It was almost a shock when—suddenly, at last—Philip’s ultimatum came. Spain demanded three points from England: and if her demands were not complied with, there was no resource but war.
1. The Queen must promise to withdraw all aid from the Protestants in the Netherlands.
2. She must give back the treasure seized, by Drake the year before.
3. She must restore the Roman Catholic religion throughout England, as it had been before the Reformation.
The first and second clauses would have been of little import in Elizabeth’s eye’s, except as they implied her yielding to dictation; the real sting lay in the last. And the last was the one which Philip would be most loth to yield. With a touch of grim humour, His Catholic Majesty sent his ultimatum in Latin verse.
The royal lioness of England rose from her throne to return her answer, with a fiery Plantagenet flash in her eyes. She could play at Latin verse quite as well as Philip; rather better, indeed,—for his question required some dozen lines, and one was sufficient for her answer.
“Ad Graecas, (Note 2) bone Rex, fient mandata kalendas!” was the prompt reply of England’s Elizabeth.
Which may be rendered—preserving the fun—
“Great King, thy command shall be done right soon,
On the thirty-first day of the coming June.”
Some knowledge of the terrible magnitude of Philip’s preparations is necessary, in order to see what it was which England escaped in 1588. The Armada consisted of 134 ships, and, reckoning soldiers, sailors, and galley-slaves, carried about 32,000 men. (The exact figures are much disputed, hardly two accounts being alike.) The cost of sustenance per day was thirty thousand ducats. The cannon and field-pieces were unnumbered: the halberts were ten thousand, the muskets seven thousand. Bread, biscuits, and wine, were laid in for six months, with twelve thousand pipes of fresh water. The cargo—among many other items—consisted of whips and knives, for the conversion of the English; and doubtless Don Martin Alorcon, Vicar-General of the Inquisition, with one hundred monks and Jesuits in his train may be classed under the same head. Heresy was to be destroyed throughout England: Sir Francis Drake was singled out for special vengeance. The Queen was to be taken alive, at all costs: she was to be sent prisoner over the Alps to Rome, there to make her humble petition to the Pope, barefoot and prostrate, that England might be re-admitted to communion with the Holy See. Did Philip imagine that any amount of humiliation or coercion would have wrung such words as these from the lips of Elizabeth Tudor?