The Age of the Reformation Part 25

[Sidenote: War with Spain]

The war with Spain is sometimes regarded as the inevitable consequence of the religious opposition of the chief Catholic and the chief Protestant power. But probably the war would never have gone beyond the stage of privateering and plots to a.s.sa.s.sinate in which it remained inchoate for so long, had it not been for the Netherlands. The corner-stone of English policy has been to keep friendly, or weak, the power controlling the mouths of the Rhine and the Scheldt. The war of liberation in the Netherlands had a twofold effect; in the first place it damaged England's best customer, and secondly, Spanish "frightfulness" shocked the English conscience. For a long time the policy of the queen herself was as cynically selfish as it could possibly be. She not only watched complacently the butcheries of Alva, but she plotted and counterplotted, now offering aid to the Prince of Orange, now betraying his cause in a way that may have been sport to her but was death to the men she played with. Her aim, as far as she had a consistent one, was to allow Spain and the Netherlands to exhaust each other.

Not only far n.o.bler but, as it proved in the end, far wiser, was the action of the Puritan party that poured money and recruits into the cause of their oppressed fellow-Calvinists. But an equally great service to them, or at any rate a greater amount of damage to Spain, was done by the hardy buccaneers, Hawkins and Drake, who preyed upon the Spanish treasure {340} galleons and pillaged the Spanish settlements in the New World. These men and their fellows not only cut the sinews of Spain's power but likewise built the fleet.

[Sidenote: England's sea power]

The eventual naval victory of England was preceded by a long course of successful diplomacy. As the aggressor England forced the haughtiest power in Europe to endure a protracted series of outrages. Not only were rebels supported, not only were Spanish fleets taken forcibly into English harbors and there stripped of moneys belonging to their government, but refugees were protected and Spanish citizens put to death by the English queen. Philip and Alva could not effectively resent and hardly dared to protest against the treatment, because they felt themselves powerless. As so often, the island kingdom was protected by the ocean and by the proved superiority of her seamen.

After a score of petty fights all the way from the Bay of Biscay to the Pacific Ocean, Spanish sailors had no desire for a trial of strength in force.

But in every respect save in sea power Spain felt herself immeasurably superior to her foe. Her wealth, her dominions, recently augmented by the annexation of Portugal, were enormous; her army had been tried in a hundred battles. England's force was doubtless underestimated. An Italian expert stated that an army of 10,000 to 12,000 foot and 2,000 horse would be sufficient to conquer her. Even to the last it was thought that an invader would be welcomed by a large part of the population, for English refugees never wearied of picturing the hatred of the people for their queen.

But the decision was long postponed for two reasons. First, Spain was fully employed in subduing the Netherlands. Secondly, the Catholic powers hoped for the accession of Mary. But after the a.s.sa.s.sination of Orange in 1584, and after the execution of the Queen {341} of Scots, these reasons for delay no longer existed. Drake carried the naval war [Sidenote: 1585] to the coasts of Spain and to her colonies. The consequent bankruptcy of the Bank of Seville and the wounded national pride brought home to Spaniards the humiliation of their position. All that Philip could do was to pray for help and to forbid the importation of English wares. [Sidenote: April 1587] In reply Drake fell upon the harbor of Cadiz and destroyed twenty-four or more wars.h.i.+ps and vast military stores.

So at last the decision was taken to crush the one power that seemed to maintain the Reformation, to uphold the Huguenots and the Dutch patriots and to harry with impunity the champions of Catholicism. Pope Sixtus V, not wis.h.i.+ng to hazard anything, promised a subsidy of 1,000,000 crowns of gold, the first half payable on the landing of the Spanish army, the second half two months later. Save this, Philip had no promise of help from any Catholic power.

The huge scale of his preparations was only equaled by their vast lack of intelligence, insuring defeat from the first. The type of s.h.i.+p adopted was the old galley, intended to ram and grapple the enemy but totally unfitted for manoeuvring in the Atlantic gales. The 130 s.h.i.+ps carried 2500 guns, but the artillery, though numerous, was small, intended rather to be used against the enemy crews than against the s.h.i.+ps themselves. The necessary geographical information for the invasion of Britain in the year 1588 was procured from Caesar's _De Bello Gallico_. The admiral in chief, the Duke of Medina Sidonia, had never even commanded a s.h.i.+p before and most of the high officers were equally innocent of professional knowledge, for sailors were despised as inferior to soldiers. Three-fourths of the crews were soldiers, all but useless in naval warfare of the new type. Blind zeal did little to supply the lack {342} of foresight, though Philip spent hours on his knees before the host in intercession for the success of his venture.

