The extraordinary reliance placed by the queen in this emergency upon the counsels of Leicester encouraged the insatiable favorite to grasp at honor and authority still more exorbitant; and he ventured to urge her majesty to invest him with the office of her lieutenant in England and Ireland; a dignity paramount to all other commands. She had the weakness to comply; and it is said that the patent was actually drawn out, when the defeat of the armada, by taking away all pretext for the creation of such an officer, gave her leisure to attend to the earnest representations of Hatton and Burleigh on the imprudence of conferring on any subject powers so excessive, and capable even in some instances of controlling her own prerogative. On better consideration the project therefore was dropped.
It is foreign from the business of this work to detail the particulars of that signal victory obtained by English seamanship and English valor against the boasted armament of Spain, prodigiously superior as it was in every circumstance of force excepting the moral energies employed to wield it. While the history of the year 1588 in all its details must ever form a favorite chapter in the splendid tale of England's naval glory, it will here suffice to mark the general results.
Not a single Spaniard set foot on English ground but as a prisoner; one English vessel only, and that of smaller size, became the prize of the invaders. The duke of Parma did not venture to embark a man. The king of Scots, standing firm to his alliance with his illustrious kinswoman, afforded not the slightest succour to the Spanish ships which the storms and the English drove in shattered plight upon his rugged coasts; while the lord-deputy of Ireland caused to be butchered without remorse the crews of all the vessels wrecked upon that island in their disastrous circumnavigation of Great Britain: so that not more than half of this vaunted invincible armada returned in safety to the ports of Spain. Never in the records of history was the event of war on one side more entirely satisfactory, and glorious, on the other more deeply humiliating and utterly disgraceful. Philip did indeed support the credit of his personal character by the dignified composure with which he heard the tidings of this great disaster; but it was out of his power to throw the slightest veil over the dishonor of the Spanish arms, or repair the total and final failure of the great popish cause.
By the English nation, this signal discomfiture of its most dreaded and detested foe was hailed as the victory of protestant principles no less than of national independence; and the tidings of the national deliverance were welcomed, by all the reformed churches of Europe, with an ardor of joy and thankfulness proportioned to the intenseness of anxiety with which they had watched the event of a conflict where their own dearest interests were staked along with the existence of their best ally and firmest protector.
Repeated thanksgivings were observed in London in commemoration of this great event: on the anniversary of the queen's birth a general festival was proclaimed and celebrated with "sermons, singing of psalms, bonfires, &c." and on the following Sunday her majesty went in state to St. Paul's, magnificently attended by her nobles and great officers, and borne along on a sumptuous chariot formed like a throne, with four pillars supporting a canopy, and drawn by a pair of white horses. The streets through which she passed were hung with blue cloth, in honor doubtless of the navy, and the colors taken from the enemy were borne in triumph.
Her majesty rewarded the lord-admiral with a considerable pension, and settled annuities on the wounded seamen and on some of the more necessitous among the officers; the rest she honored with much personal notice and many gracious terms of commendation, which they were expected to receive in lieu of more substantial remuneration;—for parsimony, the darling virtue of Elizabeth, was not forgotten even in her gratitude to the brave defenders of her country.
Two medals were struck on this great occasion; one, representing a fleet retiring under full sail, with the motto, "Venit, vidit, fugit;" the other, fire-ships scattering a fleet; the motto, "Dux fæmina facti;" a compliment to the queen, who is said to have herself suggested the employment of these engines of destruction, by which the armada suffered severely.
The intense interest in public events excited in every class by the threatened invasion of Spain, gave rise to the introduction in this country of one of the most important inventions of social life,—that of newspapers. Previously to this period all articles of intelligence had been circulated in manuscript; and all political remarks which the government had found itself interested in addressing to the people, had issued from the press in the shape of pamphlets, of which many had been composed during the administration of Burleigh, either by himself or immediately under his direction. But the peculiar convenience at such a juncture of uniting these two objects in a periodical publication becoming obvious to the ministry, there appeared, some time in the month of April 1588, the first number of The English Mercury; a paper resembling the present London Gazette, which must have come out almost daily; since No. 50, the earliest specimen of the work now extant, is dated July 23d of the same year. This interesting relic is preserved in the British Museum.
In the midst of the public rejoicings an event occurred, which, in whatever manner it might be felt by Elizabeth herself, certainly cast no damp on the spirits of the nation at large; the death of Leicester.
After the frequent notices of this celebrated favorite contained in the foregoing pages, a formal delineation of his character is unnecessary;—a few traits may however be added.