The New World: A History of the English-Speaking Peoples, Volume II (The Barnes & Noble Library of Essential Reading Series)

WITH 1588 THE CRISIS OF THE REIGN WAS PAST. ENGLAND HAD emerged from the Armada year as a first-class Power. She had resisted the weight of the mightiest empire that had been seen since Roman times. Her people awoke to a consciousness of their greatness, and the last years of Elizabeth’s reign saw a welling up of national energy and enthusiasm focusing upon the person of the Queen. In the year following the Armada the first three books were published of Spenser’s Faerie Queene, in which Elizabeth is hymned as Gloriana. Poets and courtiers alike paid their homage to the sovereign who symbolised the great achievement. Elizabeth had schooled a generation of Englishmen.

The success of the seamen pointed the way to wide opportunities of winning wealth and fame in daring expeditions. In 1589 Richard Hakluyt first published his magnificent book, The Principal Navigations, Traffics and Discoveries of the English Nation. Here in their own words the audacious navigators tell their story. Hakluyt speaks for the thrusting spirit of the age when he proclaims that the English nation, “in searching the most opposite corners and quarters of the world, and, to speak plainly, in compassing the vast globe of the earth more than once, have excelled all the nations and peoples of the earth.” Before the reign came to a close another significant enterprise took its beginning. For years past Englishmen had been probing their way through to the East, round the Cape of Good Hope and overland across the expanses of the Middle East. Their venturies led to the founding of the East India Company. At the start it was a small and struggling affair, with a capital of only £72,000. Dazzling dividends were to be won from this investment. The British Empire in India, which was to be painfully built up in the course of the next three centuries, owes its origins to the charter granted by Queen Elizabeth to a group of London merchants and financiers in the year 1600.

The young men who now rose to prominence in the Court of the ageing Queen plagued their mistress to allow them to try their hand in many enterprises. The coming years resound with attacks upon the forces and allies of Spain throughout the world—expeditions to Cadiz, to the Azores, into the Caribbean Sea, to the Low Countries, and, in support of the Huguenots, to the northern coasts of France. The story is one of confused running fights, conducted with slender resources and culminating in a few great moments. The war against Spain, which had never been officially declared, extended its heavy burden into the first year of the reign of Elizabeth’s successor. The policy of the English Government was to distract the enemy in every quarter of the world, and by subsidising the Protestant elements in the Low Countries and in France to prevent any concentration of force against themselves. At the same time England intervened to prevent the Spaniards from seizing ports on the Norman and Breton coasts which might be used as bases for another invasion. As a result of these continued though rather meagre efforts the slow victory of the Dutch in Holland and the Huguenots in France brought its reward. The eventual triumph of Henry of Navarre, the Protestant champion and heir to the French throne, was due as much to his acceptance of the Catholic faith as to victories in the field. Paris, as he is supposed to have said, was worth a Mass. His decision put an end to the French religious wars and removed the danger to England of a Spanish-backed monarch in Paris. The Dutch too were beginning to hold their own. The Island was at last secure.

But there was no way of delivering a decisive stroke against Spain. The English Government had no money for further efforts. The total revenues of the Crown hardly exceeded £300,000 a year, including the fruits of taxation granted by Parliament. Out of this sum all expenses of Court and Government had to be met. The cost of defeating the Armada is reckoned to have amounted to £160,000, and the Netherlands expeditionary force at one stage was calling for £126,000 a year. The lights of enthusiasm slowly faded out. In 1595 Raleigh again tried his hand, this time in search of Eldorado in Guiana. But his expedition brought no profits home. At the same time Drake and the veteran Hawkins, now in his sixties, set out on a last voyage. Hawkins fell ill, and as his fleet was anchoring off Porto Rico he died in his cabin. Drake, cast down by the death of his old patron, sailed on to attack the rich city of Panama. With a dash of his former spirit he swept into the bay of Nombre de Dios. But conditions were now very different. The early days had gone for ever. Spanish government in the New World was now well equipped and well armed. The raid was beaten off. The English fleet put out to sea, and in January 1596 Francis Drake, having assumed his armour to meet death like a soldier, expired in his ship. John Stow, a contemporary English chronicler, writes of him, “He was as famous in Europe and America as Tamburlaine in Asia and Africa.”

