Page:The Ifs of History (1907).pdf/73

 England was almost half Catholic, and the people of that faith might eventually have become reconciled to the foreigner. Philip might have made himself another Norman William. The Spanish culture would have been imposed upon the English nation. But unlike William of Normandy, who transferred his power to Britain, Philip would have remained a Spanish sovereign, and London would have been ruled from Madrid.

Philip would never have temporized with English Protestantism. The chances are that he would have stamped it out utterly and at the start, as he sought, too late, to do in the Netherlands. If he might have worked his will, he would also have suppressed English learning and literature. William Shakespeare, who had just come up to London, had never produced a play when the Armada sailed, and probably he never would have produced one if it had conquered. The glorious Elizabethan