To Drake, greatest of all these wild adventurers, was it left to embroil his country utterly with Spain. He followed Magellan in circumnavigating the globe, and wherever he went he left a track of plundered Spanish settlements behind. Elizabeth was in despair; she alternately knighted him and threatened to hang him as a pirate. The Spaniards, re-reading his name, called him the Dragon. He was the terror of their seas.
At last the long accumulating quarrel of religious and commercial motives reached a head. Philip began gathering in all his ports that vast "Invincible Armada," which was to assert his supremacy on sea as upon land, to crush England and Protestantism forever. This was the supreme effort of his life. There was no question as to where the blow would fall. Elizabeth knew it coming, not to be evaded by any policy or concessions. Drake knew it coming, and, taking time by the forelock, sailed boldly into the harbor of Cadiz to "singe the King of Spain's beard," destroyed all the ships and stores accumulated there.[19] ] But Cadiz was only one port among several where preparations were being hurried forward; there were others the hardy Dragon could not penetrate. The next year (1588) the "Invincible Armada" sailed for England.
The story of its destruction is too well known for repetition. This was England's proudest achievement. Philip accepted the terrific downfall of all his scheming and ambitions with a gallant calm. He had truly believed that Heaven wished him to reassert Catholicism. He accepted the storms which partly destroyed his fleet as the divine refusal of his aid. "You could not strive against the will of Heaven," he said kindly to his defeated admiral.[20] ]
In England, the repeated plunderings of Spanish ships, and now this final victory, flooded the land with wealth and triumph. The internal improvement, the intellectual advance of the people, were prodigious. The "Elizabethan Age" is the most famed in English literature. The first English theatre was built in 1570, a crude and queer affair for cruder, queerer plays.[21] ] Yet, in perhaps that very armada year of 1588, Shakespeare began writing his remarkable plays. In 1601 the drama rose to its perfection in his Hamlet, the flower of English literary genius, accredited by some as the grandest new creation that ever came from the hand of man.[22] ]
Elizabeth died in 1603. Her reign had seen also the final suppression of the Irish Catholics and their subjugation to the English crown. In the year of her death came the "Flight of the Earls," the mournful abandonment of Ireland by the last of the great lords who had fought for and now despaired of her independence.[23] ]
The age of Elizabeth can scarcely, however, be said to cease at her death. The English people had grown greater than their sovereign, and upon them the influences of their Spanish victory continued. Shakespeare is even more the Elizabethan age than Elizabeth, and his writings continued until 1611. Drake had died in 1596; Raleigh lived till 1618.
Since Elizabeth was childless, she was succeeded on the throne by the Scotch king James VI (James I of England), son of the Mary Stuart whose claims had caused such trouble. James, removed from his mother's care, had been educated by his subjects as a Protestant, so he was welcome to England. The first step toward uniting the two halves of the island was made when they thus came under a common sovereign. The same atmosphere of plot and treachery which had surrounded Elizabeth reached also to her successor. In 1605 was unearthed the "Gunpowder Plot," a scheme to blow up James with all his chief ministers and subjects in the House of Parliament. The date of its discovery is still kept as a national holiday in England.[24] ]
Then in 1607 came the fruition of Raleigh's efforts and those of Drake, the beginning surely of a new era. Spain being no longer able to oppose, a new colony was sent out from England to Virginia. It settled at Jamestown, and began the successful colonization of the United States.[25] ] The next year, the French, supported by their great king Henry IV, made a similar beginning. Quebec was founded by them on the St. Lawrence.[26] ] The era of American discovery was over, and that of American settlement was come.
[FOR THE NEXT SECTION OF THIS GENERAL SURVEY SEE VOLUME XI]