5. The Defeat of the Armada. 1588. When the Armada was sighted at the mouth of the Channel, the English commander was playing bowls with his captains on Plymouth Hoe. Drake refused to break off his amusement, saying that there was time to finish the game and to beat the Spaniards too. The wind was blowing strongly from the south-west, and he recommended Lord Howard to let the Spaniards pass, that the English fleet might follow them up with the wind behind it. When once they had gone by they were at the mercy of their English pursuers, who kept out of their way whenever the Spaniards turned in pursuit. The superiority of the English gunnery soon told, and, after losing ships in the voyage up the Channel, the Armada put into Calais. The English captains sent in fire-ships and drove the Spaniards out. Then came a fight off Gravelines-if fight it could be called-in which the helpless mass of the Armada was riddled with English shot. The wind rose into a storm, and pursuers and pursued were driven on past the coast of Flanders, where Parma's soldiers were blockaded by a Dutch fleet. Parma had hoped that the Armada when it came would set him free, and convoy him across to England. As he saw the tall ships of Spain hurrying past before the enemy and the storm, he learnt that the enterprise on which he had set his heart could never be carried out. 6. The Destruction of the Armada. 1588.-The Spanish fleet was driven northwards without hope of return, and narrowly escaped wreck on the flats of Holland. "There was never anything pleased me better," wrote Drake, as he followed hard, "than seeing the enemy flying with a southerly wind to the northwards. . . . With the grace of God, if we live, I doubt not, ere it be long, so to handle the matter with the Duke of Sidonia as he shall wish himself at St. Mary Port' amongst his orange trees." Before long even Drake had had enough. Elizabeth, having with her usual economy kept the ships short of powder, they were forced to come back. The Spaniards had been too roughly handled to return home by the way they came. Round the north of Scotland and the west of Ireland they went, strewing the coast with wrecks. About 120 of their ships had entered the Channel, but only 54 returned. "I sent you," said Philip to his admiral, "to fight against men, and not with the winds." Elizabeth, too, credited the storms with her success. She struck a medal with the inscription, "God blew with his wind and they were scattered." The winds had done their 1 A place near Cadiz where the Duke's residence was. Sir Walter Raleigh (1552-1618) and his eldest son Walter, at the age of eight: from a picture, dated 1602, belonging to Sir J. F. Lennard, Bart. part, but the victory was mainly due to the seamanship of English. mariners and the skill of English shipwrights. 7. Philip II. and France. 1588-1593.-Philip's hopes of controlling France were before long baffled as completely as his hopes of controlling England. In 1588 Guise, the partisan of Spain, was murdered at Blois by the order of the king in his very presence.. In 1589 Henry III. was murdered in revenge by a fanatic, and the Huguenot king of Navarre claimed the crown as Henry IV. The League declared that no Huguenot should reign in France. A struggle ensued, and twice when Henry seemed to be gaining the upper hand Philip sent Parma to aid the League. The feeling of the French people was against a Huguenot king, but it was also against Spanish interference. When in 1593 Henry IV. declared himself a Catholic, Paris cheerfully submitted to him, and its example was speedily followed by the rest of France. Elizabeth saw in Henry IV. a king whose position as a national sovereign resisting Spanish interference much resembled her own, and in 1589 and again in 1591 she sent him men and money. A close alliance against Spain sprang up between France and England. 8. Maritime Enterprises. 1589-1596.—It was chiefly at sea, however, that Englishmen revenged themselves for the attack of the Armada. In 1592 Drake and Sir John Norris sacked Corunna but failed to take Lisbon. Other less notable sailors plundered and destroyed in the West Indies. In 1595 Drake died at sea. In the same year Sir Walter Raleigh, who was alike distinguished as a courtier, a soldier, and a sailor, sailed up the Orinoco in search of wealth. In 1596 Raleigh, together with Lord Howard of Effingham and the young Earl of Essex, who was in high favour with the Queen, took and sacked Cadiz. Essex was generous and impetuous, but intensely vain, and the victory was followed by a squabble between the commanders as to their respective merits. 9. Increasing Prosperity.--It was not so much the victories as the energy which made the victories possible that diffused wealth and prosperity over England. Trade grew together with piracy and war. Manufactures increased, and the manufacturers growing in numbers needed to be fed. Landed proprietors, in consequence, found it profitable to grow corn instead of turning their arable lands into pasture, as they had done at the beginning of the century. The complaints about inclosures (see pp. 368, 415) died away. The results of wealth appeared in the show and splendour of the court, where men decked themselves in gorgeous attire, but still more in the gradual rise of the general standard of comfort. 1588-1596 INCREASE OF COMFORT 465 10. Buildings. Even in Mary's days the good food of Englishmen had been the wonder of foreigners. "These English," said a Spaniard, "have their houses of sticks and dirt, but they fare commonly as well as the king." In Elizabeth's time the houses were improved. Many windows, which had, except in the houses of the great, been guarded with horn or lattice, were now glazed, and even in the mansions of the nobility large windows stood in striking contrast with the narrow openings of the buildings of the middle ages. Glass was welcome, because men no longer lived-as they had lived in the days when internal wars were frequent -in fortified castles, where, for the sake of defence, the openings were narrow and infrequent. Elizabethan manor-houses, as they are now termed, sometimes built in the shape of the letter E,.in honour, as is sometimes supposed, of the Queen's name, rose all over the A mounted soldier at the end of the sixteenth century: from a broadside printed in 1596. country to take the place of the old castles. They had chimneys to carry off the smoke, which, in former days, had, in all but the largest houses, been allowed to escape through a hole in the roof. See pp. 466, 467, 469-471. 11. Furniture. The furniture within the houses underwent a change as great as the houses themselves. When Elizabeth came to the throne people of the middle class were content to lie on a straw pallet, with a log of wood, or at the best a bag of chaff, under their heads. It was a common saying that pillows were fit only |