The sacking of Cadiz had irretrievably ruined Philip’s prestige; but it had not deprived him of all material resources, heavy and ceaseless as had been the drain upon his treasury for the war in France. The Irish chiefs left him no peace from their importunities, and assured him again and again that with the aid of a few men the island might be his, and Elizabeth and the heretics at his mercy. Promises, sums of money, and slight succour were sent from time to time; but the insult of Cadiz and the exhortations of the Church, at length prevailed upon the King to attempt one great effort in Ireland to crush his enemy before swift approaching death struck him down. We understand now that such a system as his foredoomed to failure any attempt to organise promptly an efficient naval armament; for penury, peculation, delay, and ineptitude were the natural result of the minutest details being jealously retained in the hands of an overworked hermit hundreds of miles away from the centre of activity. But in England the news of his intentions caused far greater apprehension than we now know that they deserved; and Essex was again all eagerness to take out another fleet, and repeat elsewhere the coup of Cadiz.
This time he found no obstacles raised by the Cecils. In a biography of Lord Burghley, it is not necessary to probe the vexed question of the sincerity of Sir Robert Cecil’s reconciliation with Essex. Most inquirers of late years have assumed, with some show of justification, that it was from the first a deep-laid plot of Cecil, perhaps with Ralegh’s co-operation, to ruin the Earl, as in its results it certainly did. But without admitting this, or at least implicating Burghley himself in such a plan,[637] it may fairly be assumed that when Cecil saw how smoothly things went for him, and how soon he obtained the Secretaryship when Essex was absent, he may have welcomed any opportunity of again getting rid of so turbulent and quarrelsome a colleague.[638] The earl’s pride and jealousy had also taken from him much of the Queen’s regard, and she was determined to humble or to break him. The first project had been to raise a small expedition under Ralegh and Lord Thomas Howard to intercept the Spanish treasure fleets; but when it became known that the Adelantado of Castile was making ready a fleet of 100 ships and a powerful army in the Galician ports, Essex proposed a great enlargement of the plan. He was authorised to raise a force of 120 ships, the Dutchmen were induced to send a strong contingent, and with infinite labour Essex and Ralegh induced the Queen to consent to their plan for burning the Spanish fleet, in port or wherever they could find it, and then to intercept and capture the homeward-bound flotillas from the East and West Indies.
Lord Burghley’s attitude is seen by a cordial letter he wrote to Essex early in May (State Papers, Domestic). “I thank you,” he says, “for not reproving my objections for the resolutions for conference. I hope to see you at Court to-morrow, if God by over-great pains do not countermand me. I like so well to attempt something against our Spanish enemy that I hope God will prosper the purpose.”
The fleets gathered in Plymouth Sound early in July, and sailed in three fine squadrons under Essex, Thomas Howard, and Ralegh respectively.[639] On the day he sailed unsuspecting Essex in the fulness of his heart wrote a fervent letter of thanks to Cecil.[640] He would, he said, never forget his kindness whilst he lived; “and if I live to return, I will make you think your friendship well professed.” Unfortunately he returned sooner than he expected, for the fleets were caught in a storm and driven back with much suffering and danger. Famine and sickness broke out, and for a whole month the fleets were wind-bound in the Channel, whilst the Queen began to waver about allowing her ships and men to be exposed again so late in the season. Once more the aged Lord Treasurer wrote to Essex on his return (July 23), “It is not right that I should condole with you for your late torment at sea, for I am sure that would but increase your sorrow, and be no relief to me. I am but as a monoculus, by reason of a flux falling into my left eye; and you see the impediment by my evil writing and short letter.… In the time of this disaster I did by common usage of my morning prayer on the 23rd of every month, in the 107th Psalm, read these nine verses proper for you to repeat, and especially six of them, which I send to you. This letter savours more of divinity. As for humanity, I refer you to the joint-letter from the Lord Admiral, myself, and my son.”[641]
Essex and Ralegh posted to London early in August and prayed the Queen to let them resume their voyage. “Only,” said Essex, “allow me to take half the ships and to do as I please where I like, and I will perform a worthy service.” But the Queen would not hear of such a thing, nor should they with her permission enter any Spanish port at all. At last, as a compromise, she consented to Ralegh’s sending a few fire-ships into Ferrol, on condition that Essex was to keep quite away from the enterprise; and to be sure she should be obeyed, she insisted upon the soldiers being left at home. At length, on the 17th August, the truncated expedition again sailed. Disaster, jealousy and division dogged it from the first. Another great storm drove the squadrons asunder. The winds prevented them from approaching Ferrol. Ralegh, under a misunderstanding, attacked Fayal, in the Azores, in the absence of Essex, and the sycophants around the Earl bred evil blood between them. The main body of the flotillas from the Indies escaped them; and eventually Essex, with his ships battered and disabled, crept into Plymouth at the end of October, bringing with them hardly sufficient plunder to pay their expenses. Fortunately in their absence the Spanish fleet for the invasion of Ireland had also been driven back and practically destroyed by a storm, and all present danger from that quarter had disappeared.
