But Elizabeth still hesitated. She hated Mary, but her high ideas of royal prerogative made her shrink from slaying a sovereign princess, and she still dreaded the explosion of wrath which she knew must follow all over Catholic Europe. The young King of Scotland might resent his mother's execution, and the Guises in France would never pardon their cousin's death. She lingered for more than three months before she would issue Mary's death-warrant; but at last she gave the fatal signature. Her ministers at once caused the warrant to be carried out, without allowing their mistress time to repent. The Queen of Scots was executed in her prison at Fotheringay Castle. She died with great dignity and courage, asserting on the scaffold that she was a martyr for her religion, not a criminal. Many both in her own day and since have believed her words, but it is impossible to read her story through from first to last, and then to conclude that she was only the victim of circumstances and the prey of unscrupulous enemies. Though much sinned against, she was far more the worker of her own undoing (February 8, 1587).
Elizabeth expressed great wrath against her ministers for hurrying on the execution. She fined and imprisoned Davison, the Secretary of State, who had sent off Mary's death-warrant, and pretended that she had wished to pardon her. Perhaps her anger was real, but no one save the unfortunate Davison took it very seriously. The people felt nothing but satisfaction and relief, and rejoiced that there was no longer a Catholic heiress to trouble the realm. The King of Scots contented himself with a formal protest, and the Guises in France were too busy in their civil wars with King Henry III. and the Huguenots to think of assailing England.
The Spanish Armada.
Only Philip of Spain, who accepted in sober earnest the legacy of her rights which Mary had left him, took up the task of revenge, and he had already so many causes to hate Elizabeth, that he did not need this additional provocation to spur him on to attack her. He had already begun to prepare for a great naval expedition against England. All through the spring and summer of 1587 the ports of Spain, Portugal, Naples, and Sicily, were busy in manning and equipping every war-ship that the king could get together. The Duke of Parma, the Spanish viceroy in the Netherlands, was also directed to draw off every man that could be spared from the Dutch War, and to be ready to lead them across the Channel the moment that the king's fleet should have secured the Straits of Dover.
But the great flotilla, the Invincible Armada, as the Spaniards called it, was long in sailing. Ere it was ready, Drake made a bold descent on Cadiz, and burnt no less than 10,000 tons of shipping which lay in its harbour. He called this exploit "singeing the King of Spain's beard." This disaster caused so much delay that the expedition had to be put off till the next year.
In the spring of 1588, however, the Armada was at last ready to start. It comprised 130 vessels, half of which were great "galleons" of the largest size that were known to the sixteenth century, and carried 8000 seamen and nearly 20,000 soldiers. But the crews were raw, the ships were ill-found and ill-provisioned, and, what was most fatal of all, the admiral, the Duke of Medina Sidonia, was a mere fair-weather sailor, who hardly knew a mast from an anchor. It may be added that the vessels were overcrowded with the 20,000 soldiers whom they bore, and for the most part were armed with fewer and smaller cannons than their great bulk would have been able to carry.
Comparison of Spanish and English fleets.
Nevertheless, the Armada was an imposing force, and in strong hands ought to have achieved success. For Elizabeth had a very small permanent royal navy, and had to rely for the defence of her realm mainly on privateers and merchantmen hastily equipped for war service. Moreover, her parsimony had depleted the royal arsenals to such an extent, that in provisioning and arming their fleet the English were at much the same disadvantage as their enemies. But, unlike the Spaniards, they had excellent crews, and were led by old captains who had learnt their trade in long years of exploring and buccaneering across the Atlantic—men like Drake, Hawkins, Frobisher, and others whose names we have no space to mention. The command of the whole was given to Lord Howard of Effingham, a capable and cautious officer, who showed himself worthy of the queen's confidence—confidence that appeared all the more striking because he was suspected by many to be a Roman Catholic. In the mere number of ships the English fleet which mustered at Plymouth somewhat exceeded the Armada, but in size the individual vessels were far smaller than the Spanish galleons. But they were much more seaworthy, and were armed so heavily with artillery that it was found that an English ship could throw a broadside of the same weight of metal as a Spaniard of almost double its size.
Defeat and dispersion of the Armada.