Philip, though he must have been deeply mortified by this signal failure of his costly and ambitious enterprise, was too proud to show it. He received the news without a change of countenance, and thanked God that his kingdom was so strong and flourishing that it could well bear such a loss. He gave 50,000 crowns to relieve the sufferers; forbade any public mourning, assigning the mishap, not to the English, but the weather; and wrote to the Prince of Parma—whom the English Government had tempted at this crisis to throw off his allegiance, and make himself master of the Catholic provinces of the Netherlands, as the Prince of Orange had done of the Protestant ones—to thank him for his readiness to have carried out his design, and to assure him of his unshaken favour.
In following the fate of the Spanish fleet, and the bravery and address of England's naval commanders, we have left unnoticed the less striking proceedings of the army on shore. The chief camp at Tilbury, which would have come first into conflict with the Spanish army had it effected a landing, was put under the command of Leicester—a man who had been tried in the Netherlands, and found wanting in every qualification of a general. There, a few days after the defeat of the Armada, Elizabeth held a grand review. Leicester and the new stripling favourite, Essex, led her bridle rein, whilst she is said to have delivered this fine speech: "My loving people! we have been persuaded by some that are careful of our safety, to take heed how we commit ourselves to armed multitudes, for fear of treachery; but I assure you I do not desire to live to distrust my faithful and loving people. Let tyrants fear! I have always so behaved myself that, under God, I have placed my chiefest strength and safeguard in the loyal hearts and good-will of my subjects; and, therefore, I am come amongst you at this time not as for my recreation and sport, but being resolved, in the midst and heat of the battle, to live or die amongst you all—to lay down for my God, for my kingdom, and for my people, my honour and my blood, even in the dust. I know that I have but the body of a weak and feeble woman, but I have the heart of a king, and a King of England too, and think foul scorn that Parma, or Spain, or any prince of Europe, should dare to invade the borders of my realm: to which, rather than any dishonour should grow by me, I myself will take up arms—I myself will be your general—the judge and rewarder of every one of your virtues in the field. I already know by your forwardness that you have deserved rewards and crowns; and we do assure you, on the word of a prince, they shall be duly paid to you. In the meantime my lieutenant-general shall be in my stead—than whom never prince commanded a more noble or more worthy subject; nor will I suffer myself to doubt that, by your obedience to my general, by your concord in the camp, and your valour in the field, we shall shortly have a famous victory over those enemies of my God, of my kingdom, and my people."
On Lord Howard, as admiral of the fleet, rewards and favours were conferred; but neither he, nor the other heroes of his immortal contest at sea, received a tithe of the honour of Leicester, who had done nothing but write a love-letter to the queen from Tilbury camp. Nothing that she had done or could do appeared adequate to his incomprehensible merits. She determined to create a new and most invidious office in his favour; and the warrant for his creation of Lord Lieutenant of England and Ireland lay ready for the royal signature, when the remonstrances of Burleigh and Hatton delayed, and the sudden death of the favourite put an end to it. In ten days after the queen's visit to the camp he had disbanded the army, and was on his way to his castle of Kenilworth, when he was seized with sickness at Cornbury Park, in Oxfordshire, and died on the 4th of September, of a fever. His enemies declared he had been poisoned, and invented the following story:—He had discovered or suspected a criminal connection between his wife, the Countess of Essex, and Sir Christopher Blount. He had attempted to assassinate Blount, but failed; and his countess, profiting by his own instructions in getting rid of her former husband, administered the fatal dose. This and other stories against Leicester are now discredited.
The first use which Elizabeth made of her victory was to take vengeance on the Papists—not because they had done anything disloyal, but because they were of the same religion as the detested Spaniards. All their demonstrations of devotion to the cause of their country and their queen during the attempted invasion went for nothing. A commission was appointed to try those already in prison; and six priests, four laymen, and a lady of the name of Ward, for having harboured priests, other four laymen, for having been reconciled to the Roman Catholic Church, and fifteen persons, charged with being connected with them, in all thirty individuals, were, within a period of three months, condemned as traitors, and executed with all the disembowelling and other atrocities attending that sentence. Their only crime was the practice of their religion, or the succouring their clergymen. Elizabeth, however, treated their proceedings as political offences, and her efforts to dragoon the nation into conformity continued the greater part of her life; old age alone appearing to abate her virulence, as it dimmed her faculties and subdued her spirits. Sixty-one Roman Catholic clergymen, forty-seven laymen, and two ladies suffered death for their religion. The fines for recusancy were levied with the utmost rigour, £20 per lunar month being the legal sum, so that many gentlemen were fleeced of their entire income. Besides this, they were liable to a year's imprisonment and a fine of 100 marks every time they heard Mass. The search for concealed priests was carried on with great avidity, because it gave occasion for plunder, and on conviction of such concealment, forfeiture of the whole of their property followed, with ample gleaning to the informers. The poorer recusants were for some time imprisoned; but the prisons becoming full, officers were sent through the country, visiting all villages and remote places, and extorting what they could.
