© Richard Randall

Caribbean

Sundries

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In 1571, Sir William Cecil was created Baron Burghley; a wise and humorous man, who always advised caution in international relations, he had been Elizabeth's chief advisor from the earliest days, and he remained so until his death in 1598. In 1572, Burghley was raised to the powerful position of Lord High Treasurer; his post as Secretary of State was taken up by the head of Elizabeth's spy network, Sir Francis Walsingham.

Also in 1572, Elizabeth made an alliance with France. The St Bartholomew's Day Massacre, in which thousands of French Protestants (Huguenots) were killed, strained the alliance but did not break it. Elizabeth even began marriage negotiations with Henry, Duke of Anjou (later King Henry III of France and of Poland), and afterwards with his younger brother FranÁois, Duke of Anjou and AlenÁon. During the latter's visit in 1581, it is said that Elizabeth "drew off a ring from her finger and put it upon the Duke of Anjou's upon certain conditions betwixt them two". The Spanish Ambassador reported that she actually declared that the Duke of Anjou would be her husband. However, Anjou, who was reportedly scarred and hunch-backed, returned to France and died in 1584 before he could be married.

Conflict with Spain and Ireland

In 1580, Pope Gregory XIII sent a force to aid the second of the Desmond Rebellions in Ireland; but by 1583, the rebellion had been put down after a campaign waged by fire, sword and famine, in which almost the entire population of the north-western part of the province of Munster appears to have died; chilling, albeit approving, observations on the campaign are set out in A View of the Present State of Ireland by the poet, Edmund Spenser (first licensed for publication in 1633, four decades after it was written).

Also in 1580, Philip II annexed Portugal, and with the Portuguese throne came the command of the high seas. After the assassination of the Dutch Stadholder William I, England began to side openly with the United Provinces of the Netherlands, who were at the time rebelling against Spanish rule. This, together with economic conflict with Spain and English piracy against Spanish colonies (which included an English alliance with Islamic Morocco), led to the outbreak of the Anglo-Spanish War in 1585 and in 1586 the Spanish ambassador was expelled from England for his participation in conspiracies against Elizabeth. Fearing such conspiracies, Parliament had passed the Act of Association 1584, under which anyone associated with a plot to murder the Sovereign would be excluded from the line of succession. However, a further scheme against Elizabeth, the Babington Plot, was revealed by Sir Francis Walsingham, who headed the English spy network. Having put the court on full proof of the charge, Mary Stuart was convicted of complicity in the plot on foot of disputed evidence and executed at Fotheringhay Castle on February 8, 1587.

In her will, Mary had left Philip her claim to the English Throne; under force of the threat from Elizabeth's policies in the Netherlands and the east Atlantic, Philip set out his plans for an invasion of England. In April 1587, Sir Francis Drake burned part of the Spanish fleet at C·diz, delaying Philip's plans. In July 1588, the Spanish Armada, a grand fleet of 130 ships bearing over 30,000 men, set sail in the expectation of conveying a Spanish invasion force under the command of the Duke of Parma across the English Channel from the Netherlands. Elizabeth encouraged her troops with a notable speech, known as the Speech to the Troops at Tilbury, in which she famously declared, "I know I have the body but of a weak and feeble woman; but I have the heart and stomach of a King, and of a King of England too! And I think it foul scorn that Spain or Parma or any prince of Europe should dare invade the borders of my realm".

The Spanish attempt was defeated by the English fleet under Charles Howard, 2nd Baron Howard of Effingham and Sir Francis Drake, aided by bad weather. The Armada was forced to return to Spain, with appalling losses on the north and west coasts of Ireland; the victory tremendously increased Elizabeth's popularity.

The battle, however, was not decisive, and the war continued in the Netherlands, where the Dutch Estates were seeking independence from Spain. The English government was also concerned with the conflict in France and the claim to the throne of a protestant heir, Henry (later Henry IV). Elizabeth sent 20,000 troops and subsidies of over £300,000 to Henry, and 8,000 troops and subsidies of over £1,000,000 to the Dutch.

English privateers continued to attack Spanish treasure ships from the Americas; the most famous privateers included Sir John Hawkins and Sir Martin Frobisher. In 1595 and 1596, a disastrous expedition on the Spanish Main led to the deaths of the aging Sir John Hawkins and Sir Francis Drake. Also in 1595, Spanish troops under the command of Don Carlos de Amesquita landed in Cornwall, where they routed a large English militia and burned some villages, before celebrating a mass and retiring in the face of a naval force led by Sir Walter Raleigh.

In 1596, England finally withdrew from France, with Henry IV firmly in control. He had assumed the throne, commenting with double-edged irony that, "Paris is worth a mass"; the Holy League, which opposed him, had been demolished, and Elizabeth's diplomacy was beset with a new set of problems; at the same time, the Spanish had landed a considerable force of tercios in Brittany, which had expelled the English forces that were present and presented a new front in the war, with an added threat of invasion across the channel. Elizabeth sent a further 2,000 troops to France after the Spanish took Calais. Then she authorised an attack on the Azores in 1597, but the attempt was a disastrous failure. Further battles continued until 1598, when France and Spain finally made peace. The Anglo-Spanish War, meanwhile, reached a stalemate after Philip II died later in the year. In part because of the war, Raleigh and Gilbert's overseas colonisation attempts came to nothing, and the English settlement of North America was stalled, until James I negotiated peace in the Treaty of London, 1604.

Later years

In 1598, Elizabeth's chief advisor, Lord Burghley, died. His political mantle was inherited by his son, Robert Cecil, who had previously become Secretary of State in 1590. Elizabeth became somewhat unpopular because of her practice of granting royal monopolies the abolition of which Parliament continued to demand. In her famous "Golden Speech", Elizabeth promised reforms. Shortly thereafter, twelve royal monopolies were ended by royal proclamation; further sanctions could be sought in the courts of common law. These reforms, however, were only superficial; the practice of deriving funds from the grants of monopolies continued.

At the same time as England was fighting Spain, it also faced a rebellion in Ireland, known as the Nine Years War. The chief executor of Crown authority in the north of Ireland, Hugh O'Neill, 2nd Earl of Tyrone, was declared a traitor in 1595. Seeking to avoid further war, Elizabeth made a series of truces with the earl; but during this period, Spain attempted two further armada expeditions against northern Europe, although both failed owing to adverse weather conditions. In 1598, O Neill offered a truce, while benefitting from Spanish aid in the form of arms and training; upon expiry of the truce, the English suffered their worst defeat in Ireland at the Battle of the Yellow Ford.

In 1599, one of the leading members of the navy, Robert Devereux, 2nd Earl of Essex, was appointed Lord Lieutenant of Ireland and given command of the largest army ever sent to Ireland, in an attempt to defeat the rebels. Essex's campaign was soon dissipated, and after a private parley with O Neill - in which the latter sat on horseback in the middle of a river - it became clear that victory was out of reach. In 1600, Essex returned to England without the Queen's permission, where he was punished by the loss of all political offices and of the trade monopolies, which were his principal income.

The succession to the throne had been the ultimate political concern in England since Mary Stuart's arrival in Scotland in the 1560s, and by the end of the century there was only one question in the minds of Elizabeth's advisors: who next? It is in this context that the behaviour of Essex is best explained. In 1601, he led a revolt against the Queen, but popular support was curiously lacking, and the former darling of the masses was executed.

Charles Blount, 8th Baron Mountjoy, a bookish man who liked to wrap himself up in

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