General History for Colleges and High Schools

by P. V. N. Myers

6. FINAL ESTABLISHMENT OF PROTESTANTISM UNDER ELIZABETH (1558-1603).

THE QUEEN.—Elizabeth was the daughter of Henry VIII. and Anne Boleyn. She seems to have inherited the characteristics of both parents; hence the inconsistencies of her disposition.

[Illustration: ENTRANCE OF QUEEN ELIZABETH INTO LONDON. (Showing the costumes of the time.)]

When the death of Mary called Elizabeth to the throne, she was twenty-five years of age. Like her father, she favored the reformed faith rather from policy than conviction. It was to the Protestants alone that she could look for support; her title to the crown was denied by every true Catholic in the realm, for she was the child of that marriage which the Pope had forbidden under pain of the anathemas of the Church.

Elizabeth possessed a strong will, indomitable courage, admirable judgment, and great political tact. It was these qualities which rendered her reign the strongest and most illustrious in the record of England's sovereigns, and raised the nation from a position of insignificance to a foremost place among the states of Europe.

Along with her good and queenly qualities and accomplishments, Elizabeth had many unamiable traits and unwomanly ways. She was capricious, treacherous, unscrupulous, ungrateful, and cruel. She seemed almost wholly devoid of a moral or religious sense. Deception and falsehood were her usual weapons in diplomacy. "In the profusion and recklessness of her lies," declares Green, "Elizabeth stood without a peer in Christendom."

HER MINISTERS.—One secret of the strength and popularity of Elizabeth's government was the admirable judgment she exercised in her choice of advisers. Around her Council-board she gathered the wisest and strongest men to be found in the realm. The most eminent of the queen's ministers was Sir William Cecil (Lord Burleigh), a man of great sagacity and ceaseless industry, to whose able counsel and prudent management is largely due the success of Elizabeth's reign. He stood at the head of the Queen's Council for forty years. His son Robert, Sir Nicholas Bacon, and Sir Francis Walsingham were also prominent among the queen's advisers.

REESTABLISHMENT OF THE REFORMED CHURCH.—As Mary undid the work in religion of Henry and Edward, so now her work is undone by Elizabeth. The religious houses that had been reestablished by Mary were again dissolved, and Parliament, by two new Acts of Supremacy and Uniformity, relaid the foundations of the Anglican Church.

The Act of Supremacy required all the clergy, and every person holding office under the crown, to take an oath declaring the queen to be the supreme governor of the realm in all spiritual as well as temporal things, and renouncing the authority or jurisdiction of any foreign prince or prelate. For refusing to take this oath, many Catholics during Elizabeth's reign suffered death, and many more endured within the Tower the worse horrors of the rack.

The Act of Uniformity forbade any clergyman to use any but the Anglican liturgy, and required every person to attend the Established Church on Sunday and other holy days. For every absence a fine of one shilling was imposed. The persecutions which arose under this law caused many Catholics to seek freedom of worship in other countries.

THE PROTESTANT NON-CONFORMISTS.—The Catholics were not the only persons among Elizabeth's subjects who were opposed to the Anglican worship. There were Protestant non-conformists—the Puritans and the Separatists—who troubled her almost as much as the Romanists.

The Puritans were so named because they desired a purer form of worship than the Anglican. To these earnest reformers the Church Elizabeth had established seemed but half-reformed. Many rites and ceremonies, such as wearing the surplice and making the cross in baptism, had been retained; and these things, in their eyes, appeared mere Popish superstitions. What they wanted was a more sweeping change, a form of worship more like that of the Calvinistic churches of Geneva, in which city very many of them had lived as exiles during the Marian persecution. They, however, did not at once withdraw from the Established Church, but remaining within its pale, labored to reform it, and to shape its doctrines and discipline to their notions.

The Separatists were still more zealous reformers than the Puritans: in their hatred of everything that bore any resemblance to the Roman worship, they flung away the surplice and the Prayer-book, severed all connection with the Established Church, and refused to have anything to do with it. Under the Act of Conformity they were persecuted with great severity, so that multitudes were led to seek an asylum upon the continent. It was from among these exiles gathered in Holland that a little later came the passengers of the Mayflower,—the Pilgrim Fathers, who laid the foundations of civil liberty in the New World.

