of that ambitious chief, whose story is more like a fiction of romance or tragedy than a tale of real life, the plots against Elizabeth were renewed. Pope Gregory XIII. and Philip, by whom the scheme was now concerted, had each their separate views: the latter saw that he could not reduce the Netherlands to subjection unless he were master of the sea, and that he could not be master of the sea till he should have subdued England. The pope, in the plenitude of his authority, was willing to confer upon him an apostolical title to that kingdom, giving Ireland at the same time to his own bastard son, whom he had made marchese de Vineola. The notorious adventurer Stukely undertook to conquer Ireland for this king-aspirant, and to burn the ships in the Thames. For this service he asked only 3000 men, while a larger force of Spaniards and Portugueze were to land in England. To show on what grounds he proceeded, this arch-traitor presented an instrument to Philip, "subscribed with the names of most of the Irish nobility, and of divers in England of good quality, ready to be at his devotion." In order to diminish the queen's means of naval defence, foreign merchants were employed to hire for distant This was an absurd charge, and could be believed only by that party spirit which will believe any thing. Common as the employment of assassins was in that age for party motives, the English government stands free from all reproach on that score; and if it had been less scrupulous, don John was no object of its jealousy or of its fear. There is a strange tale of his intriguing for a marriage with Elizabeth; this is said to have been seriously affirmed by letters from the Low Countries, and it has also been affirmed that Escovedo passed two months in England, endeavouring to bring about a negotiation for this end; but nothing that in the slightest degree supports this, appears in all that has come to light concerning Escovedo's fate, nor in any English documents. It is only not impossible, because don John seems to have loved danger and dissimulation for their own sakes. Instead of taking a safe course to the Netherlands, when he went to assume the government, he chose to pass through France in the disguise of a negro servant, "infuscato ore, vibrato capillo ac barbâ." Strada, dec. iv. 1. 9. p. 460. The man who could choose such a disguise, would think no plot too extravagant in which he was to perform a conspicuous part. Strada suspects that the story was devised by the prince of Orange, for the purpose of exasperating Philip against his brother. (p. 556.) But the prince of Orange was a good man, engaged in a good cause,.. too good a man ever to have served it by wicked means. When he charged Philip, in his de. claration, with the death of don Carlos, I am as confident that he believed the charge as I am convinced that the charge itself was an atrocious ca A. D. voyages the greater part of those merchant ships which were built and furnished for sea-service.* It is said that Sebastian of Portugal was intended 1578. for the command of this expedition. Such an undertaking would have well accorded with his temper, and with the principles wherewith his pernicious education had thoroughly imbued him. The massacre of St. Bartholomew's had been concerted with his knowledge: an armament, which he had prepared ostensibly against the Turks, was to have sailed in aid of the French government, if that massacre had failed; and when the news of its perpetration arrived, Lisbon was illuminated, and processions made, and a thanksgiving sermon preached by the most eloquent of the Spanish preachers, Frey Luiz de Granada; and an ambassador, was sent to congratulate Charles IX. † upon a crime - for which, as it regards himself, it may be hoped that the horror and remorse which speedily brought him to an untimely death may have atoned. But though Sebastian had proffered to the pope his utmost services against Mahometans and heretics, early impressions and national feeling led him to tread in the steps of his heroic ancestors, and endeavour to recover that dominion in Africa which they had unwisely abandoned for the sake of more distant and less tenable conquests. Though the pope offered him a consecrated banner as for a holy war, he was not to be diverted from his purpose; and Stukely, who arrived in the Tagus with 800 men, raised for the invasion of Ireland, was induced to postpone that purpose, and accompany Sebastian to Barbary. Stukely met his death there, in better company than he deserved to die in; for braver or nobler-minded men never fell in battle than some of those Portugueze who perished on that disastrous day. Whether Sebastian perished with them, is one of those secrets over which the grave has closed. But as his wilfulness had been the means of averting the intended * Camden, 230. Turner, 574. Bayam, Portugal Cuidadoso y Lastimoso, 271, 272. PORTUGAL ANNEXED TO SPAIN. 