ch she stood
in need--active, industrious, intelligent artizans. Philip set up the
Inquisition in Flanders, and in a few years more than 50,000 persons
were deliberately murdered. The Duchess of Parma, writing to Philip II.
in 1567, informed him that in a few days above 100,000 men had already
left the country with their money and goods, and that more were
following every day. They fled to Germany, to Holland, and above all
to England, which they hailed as Asylum Christi. The emigrants settled
in the decayed cities and towns of Canterbury, Norwich, Sandwich,
Colchester, Maidstone, Southampton, and many other places, where they
carried on their manufactures of woollen, linen, and silk, and
established many new branches of industry.[10]

Five years later, in 1572, the massacre of St. Bartholomew took place
in France, during which the Roman Catholic Bishop Perefixe alleges that
100,000 persons were put to death because of their religions opinions.
All this persecution, carried on so near the English shores, rapidly
increased the number of foreign fugitives into England, which was
followed by the rapid advancement of the industrial arts in this
country.

The asylum which Queen Elizabeth gave to the persecuted foreigners
brought down upon her the hatred of Philip II. and Charles IX. When
they found that they could not prevent her furnishing them with an
asylum, they proceeded to compass her death. She was excommunicated by
the Pope, and Vitelli was hired to assassinate her. Philip also
proceeded to prepare the Sacred Armada for the subjugation of the
English nation, and he was master of the most powerful army and navy in
the world.

Modern England was then in the throes of her birth. She had not yet
reached the vigour of her youth, though she was full of life and
energy. She was about to become the England of free thought, commerce,
and manufactures; to plough the ocean with her navies, and to plant her
colonies over the earth. Up to the accession of Elizabeth, she had
done little, but now she was about to do much.

It was a period of sudden emancipation of thought, and of immense
fertility and originality. The poets and prose writers of the time
united the freshness of youth with the vigour of manhood. Among these
were Spenser, Shakespeare, Sir Philip Sidney, the Fletchers, Marlowe,
and Ben Jonson. Among the statesmen of Elizabeth were Burleigh,
Leicester, Walsingham, Howard, and Sir Nicholas Bacon. But per