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Rh others, their magazines of provision were put in print, as an army and navy irresistible and disdaining prevention: with all which their great and terrible ostentation, they did not in all their sailing round about England so much as sink or take one ship, bark, pinnace, or cock-boat of ours, or even burn so much as one sheep-cote on this land."

A.D. 1594. Henry IV. of France conforms to the Roman Catholic Church, and ends the civil wars that had long desolated France.

1598. Philip II. of Spain dies, leaving a ruined navy and an exhausted kingdom.

1603. Death of Queen Elizabeth. The Scotch dynasty of the Stuarts succeeds to the throne of England.

1619. Commencement of the Thirty Years War in Germany.

1624—1642. Cardinal Richelieu is minister of France. He breaks the power of the nobility, reduces the Huguenots to complete subjection,