Volume Iv Part 10 (2/2)

England had reached the mainland even earlier than Spain, for before Columbus touched its sh.o.r.es Sebastian Cabot, a seaman of Genoese blood but born and bred in England, sailed with an English crew from Bristol in 1497, and pushed along the coast of America to the south as far as Florida, and northward as high as Hudson's Bay. But no Englishman followed on the track of this bold adventurer; and while Spain built up her empire in the New World, the English seamen reaped a humbler harvest in the fisheries of Newfoundland.

[Sidenote: The Sea-dogs.]

There was little therefore in the circ.u.mstances which attended the first discovery of the western continent that promised well for freedom. Its one result as yet was to give an enormous impulse to the most bigoted and tyrannical among the powers of Europe, and to pour the gold of Mexico and Peru into the treasury of Spain. But as the reign of Elizabeth went on the thoughts of Englishmen turned again to the New World. A happy instinct drew them from the first not to the southern sh.o.r.es that Spain was conquering, but to the ruder and more barren districts of the north. In 1576 the dream of finding a pa.s.sage to Asia by a voyage round the northern coast of the American continent drew a west-country seaman, Martin Frobisher, to the coast of Labrador; and, foiled as he was in his quest, the news he brought back of the existence of gold mines there set adventurers cruising among the icebergs of Baffin's Bay. Elizabeth herself joined in the venture; but the settlement proved a failure, the ore which the s.h.i.+ps brought back turned out to be worthless, and England was saved from that greed of gold which was to be fatal to the energies of Spain. But, failure as it was, Frobisher's venture had shown the readiness of Englishmen to defy the claims of Spain to the exclusive possession of America or the American seas. They were already defying these claims in a yet more galling way.

The seamen of the southern and south-western coasts had long been carrying on a half-piratical war on their own account. Four years after Elizabeth's accession the Channel swarmed with ”sea-dogs,” as they were called, who sailed under letters of marque from Conde and the Huguenot leaders, and took heed neither of the complaints of the French Court nor of their own Queen's efforts at repression. Her efforts broke against the connivance of every man along the coast, of the very port officers of the Crown, who made profit out of the spoil which the plunderers brought home, and of the gentry of the west, whose love of venture made them go hand in hand with the sea-dogs. They broke above all against the national craving for open fight with Spain, and the Protestant craving for open fight with Catholicism. If the Queen held back from any formal part in the great war of religions across the Channel, her subjects were keen to take their part in it. Young Englishmen crossed the sea to serve under Conde or Henry of Navarre. The war in the Netherlands drew hundreds of Protestants to the field. Their pa.s.sionate longing for a religious war found a wider sphere on the sea.

When the suspension of the French contest forced the sea-dogs to haul down the Huguenot flag, they joined in the cruises of the Dutch ”sea-beggars.” From plundering the vessels of Havre and Roch.e.l.le they turned to plunder the galleons of Spain.

[Sidenote: Drake.]

Their outrages tried Philip's patience; but his slow resentment only quickened into angry alarm when the sea-dogs sailed westward to seek a richer spoil. The Papal decree which gave the New World to Spain, the threats of the Spanish king against any Protestant who should visit its seas, fell idly on the ears of English seamen. Philip's care to save his new dominions from the touch of heresy was only equalled by his resolve to suffer no trade between them and other lands than Spain. But the sea-dogs were as ready to traffic as to fight. It was in vain that their vessels were seized, and the sailors flung into the dungeons of the Inquisition, ”laden with irons, without sight of sun or moon.” The profits of the trade were large enough to counteract its perils; and the bigotry of Philip was met by a bigotry as merciless as his own. The Puritanism of the sea-dogs went hand in hand with their love of adventure. To break through the Catholic monopoly of the New World, to kill Spaniards, to sell negroes, to sack gold-s.h.i.+ps, were in these men's minds a seemly work for ”the elect of G.o.d.” The name of Francis Drake became the terror of the Spanish Indies. In Drake a Protestant fanaticism went hand in hand with a splendid daring. He conceived the design of penetrating into the Pacific, whose waters had till then never seen an English flag; and backed by a little company of adventurers, he set sail in 1577 for the southern seas in a vessel hardly as big as a Channel schooner, with a few yet smaller companions who fell away before the storms and perils of the voyage. But Drake with his one s.h.i.+p and eighty men held boldly on; and pa.s.sing the Straits of Magellan, untraversed as yet by any Englishman, swept the unguarded coast of Chili and Peru, loaded his bark with the gold dust and silver ingots of Potosi, as well as with the pearls, emeralds, and diamonds which formed the cargo of the great galleon that sailed once a year from Lima to Cadiz. With spoils of above half-a-million in value the daring adventurer steered undauntedly for the Moluccas, rounded the Cape of Good Hope, and in 1580, after completing the circuit of the globe, dropped anchor again in Plymouth harbour.