MARY STUART, QUEEN OF SCOTS.—A large part of the history of Elizabeth's reign is intertwined with the story of her cousin, Mary Stuart, Queen of Scots. Mary Stuart was the daughter of James V. of Scotland, and to her in right of birth—according to all Catholics who denied the validity of Henry's marriage with Anne Boleyn—belonged the English crown next, after Mary Tudor. Upon the death, in 1560, of her husband Francis II. of France, Mary gave up life at the French court, and returned to her native land. She was now in her nineteenth year. The subtle charm of her beauty seems to have bewitched all who came into her presence—save the more zealous of the Protestants, who could never forget that their young sovereign was a Catholic. The stern old reformer, John Knox, made her life miserable. He was a veritable Elijah, in whose eyes Mary appeared a modern Jezebel. He called her a "Moabite," and the "Harlot of Babylon," till she wept from sheer vexation. She dared not punish the impudent preacher, for she knew too well the strength of the Protestant feeling among her subjects.

Other things now conspired with Mary's hated religion to alienate entirely the love of her people. Her second husband, Henry Stuart, Lord Darnley, was murdered. The queen was suspected of having some guilty knowledge of the affair. She was imprisoned and forced to abdicate in favor of her infant son James.

Escaping from prison, Mary fled into England (1568). Here she threw herself upon the generosity of her cousin Elizabeth, and entreated aid in recovering her throne. But the part which she was generally believed to have had in the murder of her husband, her disturbing claims to the English throne, and the fact that she was a Catholic, all conspired to determine her fate. She was placed in confinement, and for nineteen years she remained a prisoner. During all this time Mary was the centre of innumerable plots and conspiracies on the part of the Catholics, which aimed at setting her upon the English throne. The Pope aided these conspirators by a bull excommunicating Elizabeth, denying her right to the crown she wore, and releasing her subjects from their allegiance.

Events just now occurring on the continent tended to inflame the Protestants of England with a deadly hatred against Mary and her Catholic friends and abettors. In 1572 the Huguenots of France were slaughtered on St. Bartholomew's Day. In 1584 the Prince of Orange fell at the hands of a hired assassin. That there were daggers waiting to take the life of Elizabeth was well known. It was evident that so long as Mary lived the queen's life was in constant danger. In the feverish state of the public mind, it was natural that the air should be filled with rumors of plots of every kind. Finally, a carefully laid conspiracy to assassinate Elizabeth and place Mary on the throne, was unearthed. Mary was tried for complicity in the plot, was declared guilty, and, after some hesitation, feigned or otherwise, on the part of Elizabeth, was ordered to the block (1587).

THE INVINCIBLE ARMADA.—The execution of Mary Stuart led immediately to the memorable attempt against England by the Spanish Armada. Before her death the Queen of Scots had bequeathed to Philip II. of Spain her claims to the English crown. To enforce these rights, to avenge the death of Mary, to punish Elizabeth for rendering aid to his rebellious subjects in the Netherlands, and to deal a fatal blow to the Reformation in Europe by crushing the Protestants of England, Philip resolved upon making a tremendous effort for the conquest of the heretical and troublesome island. Vast preparations were made for carrying out the project. Great fleets were gathered in the harbors of Spain, and a large army was assembled in the Netherlands to cooperate with the naval armament. The Pope, Sixtus V., blessed the enterprise, which was thus rendered a sort of crusade.

These threatening preparations produced a perfect fever of excitement in England; for we must bear in mind that the Spanish king was at this time the most powerful potentate in Europe, commanding the resources of a large part of two worlds. Never did Roman citizens rise more splendidly to avert some terrible peril threatening the republic than the English people now arose as a single man to defend their island-realm against the revengeful and ambitious project of Spain. The imminent danger served to unite all classes, the gentry and the yeomanry, Protestants and Catholics. The latter might intrigue to set a Mary Stuart on the English throne, but they were not ready to betray their land into the hands of the hated Spaniards.

[Illustration: SPANISH AND ENGLISH WAR-VESSELS OF THE SIXTEENTH CENTURY.]

July 19, 1588, the Invincible Armada, as it was boastfully called, was first descried by the watchmen on the English cliffs. It swept up the channel in the form of a great crescent, seven miles in width from tip to tip of horn. The English fleet, commanded by Drake, Howard, and Lord Henry Seymour, disputed its advance. The light build and quick movements of the English ships gave them a great advantage over the clumsy, unwieldy Spanish galleons. The result was the complete defeat of the immense Armada, and the destruction of many of the ships. The remaining galleons sought to escape by sailing northward around the British Isles; but—a terrible tempest arising, many of the fleeing ships were dashed to pieces on the Scottish or the Irish shores. Barely one-third of the ships of the Armada ever reentered the harbors whence they sailed. When intelligence of the woeful disaster was carried to Philip, he simply said, "God's will be done; I sent my fleet to fight with the English, not with the elements."

