Sir H. Sidney overruns the South and West Sir Humfrey Gilbert in command at Kilmallock Wholesale slaughter of the Irish Enormous cost of Ireland to the English Crown Sir Edward Fitton President of Connaught Fortunes of the Archbishop of Cashel in Spain Ireland a fief of the see of Rome Intended invasion of Ireland by the Spaniards Sir Henry Sidney resigns his office They are cut in pieces by Perrot and the Butlers Results of Perrot's government... Elizabeth determines to conciliate the Irish Attempted English settlement at Knockfergus THE CHAPTER XIX. HE impunity with which Elizabeth's Government CHAP XIX was able to insult and provoke the Catholic Powers of Europe is the most anomalous phenomenon in modern history. The population of England was less than half the population either of France or Spain. The nation was divided against itself, and three-quarters of the Peers and half the gentlemen were disaffected. Yet the intricacies of the political situation protected the Queen not only against active resentment from abroad, but from the conspiracies of her own subjects. Everywhere, indeed, there was paradox; everywhere contradiction and inconsistency. In the struggle for existence men snatch at the first weapon that comes to hand, and cannot look too nicely at the armoury where it has been forged. Catholics and Protestants where they were a suffering minority clamoured alike for liberty of conscience; alike where they were in power they proscribed every creed but their own. The obligations of loyalty varied with the creed of the Sovereign. The English Bishops who composed the Homily on Wilful Rebellion, fed the armies of the Huguenots and the Prince of Orange with contributions collected in the English churches. The Catholics who on the Continent preached the Divine right of Kings, believed CHAP XIX in England that they might lawfully be deposed by their subjects. Princes were not more consistent than their peoples. Elizabeth was half a Catholic in theory, in practice she was the most vigorous of Protestants. The Court of France was one month the ally of the Papacy, and the irreconcilable enemy of heresy; in the next it was seeking alliance with England, stretching out its hands to the Princes of the religion, and thinking only how best to take advantage of the distractions of the Low Countries, and annex Brabant and Flanders to the French crown. But phenomena like these occasion no surprise. They explain themselves on the common principles of human nature, or in the divisions of opinions and parties. The anomalies in the position of the English Queen were so singular as to be without precedent or parallel. From Philip, the most orthodox of Princes, and the Spanish nation, the most passionately Catholic in the world, some kind of principle, some uniformity of action, might have been looked for with certainty; yet Philip was compelled to be the chief supporter of a heretic Power, by which he was himself insulted and despised. If he attempted to interfere to change the government in England, France stepped to Elizabeth's side and threatened him with war. If he stood aside to let the Catholics rebel, the Catholic element in France was ready with its offers of help to secure the profits of the anticipated revolution, and Philip, through fear for his Netherlands, was forced back upon his sisterin-law's side, was obliged to stand between her and the Pope, and to perplex the whole Catholic world by an irresolution not less marked and far more mischievous than the vacillation of Elizabeth herself. Again and again he had tried to extricate himself from his dilemma, but the strange eddy was always too strong for him. Had there been no France the English Catholics CHAP XIX would have found an instant ally in Spain and Mary Stuart would have found a champion. Had Mary Stuart been unconnected with France the difficulty would have been greater but still not insurmountable. And again, had there been no Spain, the French would never have submitted to be driven out of Scotland, or would have found an easy means to revenge themselves in the intestine divisions of England. But as with the calms in the Northern latitudes, which are caused by the conflict and counterpoise of opposed atmospheric currents, the mutual jealousies of the two Powers left Elizabeth more free to settle her own difficulties than if the 'ditch' which divided England from the Continent had been the Atlantic itself. She had the advantage of the neighbourhood without its evil, for her disaffected subjects, instead of trusting to their own energies, built their hopes on assistance from abroad which never came. She had robbed Philip of his money, imprisoned his ambassador, destroyed his commerce, assisted his subjects in rebellion, and invaded his Indian colonies, yet to keep her on the throne continued the same necessity to him as when ten years before he had rejected the entreaties of de Feria and de Quadra to make himself master of England by force. If The immunity indeed could not last for ever. the Reformers were finally crushed on the Continent, the turn of England would come in the end; and had Elizabeth understood the situation as completely as Cecil understood it, she might have struck boldly into the quarrel, and perhaps turned the scale conclusively over all Western Europe. But for such a policy she wanted courage, and probably she wanted inclination. She dipped into the whirlpool and drew out of it, she hung CHAP XIX on the edge and promised and broke her promises, and sent help to France and Flanders and denied having sent it, and did all those things which in common times would have most exposed her to danger with least profit to herself. Yet here too, strangely, her star was on her side. This very conduct answered best for her own purposes, since it enabled Philip to hope to the last that she would go back to the principles of the old alliance and the old faith, and so furnished him with an excuse to himself for his own inaction. Thus time was gained, and time was everything for the consolidation of English freedom. Catholicism in England was still to appearance large and imposing, but its strength was the strength of age, which, when it is bowed or broken, cannot lift itself again. Protestantism, on the other hand, was exuberant in the freshness of youth; if a branch was lopped away another more vigorous shot from the stem; the sap was in its veins; it would bend to the storm and gather strength from the blasts which tossed its branches. The Catholic rested upon order and tradition, stately in his habits of thought, mechanical and regular in his mode of action. His party depended on its leaders, and the leaders looked for guidance to the Pope and the European Princes. The Protestant was self-dependent, confident, careless of life, believing in the future not the past, irrepressible by authority, eager to grapple with his adversary wherever he could find him, and rushing into piracy metaphorical or literal when regular warfare was denied him. Life and energy were on the side of the Queen, and every year that she could gain was a fresh security for her, while the convenient season for which Philip waited, though it arrived at last, arrived too late, when the hand which should execute his behests was shaking in decrepitude. |