[Sidenote: Conquest of Portugal.]

The romantic daring of Drake's voyage as well as the vastness of his spoil roused a general enthusiasm throughout England. But the welcome which he received from Elizabeth on his return was accepted by Philip as an outrage which could only be expiated by war. Sluggish as it was, the blood of the Spanish king was fired at last by the defiance with which the Queen listened to all demands for redress. She met a request for Drake's surrender by knighting the freebooter and by wearing in her crown the jewels he offered her as a present. When the Spanish amba.s.sador threatened that ”matters would come to the cannon,” she replied ”quietly, in her most natural voice, as if she were telling a common story,” wrote Mendoza, ”that if I used threats of that kind she would fling me into a dungeon.” Outraged indeed as Philip was, she believed that with the Netherlands still in revolt and France longing for her alliance to enable it to seize them, the king could not afford to quarrel with her. But the victories and diplomacy of Parma were already rea.s.suring Philip in the Netherlands; while the alliance of Elizabeth with the revolted Provinces convinced him at last that their reduction could best be brought about by an invasion of England and the establishment of Mary Stuart on its throne. With this conviction he lent himself to the plans of Rome, and waited only for the rising in Ireland and the revolt of the English Catholics which Pope Gregory promised him to despatch forces from both Flanders and Spain. But the Irish rising was over before Philip could act; and before the Jesuits could rouse England to rebellion the Spanish king himself was drawn to a new scheme of ambition by the death of King Sebastian of Portugal in 1580. Philip claimed the Portuguese crown; and in less than two months Alva laid the kingdom at his feet. The conquest of Portugal was fatal to the Papal projects against England, for while the armies of Spain marched on Lisbon Elizabeth was able to throw the leaders of the expected revolt into prison and to send Campian to the scaffold. On the other hand it raised Philip into a far more formidable foe. The conquest almost doubled his power. His gain was far more than that of Portugal itself.

While Spain had been winning the New World her sister-kingdom had been winning a wide though scattered dominion on the African coast, the coast of India, and the islands of the Pacific. Less in extent, the Portuguese settlements were at the moment of even greater value to the mother country than the colonies of Spain. The gold of Guinea, the silks of Goa, the spices of the Philippines made Lisbon one of the marts of Europe. The sword of Alva had given Philip a hold on the richest trade of the world. It had given him the one navy that as yet rivalled his own. His flag claimed mastery in the Indian and the Pacific seas, as it claimed mastery in the Atlantic and Mediterranean.

[Sidenote: The marriage with Anjou.]

The conquest of Portugal therefore wholly changed Philip's position. It not only doubled his power and resources, but it did this at a time when fortune seemed everywhere wavering to his side. The provinces of the Netherlands, which still maintained a struggle for their liberties, drew courage from despair; and met Philip's fresh hopes of their subjection by a solemn repudiation of his sovereignty in the summer of 1581. But they did not dream that they could stand alone, and they sought the aid of France by choosing as their new sovereign the Duke of Alencon, who on his brother Henry's accession to the throne had become Duke of Anjou.

The choice was only part of a political scheme which was to bind the whole of Western Europe together against Spain. The conquest of Portugal had at once drawn France and England into close relations, and Catharine of Medicis strove to league the two countries by a marriage of Elizabeth with the Duke of Anjou. Such a match would have been a purely political one, for Elizabeth was now forty-eight, and Francis of Anjou had no qualities either of mind or body to recommend him to the Queen.

