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10. Francis Drake's Voyage to Panama. 1572.-The noblest of these mariners was Francis Drake. Sickened by one experience

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Sir Francis Drake, in his 43rd year: from the engraving by Elstracke.

of the slave trade, and refusing to take any further part in it, he flew at the wealth of the Spanish Government. In 1572 he sailed for Nombre de Dios, on the Atlantic side of the isthmus of

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Panama. Thither were brought once a year gold and silver from the mines of Peru. In the governor's house Drake found a pile of silver bars. "I have now," he said to his men, "brought you to the mouth of the treasury of the world." He himself was wounded, and his followers, having little spirit to fight without their leader, were beaten off. "I am resolved," he said somewhat later to a Spaniard, "by the help of God, to reap some of the golden harvest which you have got out of the earth and sent to Spain to trouble the earth." It was his firm conviction that he was serving God in robbing the king of Spain. Before he returned some Indians showed him from a tree on the isthmus the waters of the Pacific, which no civilised people except the Spaniards had ever navigated. Drake threw himself on his knees, praying to God to give him life and to allow him to sail an English vessel on those seas.

II. The Seizure of Brill, and the Massacre of St. Bartholomew. 1572. Exiles from the Netherlands took refuge on the sea from Alva's tyranny, and plundered Spanish vessels as Englishmen had done before. In 1572 a party of these seized Brill and laid the foundations of the Dutch Republic. They called on Charles IX. of France to help them, and he (being under the influence of Coligny, the leader of the Huguenots) was eager to make war on Spain on their behalf. Charles's mother, Catherine de Medicis, was, however, alarmed lest the Huguenots should grow too powerful, and frightened her son with a tale that they were conspiring against him. He was an excitable youth, and turned savagely on the Huguenots, encouraging a fearful butchery of them, which is known as the Massacre of St. Bartholomew, because it took place on August 24, which was St. Bartholomew's day. Coligny himself was among the victims.

12. The Growth of the Dutch Republic. 1572-1578.-By this time the provinces of Holland and Zeeland had risen against Spain. They placed at their head the Prince of Orange with the title of Stadtholder or Lieutenant, as if he had been still the lieutenant of the king of Spain whom he resisted. The rebels had but a scanty force wherewith to defend themselves against the vast armies of Spain. Alva took town after town, sacked them, and butchered man, woman and child within. In 1574 Leyden was saved from his attack. Holland is below the sea-level, and the Dutch cut the dykes which kept off the sea, and when the tide rushed in, sent flat-bottomed vessels over what had once been land, and rescued the town from the besiegers. Alva, disgusted at his failure, returned to Spain. In 1576 his successor Requesens died. Spain, with all the wealth

of the Indies pouring into it, was impoverished by the vastness of the work which Philip had undertaken in trying to maintain the power of the Roman Catholic Church in all western Europe. The expenses of the war in the Netherlands exhausted his treasury, and on the death of Requesens, the Spanish army mutinied, plundered even that part of the country which was friendly to Spain, and sacked Antwerp with barbarous cruelty. Then the whole of the seventeen provinces of the Netherlands drove out the Spaniards, and bound themselves by the Pacification of Ghent into a confederate Republic. In 1578 Alexander, duke of Parma, arrived as the Spanish governor. He was a great warrior and statesman, and he won over the Catholic provinces of the southern Netherlands to his side. By the Union of Utrecht the Prince of Orange formed a new confederate republic of the seven northern provinces, which were mainly Protestant.

In

13. Quiet Times in England. 1572-1577.-The Spaniards were no longer able to interfere in England. Elizabeth was equally safe from the side of France. In 1574 Charles IX. died, and was succeeded by Elizabeth's old suitor Anjou as Henry III. There were fresh civil wars which gave him enough to do at home. 1573 Elizabeth sent aid to the party of the young king in Scotland, and suppressed the last remnants of Mary's party there. In England she pursued her old policy. Men might think what they would, but they must not discuss their opinions openly. There must be as little preaching as possible, and when the clergy began to hold meetings called prophesyings for discussion on the Scriptures, she ordered Grindal, who had succeeded Parker as Archbishop of Canterbury, to suppress them, and on his refusal in 1577 suspended him from his office, and put down the prophesyings herself.

