Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 17.djvu/230

 to the throne of Portual it was said, was asserting no more than his fight, and this fleet of 160 sail (ib. p. 275), and carrying a force of more than twenty-three thousand men, was equipped with the object of supporting him in his attempt to recover his kingdom. The Portuguese pretender gained nothing, the adventurers lost heavily, the whole thing was a humiliating disappointment, except in the damage it wrought to Spain. The loss of life was again 'appalling' [see ]. Six years later Elizabeth sent out her last and most disastrous expedition to the West Indies and the Spanish main. Drake and Hawkins were associated in the command of the fleet. Neither of them returned. Hawkins died on ll Nov. 1595 as his ship lay at anchor off Porto Rico; Drake on 28 Jan. following at Porto Bello. Frobisher had died in November 1594. There were none to take their places.

After this time there was no more sending fleets across the Atlantic. It was shrewdly suspected that the king of Spain might be attacked and his treasure-ships intercepted just as easily and much more economically on the coast of Spain and Portugal as four thousand miles away. Drake's last voyage was followed up by the famous Cadiz voyage in 1596 [see, second ], which brought more glory than profit, and by the Island voyage of 1597, which brought neither profit nor glory. Elizabeth was irritated by the intelligence that the treasure fleet had escaped her navies three years running, and that no gain had come to her exchequer to repay the advances she had made. The last of the naval expeditions was that of 1602. Sir Richard Leveson with Sir William Monson as his vice-admiral was sent off with a fleet of ten ships (Cal. Dom. 1602, p. 152), victualled for five months to cruise off the coast of Spain, do all the damage it could, and intercept any vessels returning from the East or West Indian voyage. He fell in with a carrack of fourteen hundred tons, drove her into Lisbon, and managed to cut her out under the guns of the fort and bring her safely into Plymouth in July (ib. p. 228). She proved a valuable prize, laden with ebony, spices, and other produce, but treasure there was none. The Portugal trade was with the East Indies. The fleet laden with the produce of the silver mines of Bolivia was always bound for San Lucar. It was a poor return for all the cost, but it was something. With this success the naval history of Elizabeth's reign comes to an end.

We have seen that for the first thirty years of her reign Elizabeth had managed to keep from any very costly interference with the interminable civil wars that were going on in France. The time came at last when she could no longer hold aloof from the fierce struggle. A rapid succession of ghastly surprises, such as only French history can furnish examples of, beginning at the end of the Armada year, brought on a crisis. The murder of the two Guises in December 1588, the death of Catherine de' Medici a fortnight later, and the assassination of Henry III on 1 Aug. 1589, had opened the question who was to succeed to the throne now that the house of Valois had come to an end. Elizabeth was compelled to support the cause of Henry of Navarre, if only to thwart the ambitious designs of Philip. In September 1590 Lord Willoughby de Eresby was sent across the Channel with four thousand men and some supplies of money [see ]. But he returned without effecting anything. Next year Henry IV won the famous battle of Ivry (14 March), but lost more than he gained when the Spaniards under Parma succeeded in relieving Paris. In 1591 he was driven to apply to Elizabeth again, and Robert, earl of Essex, was sent out with four thousand men on 21 July [see, second ]. Henceforth the part that England played in French affairs was inconsiderable. The dreaded Parma died on 2 Dec. 1592, and when Henry IV apostatised and was received into the church of Rome (23 July 1593) Elizabeth took less interest in French affairs. France and Spain made peace at Vervins (2 May 1598); the edict of Nantes was published three weeks later, and Philip himself died in the following September. The treaty with the Netherlands of August 1598 relieved Elizabeth from all expense in the war that was going on, and put her in the anomalous position of a sovereign pledged to permit the levying of forces in her own kingdom which were to be used abroad (Fœdera, xvi. 340). So, only that her own exchequer was not burdened, her subjects might fight the Spaniards on the other side of the Channel at the cost of the States, leaving her to make peace with Spain if the time should come for that. The administration of Irehind during the reign of the queen is not a pleasant subject to write upon. So far as the queen had any Irish policy it resolved itself into one fixed idea, to which she clung with more than her usual stubborn tenacity of purpose. Ireland was to be assimilated in all respects to England, in law and in religion; and she must be made to pay her own expenses, and, if it might be so, to contribute to the national 