e a fruitless effort to take
Antwerp by surprise. It was in vain that Orange strove by patient
negotiation to break the blow. The Duke fled homewards, the match and
sovereignty were at an end, the alliance of the three powers vanished
like a dream. The last Catholic provinces passed over to Parma's side;
the weakened Netherlands found themselves parted from France; and at
the close of 1583 Elizabeth saw herself left face to face with Philip of
Spain.

[Sidenote: The Puritans and the Crown.]

Nor was this all. At home as well as abroad troubles were thickening
around the Queen. The fanaticism of the Catholic world without was
stirring a Protestant fanaticism within the realm. As Rome became more
and more the centre of hostility to England, patriotism itself stirred
men to a hatred of Rome; and their hatred of Rome passed easily into a
love for the fiercer and sterner Calvinism which looked on all
compromise with Rome, or all acceptance of religious traditions or
usages which had been associated with Rome, as treason against God.
Puritanism, as this religious temper was called, was becoming the creed
of every earnest Protestant throughout the realm; and the demand for a
further advance towards the Calvinistic system and a more open breach
with Catholicism which was embodied in the suppression of the
"superstitious usages" became stronger than ever. But Elizabeth was firm
as of old to make no advance. Greatly as the Protestants had grown, she
knew they were still a minority in the realm. If the hotter Catholics
were fast decreasing, they remained a large and important body. But the
mass of the nation was neither Catholic nor Protestant. It had lost
faith in the Papacy. It was slowly drifting to a new faith in the Bible.
But it still clung obstinately to the past; it still recoiled from
violent change; its temper was religious rather than theological, and
it shrank from the fanaticism of Geneva as it shrank from the fanaticism
of Rome. It was a proof of Elizabeth's genius that alone among her
counsellors she understood this drift of opinion, and withstood measures
which would have startled the mass of Englishmen into a new resistance.

[Sidenote: The High Commission.]

But her policy was wider than her acts. The growing Puritanism of the
clergy stirred her wrath above measure, and she met the growth of
"nonconforming" ministers by conferring new powers in 1583 on the
Ecclesiastical Commission. From being a temporary boa