As the conflict with Spain drew inconclusively on, and both sides struck at each other in ever-growing, offensive exhaustion, the heroic age of sea fights passed away. One epic moment has survived in the annals of the English race—the last fight of the Revenge at Flores, in the Azores. “In the year 1591,” says Bacon, “was that memorable fight of an English ship called the Revenge, under the command of Sir Richard Grenville, memorable (I say) even beyond credit and to the height of some heroical fable: and though it were a defeat, yet it exceeded a victory; being like the act of Samson, that killed more men at his death, than he had done in the time of all his life. This ship, for the space of fifteen hours, sate like a stag amongst hounds at bay, and was sieged and fought with, in turn, by fifteen great ships of Spain, part of a navy of fifty-five ships in all; the rest like abettors looking on afar off. And amongst the fifteen ships that fought, the great San Philippo was one; a ship of fifteen hundred ton, prince of the twelve Sea Apostles, which was right glad when she was shifted off from the Revenge. This brave ship the Revenge, being manned only with two hundred soldiers and marines, whereof eighty lay sick, yet nevertheless after a fight maintained (as was said) of fifteen hours, and two ships of the enemy sunk by her side, besides many more torn and battered and great slaughter of men, never came to be entered, but was taken by composition; the enemies themselves having in admiration the virtue of the commander and the whole tragedy of that ship.”

It is well to remember the ordinary seamen who sailed in ships sometimes as small as twenty tons into the wastes of the North and South Atlantic, ill-fed and badly paid, on risky adventures backed by inadequate capital. These men faced death in many forms—death by disease, death by drowning, death from Spanish pikes and guns, death by starvation and cold on uninhabited coasts, death in the Spanish prisons. The Admiral of the English fleet, Lord Howard of Effingham, spoke their epitaph: “God send us to sea in such a company together again, when need is.”

Victory over Spain was the most shining achievement of Elizabeth’s reign, but by no means the only one. The repulse of the Armada had subdued religious dissension at home. Events which had swung England towards Puritanism while the Catholic danger was impending swung her back to the Anglican settlement when the peril vanished in the smoke of the burning Armada at Gravelines. A few months later, in a sermon at St. Paul’s Cross, Richard Bancroft, who was later to be Archbishop of Canterbury, attacked the Puritan theme with the confidence of a man who was convinced that the Anglican Church was not a political contrivance, but a divine institution. He took the only line on which the defence of the Church could be sustained with an enthusiasm equal to that of its assailants: it was not “the religion set forth by Her Majesty,” but the Church of the Apostles still subsisting by virtue of the episcopal succession. But Bancroft saw also that to maintain the cause a better type of clergy was needed, men of “solid learning,” and such he set himself to provide. “If he had lived,” Clarendon wrote a century later, “he would quickly have extinguished all that fire in England which had been kindled at Geneva.” But the fire was still dangerously smouldering when Elizabeth died.

Nevertheless the Church she had nursed to strength was a very different body from the half-hearted and distracted community of her early years: more confident, more learned, far less inclined to compromise with dissidents within or separatists without; strong in the attachment of thousands to whom its liturgy had become dear by habit and who thought of it as the Church into which they had been baptised. Their devotion to the Church of England as a sacred institution was as profound and sincere as the attachment of the Calvinist to his presbytery or the Independent to his congregation. And, bitter as the coming divisions were to be, England united in prizing Elizabeth’s service to her people and to religion. “Queen Elizabeth of famous memory,” Oliver Cromwell called her, and added, “we need not be ashamed to call her so.” And those whose memories went back to the dark years of disaster and persecution, who had seen the Spanish peril growing till it broke in ruins, could hardly fail to re-echo in their hearts the majestic utterance of Richard Hooker, author of the classic justification of the Elizabethan Church, Of the Laws of Ecclesiastical Polity. “As, by the sword of God and Gideon, was sometime the cry of the people of Israel,” he wrote, “so it might deservedly be at this day the joyful song of innumerable multitudes, and the true inscription, style, or title of all churches yet standing within this realm: by the goodness of Almighty God and his servant Elizabeth, we are.”

By now the men who had governed England since the 1550’s were passing from power and success to their graves. Leicester had died in the last days of 1588, Walsingham in 1590, and Burghley in 1598. The fifteen years which followed the Armada are dominated by other figures. War with Spain had set a premium on martial virtues. Young and eager men like Walter Raleigh and Robert Devereux, Earl of Essex, quarrelled for permission to lead enterprises against the Spaniards. The Queen hesitated. She knew that the security she had striven for all her life was very fragile. She knew the danger of provoking the might of Spain, backed as it was by all the wealth of the Indies. She was growing old and out of touch with the younger generation, and her quarrel with Essex marked and revealed her changing mood.