The very names of the s.h.i.+ps, though quite in accordance with Spanish practice, seem symbolic of the holy character of the crusade: _Santa Maria de Gracia, Neustra Senora del Rosario, San Juan Baptista, La Concepcion_.

On the English side there was also plenty of fanatical fury, but it was accompanied by practical sense. The grandfathers of Cromwell's Ironsides had already learned, if they had not yet formulated, the maxim, "Fear G.o.d and keep your powder dry." Some of the s.h.i.+ps in the English navy had religious names, but many were called by more secular appellations: _The Bull, The Tiger, The Dreadnought, The Revenge_. To meet the foe a very formidable and self-confident force of about forty-five s.h.i.+ps of the best sort had gathered from the well-tried ranks of the buccaneers. It is true that patronage did some damage to the English service, but it was little compared to that of Spain. Lord Howard of Effingham was made admiral on account of his t.i.tle, but the vice-admiral was Sir Francis Drake, to whom the chief credit of the action must fall.

[Sidenote: July, 1588]

The battle in the Channel was fought for nine days. There was no general strategy or tactics; the English simply sought to isolate and sink a s.h.i.+p wherever they could. Their heavier cannon were used against the enemy, and fire-s.h.i.+ps were sent among his vessels. When six Spanish s.h.i.+ps had foundered in the Channel, the fleet turned northward to the coasts of Holland. During their flight an uncertain number were destroyed by the English, and a few more fell a prey to the Sea Beggars of Holland. The rest, much battered, turned north to sail around Scotland. In the storms nineteen s.h.i.+ps were wrecked on the coasts of Scotland and Ireland; of thirty-five s.h.i.+ps the Spaniards themselves {343} could give no account. For two months Philip was in suspense as to the fate of his great Armada, of which at last only a riddled and battered remnant returned to home harbors.

The importance of the victory over the Armada, like that of most dramatic events, has been overestimated. To contemporaries, at least to the victors and their friends it appeared as the direct judgment of G.o.d: "Flavit Deus et dissipati sunt." The gorgeous rhetoric of Ranke and Froude has painted it as one of the turning points in world history. But in reality it rather marked than made an epoch. Had Philip's s.h.i.+ps won, it is still inconceivable that he could have imposed his dominion on England any more than he could on the Netherlands. England was ripening and Spain was rotting for half a century before the collision made this fact plain to all. The Armada did not end the war nor did it give the death blow to Spanish power, much less to Catholicism. On the Continent of Europe things went on almost unchanged.

But in England the effect was considerable. The victory stimulated national pride; it strengthened the Protestants, and the left wing of that party. Though the Catholics had shown themselves loyal during the crisis they were subjected, immediately thereafter, to the severest persecution they had yet felt. This was due partly to nervous excitement of the whole population, partly to the advance towards power of the Puritans, always the war party.

[Sidenote: Puritans]

Even in the first years of the great queen there had been a number of Calvinists who looked askance at the Anglican settlement as too much of a compromise with Catholicism and Lutheranism. The Thirty-nine Articles pa.s.sed Convocation by a single vote [Sidenote: 1563] as against a more Calvinistic confession. Low-churchmen (as they would now be called) attacked the "Aaronic" {344} vestments of the Anglican priests, and prelacy was detested as but one degree removed from papacy.

The Puritans were not dissenters but were a party in the Anglican communion thoroughly believing in a national church, but wis.h.i.+ng to make the breach with Rome as wide as possible. They found fault with all that had been retained in the Prayer Book for which there was no direct warrant in Scripture, and many of them began to use, in secret conventicles, the Genevan instead of the English liturgy. Their leader, Thomas Cartwright, [Sidenote: Cartwright, 1535-1603] a professor of divinity at Cambridge until deprived of his chair by the government, had brought back from the Netherlands ideals of a presbyterian form of ecclesiastical polity. In his view many "Popish Abuses" remained in the church of England, among them the keeping of saints' days, kneeling at communion, "the childish and superst.i.tious toys" connected with the baptismal service, the words then used in the marriage service by the man, "with my body I thee wors.h.i.+p" by which the husband "made an idol of his wife," the use of such t.i.tles as archbishop, arch-deacon, lord bishop.

It was because of their excessively scrupulous conscience in these matters, that the name "Puritan" was given to the Calvinist by his enemy, at first a mocking designation a.n.a.logous to "Catharus" in the Middle Ages. But the tide set strongly in the Puritan direction. Time and again the Commons tried to initiate legislation to relieve the consciences of the stricter party, but their efforts were blocked by the crown. From this time forth the church of England made an alliance with the throne that has never been broken. As Jewel had been compelled, at the beginning of Elizabeth's reign, [Sidenote: 1562] to defend the Anglican church against Rome, so Richard Hooker, in his famous {345} _Ecclesiastical Polity_ [Sidenote: 1594] was now forced to defend it from the extreme Protestants. In the very year in which this finely tempered work was written, a Jesuit reported that the Puritans were the strongest body in the kingdom and particularly that they had the most officers and soldiers on their side. The coming Commonwealth was already casting its shadow on the age of Shakespeare.

