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The new queen had Protestant sympathies for which she was eventually ex-communicated by the Pope, but she was not an extremist like her sister. She was generally tolerant except when religious questions of the day gave her no other option, such as when numerous plots were discovered to put her first cousin Mary, Queen of the Scots, on the throne of England. Much to her distaste, Elizabeth was forced to have Mary executed.
Elizabeth’s reign was a great one for England and she raised the country’s status in the world. During her reign the first English attempts were made to set up a colony in northern America. Walter Raleigh named the land Virginia, after the virgin queen, at the suggestion of the queen herself so she could curry favour with her Catholic subjects.
This claim on America, however, was the final straw for the Spanish; after all they had claimed the entire American continent as their own and with papal approval no less! By sending aid to the United Provinces, by repeatedly attacking Spanish shipping and settlements, and by executing her Catholic cousin, Mary, Elizabeth could surely not have expected a reasoned response.
The Spanish immediately started preparations for sending an ‘Armada’ of ships to invade England and restore the country to the Catholic faith. Word of this endeavour soon spread as Philip of Spain encouraged all Catholic countries to contribute funds and men. When it set sail, the Armada comprised 7,000 sailors, 17,000 soldiers and 130 ships. While the Pope blessed the venture, the whole of Europe looked on. Yet despite the funds at its disposal, the Armada failed.
First, there were delays when Francis Drake sailed brazenly into the port of Cadiz in southern Spain and sank 30 Spanish ships, infuriating Philip even further in the process.73 Second, the person put in charge of leading the Armada, the Duke of Medina-Sidonia had, rather unbelievably, never commanded a navy and sought desperately to get out of taking command. A combination of factors, including errors by the Spanish, bad luck with the weather and superb tactics by the English, together with their use of smaller and faster ships, ensured Spanish defeat. The Armada was forced to sail around the British Isles, and limped back into port in Spain with half its ships and approximately half its men – a financial disaster and a humiliating defeat.
While the inflow of wealth from the Americas helped Spain in recovering fairly rapidly from its financial losses, the country was less able to recover from the blow to its prestige. Who were the English to defeat mighty Spain, or the Dutch for daring to challenge them for that matter? The defeat gave the English and the Dutch new confidence in attacking the Spanish at sea and contributed to their growth in power over the coming century. As a result of the Armada’s defeat, Francis Drake became a national hero and Elizabeth became a legend; she had seen off the greatest threat the country had faced since the Norman invasion 400 years earlier.
While Elizabeth had made England great, her successors unravelled much of what she had achieved. In 1603, the son of Mary Queen of Scots, James VI of Scotland, became James I of England, although it would take a hundred more years and the Act of Union in 1707 before the two governments were officially joined in the Kingdom of Great Britain.74 James was unloved by the people and it was during his reign in 1605 that a group of Catholic peers, led by Guy Fawkes, plotted to blow up the Houses of Parliament – an act still remembered every year in England on 5th November. James’ son, Charles I, would lead the country to civil war.