The destruction of the Invincible Armada was not only a terrible blow to Spanish pride, but an equally heavy blow to Spanish supremacy among the states of Europe. From this time on, Spain's prestige and power rapidly declined.

As to England, she had been delivered from a great peril; and as to the cause of Protestantism, it was now safe.

MARITIME AND COLONIAL ENTERPRISES.—The crippling of the naval power of Spain left England mistress of the seas. The little island-realm now entered upon the most splendid period of her history. The old Norse blood of her people, stirred by recent events, seemed to burn with a feverish impatience for maritime adventure and glory. Many a story of the daring exploits of English sea-rovers during the reign of Elizabeth seems like a repetition of some tale of the old Vikings. [Footnote: Among all these sea-rovers, half explorer, half pirate, Sir Francis Drake (1545-1595) was preeminent. Before the Armada days he had sailed around the globe (1577- 1579), and for the achievement had been knighted by Queen Elizabeth. The whole life of this sixteenth century Viking was spent in fighting the fleets of his sovereign's enemy, Philip II., in capturing Spanish treasure-vessels on the high sea, and in pillaging the warehouses and settlements on every Spanish shore in the Old and the New World.]

Especially deserving of mention among the enterprises of these stirring and romantic times are the undertakings of Sir Walter Raleigh (1552-1618). Several expeditions were sent out by him for the purpose of making explorations and forming settlements in the New World. One of these, which explored the central coasts of North America, returned with such glowing accounts of the beauty and richness of the land visited, that, in honor of the Virgin Queen, it was named "Virginia."

Sir Walter Raleigh sent two colonies to the new land, but they both failed to form permanent settlements. It is said that the returning colonists first acquainted the English with the Indian custom of smoking tobacco, and that Sir Walter Raleigh made the practice popular. This may be true; yet prior to this, Europeans had acquired a knowledge of the plant and some of its uses through Spanish explorers and settlers. At this same time also, the potato, likewise a native product of the New World, was introduced into the British Isles.

THE QUEEN'S DEATH.—The closing days of Elizabeth's reign were, to her personally, dark and gloomy. She seemed to be burdened with a secret grief, [Footnote: In 1601 she sent to the block her chief favorite, the Earl of Essex, who had been found guilty of treason. She wished to spare him, and probably would have done so, had a token which he sent her from his prison reached her. Read the story as told in all the histories of England.] as well as by the growing infirmities of age. She died March 24, 1603, in the seventieth year of her age, and the forty-fifth of her reign. With her ended the Tudor line of English sovereigns.

Literature of the Elizabethan Era.

INFLUENCES FAVORABLE TO LITERATURE.—The years covered by the reign of Elizabeth constitute the most momentous period in history. It was the age when Europe was most deeply stirred by the Reformation. It was, too, a period of marvellous physical and intellectual expansion and growth. The discoveries of Columbus and Copernicus had created, as Froude affirms, "not in any metaphor, but in plain and literal speech, a new heaven and a new earth." The New Learning had, at the same time, discovered the old world—had revealed an unsuspected treasure in the philosophies and literatures of the past.

No people of Europe felt more deeply the stir and movement of the times, nor helped more to create this same stir and movement, than the English nation. There seemed to be nothing too great or arduous for them to undertake. They made good their resistance to the Roman See; they humbled the pride of the strongest monarch in Christendom; they sailed round the globe, and penetrated all its seas.

An age of such activity and achievement almost of necessity gives birth to a strong and vigorous literature. And thus is explained, in part at least, how the English people during this period should have developed a literature of such originality and richness and strength as to make it the prized inheritance of all the world.

THE WRITERS.—To make special mention of all the great writers who adorned the Elizabethan era would carry us quite beyond the limits of our book. Having said something of the influences under which they wrote, we will simply add that this age was the age of Shakespeare and Spenser and Bacon. [Footnote: William Shakespeare (1564-1616); Edmund Spenser (1552?-1599); Francis Bacon (1561-1626). Shakespeare and Bacon, it will be noticed, outlived Elizabeth. Two other names hold a less prominent place,—that of Sir Philip Sidney (1554-1586), the courtly knight, who wrote the Arcadia, a sort of pastoral romance, and A Defence of Poesy, a work intended to counteract the Puritanical spirit then rising; and that of Richard Hooker (1553-1600), who in his Ecclesiastical Polity defends the Anglican Church.]

[Illustration: REDUCED FAC-SIMILE OF THE SIGNATURE OF QUEEN ELIZABETH]