14. Drake's Voyage. 1577-1580.-Elizabeth had no sympathy with the heroic Netherlanders, who fought for liberty and conscience, but she had sympathy with the mariners who by fair means or foul brought treasure into the realm. In 1577 Drake sailed for that Pacific which he had long been eager to enter. Passing through the Straits of Magellan, he found himself alone on the unknown ocean with the 'Pelican,' a little ship of 100 tons. He ranged up the coast of South America, seizing treasure where he landed, but never doing any cruel deed. The Spaniards, not thinking it possible that an English ship could be there, took the 'Pelican' for one of their own vessels, and were easily caught. At Tarapaca, for instance, Drake found a Spaniard asleep with bars of silver by his side. At another landing place he found eight llamas laden with

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silver. So he went on, till he took a great vessel with jewels in plenty, thirteen chests of silver coin, eighty pounds' weight of gold, and twenty-six tons of silver. With all this he sailed home by way of the Cape of Good Hope, arriving in England in 1580, being the first commander who had circumnavigated the globe. The king of Spain was furious, and demanded back the wealth of which his subjects had been robbed. Elizabeth gave him good words, but not a penny of money or money's worth.

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15. Ireland and the Reformation. 1547.Since the death of Henry VIII. the management of Ireland had been increasingly difficult. An attempt had been made in the reign of Edward VI. to establish the reformed religion. All that was then done had been overthrown by Mary, and what Mary did was in turn overthrown by Elizabeth. As yet, however, the orders of the English Government to make religious changes in Ireland were of comparatively little importance. The power of the Government did not reach far, and even in the districts to which it extended there was none of that mental preparation for the reception of the new doctrines which was to be found in England. The Reformation was accepted by very few, except by English officials, who were ready to accept anything to please the Government. Those who clung to the old ways, however, were not at all zealous for their faith, and there was as yet no likelihood that any religious insurrection like the Pilgrimage of Grace or the rising in the North would be heard of in Ireland. The lives of the Celtic chiefs and the Anglo-Norman lords were passed in bloodshedding and looseness of life, which made them very unfit to be champions of any religion whatever.

Armour as worn during the reign of Elizabeth: from the brass of Francis Clopton, 1577, at Long Melford, Suffolk.

16. Ireland under Edward VI. and Mary. 1547-1558.--The real difficulty of the English Government in Ireland lay in its relations with the Irish tribes, whether under Celtic chiefs or AngloNorman lords. At the end of the reign of Edward VI. an attempt had been made to revert to the better part of the policy of Henry

1 Magellan died on the way, though his ship completed the voyage round the world.

VIII., and the heads of the tribes were entrusted by the government with powers to keep order in the hope that they would gradually settle down into civilisation and obedience. Such a policy required almost infinite patience on the part of the Government, and the Earl of Sussex, who was Lord Deputy under Mary, began again the old mischief of making warlike attacks upon the Irish which he had not force or money enough to render effectual. It was Mary and not a Protestant sovereign who first sent English colonists to occupy the lands of the turbulent Irish in King's County and Queen's County-then much smaller than at present. A war of extermination at once began. The natives massacred the intruders and the intruders massacred the natives, till-far on in Elizabeth's reign-the natives had been all slaughtered or expelled. There was thus introduced into the heart of Ireland a body of Englishmen who, no doubt, were far more advanced in the arts of life than the Irish around them, but who treated the Irish with utter contempt, and put them to death without mercy.

17. Elizabeth and Ireland. 1558-1578.—From the time of the settlement of King's and Queen's Counties all chance of a peaceable arrangement was at an end. Elizabeth had not money enough to pay an army capable of subduing Ireland, nor had the Irish tribes sufficient trust in one another to unite in national resistance. There was, in fact, no Irish nation. Even Shan O'Neill, the most formidable Irish opponent of the English Government, who was predominant in the North during the early part of Elizabeth's reign, failed because he tried to reduce the other Ulster chiefs to subjection to himself, and in 1567 was overthrown by the O'Donnells, and not by an English army. When the English officials gained power, they were apt to treat the Irish as if they were vermin to be destroyed. New attempts at colonisation were made, but the Irish drove out the colonists, and Ireland was in a more chaotic state than if it had been left to its own disorder.

18. The Landing at Smerwick, and the Desmond Rising. 1579-1583.-Elizabeth's servants were the more anxious to subdue Ireland by the process of exterminating Irishmen, because they believed that the Irish would welcome Spaniards if they came to establish a government in Ireland hostile to Elizabeth. On the other hand, the English Catholics, and especially the English Catholic clergy in exile on the Continent, fancied, wrongly, that the Irish were fighting for the papacy, and not for tribal independence, or, rather, for bare life, which tribal independence alone secured. In 1579 Sir James Fitzmaurice landed with a few men at Dingle,

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