301 invasion of England, so by the consequences of his defeat and disappearance, Portugal became the immediate object of Philip's designs: his chief care was devoted to obtaining the succession for himself; and the forces which had been levied against Elizabeth were employed in establishing his ill-founded claim against a pretender whose pretensions were weaker than his own, and who had nothing to support them but the favour of the populace. A few years earlier, Cecil, the greatest of English statesmen, thought that, if an enemy were at hand to assail the realm, it were a fearful thing to consider, because of its growing weakness, what the resistance might be. The cause of that weakness he perceived " in the queen's celibacy, and the want of a suitable successor, and the lack of foreign alliances; in the feebleness which long peace had induced, the weakness of the frontier, the ignorance of martial knowledge in the subjects, the lack of meet captains and trained soldiers, the rebellion which had then recently broken out in Ireland, the over-much boldness which the mildness of the queen's government had encouraged, the want of treasure, the excess of the ordinary charges, the poverty of the nobility and gentlemen of service (the wealth being in the meaner sort), the lack of mariners and munition, and the decay of morals and religion ;" but the greatest danger he considered to be that which arose from "the determination of the two monarchies, next neighbours to England, to subvert not only their own subjects, but also all others refusing the tyranny of Rome, and their earnest desire to have the queen of Scots possess this throne of England.”* One alone of these causes of danger had been remedied, the lack of mariners: a race of seamen such as no former times had equalled, and no after ones have surpassed, was then training in voyages of discovery and of mercantile adventure. For the predatory spirit by which the speculators at home, as well * Memorial of the state of the realm, quoted by Turner, 513. as the adventurers themselves, were influenced, some provocation had been given; and when Elizabeth, in answer to the demand made by the Spanish ambassador for restitution of the treasure which Drake had brought home from that voyage which has immortalised his name, told him that Drake should be forthcoming to answer according to law, if he were convicted by good evidence of having committed any thing against law or right; and that the property was set apart, in order that it might be restored to its just claimants; she reminded him that a greater sum than Drake had brought home she had been compelled to expend in putting down those rebellions which the Spaniards had raised and encouraged both in Ireland and England: and as to the complaint which he preferred against the English for sailing in the Indian Ocean, she answered, she could not persuade herself that the bishop of Rome's donation had conferred upon the kings of Spain any just title to the Indies she acknowledged no prerogative in that bishop to lay any restriction upon princes who owed him no obedience; nor could she allow that he had any authority to enfeoff, as it were, the Spaniard in that new world, and invest him with the possession thereof. Neither was their only other claim to be admitted, which was no more than that they had touched here and there upon the coast, built huts there, and given names to a river or a cape. This donation of that which was another's, and this imaginary propriety, did not preclude other princes from trading to those countries, nor from transporting colonies (without breach of the law of nations), into those parts which were not inhabited by Spaniards (for prescription without possession was little worth); nor from navigating that vast ocean, seeing that the sea and air are common to all. A title to the ocean belonged not to any people or private persons, forasmuch as neither nature nor public custom warranted any possession thereof. She observed, also, that the Spaniards, by their hard dealing with the English, whom they had, contrary to the law of nations, SPANIARDS IN IRELAND. 303 prohibited from commerce, had drawn upon themselves the mischiefs which they now complained of.* The charge against the Spanish government, of having instigated rebellion, was incontestable. Stukely's preparations had not been secret, and an English fleet had been stationed on the Irish coast to intercept him; and that fleet had not long returned to England, in the belief that all present danger was past, before a body of Spaniards were landed in Ireland, in aid of the first Irish rebellion, into which the Romish religion entered as an exciting cause,.. a cause from whence have arisen the greatest evils that have afflicted, and are afflicting, and will long continue to afflict, that unhappy island. The Spaniards fortified themselves in Kerry; and when the lord deputy, Arthur lord Grey of Wilton, marched against them, and sent a trumpet "to demand who they were, what they had to do in Ireland, who sent them, and wherefore they had built a fort in queen Elizabeth's dominions, and withal to command them to depart with speed;" they answered, that they were sent some from the most holy father the pope, and some from the king of Spain, to whom the pope had given Ireland, queen Elizabeth having, as a heretic, forfeited her title to it. They would, therefore, hold what they had gotten, and get more if they could." confidence which seemed to themselves to justify this language soon failed them; they discovered too late the vanity of the promises which had been held out to them, the condition of the people with whom they were to act, and the dreadful character of the war which, in reliance upon their support, had been begun. They were besieged by land; the protecting squadron was remanded from England, and cut off their escape by sea: they were compelled to surrender at discretion, and were put to the sword; a measure which grieved Elizabeth, and which she disapproved, even when she admitted that the plea of stern necessity was strongly urged in its vindication.† 66 The It was easy for Elizabeth to justify the views of her |