husband of Mary Tudor could claim the throne for himself. What the formidable attack of Philip on England in 1588, the year following the execution of Mary, queen of Scots, really signified, is best and most graphically shown in the pastoral letter to the English people of cardinal Allen. Allen had been for years the indefatigable teacher of the disloyal Roman Catholic seminarists at Douai and at Rheims. Pope Sixtus V., who had already offered a large sum of money to Philip to help him in his invasion of England, had made him a cardinal; and Allen was also named as the future archbishop of Canterbury.

This pastoral letter of cardinal Allen rehearsed the terrible anathemas levelled by Rome at queen Elizabeth, urging at the same time the faithful English Roman Catholics to rise in arms and thus welcome the Spanish champion of their religion. Copies of this pastoral of Allen's were secretly conveyed across the Channel, and distributed by means of the many Roman missionaries scattered up and down the country. The Spanish invasion, so runs the traitorous document which heralded the advent of the Armada and the soldiers of Parma, who were to be convoyed across the narrow seas by means of the ships of Spain, was intended to dethrone the usurping heretic Elizabeth, who was termed the infamous daughter of the excommunicated Henry VIII. The English queen was described as born in adultery; as one who had overthrown the English Church, profaned the sacraments, and torn God's

Philip had also shadowy claims to the English throne through his descent from the house of Lancaster; John of Gaunt having married Constance, daughter of Peter the Cruel of Castille, from whom the emperor Charles V. was descended.

priests from the altars in the very act of celebrating the holy mysteries. In the sees of the bishops she had placed the scum and filth of mankind—infamous, lascivious, apostate heretics. She had made England a sanctuary of atheists and rebels. Innocent, godly, and learned men, priests and bishops in England and Ireland, had been racked, torn, chained, and even barbarously executed; and the queen had filled up at last the measure of her wickedness by killing the anointed of God, the lady Mary, her nearest kinswoman, and by law the rightful possessor of her crown. The holy father had for a long time treated her with gentleness; but finding that such treatment availed nothing, he at length asked the princes of Christendom to aid him in the punishment of so wicked a monster-the scourge of God and shame of womankind. The most Catholic king [Philip II. of Spain] had undertaken the task, and his soldiers were about to land on the English coast. "His holiness," pursued Allen, "being of your own flesh and blood, has been pleased to choose me as his legate for the restoring of religion. . He discharges you (the faithful) of your oath of allegiance, and requires you to join his Catholic majesty's power on their arrival." They (the faithful) were to fight for God's church and the honour of English knighthood, for Christ, for religion, and for the holy sacraments of the faith. The saints in heaven were interceding for them; the blood of the martyred bishops, friars, priests, and laymen was crying to God for their victory; they were not to fear, for the English nation would turn from the setting sun, and would follow no more the broken fortunes of a

1588.]

Much more of similar traitorous stuff was contained in this singular document of cardinal Allen, which preceded the advent of the Spanish Armada. The mighty armament itself sailed from the shores of Spain for the invasion of England in the July of 1588, under the command of the duke de Medina Sidonia, the grandest and apparently the most powerful fleet that the world had ever seen, while a trained and well-equipped Spanish army, under the able generalship of the prince of Parma, waited for their coming on the coasts of the Low Countries.

The utter discomfiture of this magnificent Armada by the English fleet, under the gallant Howard, Drake, and their valiant companions, is a well-known story, and does not belong to our own. But the memory of king Philip's attempt, and the awful danger to which England had been exposed, remained for ever green in the memory of the English people. It has never been forgotten. Twenty years filled with plots, with secret machinations, with constant rumours of revolt, revolution, and assassinations, had already sunk deep into the hearts of the nation. The Armada was the crowning blow to Roman Catholicism in this country. The innocent suffered with the guilty. There is no reason to suppose that the majority of English Romanists really sympathised with these would-be disturbers of the national peace, or ever dreamed of making common cause with the traitorous men who desired

Cf. Froude, who gives this Admonition to the Nobility of England by Cardinal Allen" at greater length: vol. xii, chap. xxxvi.

407

the violent death of Elizabeth and the elevation of the queen of Scots to the throne; still less favoured the views of Philip of Spain. But, naturally, the wellknown conspiring of the little band of Jesuits and of seminarists, their undisguised teachings, the horrible fulminations of successive popes, the designs of Philip, which, when the Armada sailed in all its grandeur and pomp of war from the shores of Spain, seemed near their dread fulfilment—all these things impressed the English people with the persuasion that Roman Catholicism was a public and perpetual menace to the very existence of the empire; that the English Roman Catholic was at heart a traitor, one who for the interests of what he deemed the true religion was ready to sacrifice the best interests of his country.

Never has this stern object-lesson been forgotten; and the dislike, in many cases the positive hatred, of the English nation to Rome and its faith, which even after three centuries still lives among us, is largely traceable to the events which happened during the first thirty years of Elizabeth's reign, very briefly and roughly portrayed in the preceding pages. In much, the dispassionate modern historian freely confesses, this dislike is exaggerated and perhaps unreasonable; but it was then far from baseless, and, rightly or wrongly, it has largely influenced and deeply coloured the whole subsequent history of the Church of England. How strongly these events influenced Elizabeth, and determined her conduct and the policy of her confidential advisers in church matters, must now be related, as we proceed to take up again our chronicle of the ecclesiastical settlement of her reign.

E

LIZABETH in many respects inherited her father's (Henry VIII.) views on religion. It has been said. broadly, but not without some truth, that king Henry attempted to constitute an Anglican church differing from the Roman Catholic church on the point of the papal supremacy, and on that point alone.* His daughter to a large extent shared these views. "Circumstances rather than preference had placed her originally on the side of the Protestants. Her connection with them was political, and it was only when she needed their assistance that she acknowledged a community of creed. With the quarrel with Rome she was identified from her birth. Her mother's marriage had caused the rupture, and the reunion under her sister had been accompanied by her own disgrace. But with the creed as distinct from the papal supremacy she had no quarrel at all. Mass and breviary, accompanied by national independence and liberty, not of worship but of conscience, would have suited best with her own tastes. For Protestantism Elizabeth had never concealed her

Macaulay: "History of England," vol. i.,

chap. i.

left the Catholics in her household so unrestrained that they absented themselves at pleasure from the royal chapel without a question being asked. She allowed the county gentlemen all possible latitude in their own houses."*

These passages of our historians, allowing perhaps for a little exaggeration, fairly represent Elizabeth's mind toward religion. The great queen, however, was no theologian like her father, and in these matters felt less deeply than he had done, and allowed herself to be largely influenced by her episcopal advisers. These had been, of course, mostly chosen from the reformed party, which had suffered so grievously under the rule of her sister Mary. Their influence with her was enormously strengthened, as we have seen, by the events which happened during the first thirty years of her reign. The danger

*Froude History of England," vol. xii., chap. xxxviii., and "Conclusion."