Complete Works of Rudyard Kipling (Illustrated), page 836
“Low Countries” (the modern Belgium and
Holland), and our Queen was constantly sending aid to the Protestants there, though never openly till 1585, by which time the “Dutch
Republic” had been born there, and had become the most valuable ally of England.
It was the same story in France, where a strong
Protestant party, continually fed by underhand help from England, kept up a civil war for thirty years. All this weakened the two great Catholic powers, and made Elizabeth stand out more and more as the Champion of European Protestantism.
On the whole, however, her reign is mainly occupied with two long duels, that with Mary,
Queen of Scots, 1560-87, and that with Philip of Spain, which began to be severe about 1570
and lasted till her death.
The beautiful Mary Stuart returned, a widowed Queen, to Scotland in 1561 to find that
Elizabeth had already helped the Scottish nobles to overthrow the French power and the Catholic
Church at one blow. The new Church that was then set up in Scotland was called the “Presbyterian” from its government by “presbyters” or elders instead of bishops, and was far more violently Protestant than ours. This is important to remember because, to those English Puritans who wanted to abolish bishops and the Prayer
Book in our own Church, the example of Scotland was always present. Mary was a clever woman, but quite without principles, and far more reckless than her English rival. She honestly believed herself to be rightful Queen of England, but she found it hard work to keepher own crown, and in six years she had lost it. For she was always an object of suspicion to the Scottish nobles, both as a Catholic and as a Frenchwoman at heart. She married her cousin, Lord Darnley, in 1565, and bore him a son, who afterward, as James I, united the two crowns of Britain. Then, in 1587, Mary allowed her husband to be murdered and married his murderer, the Earl of Bothwell.
Scotland rose in wrath, deposed and imprisoned her, crowned her baby son, and had him brought up as a Protestant King. A year later Mary escaped from prison and fled to
England, demanding aid from her rival
Elizabeth.
That clever lady pretended to pity Mary,
but kept her safe, at first as a sort of guest,
soon as a prisoner for nineteen dreary years.
No wonder that Mary soon began to plot against Elizabeth’s life, and to implore the aid of every Catholic power in Europe. The one insurrection of Elizabeth’s reign, that of the North of England in 1569, was got up in order to put Mary on the throne. At last,
in despair, Elizabeth’s wisest councillors implored her to bring Mary to trial; and in 1587,
the Scottish Queen was tried, condemned and beheaded in Fotheringay Castle.
This was an open challenge on the part of
England to Catholic Europe. Mary had made a will in which she passed over her son, left
Philip of Spain heir to both her crowns and implored him to avenge her. He was ready to do so, for he had long been tired of Elizabeth’s secret aid to his rebels, and exasperated at the failure of the plotters to kill the English Queen.
So he prepared to send against us a great fleet,
known to history as the “Spanish Armada.”
Now Henry VII and Henry VIII had been the real makers of the English navy, for they had been the first kings to build big ships which could sail anywhere and fight anybody. And
Henry VIII had paid very special attention to guns and gunnery. He had also been the true father of English merchant shipping, and had encouraged his subjects to trade to distant parts of the world. All merchant-ships in those days carried guns, for they always had to be ready for a tussle with pirates. So,
though the Spanish fleet was perhaps twice as numerous as the English Royal navy, the number of fighting ships that England could put to sea far out-numbered those that Spain could send into the Channel. And our men were going to fight, not only for Queen and faith, but for home and wives and children;
to fight, too, on their own shores, every tide and shoal cf which was well known to them.
When Spain had discovered America and the Portuguese had found the way round the
Cape of Good Hope to India, each tried to exclude all other nations from the seas they had explored, from the lands they had discovered, and from the trades they had opened up. And a Pope had had the astounding insolence to divide these seas, countries, and trades between the Spaniards and Portuguese,
giving the Western World to Spain, the Eastern to Portugal. Englishmen, when they abolished the Pope, naturally laughed at this exclusion;
they meant to take, and did take, English goods to all countries where they could find a market for them, and this rough, deep-sea game went on all through the reigns of Edward and Mary.
In the reign of Elizabeth it became the game of
Englishmen. You can imagine some simple
English sailor lad, who had perhaps never done more than a few coasting voyages from one little port of Devon to another, opening his eyes to the wonders of the Tropics as he sails in Francis Drake’s great voyage in the Golden
Hind across the Atlantic, across the Equator,
south and ever south till the Strait of Magellan opens the door into the Pacific; then north again, picking up here and there some rich
Spanish merchant-ship as a prize; then across through innumerable spice islands to the Indian
Ocean, and so round the Cape of Good Hope and home; home to his own wind-swept Channel and the white cliffs by Plymouth. This was in 1580 — the first English voyage round the
World, the third only of such voyages in recorded history; honour to Sir Francis Drake!
