Headpiece
THE EVOLUTION OF THE SPANISH ARMADA.
Perhaps no character in history has been more misjudged and misrepresented than Philip II. For three centuries it has pleased English writers particularly, to portray him as a murderous ogre, grimly and silently plotting the enslavement of England for thirty years before the great catastrophe which reduced his vast empire to the rank of a harmless second-rate power. As a matter of fact he was a laborious, narrow-minded, morbidly conscientious man, patient, distrustful, and timid; a sincere lover of peace and a nater of all sorts of innovations. He was born to a position for which he was unfitted, and was forced by circumstances stronger than himself to embark upon gigantic warlike enterprises which he disliked and deplored.
For ages it had been considered vital in the interests both of England and Spain that a close alliance should exist between the two countries, in order to counterbalance the immemorial connection between Scotland and France; and that the Flemish dominions of the house of Burgundy should under no circumstances be allowed to fall under the sway of the French. It is easy to understand that with France paramount over the North Sea ports and in Scotland, England would never have been safe for a moment; whilst the principal continental seat of English foreign trade would have been at the mercy of England's secular foe. At the same time all central Europe would have been cut off from its Atlantic seaboard, whilst the principal maritime powers, Spain and Portugal, would have been excluded from all ports north of Biscay, except on the sufferance of their jealous rival. This was the tradition to which Philip had been born; inheriting as he did the dominions both of Spain and the house of Burgundy, and almost at any cost he was forced, as his forefathers had been, to cling to the connection between his country and England. Henry VIII. had known full well that he might strain the cord very tightly without breaking it when he flew into the face of all Christendom, and contemptuously cast aside for an ignoble passion the aunt of the Emperor, a daughter of the proudest royal house in Europe. Charles V. dared not, and did not, break with England in consequence; for Henry had taken care to draw close to Scotland and France, and the very hint of such a combination was sufficient to render the Emperor all amiability.
For a time it looked as if the alliance had been rendered proof against all attack by the marriage of Philip and Mary, and it is highly probable that it would have been so if Renard's plan to marry Elizabeth to the Duke of Savoy had been carried out; but here again circumstances were too strong for persons. The marriage would have been useless unless Elizabeth were first legitimised, and Mary could not legitimise her without bastardising herself, which she obstinately refused to do, notwithstanding all the entreaties of Philip and his friends. But Philip ostentatiously favoured his young sister-in-law, in the hope that when she came to the throne he might have some claim upon her gratitude, and induce her to maintain the friendship which was so necessary for his interests. It was no question of Catholic or Protestant yet. He would have supported her—as indeed he did—however firm a Protestant she might be; for the next Catholic heir to the crown, Mary Stuart, was practically a Frenchwoman, married to the heir of the French throne, and with her as Queen of England and France, Spain and the house of Burgundy would have been ruined.
Elizabeth knew as well as any one how vital it was for Philip to be friendly with England; and during a long course of years she traded unscrupulously upon her knowledge that she might assail, insult, plunder, and make more or less veiled war upon him, and yet that he dared not openly break with her whilst France was greedily eyeing his Flemish harbours. From the first moment that Elizabeth's reform policy became evident it was seen by Spanish statesmen that either the government of England must be changed, so as to bring it back to the old cordial alliance, or else Spain must seek new combinations of powers, in order to redress the balance. For the first alternative to be successful promptness was necessary, and the government of the Queen changed whilst the country was yet unsettled and divided. Feria wrote from London to Philip only a day or two after Mary's death that the country must be dealt with sword in hand rather than by cajolery, unless it were to be allowed to slip through their hands; and thenceforward for years all of Philip's agents, one after the other, pressed upon their master the necessity of using force, either by aiding the Catholics to revolt or by a direct attack on England. Angry, almost contemptuous, references to the King's hesitancy and timidity are constantly occurring in the letters of the various Spanish ambassadors in England, but beyond occasional money aid to the English Catholics nothing could be obtained from the King.
Of all things slow-minded, unwarlike Philip desired peace, almost at any price, and he saw, as his advisers did not, the dangers that surrounded him. Marriage designs, cajolery, and other peaceful methods having failed to bind Elizabeth to him, he attempted to form a new combination. He married the French king's daughter as his third wife; and doubtless even thus early had evolved in his mind the idea of a league of the Catholic powers as a counterbalance to Elizabeth's friendship with Denmark, Sweden, and the German Protestant princes. He knew that overt assistance from him to the English Catholics to depose the Queen and stifle Protestantism would increase the enmity of the allied Protestants of the Continent, and perhaps let loose the storm of which the mutterings were already audible in Flanders. So, in answer to Feria's advice and Bishop Quadra's arguments in favour of force, he insisted upon a policy of soft words, pacification, and palliation; and again and again told his ambassadors, "You must keep principally in view by all ways and means to avoid a rupture ... the importance of which is so great that I cannot be satisfied without repeating it so many times."