Essex found that in his absence the Lord Admiral had been made Earl of Nottingham, which, in conjunction with his office, gave him precedence, and that Secretary Cecil had been made Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster. The Earl was furious, and sulked at Wanstead instead of going to court; but the old Lord Treasurer was once more amiability itself—as well he might be, for his son was winning all along the line. On the 9th November he wrote to the Earl, “My writing manifests my sickness. Some of your friends say that the cause of your absence is sickness, so I send my servant to ascertain your health. I wish I could remedy any other cause of your absence; but writing will do no good. It requires another manner of remedy, in which you may command my service.”[642] And again, ten days later, “I hoped you would have come to court for the fortieth anniversary of her Majesty’s coronation. I hear, to my sorrow, that you have been really sick, but hope you will soon be back at court, where you shall find a harvest of business, needful for many heads, wits, and hands.”[643]
Although the young Earl obstinately absented himself from court, he seems to have sent a letter of thanks and friendship to Lord Burghley; for the latter on the 30th November writes expressing his joy at the Earl’s contentment, but chiding him for his continued absence, which he says is exposing him to “diversity of censures.” “I find,” he says, “her Majesty sharp to such as advise her to that which it were meet for her to do, and for you to receive. My good Lord, overcome her with yielding without disparagement of your honour, and plead your own cause with your presence; whereto I will be as serviceable as any friend you have, to my power—which is not to run, for lack of good feet, nor to fight, for lack of good hands, but ready with my heart to command my tongue to do you due honour.”[644] At length, probably at the suggestion of Burghley, the angry Queen made Essex Earl-Marshal, which gave him precedence over Howard, and he came back to court sulky and quarrelsome, galled that cooler heads and keener wits than his could work their will in spite of him.
In the meanwhile the war between France and Spain was wearing itself out. Since the conversion of Henry IV. matters were gradually working back into their natural groove of nationalities instead of faiths. Philip was bankrupt in purse, broken in spirit, and already on the brink of the grave; but the awful sacrifices his ruined country had made had at least prevented France from becoming a Protestant country. He was leaving Flanders to his beloved daughter Isabel, and wished to bequeath to her peace as well. By Henry’s treaty with England and the United Provinces two years before he had bound himself to make common cause with them against the King of Spain; but the main cause of his own quarrel with Spain had nearly disappeared, for the Leaguers were now mostly on his side, and for a year past the Pope (Clement VIII.) had been busy trying to bring about a reconciliation between the two great Catholic powers. The pontiff assured Henry that he was not bound to keep faith with heretics, and might break the treaty with Elizabeth and Holland. “I have,” replied the Béarnais, “pledged my faith to the Queen of England and the United Provinces. How could I treat to their detriment, or even fail in a single point, without betraying my duty, my honour, and my own interests? No pretext would excuse such baseness and perfidy, and if it could, sooner than avail myself of it I would lose my life.”
But when, in the autumn of 1597, the Spaniards were finally routed at Amiens, it was evident that Spain could fight no longer, and that the moment for peace had come. The Archduke, who was to marry the new sovereign of Flanders, was especially anxious for peace before the Spanish King died, and at his instance advances to Henry were made. This was the last great international question in which Burghley was personally interested, and by a curious coincidence it brought once more to the front the traditional English policy, of which he was the representative; a policy which had for many years past been broken and interrupted by the religious position on the Continent. The growing power and ambition of the Dutch United Provinces, and their aid sent to Henry IV. against Spain, together with Henry’s conversion to Catholicism, had once more aroused the fear of England that by an arrangement between them the French might dominate Spanish Flanders. The project of making the Infanta and her husband practically independent sovereigns of the Belgic provinces was therefore eminently favourable to English interests, and drew England once more irresistibly to the side of Spain, as against the Dutchmen and Henry IV.; for the possession of Flanders by the French (or now even by the strong pushing young Republic under French influence) was one of the two eventualities against which for centuries the traditional policy of England had been directed. Coincident, therefore, with Henry’s negotiations, secret approaches were made by England to the Archduke, and once more, after a half-century of fighting, England was smiling as of old on a “Duke of Burgundy,” as against a French King.[645]