With Drake in the Tropics
South and far south below the Line,
Our Admiral leads us on,
Above, undreamed-of planets shine —
The stars we knew are gone.
Around, our clustered seamen mark
The silent deep ablaze
With fires, through which the far-down shark
Shoots glimmering on his ways.
The sultry tropic breezes fail
That plagued us all day through;
Like molten silver hangs our sail,
Our decks are dark with dew.
Now the rank moon commands the sky,
Ho! Bid the watch beware
And rouse all sleeping men that lie
Unsheltered in her glare.
How long the time ‘twixt bell and bell!
How still our lanthorns burn!
How strange our whispered words that tell
Of England and return!
Old towns, old streets, old friends, old loves,
We name them each to each.
While the lit face of Heaven removes
Them farther from our reach.
Now is the utmost ebb of night
When mind and body sink,
And loneliness and gathering fright
O’erwhelm us, if we think —
Yet, look, where in his room apart,
All windows opened wide,
Our Admiral thrusts away the chart
And comes to walk outside.
Kindly, from man to man he goes,
With comfort, praise, or jest.
Quick to suspect our childish woes,
Our terror and unrest.
It is as though the sun should shine —
Our midnight fears are gone!
South and far south below the Line,
Our Admiral leads us on!
Drake, Hawkins, Raleigh, Grenville, Cavendish and a hundred more of gallant English merchants and sailors pushed their ships and their trade into every corner of Spanish America;and of course the Spaniards hanged many of them as pirates and burned others as heretics.
Remonstrances to the English Queen were of little use, for she was often able to reply to
Philip, “Then why is your Majesty encouraging plots against my life and helping my rebels I
in Ireland?”
Philip had, in fact, delayed his attack too long; he had no idea how strong England had grown in the thirty years of Elizabeth’s reign.
And though he was now King of Portugal as well as Spain, and master of all the gold mines I
of America, he was as stingy as Elizabeth. I
Even in this critical year, 1588, his “Armada5’
was not nearly big enough to win, and it was I
very badly equipped as a fighting force; his ships did not carry enough gunpowder, and most of their provisions were rotten. Still,
the terror was great in many English hearts as the Spaniards swept up channel in the last half of July. For one long, hot week our light and swift sailing ships hung round their flanks,
knocking their spars to pieces at long range,
almost without the loss of a single English life or gun. The object of the Spaniards was to avoid fighting until they came off the Dutch coast, for there was a large Spanish army col- !
lected in the River Scheldt, under the great I
General Parma, ready to be ferried across to I
the mouth of the Thames. But before the
Spaniards reached the Straits of Dover their fleet had been half crippled by the English guns; and, when they were off Calais, a lot of boats smeared with pitch and full of gunpowder were set on fire and set adrift among them.
This so terrified the Spanish Admiral that he put his whole fleet about and fled into the
North Sea. Then great gales arose and drove them northward and ever northward. Many were wrecked, the remainder lumbered round
Scotland and southward again round Ireland;
perhaps half or one third, and these, mostly mere hulks, arrived at length in the harbours of Spain; the winds and waves and rocks had finished what the English guns had begun:
Long, long in vain the waiting mothers kneel
In the white palaces of far Castile.
Weep, wide brown eyes that watch along the shore,
Your dark-haired lovers shall return no more;
Only it may be, on the rising tide,
The shattered hull of one proud bark may glide,
To moor at even on a smooth bay’s breast,
Where the South mountains lean toward the
West,A wraith of battle with her broken spars,
Between the water’s shimmer and the stars.
Our country, and, with her, the great cause of freedom and Protestantism, were saved.
Spain was now known to be mainly a bugbear to frighten children, and England and Elizabeth ruled the waves.
The great Queen lived for fifteen years after her victory, and her enemy, Philip, lived for ten. She never realized how complete that victory had been; when her best councillors and her bravest sailors urged her to follow it up and blow the Spanish once and for all out of the seas, she utterly refused. She allowed occasional raids on the Spanish coasts and colonies,
and one of these took the city and burned the great dockyard of Cadiz; but pay for a big war she would not; though, in a big war, swift victory was all’but certain, and would have produced a lasting peace. Her last years were very lonely; she had never married; the great men who had helped her to make England a first-rate power, Burghley, Walsingham, Drake,
Grenville, had died before her. The rising generation was all looking toward her successor,
and that could only be King James of Scotland,
whom she cordially hated, and whom she knewto be incapable of continuing her work. The
Church of England, which she had nursed, was indeed safe; but the Puritan party within it was growing, and was strong even in Parliament. All this foretold that seventeenth-century England would have plenty of troubles to face, though no such dangers from foreign foes and religious strife as had threatened it during the seventy years of Elizabeth’s life and the forty-five of her reign. She died at Richmond in the seventieth year of her age in 1603.