Essex was Leicester’s stepson, and Leicester brought him into the circle of the Court. He found the Government in the hands of the cautious Cecils, William, Lord Burghley, and his son Robert. The Queen’s favour had lighted upon the hard, handsome, and ambitious Captain of the Guard, Sir Walter Raleigh. Essex was the younger and the more fiery, and he soon displaced the Captain in the affections of Elizabeth. He too was ambitious, and set out to create his own party in Court and Council and subdue the influence of the Cecils. He found support in the Bacon brothers, Anthony and Francis, sons of the Lord Keeper, Nicholas Bacon, who had earlier in the reign been a colleague and brother-in-law of Burghley’s. The young nephews were discontented with Burghley’s lack of attention. They were dangerous enemies, and Essex was a convenient figure-head for thrusting a more forward policy upon the Queen. They had both served in the Embassy in Paris, and, like Walsingham, had built up an admirable intelligence service. It was with their help that Essex became an expert on foreign affairs and showed the Queen that he had ability as well as charm. In 1593 he was made a Privy Counsellor. Relations with Spain were again becoming tense. Essex soon headed the war party in the Council; and once the old Lord Treasurer pulled a Prayer Book out of his pocket and, shaking a finger at his young opponent, read out the verse, “Bloodthirsty and deceitful men shall not live out half their days.” In 1596 an expedition was sent against Cadiz under the joint command of Essex and Raleigh. In the sea fight for the harbour Raleigh was the outstanding leader. The Spanish fleet was burned and the town lay open to the English crews. Essex was the hero of the shore fight. It was a brilliant combined operation, and Cadiz was held by the English for a fortnight. The fleet returned home triumphant, but, to Elizabeth’s regret, little the richer. During its absence Robert Cecil had become Secretary of State.

Victory at Cadiz heightened the popularity of Essex among the younger members of the Court and throughout the country. The Queen received him graciously, but with secret misgiving. Was he the incarnation of the spirit of this new generation, whose rash eagerness she feared? Would the younger men look to him rather than to her as their leader? For the moment all went well. Essex was made Master of the Ordnance. He was given command of an expedition to intercept a further Armada now gathering in the ports of Western Spain. In the summer of 1597 it seemed that another “Enterprise of England” was about to sail. The English ships headed south-west and made for the Azores. There was no sign of the great f leet whose passage they were to bar, but the islands made a convenient base where they could await the treasure ships from the New World. Raleigh too was in the expedition. The English failed to take any of the island ports; the Spanish Treasure Fleet eluded them; the Armada put out into the Bay of Biscay with the seas clear of defending ships to the north. Once again the winds saved the Island. The badly manned galleons tottered into a northern gale scattered and sinking. The disorganised fleet crept back into its ports. King Philip was kneeling in his chapel in the Escorial praying for his ships. Before the news of their return could reach him he was seized with a paralytic stroke, and the tale of their failure was brought to him on his deathbed.

Essex came home to find a sovereign still vigorous and dominating. The muddle and quarrelling which had marred the Azores expedition enraged Elizabeth. She declared she would never send the Fleet out of the Channel again, and this time she kept her word. Essex retired from Court, and thunderous days followed. Essex was sure he was misunderstood. There was a plaintive correspondence. Wild thoughts went surging through his mind. A little group gathered round him and schemed to force the sun of the royal favour into the heavens again.

Troubles in Ireland, which now came to a head, seemed to offer him the chance of recovering both the Queen’s goodwill and his own prestige. Throughout the reign Ireland had presented an intractable problem. Henry VIII had assumed the title of King of Ireland, but this involved no real extension of his authority. Though Irish chiefs were given English titles, in the hope of converting them into magnates on the English pattern, they still clung to their ancient feuding clan-life, and largely ignored the commands of the Lord Lieutenants in Dublin. The Counter-Reformation revived and reanimated opposition to Protestant England. For the Queen’s Government in London this meant strategic anxieties, since any power hostile to England could readily take advantage of Irish discontents. Able Viceroys with small forces tried hard to impose order and respect for English law, and efforts were made to plant and colonise the country with reliable settlers. But these measures met with no striking success. In the first thirty years of Elizabeth’s reign Ireland was shaken by three major rebellions. Now in the 1590’s a fourth rising had erupted into a wearing and expensive war.

