Picking up again on page 12

Picking up again with the brief overview of the reign of Queen Elizabeth, at page 12 of Gardiner's History of England…

(By the way, if you want to direct your browser to a particular page in Volume 1 of Gardiner's History, copy this into your browser's address window:

http://bob.fooguru.org/content/gardiner/hist10/HistV1.html#pagexx

and change xx to the page number you want. The string for page 12 will be http://bob.fooguru.org/content/gardiner/hist10/HistV1.html#page12.)

It's an important aspect of the international political landscape of the early 17th century that Spain was greatly over-estimated in its wealth and military strength. The English government, and probably most governments in Europe, thought Spain to be invincible and in possession of almost unlimited resources. In fact, Spain was already over-extended. Even the wealth of the Indies—which itself did not come without great expense—could not sustain perpetual standing armies in the Low Lands and Italy, and military adventures elsewhere. Still, knowing the outcome, I think we underestimate Spain at this time, and Gardiner makes the point very well.

Gardiner mentions Lepanto, the 1571 sea battle in which a combined Imperial, Spanish and Venician fleet defeated a Turkish flotilla in the Adriatic. It is one of the reasons that we will be talking much more about Christian-versus-Christian conflict in the 17th century than about Christian-versus-Musselman. It is the subject of what some consider the best poem of the 20th century, and I bring it up because (saving the unflattering reference to The cold queen of England in the first stanza), it might almost be an Elizabethan poem, in sentiment if not language. The English of that time, and we today, liked their enemies well-caricatured and their heroes too. Don John's subsequent history in the Netherlands would, of course, have dampened any English enthusiasm that might have existed for him after Lepanto. (See this blog for more information about the Battle of Lepanto, including a photo of a reproduction of Don John's flagship.)

The important take-away from this part of the first chapter is that protestantism and its attendant anti-catholicism were political as well as religious issues to the English ruling classes. Elizabeth and her council put a lid on the emotional aspects of doctrinal difference by making outward conformance to a compromise doctrine a requirement of the law. That a large part of the Catholics were practically excluded from the compromise was considered an acceptable political trade-off. In the short and the long term, this approach was sufficient; but in the middle—the period we are concerned with—the lid would not stay on.

We'll pick up next time on 14, with mention of Mary, Queen of Scots, and of the Armada.