PHILIP II. (After Titian.)
As Elizabeth grew in years she more and more resembled her father, and persecuted the Puritans as zealously as the Papists, and for similar reasons. In these Reformers, however, she found a sturdy class of men, who would not endure so quietly her oppressions. Hume blames the Nonconformists for not setting up separate congregations of their own; but he forgot the £20 a month, which would have been levied on every individual that could pay, and the imprisonments and harassing of others. Where, however, the Nonconformists could not preach, they printed. Books and pamphlets flew in all directions; and there was set up a sort of ambulatory press, which was conveyed from place to place, till at length it was hunted down and destroyed near Manchester. In 1590, Sir Richard Knightley, Hooles, of Coventry, and Wigmore and his wife, of Warwick, were fined, in the Star Chamber, as promulgators of a book called "Martin Marprelate," the first £2,000, the second 1,000 marks, the third 500, the fourth 100, and to be imprisoned during the queen's pleasure.
In 1591 Udal, a Nonconformist minister, was condemned to death for publishing a book called "A Demonstration of Discipline," but died in prison. Mr. Cartwright, fellow of Trinity College, Cambridge, for pointing out defects in the system of the Church, was deprived of his fellowship, expelled the university, and in 1591 was summoned before the ecclesiastical commission with some of his friends, and committed to prison because they would not answer interrogatories on oath—a practice clearly contrary to law. In 1593 Barrow, Greenwood, and Penry, Independent ministers, or Brownists, were put to death for writings said to reflect on the queen. But no suppression produced the desired effect.
In the spring of 1589 Parliament and Convocation assembled, and Elizabeth laid before them a statement of the heavy expenses incurred in beating off the Spaniards. She had already levied a forced loan, to which the recusants had been made to contribute heavily, and she now received most liberal grants from both Parliament and Convocation. Having given this freely, the House of Commons prayed the queen to send out a strong force and take vengeance on the Spaniards for their attack on this country. Elizabeth was perfectly agreeable that they should punish Philip to their hearts' content, but not out of the supplies they had granted. She said there were great demands on her exchequer; that she could only furnish ships and soldiers, and they must pay the cost. The proposal of retaliation was so much to the taste of the public that an association was formed under the auspices of Drake and Norris, and very soon they had a fleet of 100 sail at Plymouth, carrying 21,000 men. Elizabeth had long been patronising Don Antonio, prior of Crato, an illegitimate branch of the Royal family of Portugal. This pretender was now sent out in this fleet in royal state, and the expedition was directed to land in Portugal, and call on the people to throw off the Spanish yoke, and restore their government under a native, and, as Elizabeth boldly asserted, legitimate prince. If the Portuguese would not receive Don Antonio, the fleet was then to scour the roads of Spain, and inflict on the territory of Philip all the damage possible.
The fascination of this expedition under so renowned a commander as Drake, seized on the fancy of a young noble, who had now become Elizabeth's prime favourite—the Earl of Essex. This was the son of the Countess of Essex whom Leicester had secretly married, much to Elizabeth's indignation, in 1578. Leicester introduced the young earl to Elizabeth, who, for a time, hated him on account of his mother, for the queen, in spite of her numerous quarrels with Leicester, was never able to free herself wholly from her early attachment to him. However, some time before Leicester's death, the graces and lively disposition of the young earl had made a strong impression on her heart or head, and she lavished blandishments on the handsome boy in public, even in the face of the camp at Tilbury, which must have been eminently ludicrous. After Leicester's death he was installed as the chief favourite, and she could scarcely bear him out of her sight. Her consternation was great when she found that he had slyly eloped, and had set off after the fleet bound for Spain.