Philip's Long Patience
Elizabeth's most important achievement was her handling of Spain. She let Philip hope that she would marry him or his son, and Philip, hoping to win England with a wedding ring, waited until his friends grew estranged and Elizabeth grew strong. Though the pope, the emperor and the unhappy Queen of Scots all wanted him to invade England, Philip distrusted France and was entangled in the Netherlands, and he would not risk so reckless a gamble, fearing that France would seize the Spanish Netherlands the moment he attacked England. He disliked fomenting revolt anywhere and, by long habit of delay, hoped that Elizabeth would one day take one of the exits that nature provides us all; he was in no hurry to hand the English crown to a young Scottish queen in love with France. For years he restrained the pope from excommunicating Elizabeth. He kept silent about her treatment of English Catholics and did not answer her protests over the treatment of English Protestants in Spain. Although English armed ships raided Spanish colonies and commerce, he remained at peace with England for nearly thirty years.
No Commandments at Sea
Human nature shows itself in the conduct of governments, for states are much like ourselves, behaving like individuals not yet tamed by force and religion. Conscience follows the policeman, but states have no policeman. There were no Ten Commandments on the seas, and merchants traded only by leave of the pirates. Small pirate craft sheltered in the coves of the British coast and sallied out to seize whatever they could; if the victims were Spanish, the English felt a kind of religious exultation at seeing papists plundered. Bold men like John Hawkins and Francis Drake used armed private ships and roamed the oceans. Elizabeth, though she did not officially approve, did not hinder them, for she saw in the privateers the seed of an English navy and in the sea rovers her future admirals. La Rochelle, held by French Protestants, became a rendezvous for English, Dutch and Huguenot ships that hunted Catholic merchantmen under any flag, and at times attacked Protestant ships as well.
The Slave Trade
From piracy these men turned to the profitable slave trade, begun by the Portuguese a century earlier. The native peoples of Spain's American colonies were dying under labor that their climate and constitutions could not bear, and the demand for other workers grew. Las Casas himself, the defender of the Indians, had proposed to Charles I of Spain that Africans be brought to do the heavy work, and Charles agreed; but Philip II condemned the trade and ordered his American governors to admit no African slaves without a royal license, which was rarely and expensively granted.
Hawkins, knowing that some governors evaded the order, took three ships to Africa in 1562, seized some three hundred Africans according to the book, carried them to the West Indies and sold them to Spanish settlers for sugar, spices and drugs. Back in England he persuaded Lord Pembroke and others to invest in another dangerous voyage and induced Elizabeth to lend him one of her best ships. In 1564 he sailed south with four ships, seized four hundred Africans, forced Spanish colonists by threats to buy them, and returned to divide the profits among the queen and his backers, hailed as a hero. The queen earned sixty percent on her investment.
In 1567 Elizabeth leased him her ship the Jesus, and with it and four other vessels he again went to Africa, captured as many people as he could, and sold them in America at a hundred and sixty pounds a head. But on the way home with a cargo valued at a hundred thousand pounds, he was attacked by a Spanish fleet at San Juan de Ulua off the coast of Mexico, and all his ships except two small supply vessels were lost. After a thousand perils he reached England in 1569 with those two ships and empty hands.
Francis Drake Circles the Globe
Among the survivors of that voyage was a young kinsman of Hawkins named Francis Drake. Educated at Hawkins's expense, he became a son of the sea; at twenty-two he commanded a ship on Hawkins's failed expedition, and at twenty-three he had lost everything but his reputation and vowed revenge on Spain. At twenty-five Elizabeth commissioned him to command a privateer. In 1573, aged twenty-eight, he captured the escort of a silver convoy on the coast of Panama and returned to England with both revenge and booty. When Spain demanded his execution, the queen's councillors kept him hidden for three years.
Then Leicester, Walsingham and Hatton gave him four small ships totaling three hundred seventy-five tons, and on 15 November 1577 he sailed from Plymouth on what became the second voyage around the world. As his ships emerged from the Strait of Magellan a fierce storm scattered them for good. With only the Pelican he worked up the western coasts of South and North America to the region the book calls San Francisco, plundering Spanish ships on the way. He then boldly turned west toward the Philippines, passed by the Moluccas to Java, crossed the Indian Ocean to Africa, rounded the Cape of Good Hope, crossed the Atlantic, and on 26 September 1580, thirty-four months after leaving, returned to Plymouth. He brought back plunder worth, according to the book, six hundred thousand pounds, of which two hundred seventy-five thousand went to the queen. The English hailed him as the greatest seaman of the age; Elizabeth dined aboard his ship and knighted him.
Peace in Name Only
All this time England was nominally at peace with Spain. Philip complained repeatedly; the queen apologized, pocketed the spoils, and pointed out that he too had broken international "law" by aiding Irish rebels. When the Spanish ambassador threatened war, she frightened him with talk of marrying Alencon and allying with France. Philip, busy conquering Portugal, ordered his ambassador not to break the peace. As usual fortune favored her policy of hesitation. Had Catholic France not been torn by civil war, had Catholic Austria and the emperor not been fighting the Turks, and had Spain's relations with Portugal, France, the pope and its own Dutch subjects not been strained, no one knows what would have become of her.
The Netherlands and the Seized Treasure
For years Elizabeth pursued an ambiguous policy toward the Netherlands, adapting to changing events, and no charge of indecision or betrayal could drive her blindly in one direction. She disliked the Dutch Calvinists as much as the English Puritans and, like Philip, had no taste for rebellion. Yet she knew the value of uninterrupted trade with the Netherlands to the English economy, and she meant to help the rebels just enough to keep them from being crushed by Spain or delivering themselves to France, since as long as the Dutch revolt lasted Spain could not meddle in England.
A stroke of luck let her help the rebels and enrich her treasury at once. In December 1568 several Spanish ships carrying, according to the book, a hundred and fifty thousand pounds to pay Alva's soldiers in the Netherlands were driven by English privateers into Channel ports. Elizabeth, having just heard of Hawkins's disaster at San Juan de Ulua, saw a chance to recover England's losses. She asked Bishop Jewel whether she had the right to seize the Spanish treasure, and he answered that since God was surely a Protestant, He would be pleased to see the papists despoiled. She had also learned that Philip had borrowed the money from Genoese bankers and would take ownership only when it reached Antwerp safely.
She sent the money to her treasury. Philip protested; Alva seized all English subjects and goods in the Netherlands; Elizabeth arrested all Spaniards in England. But their mutual need for trade gradually restored normal relations. Alva refused to be provoked into war, which would only have pushed Elizabeth into open alliance with the rebels. Philip kept his composure, and Elizabeth kept the money.