The History of England by A. E. Pollard
England had disposed of similar claims to political and military authority in 1569, when medieval
feudalism made its last bid for the control of English policy. For ten years Elizabeth had been guided by
Sir William Cecil, a typical "new man" of Tudor making, who hoped to wean the common people from
dependence upon their lords, and to complete the destruction of feudal privileges which still impeded the
action of national sovereignty. The flight of Mary Queen of Scots into England in 1568 provided a focus
for noble discontent with Cecil's rule, and the northern earls rebelled in 1569. The rebellion was easily
suppressed, but its failure did not deter the Duke of Norfolk, the earls' accomplice, from joining Ridolfi's
plot with similar ends. He was brought to the block in 1572, and in him perished the last surviving
English duke. For more than half a century England had to do its best - defeat the Spanish Armada,
conquer Ireland, circumnavigate the globe, lay the foundations of empire, produce the literature of the
Elizabethan age - without any ducal assistance. It was left for James I, who also created the rank of
baronet in order to sell the title (1611), to revive the glories of ducal dignity in the persons of Ludovic
Stuart, Duke of Richmond, and George Villiers, Duke of Buckingham (1623).
Cecil's drastic methods of dealing with the opposition lords left the door of government open to men like
Walsingham, who were determined to give full play to the new forces in English politics. Discontented
reactionaries were reduced to impotent silence, or driven abroad to side openly with the enemy. Pius V's
bull excommunicating and deposing Elizabeth (1570) shattered in a similar way the old Catholic party.
The majority acquiesced in the national religion; the extremists fled to become conspirators at foreign
courts or Jesuit and missionary priests. The antagonism between England and Spain in the New World
did more, perhaps, than Spanish Catholicism to make Philip the natural patron of these exiles and of their
plots against the English government; and as Spain and England drew apart, England and France drew
together. In 1572 a defensive alliance was formed between them, and there seemed a prospect of their
co-operation to drive the Spaniards out of the Netherlands. But Catholic France resented this Huguenot
policy, and the massacre of St. Bartholomew put a violent end to the scheme, while Elizabeth and Philip
patched up a truce for some years. There could, however, be no permanent compromise, on the one hand,
between Spanish exclusiveness and the determination of Englishmen to force open the door of the New
World and, on the other, between English nationalism and the papal resolve to reconquer England for the
Catholic church. Philip made common cause with the papacy and with its British champion, Mary Queen
of Scots, while Englishmen made common cause with Philip's revolted subjects in the Netherlands. The
acquisition of Portugal, its fleet, and its colonial empire by Philip in 1580, the assassination of William of
Orange in 1584, and the victories of Alexander of Parma in the Netherlands forced Elizabeth into
decisive action. The Dutch were taken under her wing, a national expedition led by Drake paralyzed
Spanish dominion in the West Indies in 1585 and then destroyed Philip's fleet at Cadiz in 1587, and the
Queen of Scots was executed.
At last Philip attempted a tardy retaliation with the Spanish Armada. Its naval inefficiency was matched
by political miscalculations. Philip never imagined that a united England could be conquered; but he
laboured under the delusion, spread by English Catholic exiles, that the majority of the English people
only awaited a signal to rise against their queen. When this delusion was exploded and the naval
incompetence of Spain exposed, his dreams of conquest vanished, and he continued the war merely in the
hope of securing guarantees against English interference in the New World, in the Netherlands, and in
France, where he was helping the Catholic League to keep Henry of Navarre off the French throne.
Ireland, however, was his most promising sphere of operations. There religious and racial hostility to the
English was fusing discordant Irish septs into an Irish nation, and the appearance of a Spanish expedition
was the signal for something like a national revolt. England had not been rich enough in men or money to
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