months. This conquest nearly doubled her power. While she had been winning possessions in the New World, her neighbor had been acquiring even more valuable ones in Africa, India, and the islands of the Pacific. Though less in extent, the Portuguese settlements brought in more wealth than the colonies of Spain. All these possessions Alva's sword had transferred to Philip, and with them the only navy that as yet rivalled his own. He now claimed the mastery of the Pacific as well as that of the Atlantic and the Mediterranean.

And where was England, Protestant England, all this time? Where was the great queen who should have been, as she has been styled, the defender of Protestantism in Europe? The question as to the position of England will be discussed in some subsequent chapters. That relating to Elizabeth can be briefly answered. Throughout the whole struggle she had been trying simply to save herself. Men have often died for a cause; she was willing that any cause should die for her. At the darkest hour of the contest, when Alva had subdued all the Netherland provinces, except part of Holland and Zeeland, and William of Orange was almost in despair, she had bent all her energies to prevent him from obtaining aid from France, lest that power should gain too great strength. Again, when Requesens came on the scene with his policy of reconciliation, based on a restoration of civil liberty provided the rebels would give up the religious question, she had used all her influence to have his terms accepted. Such a peace would have benefited her commerce, and she could not understand why these obstinate Dutchmen should stand out for what seemed to her the merest trifle, simply the right to worship God as they saw fit. She had no sympathy and no patience with such sentiments. To her the conduct of William

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of Orange and his compatriots was as incomprehensible as the bigotry of Philip.

For twenty-seven years Elizabeth had now kept the throne. Enemies surrounded her on every side, but she had secured peace for the kingdom and safety for herself. "No war, no war," she cried to her ministers, and generally evaded it through the complications between France and Spain by some piece of feminine duplicity. The religious question gave her the most trouble. Here her motto was, "No zeal." On the one side stood the great majority of her subjects, not sentimentally zealous to be sure, but still imbued with Catholic traditions. On the other side was arrayed a rapidly growing class of Reformers, believing in the doctrines of Calvin, and regarding the practices of the Romish Church as no better than idolatry. Her sympathies were with the former, but her main object had been to keep control of the situation and prevent the committal of England to either side. Thus far she had succeeded in maintaining a policy of indifference; but in spite of all her efforts, and notwithstanding her own want of religious convictions, events were marching on which compelled a more decided stand. As these events were to force England into the contest with Spain, and to bring about the relations with the Netherlands which were to prove so potent in their influence both upon England and America, we may well pause here to consider with some care what kind of a land England was, and by what kind of a people it was inhabited, three centuries ago. Thus only shall we comprehend the history and the character of the English and American Puritans to whom this period gave birth.

CHAPTER V

ENGLAND BEFORE ELIZABETH

THE preceding pages have been devoted mainly to the affairs of the Netherlanders. I have attempted to sketch the progress of their civilization, and to show the nature of the conflict which they were waging against the mightiest power on the globe. It is now time to direct our eyes across the Channel, and to inquire into the condition of England and her people when these Puritans of Holland, fighting for civil and religious liberty, were to broaden the field of conflict by taking in their neighbors. To this subject, therefore, the attention of the reader is invited. Following the method adopted with relation to the Netherlands, I shall first discuss the influences which made the England of this age, and shall then, in subsequent chapters, treat somewhat in detail of domestic life and manners, industrial pursuits, private and public morals, education, religion, the organization of society, the administration of justice, and such other matters as historians, until recently, have usually ignored. Wars and political intrigues, although important in their way, will here find no more space than is necessary to elucidate their effects on the civilization of the people.

The materials for this description are ample enough, and yet every writer who attempts to tell the truth about the Elizabethan age must approach the subject with some diffidence. In the first place, it is no easy task to reproduce, although imperfectly, the features of

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a country or of a people as they appeared three centuries ago, and this difficulty is very much increased when the country is one whose modern aspect is so familiar to the reader. It is somewhat like describing the youthful beauty of an old, wrinkled grandmother. Persons who have never seen her may imagine how she looked when in her teens, but you cannot persuade her little grandchildren that she ever danced, romped, or went around without glasses and false hair.

In the case of England there is a further difficulty. Scarcely any old country of modern times has been altered so much in its outward appearance in the last three centuries, and probably no people of any age have changed so greatly, in some respects, as the English have done in the same space of time. The change has been brought about by the influences of commerce, manufactures, and scientific agriculture, all three of which pursuits were almost unknown to the subjects of Elizabeth. The modern Englishman is familiar to us, and, because we know him so well, we find it almost impossible to picture his ancestors before their devotion to modern occupations.

The final and main difficulty, in the present case, lies in the false glamour thrown around this particular age by the poet, novelist, and so-called historian (made up of the other two in varying proportions), all of whom are carried away by a very natural enthusiasm over the many-sided display of energy and the marvellous power of assimilation which characterized this period. These writers, to describe the magnificence of Elizabeth's court, tell of her three thousand gowns and numberless jewels; they say little of her council chamber, with its carpet of hay or rushes, of her eating with her fingers, and of the practices by which her jewels were obtained. They tell

how, on one occasion, she made an address in Greek, but refer lightly to the fact that among her nobles were men who could not read a line of English. They never tire of describing the virtues of Sir Philip Sidney, but do not always note the depth of the gulf which divided him from most of the other men about the court. They glory in the piracy of Drake, Hawkins, Frobisher, and their associates-piracy which all the rest of the world then denounced, and which, if repeated now, England would be the first to extirpate. They cite the names of a few scholars to show how learning flourished in this age, forgetful of the multitude of scholars much more advanced upon the Continent; and then point to Spenser, Shakespeare, Ben Jonson, and a host of others, and ask what more could be desired of an age which produced such poets.

In answer to all this, the historian can only give the facts; but they are gathered from many quarters, all confirming each other, and established by unquestionable witnesses. These facts show that, in the age of Elizabeth, England, as to most features of general civilization, bore about the same relation to the Netherlands that Russia bears to-day to Western Europe, or that the states of Central America bear to Massachusetts. This is a great pivotal truth in American and English history, although one which is often overlooked. Keeping it in mind, it is an easy matter to understand how the English Puritans who subsequently emigrated to America developed when brought into contact with the Hollanders, while we can also see why their progress was so much arrested. As for those who remained at home, the question will perhaps appear of no less importance when we come to see how they were affected by their neighbors across the Channel.