fitting out the "Invisible Armada," an immense fleet of warships, intended to carry twenty thousand soldiers, and to receive on its way reenforcements of thirty thousand more from the Spanish army in the Netherlands.

399. Drake's Expedition; Sailing of the Armada (1588).

Sir Francis Drake (S392) determined to check Philip's preparations. He heard that the enemy's fleet was gathered at Cadiz. He sailed there, and in spite of all opposition effectually "singed the Spanish King's beard," as he said, by burning and otherwise destroying more than a hundred ships.

This so crippled the expedition that it had to be given up for that year, but the next summer a vast armament set sail. Motley says it consisted of ten squadrons, of more than one hundred and thirty ships, carrying upwards of three thousand cannon.

Motley's "United Netherlands," II, 465; compare Froude's "England," XII, 466, and Laughton's "Armada" (State Papers), pp. xl-lvii.

The impending peril thoroughly roused England. Both Catholics and Protestants rose to defend their country and their Queen.