“Together”
When Horse and Rider each can trust the
other everywhere.
It takes a fence and more than a fence to pound
that happy pair;
For the one will do what the other demands,
although he is beaten and blown,
And when it is done, they can live through a run that neither could face alone.
When Crew and Captain understand each other
to the core,
It takes a gale and more than a gale to put
their ship ashore;
For the one will do what the other commands,
although they are chilled to the bone,
And both together can live through weather that neither could face alone.
When King and People understand each other
past a doubt,
It takes a foe and more than a foe to knock that
country out;
For the one will do what the other one asks as
soon as the need is known,
And hand in hand they can make a stand which neither could make alone!
This wisdom had Elizabeth and all her subjects too,
For she was theirs and they were hers as well
the Spaniard knew;
For when his grim Armada came to conquer
the Nation and Throne,
Why, back to back they met an attack that neither could face alone!
It is not wealth nor talk nor trade nor schools
nor even the Vote,
Will save your land when the enemy’s hand is
tightening round your throat.
But a King and a People who thoroughly trust
each other in all that is done
Can sleep on their bed without any dread —
for the world will leave ‘em alone!
CHAPTER VIII
THE EARLY STUARTS AND THE GREAT CIVIL WAR, 1603-60
Henry VIII and Elizabeth had given England unity and patriotism. Would the next race of kings, the Stuarts, be able to maintain unity?
That was the question which every one was asking while King James I was slowly riding from Scotland to London in 1603. James, of whom you may read the character in Sir Walter
Scott’s beautiful story, “The Fortunes of Nigel,”
was already thirty-five, “an old King,” he said;
and he had had a miserable time in Scotland between the turbulent nobles and the Presby’terian ministers who were always preaching at him. And he had been very poor. He knew England to be rich, and thought he was going to be a rich and great King. He was a firm and very learned Protestant, a kindly man,
though irritable and conceited. He saw a great deal farther than most of his subjects saw, but he never understood the temper of the English people; and above all he did not know, as the
Tudors had known, when he had “come to the place called Stop.” You might describe him as
The child of Mary Queen of Scots,
A shifty mother’s shiftless son,
Bred up among intrigues and plots
Learned in all things, wise in none!
Ungainly, babbling, wasteful, weak,
Shrewd, clever, cowardly, pedantic,
The sight of steel would blanch his cheek,
The smell of baccy drive him frantic.
He was the author of his line —
He wrote that witches should be burnt;
He wrote that monarchs were divine,
And left a son who proved they weren’t!
Now the temper of the English people was going to be a very serious matter. They were fully “grown up,” and fully aware that they were grown up; and they did not want to be
“in leading strings” any longer. Even the great Elizabeth, in her last years, had galled this proud temper a good deal. She had scolded her Parliaments and done high-handed things against the law. But she had served and guided her people faithfully, and they knew it and made allowances accordingly.
James I and his son Charles I, never thought of themselves as “servants” of their people.
They wanted to rule as the Tudors had ruled,
though the need for the guidance and the leading strings had passed away. They were not
“tyrants” or cruel men or extortioners, but they irritated the nation until they provoked rebellion and civil war. And so they broke the unity of King and People, which was hardly restored again before the reign of Victoria the
Great.
The main thing to remember about them is that they quarrelled continually with their
Parliaments, with the House of Lords almost as much as with the House of Commons; and nearly all their quarrels were over religion or money. The House of Commons took the lead in the quarrels, because it was the most powerful body of gentlemen in the country.
The Tudors had flattered and strengthened it enormously, and added very largely to its numbers; for they had been rather afraid of the
House of Lords. The Stuarts added more than a hundred members to the House of Lords in the hope of getting its support against the
Commons, but without much success.
First then, for the quarrels about religion.
England was growing more Puritan every day.
Men saw that the Church of Rome had “set its house in order” since the Reformation, and so was regaining its ground everywhere. Itwas catching hold of kings and courtiers, even in lands that had been soundly Protestant fifty years before. Spain backed it up with sword and gun; and Spain, though the old men who had beaten the Armada might laugh at her, still seemed to be a gigantic power. James