With Spanish backing, Hugh O’Neill, Earl of Tyrone, was threatening the whole English dominance of Ireland. If Essex became Lord Deputy and destroyed the rebellion he might recover his power in England. It was a perilous gamble. In April 1599 Essex was allowed to go to Ireland, at the head of the largest army that England had ever sent there. He accomplished nothing and was on the verge of ruin. But he planned a dramatic stroke. Disobeying the express orders of the Queen, he deserted his command and rode in haste to London unannounced. Robert Cecil had quietly waited for his rival to overreach himself. Angry scenes followed between Essex and the Queen, and the Earl was confined to his house. Weeks dragged by, and a desperate plot was made by Essex and his younger companions, including Shakespeare’s patron, the Earl of Southampton. There was to be a rising in the City, a concentration upon Whitehall, and a seizure of the Queen’s person. To symbolise the result a new play, which culminated in a royal dethronement, was to be produced at Southwark—Shakespeare’s Richard II.

Elizabeth well understood the issues at stake. Essex had been not simply a courtier soliciting, and even fighting for, the affections of his Queen. He was the leader of a bid for power by a faction of her Court. Acutely aware of the Queen’s advancing years, he aimed to control the succession and to dominate the next sovereign. This was not yet an age of party politics, but of patronage and clientage. No fundamental principle divided Essex from Raleigh or the Bacons from Cecil. The spoils of office, power, and influence were at stake, and victorious Essex would have dispensed appointments throughout England, and perhaps even have dictated terms to the Queen. But long years of statesmanship served Elizabeth better than the driving ambition of a courtier half her age. She struck back; and in destroying Essex she saved England from the consumption of civil war.

For the English cause in Ireland the flight of Essex proved a blessing. He was succeeded by Lord Mountjoy, a tenacious and energetic commander, who soon had the rebellion under control. When a Spanish force, some four thousand strong, landed at Kinsale in 1601 they were too late. Mountjoy routed their Irish allies and compelled the Spaniards to surrender. Even Tyrone finally made his submission. Ireland had at last, though only temporarily, been conquered by English arms.

If Essex challenged the political power of Elizabeth, more significant for the future was the challenge to her constitutional power in the Parliament of 1601. Throughout the reign the weight and authority of Parliament had been steadily growing. Now the issue turned on monopolies. For some time the Crown had eked out its slender income by various devices, including the granting of patents of monopolies to courtiers and others in return for payment. Some of these grants could be justified as protecting and encouraging inventions, but frequently they amounted merely to unjustified privileges, involving high prices that placed a burden upon every citizen. In 1601 grievances flared up into a full-dress debate in the House of Commons. An angry Member read out a list extending from a patent for iron manufacture to a patent for drying pilchards. “Is not bread there?” shouted another back-bencher. The uproar in the House brought a stinging rebuke from Mr Secretary Cecil. “What an indignity then is it,” he exclaimed, “that when any is discussing this point he should be cried and coughed down. This is more fit for a grammar-school than a Parliament.” But the Queen preferred subtler methods. If the Commons pushed their proposals to a division the whole basis of her constitutional authority would be under fire. She acted swiftly now. Some monopolies were abolished forthwith. All, she promised, would be investigated. So she forestalled the direct challenge, and in a golden speech to a large gathering of her Commons summoned to her chamber she told them, “Though God hath raised me high, yet this I account the glory of my crown, that I have reigned with your loves.” It was to be her last appearance in their midst.

The immense vitality displayed by the Queen throughout the troublous years of her rule in England ebbed slowly and relentlessly away. She lay for days upon a heap of cushions in her room. For hours the soundless agony was prolonged. The corridors without echoed with the hurrying of agitated feet. At last Robert Cecil dared to speak. “Your Majesty, to content the people you must go to bed.” “Little man,” came the answer, “is ‘must’ a word to use to princes?” The old Archbishop of Canterbury, Whitgift, her “little black husband,” as she had once called him, knelt praying at her side. In the early hours of the morning of March 24, 1603, Queen Elizabeth died.

Thus ended the Tudor dynasty. For over a hundred years, with a handful of bodyguards, they had maintained their sovereignty, kept the peace, baffled the diplomacy and onslaughts of Europe, and guided the country through changes which might well have wrecked it. Parliament was becoming a solid affair based on a working harmony between Sovereign, Lords and Commons, and the traditions of English monarchical government had been restored and gloriously enhanced. But these achievements carried no guarantee of their perpetuation. The monarchy could only govern if it was popular. The Crown was now to pass to an alien Scottish line, hostile in political instincts to the class which administered England. The good understanding with Parliament which the Tudors had nourished came to a fretful close. The new kings soon clashed with the forces of a growing nation, and out of this conflict came the Civil War, the Republican interlude, the Restoration and the Revolution settlement.