had a worse enemy to deal with than Puritan controversialists or spoilt Court favourites.  The Protestant English mariners stood between them and their prey, and had to be encountered on an element which did not bow to popes or princes, before Mary Stuart was to wear Elizabeth’s crown or Cardinal Allen be enthroned at Canterbury.  It was a revelation to all parties.  Elizabeth herself had not expected—­perhaps had not wished—­so signal a success.  War was now looked on as inevitable.  The Spanish admirals represented that the national honour required revenge for an injury so open and so insolent.  The Pope, who had been long goading the lethargic Philip into action, believed that now at last he would be compelled to move; and even Philip himself, enduring as he was, had been roused to perceive that intrigues and conspiracies would serve his turn no longer.  He must put out his strength in earnest, or his own Spaniards might turn upon him as unworthy of the crown of Isabella.  Very reluctantly he allowed the truth to be brought home to him.  He had never liked the thought of invading England.  If he conquered it, he would not be allowed to keep it.  Mary Stuart would have to be made queen, and Mary Stuart was part French, and might be wholly French.  The burden of the work would be thrown entirely on his shoulders, and his own reward was to be the Church’s blessing and the approval of his own conscience—­nothing else, so far as he could see.  The Pope would recover his annates, his Peter’s pence, and his indulgence market.

If the thing was to be done, the Pope, it was clear, ought to pay part of the cost, and this was what the Pope did not intend to do if he could help it.  The Pope was flattering himself that Drake’s performance would compel Spain to go to war with England whether he assisted or did not.  In this matter Philip attempted to undeceive his Holiness.  He instructed Olivarez, his ambassador at Rome, to tell the Pope that nothing had been yet done to him by the English which he could not overlook, and unless the Pope would come down with a handsome contribution peace he would make.  The Pope stormed and raged; he said he doubted whether Philip was a true son of the Church at all; he flung plates and dishes at the servants’ heads at dinner.  He said that if he gave Philip money Philip would put it in his pocket and laugh at him.  Not one maravedi would he give till a Spanish army was actually landed on English shores, and from this resolution he was not to be moved.

To Philip it was painfully certain that if he invaded and conquered England the English Catholics would insist that he must make Mary Stuart queen.  He did not like Mary Stuart.  He disapproved of her character.  He distrusted her promises.  Spite of Jesuits and seminary priests, he believed that she was still a Frenchwoman at heart, and a bad woman besides.  Yet something he must do for the outraged honour of Castile.  He concluded, in his slow way, that he would collect a fleet, the largest and