As a moral and religious influence Puritanism was of the utmost importance in moulding the English--and American--character and it was, take it all in all, a n.o.ble thing. If it has been justly blamed for a certain narrowness in its hostility, or indifference, to art and refinement, it more than compensated for this by the moral earnestness that it impressed on the people. To bring the genius of the Bible into English life and literature, to impress each man with the idea of living for duty, to reduce politics and the whole life of the state to ethical standards, are undoubted services of Puritanism. Politically, it favored the growth of self-reliance, self-control and a sense of personal worth that made democracy possible and necessary.

[Sidenote: Browne, 1550?-1633?]

To the left of the Puritans were the Independents or Brownists as they were called from their leader Robert Browne, the advocate of _Reformation without Tarrying for Any_. He had been a refugee in the Netherlands, where he may have come under Anabaptist influence. His disciples differed from the followers of Cartwright in separating themselves from the state church, in which they found many "filthy traditions and inventions of men." Beginning to organize hi separate congregations about 1567, they were said by Sir Walter Raleigh to have as many as 20,000 adherents in 1593. Though heartily disliked by re-actionaries and by the _beati possidentes_ in both church {346} and state, they were, nevertheless, the party of the future.

[1] A. O. Meyer: _England und die katholische Kirche unter Elizabeth_, p. 231.

SECTION 5. IRELAND

If the union of England and Wales has been a marriage--after a courts.h.i.+p of the primitive type; if the union with Scotland has been a successful partners.h.i.+p--following a long period of cut-throat compet.i.tion; the position of Ireland has been that of a captive and a slave. To her unwilling mind the English domination has always been a foreign one, and this fact makes more difference with her than whether her master has been cruel, as formerly, or kind, as of late.

[Sidenote: English rule]

The saddest period in all Erin's sad life was that of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, when to the old antagonism of race was added a new hatred of creed and a new commercial compet.i.tion. The policy of Henry was "to reduce that realm to the knowledge of G.o.d and obedience of Us." The policy of Elizabeth was to pray that G.o.d might "call them to the knowledge of his truth and to a civil polity," and to a.s.sist the Almighty by the most fiendish means to accomplish these ends. The government of the island was a crime, and yet for this crime some considerations must be urged in extenuation. England then regarded the Irish much as the Americans have seemed to regard the Indians, as savages to be killed and driven off to make room for a higher civilization. Had England been able to apply the method of extermination she would doubtless have done so and there would then be no Irish question today. But in 1540 it was recognized that "to enterprise the whole extirpation and total destruction of all the Irishmen in the land would be a marvellous gumptious charge and great difficulty."

Being unable to accomplish this or to put Ireland at {347} the bottom of the sea, where Elizabeth's minister Walsingham often wished that it were, the English had the alternatives of half governing or wholly abandoning their neighbors. The latter course was felt to be too dangerous, but had it been adopted, Ireland might have evolved an adequate government and prosperity of her own. It is true that she was more backward than England, but yet she had a considerable trade and culture. [Sidenote: Irish misery] Certain points, like Dublin and Waterford, had much commerce with the Continent. And yet, as to the nation as a whole, the report of 1515 probably speaks true in saying: "There is no common folk in all this world so little set by, so greatly despised, so feeble, so poor, so greatly trodden under foot, as the king's poor common folk of Ireland." There was no map of the whole of Ireland; the roads were few and poor and the vaguest notions prevailed as to the shape, size and population of the country. The most civilized part was the English Pale around Dublin; the native Irish lived "west of the Barrow and west of the law," and were governed by more than sixty native chiefs. Intermarriage of colonists and natives was forbidden by law. The only way the Tudor government knew of a.s.serting its suzerainty over these septs, correctly described as "the king's Irish enemies," was to raid them at intervals, slaying, robbing and raping as they went. It was after one of these raids in 1580 that the poet Spencer wrote:

The people were brought to such wretchedness that any strong heart would have rued the same. Out of every corner of the woods and glens they came, creeping forth upon their hands, for their legs would not bear them.

They looked like anatomies of death; they spoke like ghosts crying out of their graves. They did eat the dead carrions, happy where they could find them; yea and one {348} another soon after, inasmuch as the very carca.s.ses they spared not to sc.r.a.pe out of their graves; and if they found a plot of watercresses or shamrocks, there they thronged as to a feast for a time.