But the English ministers pressed for it, Elizabeth amidst all her coquetries seemed at last ready to marry, and the States seized the moment to lend themselves to the alliance of the two powers by choosing the Duke as their lord. Anjou accepted their offer, and crossing to the Netherlands, drove Parma from Cambray; then sailing again to England, he spent the winter in a fresh wooing.

[Sidenote: Its failure.]

But the Duke's wooing still proved fruitless. The schemes of diplomacy found themselves shattered against the religious enthusiasm of the time.

While Orange and Catharine and Elizabeth saw only the political weight of the marriage as a check upon Philip, the sterner Protestants in England saw in it a victory for Catholicism at home. Of the difference between the bigoted Catholicism of Spain and the more tolerant Catholicism of the court of France such men recked nothing. The memory of St. Bartholomew's day hung around Catharine of Medicis; and the success of the Jesuits at this moment roused the dread of a general conspiracy against Protestantism. A Puritan lawyer named Stubbs only expressed the alarm of his fellows in his ”Discovery of a Gaping Gulf”

in which England was to plunge through the match with Anjou. When the hand of the pamphleteer was cut off as a penalty for his daring, Stubbs waved his hat with the hand that was left, and cried ”G.o.d save Queen Elizabeth.” But the Queen knew how stern a fanaticism went with this unflinching loyalty, and her dread of a religious conflict within her realm must have quickened the fears which the worthless temper of her wooer cannot but have inspired. She gave however no formal refusal of her hand. So long as coquetry sufficed to hold France and England together, she was ready to play the coquette; and it was as the future husband of the Queen that Anjou again appeared in 1582 in the Netherlands and received the formal submission of the revolted States, save Holland and Zealand. But the subtle schemes which centred in him broke down before the selfish perfidy of the Duke. Resolved to be ruler in more than name, he planned the seizure of the greater cities of the Netherlands, and at the opening of 1583 made a fruitless effort to take Antwerp by surprise. It was in vain that Orange strove by patient negotiation to break the blow. The Duke fled homewards, the match and sovereignty were at an end, the alliance of the three powers vanished like a dream. The last Catholic provinces pa.s.sed over to Parma's side; the weakened Netherlands found themselves parted from France; and at the close of 1583 Elizabeth saw herself left face to face with Philip of Spain.

[Sidenote: The Puritans and the Crown.]

Nor was this all. At home as well as abroad troubles were thickening around the Queen. The fanaticism of the Catholic world without was stirring a Protestant fanaticism within the realm. As Rome became more and more the centre of hostility to England, patriotism itself stirred men to a hatred of Rome; and their hatred of Rome pa.s.sed easily into a love for the fiercer and sterner Calvinism which looked on all compromise with Rome, or all acceptance of religious traditions or usages which had been a.s.sociated with Rome, as treason against G.o.d.

Puritanism, as this religious temper was called, was becoming the creed of every earnest Protestant throughout the realm; and the demand for a further advance towards the Calvinistic system and a more open breach with Catholicism which was embodied in the suppression of the ”superst.i.tious usages” became stronger than ever. But Elizabeth was firm as of old to make no advance. Greatly as the Protestants had grown, she knew they were still a minority in the realm. If the hotter Catholics were fast decreasing, they remained a large and important body. But the ma.s.s of the nation was neither Catholic nor Protestant. It had lost faith in the Papacy. It was slowly drifting to a new faith in the Bible.

But it still clung obstinately to the past; it still recoiled from violent change; its temper was religious rather than theological, and it shrank from the fanaticism of Geneva as it shrank from the fanaticism of Rome. It was a proof of Elizabeth's genius that alone among her counsellors she understood this drift of opinion, and withstood measures which would have startled the ma.s.s of Englishmen into a new resistance.

[Sidenote: The High Commission.]

