Page:Cassell's Illustrated History of England vol 2.djvu/550

536 zealously as the Papists. In these Reformers, however, she found a sturdy class of men, who would not endure so quietly her oppressions. Hume blames the Nonconformists for not setting up separate congregations of their own; but he forgot the £20 a month, which would have been levied on every individual that could pay, and the imprisonments and harassing of others. Where, however, the Nonconformists could not preach, they printed. Books and pamphlets flew in all directions; and there was set up a sort of ambulatory press, which was conveyed from place to place, till at length it was hunted down and destroyed near Manchester. In 1590, Sir Richard Knightley, Hooles, of Coventry, and Wigmore and his wife, of Warwick, were fined, in the Star Chamber, as promulgators of a book called "Martin Marprelate," the first £2,000, the second 1,000 marks, the third 500, the fourth 100, and to be imprisoned during the queen's pleasure.

In 1591 Udal, a Nonconformist minister, was condemned to death for publishing a book called "A Demonstration of Discipline," but died in prison. Mr. Cartwright, fellow of Trinity College, Cambridge, for pointing out defects in the system of the Church, was deprived of his fellowship, expelled the university, and in 1591 was summoned before the ecclesiastical commission with some of his friends, and committed to prison because they would not answer interrogatories on oath—a practice clearly contrary to law. In 1593 Barrow, Greenwood, and Penry, Independent ministers, or Brownists, were put to death for writings said to reflect on the queen. In fact, the whole of the reign of Elizabeth, with the exception of her few last years, when she was failing, and the fear of the Presbyterian King of Scotland as her successor began to awe the persecuting magistrates and officers, was a scene of such intolerance and oppression of her subjects as gives us strange ideas of this Royal champion of Protestantism. As we shall have occasion, however, to notice these matters in our review of the century, we here pass on to other topics.

In the spring of 1589 Parliament and Convocation assembled, and Elizabeth laid before them a statement of the heavy expenses incurred in beating off the Spaniards. She had already levied a forced loan, to which the recusants had been made to contribute heavily, and she now received most liberal grants from both Parliament and Convocation. Having given this freely, the House of Commons prayed the queen to send out a strong force and take vengeance on the Spaniards for their attack on this country. Elizabeth was perfectly agreeable that they should punish Philip to their hearts' content, but not out of the supplies they had granted. She said there were great demands on her exchequer; that she could only furnish ships and soldiers, and they must pay the cost. The proposal of retaliation was so much to the taste of the public that an association was formed under the auspices of Drake and Norris, and very soon they had a fleet of 100 sail at Plymouth, carrying 21,000 men. Elizabeth had long been patronising Don Antonio, prior of Crato, an illegitimate branch of the Royal family of Portugal. This pretender was now sent out in this fleet in Royal state, and the expedition was directed to land in Portugal, and call on the people to throw off the Spanish yoke, and restore their Government under a native, and, as Elizabeth boldly asserted, legitimate prince. If the Portuguese would not receive Don Antonio, the fleet was then to scour the roads of Spain, and inflict on the territory of Philip all the damage possible.

The fascination of this expedition under so renowned a commander as Drake, seized on the youthful fancy of a young noble, who had now succeeded to the post of Leicester as Elizabeth's prince favourite—the Earl of Essex. This was the son of the Countess of Essex whom Leicester had seduced, and, after poisoning her husband, married. Leicester introduced the young earl to Elizabeth, who, for a time, hated him on account of his mother, who had committed the great sin in Elizabeth's eyes—not of being accessory to her husband's murder, but of marrying her favourite. However, some time before Leicester's death, the graces and lively disposition of the young earl had made a strong impression on her heart or head, and she lavished blandishments on the handsome boy in public, even in the face of the camp at Tilbury, which must have been eminently ludicrous. After Leicester's death he became installed as the chief favourite, and she could scarcely bear him out of her sight. Her consternation was great when she found that he had slily eloped, and had set off after the fleet bound for Spain. She immediately dispatched the Earl of Huntingdon to stop him and bring him back; but though the fleet had weighed anchor, Essex, who had glory or plunder before him, and debts to the amount of £20,000, and the caresses of a nauseous and nauseating "old woman," as he invariably called her, behind him, had got off after the Royal fleet in a ship of war, that, luckily, had lingered for some cause behind. Huntingdon, finding the bird had flown, sent a copy of his instructions to the commander of the fleet to hasten the truant back—an order to which Drake or the young man appears to have paid no attention.

Drake made first for Corunna, where he seized a number of merchantmen and ships of war, made himself master of the suburbs or marine part of the town, with great stores of oil and wine, but failed to take the town itself, though he succeeded in making a breach in the wall, at the cost of many lives. Norris, meantime, attacked the forces of the Conde d'Andrada, posted at the Puente de Burgos, and drove them before him for some miles; but sickness and shortness of powder compelled them to embark again. Drake and Norris, as famous for their bulletins as Napoleon in our day, wrote home that they had killed 1,000 of the enemy, with the loss of only three men! but Lord Talbot, writing at the same time to his father, said that they had lost a great number of men, quite as many as the Spaniards. From Corunna they coasted to Peniche, about thirty miles north of Lisbon. At Peniche the young Earl of Essex, who kept out at sea till the commanders could say in their dispatches that they had heard nothing of him, was the first to spring on shore, and showed great gallantry. They quickly took the castle, and the fleet then proceeded along the shore to the Tagus, whilst the army marched by land to Lisbon through Torres Vedras and St. Sebastian.

The garrison in Lisbon was but weak, and Essex knocked at the gates, and summoned the commander to