The Irish chiefs were not to be tamed by either kindness or force.

Henry and Elizabeth scattered t.i.tles of "earl" and "lord" among the O's and Macs of her western island, only to find that the coronet made not the slightest difference in either their affections or their manners.

They still lived as marauding chiefs, surrounded by wild kerns and gallowgla.s.ses fighting each other and preying on their own poor subjects. "Let a thousand of my people die," remarked one of them, Neil Garv, "I pa.s.s not a pin. . . . I will punish, exact, cut and hang where and whenever I list." Had they been able to make common cause they might perhaps have shaken the English grasp from their necks, for it was commonly corrupt and feeble. Sir Henry Sidney was the strongest and best governor sent to the island during the century, but he was able to do little. Though the others could be bribed and though one of them, the Earl of Ess.e.x, conspired with the chiefs to rebel, and though at the very end of Elizabeth's reign a capable Spanish army landed in Ireland to help the natives, nothing ever enabled them to turn out the hated "Sa.s.senach."

[Sidenote: English colonization]

England had already tried to solve the Irish problem by colonization.

Leinster had long been a center of English settlement, and in 1573 the first English colony was sent to Ulster. But as it consisted chiefly of bankrupts, fugitives from justice and others "of so corrupt a disposition as England rather refuseth," it did not help matters much but rather "irrecuperably d.a.m.nified the state." The Irish Parliament continued to represent only the English of the Pale and of a few towns outside of it. Though the inhabitants of the {349} Pale remained nominally Catholic, the Parliament was so servile that in 1541 it destroyed the monasteries and repudiated the pope, [Sidenote: Religion]

shortly after which the king took the t.i.tle of Head of the Irish Church. Not one penny of the confiscated wealth went to endow an Irish university until 1591, when Trinity College was founded in the interests of Protestantism. Though almost every other country of Europe had its own printing presses before 1500, Ireland had none until 1551, and then the press was used so exclusively for propaganda that it made the very name of reading hateful to the natives. There were, however, no religious ma.s.sacres and no martyrs of either cause. The persecuting laws were left until the following century.

[Sidenote: Commercial exploitation]

The rise of the traders to political power was more ominous than the inception of a new religion. The country was drained of treasure by the exaction of enormous ransoms for captured chiefs. The Irish cloth-trade and sea-borne commerce were suppressed. The country was flooded with inferior coin, thus putting its merchants at a vast disadvantage. Finally, there was little left that the Irish were able to import save liquors, and those "much corrupted."

With every plea in mitigation of judgment that can be offered, it must be recognized that England's government of Ireland proved a failure.

If she did not make the Irish savage she did her best to keep them so, and then punished them for it. By exploiting Erin's resources she impoverished herself. By trying to impose Protestantism she made Ireland the very stronghold of papacy. By striving to destroy the septs she created the nation.

{350}

CHAPTER VII

SCOTLAND

One of the most important effects of modern means of easy communication between all parts of the world has been to obliterate or minimize distinctions in national character and in degrees of civilization. The manner of life of England and Australia differ less now than the manner of life of England and Scotland differed in the sixteenth century. The great stream of culture then flowed much more strongly in the central than in the outlying parts of Western Europe. The Latin nations, Italy and France, lay nearest the heart of civilization. But slightly less advanced in culture and in the amenities of life, and superior in some respects, were the Netherlands, Switzerland, England and the southern and central parts of Germany. In partial shadow round about lay a belt of lands: Spain, Portugal, Northern Germany, Prussia, Poland, Hungary, Scandinavia, Scotland, and Ireland.

[Sidenote: Scotland]

Scotland, indeed, had her own universities, but her best scholars were often found at Paris, or in German or Italian academies. Scotch humanists on the continent, the Scotch guard of the French king, and Scotch monasteries, such as those at Erfurt and Wurzburg, raised the reputation of the country abroad rather than advanced its native culture. Printing was not introduced until 1507. Brantome in the sixteenth century, like Aeneas Silvius in the fifteenth, remarked the uncouthness of the northern kingdom.

Most backward of all was Scotland's political development. No king arose strong enough to be at once {351} the tyrant and the saviour of his country; under the weak rule of a series of minors, regents and wanton women a feudal baronage with a lush growth of intestine war and crime, flourished mightily to curse the poor people. When Sir David Lyndsay asked, [Sidenote: 1528] Why are the Scots so poor? he gave the correct answer:

Wanting of justice, policy and peace, Are cause of their unhappiness, alas!

Something may also be attributed to the poverty of the soil and the lack of important commerce or industries.