The next year, 1576, is noted for the ‘Spanish Fury.’  Philip’s sea power was so hampered by the Dutch and English privateers, and he was so impotent against the English navy, that he could get no ready money, either by loan or from America, to pay his troops in Antwerp.  These men, reinforced by others, therefore mutinied and sacked the whole of Antwerp, killing all who opposed them and practically ruining the city from which Charles V used to draw such splendid subsidies.  The result was a strengthening of Dutch resistance everywhere.

Elizabeth had been unusually tortuous in her policy about this time.  But in 1577 she was ready for another shot at Spain, provided always that it entailed no open war.  Don John of Austria, natural son of Charles V, had all the shining qualities that his legitimate half-brother Philip lacked.  He was the hero of Lepanto and had offered to conquer the Moors in Tunis if Philip would let him rule as king.  Philip, crafty, cold, and jealous, of course refused and sent him to the Netherlands instead.  Here Don John formed the still more aspiring plan of pacifying the Dutch, marrying Mary Queen of Scots, deposing Elizabeth, and reigning over all the British Isles.  The Pope had blessed both schemes.  But the Dutch insisted on the immediate withdrawal of the Spanish troops.  This demolished Don John’s plan.  But it pleased Philip, who could now ruin his brilliant brother by letting him wear himself out by trying to govern the Netherlands without an army.  Then the Duke of Anjou, brother to the King of France, came into the fast-thickening plot at the head of the French rescuers of the Netherlands from Spain.  But a victorious French army in the Netherlands was worse for England than even Spanish rule there.  So Elizabeth tried to support the Dutch enough to annoy Philip and at the same time keep them independent of the French.

In her desire to support them against Philip indirectly she found it convenient to call Drake into consultation.  Drake then presented to Sir Francis Walsingham his letter of commendation from the Earl of Essex, under whom he had served in Ireland; whereupon ’Secretary Walsingham [the first civilian who ever grasped the principle of modern sea power] declared that Her Majesty had received divers injuries of the King of Spain, for which she desired revenge.  He showed me a plot [map] willing me to note down where he might be most annoyed.  But I refused to set my hand to anything, affirming that Her Majesty was mortal, and that if it should please God to take Her Majesty away that some prince might reign that might be in league with the King of Spain, and then would my own hand be a witness against myself.’  Elizabeth was forty-four.  Mary Queen of Scots was watching for the throne.  Plots and counter-plots were everywhere.