she secretly provided assistance to the revolted subjects of Philip in the Netherlands, which pleased France, as her aid to the Scottish rebels had gratified Philip. The consequence was that favorable terms were granted to the Netherlands in the Pacification of Ghent, in 1576. It was material to her interests that the Huguenots should not be subdued, and she covertly gave them help while she was in friendly relations with the French government that was seeking to crush them. At length the desperate condition of the Protestants in the Netherlands imposed on her the necessity, in 1585, of openly sending her troops, under the command of Leicester, for their deliverance. Shortly after, Drake appeared before St. Domingo and took possession of that island.

Mary Stuart was the centre of the hopes of the enemies of Protestant England and of Elizabeth. Their plots looked to the elevation of Mary to the throne which Elizabeth filled. Political ambition and religious fanaticism were linked together in this great scheme. Mary's life was regarded by the wisest of the English statesmen as a standing menace. When her complicity with the conspiracy of Babington, which involved a Spanish invasion and the dethronement and death of Elizabeth was proved, the execution of Mary followed (1587).

Apart from the interference of Elizabeth in the Netherlands, England and Spain had long been engaged in a desultory warfare on the ocean, where the treasure ships of Philip were captured by Drake and his compeers, and the Spanish colonies harassed by their attacks. The cruelty of the Inquisition to English sailors in Spain quickened the relish of the great English mariners for this kind of retaliation. The sailing of the invincible Armada for the conquest of England was at once the culmination of this prolonged, indefinite conflict, and the supreme effort of the Catholic reaction to annihilate the Protestant strength. The valor of the English seamen,

PROTESTANTISM IN IRELAND.

383

with the winds for their allies, dispersed and destroyed the mighty fleet, and "the northern ocean even to the frozen Thule was scattered with the proud shipwrecks of the Spanish Armada." A death-blow was given to the hopes of the enemies of Protestant England (1588).

A sketch of the Reformation in Great Britain would be incomplete without some notice of the attempts to plant Protestantism in Ireland. Ireland, one of the last of the countries to bow to the supremacy of the Holy See, has been equaled by none in its devotion to the Roman Church, although the independence of the country was wrested from it under the warrant of a bull of Adrian IV., which gave it to Henry II. Protestantism was associated with the hated domination of foreigners, and was propagated according to methods recognized in that age as lawful to the conqueror.2 Invaders who were engaged in an almost perpetual conflict with a subject race, the course of which was marked by horrible massacres, could hardly hope to convert their enemies to their own religious faith. Henry VIII., having made himself the head of the English Church, proceeded to establish his ecclesiastical supremacy in the neighboring island. This was ordained by the Irish Parliament in 1537, but was resisted by a great part of the clergy, with the Archbishop of Armagh at their head. George Browne, a willing agent of the King, who had been Provincial of the Augustine friars in England, was made Archbishop of Dublin. The Protestant hierarchy was constituted, but the people remained Catholic. The mistaken policy of seeking to Anglicize the country was pursued, and the services of religion were conducted in a tongue which they did not understand. The Prayer Book, which was introduced in 1551, was not rendered into Irish, but was to

1 Milton, Of Reformation in England, b. ii.

2 Hallam, Const. Hist., ch. xviii.

be rendered into Latin, for the sake of ecclesiastics and others who were not acquainted with English! On the accession of Mary, the new fabric which had been raised by Henry VIII. and his son, fell to pieces without resistance. As the Catholic Reaction became organized in Europe, and began to wage its contest with Queen Elizabeth, the Irish who had to some extent attended the English service, generally deserted it. Protestantism had no footing outside of the Pale, or where English soldiers were not present to protect it or force it upon the people. The Episcopal Church in Ireland wore a somewhat Puritanic cast, and in its formularies set forth prominently the Calvinistic theology. The New Testament was not translated into Irish until 1602; and the Prayer Book, though translated earlier, was not sanctioned by public authority, and was little used.1 Among various wise suggestions in Lord Bacon's tract, written in 1601, entitled "Considerations touching the Queen's service in Ireland," is a recommendation to take care of the versions of Bibles and catechisms, and other books of instruction, into the Irish language." 2 With equal sagacity and good feeling, he counsels the establishment of colonies or plantations, the sending out of fervent, popular preachers and of pious and learned bishops, and the fostering of education. He recommends mildness and toleration rather than the use of the temporal sword. But the policy which the great philosopher and statesman marked out, was very imperfectly followed.

1 Hardwick, History of the Reformation, p. 270.

2 This tract is in vol. v. of Montagu's edition of Bacon's writings.

CHAPTER XI.

THE REFORMATION IN ITALY AND IN SPAIN: THE COUNTER-REFORMATION IN THE ROMAN CATHOLIC

CHURCH.

PROTESTANTISM, which in the course of one generation spread over a great part of Central and Northern Europe, penetrated beyond the Alps and the Pyrenees. But here, in the Italian and Spanish peninsulas, it encountered the first effectual resistance. Here were organ

ized the forces that were to arrest its march, and even to reconquer territory which had been surrendered to the new faith.

After the emancipation of Italy from the control of the German emperors, by the downfall of the Hohenstaufen line, in the middle of the thirteenth century, a period of two centuries and a half elapsed prior to the invasion of Charles VIII. Then Italy became the field and the prize of the conflict between the Spanish-Austrian house and France. The long interval of independence preceding this epoch, notwithstanding the turbulence and confusion that marked the political history of Italy, was the era in which art, letters, trade, and commerce flourished most; the period in which the intellectual superiority of Italy among the European nations was most conspicuous. But municipal liberty was gradually lost. The conflicts, in the northern and central cities, between the nobles and the commons, generally issued in the triumph of the lat ter; but the next step was the grasping of supreme power by a single family. The dominion of a tyrant or lord

was built up on the ruins of republicanism. Florence followed the fate of other cities, and fell at last under the rule of the Medici.1 The division of Italy into states, at the beginning of the fifteenth century of which Naples, the Papal Kingdom, Florence, Milan, and Venice, were the chief - was favorable to the Reformation. There was no one central government with power to crush the new opinions. It might be possible for those who were persecuted in one city to flee into another. On the other hand, the decline of the spirit of liberty, which took place in the age before the Reformation, the brilliant age of literature and art, was an inauspicious event.

Italy was a near spectator of the venality and profligacy of the Roman curia, and the victim in the strife that was kindled by the ambition of the pontiffs to extend their temporal dominion and to aggrandize their relatives. The rebukes that were thundered from the pulpit of Savonarola were not stripped of their influence in consequence of his death, for which the enmity of Alexander VI. was largely responsible. In the Council of the Lateran, in 1512, Ægidius, General of the Augustinian Order, and the Count of Mirandola, among others, denounced the abuses that menaced the Church and religion itself with ruin. The arraignment of the papal administration by the Transalpine reformers would naturally meet with a sympathetic response in Italy. Yet there was a national pride connected with the Papacy; and this sentiment was strengthened by the circumstance that the Papacy was often attacked as an Italian institution, and in a style that was adapted to wound Italian feeling.

As far back as the twelfth century, Arnold of Brescia, inspired by the teachings of Abelard with a love of truth, and catching the spirit which the struggle for municipal

1 On the condition of Italy in the 15th century, see Sismondi, Hist. d. Républ Ital. d. Moyen Age, VII. ch. x.; Hallam, Europe during the Middle Ages, ch. iii.