But her policy was wider than her acts. The growing Puritanism of the clergy stirred her wrath above measure, and she met the growth of ”nonconforming” ministers by conferring new powers in 1583 on the Ecclesiastical Commission. From being a temporary board which represented the Royal Supremacy in matters ecclesiastical, the Commission was now turned into a permanent body wielding the almost unlimited powers of the Crown. All opinions or acts contrary to the Statutes of Supremacy and Uniformity fell within its cognizance. A right of deprivation placed the clergy at its mercy. It had power to alter or amend the statutes of colleges or schools. Not only heresy and schism and nonconformity, but incest or aggravated adultery were held to fall within its scope; its means of enquiry were left without limit, and it might fine or imprison at its will. By the mere establishment of such a court half the work of the Reformation was undone. The large number of civilians on the board indeed seemed to furnish some security against the excess of ecclesiastical tyranny. Of its forty-four commissioners, however, few actually took any part in its proceedings; and the powers of the Commission were practically left in the hands of the successive Primates. No Archbishop of Canterbury since the days of Augustine had wielded an authority so vast, so utterly despotic, as that of Whitgift and Bancroft and Abbot and Laud. The most terrible feature of their spiritual tyranny was its wholly personal character. The old symbols of doctrine were gone, and the lawyers had not yet stepped in to protect the clergy by defining the exact limits of the new. The result was that at the commission-board at Lambeth the Primates created their own tests of doctrine with an utter indifference to those created by law. In one instance Parker deprived a vicar of his benefice for a denial of the verbal inspiration of the Bible. Nor did the successive Archbishops care greatly if the test was a varying or a conflicting one. Whitgift strove to force on the Church the Calvinistic supralapsarianism of his Lambeth Articles. Bancroft, who followed him, was as earnest in enforcing his anti-Calvinistic dogma of the divine right of the episcopate. Abbot had no mercy for Erastians. Laud had none for anti-Erastians. It is no wonder that the Ecclesiastical Commission, which these men represented, soon stank in the nostrils of the English clergy. Its establishment however marked the adoption of a more resolute policy on the part of the Crown, and its efforts were backed by stern measures of repression. All preaching or reading in private houses was forbidden; and in spite of the refusal of Parliament to enforce the requirement of them by law, subscription to the Three Articles was exacted from every member of the clergy. For the moment these measures were crowned with success. The movement which Cartwright still headed was checked; Cartwright himself was driven from his Professors.h.i.+p; and an outer uniformity of wors.h.i.+p was more and more brought about by the steady pressure of the Commission. The old liberty which had been allowed in London and the other Protestant parts of the kingdom was no longer permitted to exist.

The leading Puritan clergy, whose nonconformity had hitherto been winked at, were called upon to submit to the surplice, and to make the sign of the cross in baptism. The remonstrances of the country gentry availed as little as the protest of Lord Burleigh himself to protect two hundred of the best ministers from being driven from their parsonages on a refusal to subscribe to the Three Articles.

[Sidenote: Martin Marprelate.]

But the political danger of the course on which the Crown had entered was seen in the rise of a spirit of vigorous opposition, such as had not made its appearance since the accession of the Tudors. The growing power of public opinion received a striking recognition in the struggle which bears the name of the ”Martin Marprelate controversy.” The Puritans had from the first appealed by their pamphlets from the Crown to the people, and Archbishop Whitgift bore witness to their influence on opinion by his efforts to gag the Press. The regulations made by the Star-Chamber in 1585 for this purpose are memorable as the first step in the long struggle of government after government to check the liberty of printing. The irregular censors.h.i.+p which had long existed was now finally organized. Printing was restricted to London and the two Universities, the number of printers was reduced, and all applicants for license to print were placed under the supervision of the Company of Stationers. Every publication too, great or small, had to receive the approbation of the Primate or the Bishop of London. The first result of this system of repression was the appearance, in the very year of the Armada, of a series of anonymous pamphlets bearing the significant name of ”Martin Marprelate,” and issued from a secret press which found refuge from the Royal pursuivants in the country-houses of the gentry.

The press was at last seized; and the suspected authors of these scurrilous libels, Penry, a young Welshman, and a minister named Udall, died, the one in prison, the other on the scaffold. But the virulence and boldness of their language produced a powerful effect, for it was impossible under the system of Elizabeth to ”mar” the bishops without attacking the Crown; and a new age of political liberty was felt to be at hand when Martin Marprelate forced the political and ecclesiastical measures of the Government into the arena of public discussion.

<script>