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Elizabeth was, during this period, extremely anxious on account of every revolution in Scotland; both because that country alone, not being separated from England by sea, and bordering on all the Catholic and malecontent counties, afforded her enemies a safe and easy method of attacking her; and because she was sensible that Mary, thinking herself abandoned by the French monarch, had been engaged by the Guises to have recourse to the powerful protection of Philip, who, though he had not yet come to an open rupture with the queen, was every day, both by the injuries which he committed and suffered, more exasperated against her. That he might retaliate the assistance which she gave to his rebels in the Low Countries, he had sent, under the name of the pope; a body of seven hundred Spaniards and Italians into Ireland; where the inhabitants, always turbulent, and discontented with the English government, were now more alienated by religious prejudices, and were ready to join every invader. The Spanish general, San Josepho, built a fort in Kerry; and being there besieged by the earl of Ormond, president of Munster, who was soon after joined by Lord Gray, the deputy, he made a weak and cowardly defence. After some assaults, feebly sustained, he surrendered at discretion; and Gray, who commanded but a small force, finding himself encumbered with so many prisoners, put all the Spaniards and Italians to the sword without mercy, and hanged about fifteen hundred of the Irish; a cruelty which gave great displeasure to Elizabeth.[*]

When the English ambassador made complaints of this invasion, he was answered by like complaints of the piracies committed by Francis Drake, a bold seaman, who had assaulted the Spaniards in the place where they deemed themselves most secure—in the new world. This man, sprung from mean parents in the county of Devon, having acquired considerable riches by depredations made in the Isthmus of Panama, and having there gotten a sight of the Pacific Ocean, was so stimulated by ambition and avarice, that he scrupled not to employ his whole fortune in a new adventure through those seas, so much unknown at that time to all the European nations.[**] By means of Sir Christopher Hatton, then vice-chamberlain, a great favorite of the queen’s, he obtained her consent and approbation; and he set sail from Plymouth in 1577, with four ships and a pinnace, on board of which were one hundred and sixty-four able sailors.[***] He passed into the South Sea by the Straits of Magellan; and attacking the Spaniards, who expected no enemy in those quarters, he took many rich prizes, and prepared to return with the booty which he had acquired. Apprehensive of being intercepted by the enemy, if he took the same way homewards by which he had reached the Pacific Ocean, he attempted to find a passage by the north of California; and failing in that enterprise, he set sail for the East Indies, and returned safely this year, by the Cape of Good Hope. He was the first Englishman who sailed round the globe; and the first commander-in-chief; for Magellan, whose ship executed the same adventure, died in his passage. His name became celebrated on account of so bold and fortunate an attempt; but many, apprehending the resentment of the Spaniards, endeavored to persuade the queen, that it would be more prudent to disavow the enterprise, to punish Drake, and to restore the treasure. But Elizabeth, who admired valor, and who was allured by the prospect of sharing in the booty, determined to countenance that gallant sailor: she conferred on him the honor of knighthood, and accepted of a banquet from him at Deptford, on board the ship which had achieved so memorable a voyage.

* Camden, p. 475. Cox’s Hist, of Ireland, p. 368.

** Camden, p. 478. Stowe, p. 689.

** Camden, p. 478. Hakluyt’s Voyages, vol. iii. p. 750
Purchas’s Pilgrim, vol. i. p. 46.

When Philip’s ambassador, Mendoza, exclaimed against Drake’s piracies, she told him, that the Spaniards, by arrogating a right to the whole new world, and excluding thence all other European nations who should sail thither, even with a view of exercising the most lawful commerce, naturally tempted others to make a violent irruption into those countries.[*] To pacify, however, the Catholic monarch, she caused part of the booty to be restored to Pedro Sebura, a Spaniard, who pretended to be agent for the merchants whom Drake had spoiled. Having learned afterwards that Philip had seized the money, and had employed part of it against herself in Ireland, part of it in the pay of the prince of Parma’s troops she determined to make no more restitutions.

1581.

There was another cause which induced the queen to take this resolution: she was in such want of money, that she was obliged to assemble a parliament; a measure which, as she herself openly declared, she never embraced except when constrained by the necessity of her affairs. The parliament, besides granting her a supply of one subsidy and two fifteenths, enacted some statutes for the security of her government, chiefly against the attempts of the Catholics. Whoever in any way reconciled any one to the church of Rome, or was himself reconciled, was declared to be guilty of treason; to say mass was subjected to the penalty of a year’s imprisonment and a fine of two hundred marks; the being present was punishable by a year’s imprisonment and a fine of a hundred marks: a fine of twenty pounds a month was imposed on every one who continued, during that time, absent from church.[**] To utter slanderous or seditious words against the queen was punishable, for the first offence, with the pillory and loss of ears; the second offence was declared felony; the writing or printing of such words was felony, even on the first offence.[***] The Puritans prevailed so far as to have further applications made for reformation in religion:[****] and Paul Wentworth, brother to the member of that name who had distinguished himself in the preceding session, moved, that the commons, from their own authority, should appoint a general fast and prayers; a motion to which the house unwarily assented. For this presumption they were severely reprimanded by a message from the queen, as encroaching on the royal prerogative and supremacy; and they were obliged to submit, and ask forgiveness.[v]

* Camden, p. 480.

** 23 Eliz. cap. 1.

*** 23 Eliz. cap. 2.

**** D’Ewes, p. 302.

v Camden, p. 477.

The queen and parliament were engaged to pass these severe laws against the Catholics, by some late discoveries of the treasonable practices of their priests. When the ancient worship was suppressed, and the reformation introduced into the universities, the king of Spain reflected, that as some species of literature was necessary for supporting these doctrines and controversies, the Romish communion must decay in England, if no means were found to give erudition to the ecclesiastics; and for this reason he founded a seminary at Douay, where the Catholics sent their children, chiefly such as were intended for the priesthood, in order to receive the rudiments of their education. The cardinal of Lorraine imitated this example, by erecting a like seminary in his diocese of Rheims; and though Rome was somewhat distant, the pope would not neglect to adorn, by a foundation of the same nature, that capital of orthodoxy. These seminaries, founded with so hostile an intention, sent over, every year, a colony of priests, who maintained the Catholic superstition in its full height of bigotry; and being educated with a view to the crown of martyrdom, were not deterred, either by danger or fatigue, from maintaining and propagating their principles. They infused into all their votaries an extreme hatred against the queen, whom they treated as a usurper, a schismatic, a heretic, a persecutor of the orthodox, and one solemnly and publicly anathematized by the holy father. Sedition, rebellion, sometimes assassination, were the expedients by which they intended to effect their purposes against her; and the severe restraint, not to say persecution, under which the Catholics labored, made them the more willingly receive from their ghostly fathers such violent doctrines.