of Austria and two sons
of Catharine de' Medici's. The suit of one of the latter began when
Elizabeth was thirty-nine years old and he was nineteen [Sidenote:
1566] and continued for ten years with apparent zest on both sides.
Parliament put all the pressure it could upon the queen to make her
flirtations end in matrimony, but it only made Elizabeth angry. Twice
she forbade discussion of the matter, and, though she afterwards
consented to hear the petition, she was careful not to call another
Parliament for five years.

[Sidenote: Financial measures]

Vexatious financial difficulties had been left to Elizabeth. Largely
owing to the debasement of the currency royal expenditure had risen
from L56,000 per annum at the end of Henry's reign to L345,000 in the
last year of Mary's reign. The government's credit was in a bad way,
and the commerce of the kingdom deranged. [Sidenote: 1560] By the
wise expedient of calling in the {332} debased coins issued since 1543,
the hardest problems were solved.

[Sidenote: Underhand war]

Towards France and Spain Elizabeth's policy was one well described by
herself as "underhand war." English volunteers, with government
connivance, but nominally on their own responsibility, fought in the
ranks of Huguenots and Netherlanders. Torrents of money poured from
English churches to support their fellow-Protestants in France and
Holland. English sailors seized Spanish galleons; if successful the
queen secretly shared the spoil; but if they were caught they might be
hanged as pirates by Philip or Alva. This condition, unthinkable now,
was allowed by the inchoate state of international law; the very idea
of neutrality was foreign to the time. States were always trying to
harm and overreach each other in secret ways. In Elizabethan England
the anti-papal and anti-Spanish ardor of the mariners made possible
this buccaneering without government support, had not the rich prizes
themselves been enough to attract the adventurous. Doubtless far more
energy went into privateering than into legitimate commerce.

Peace was officially made with France, recognizing the surrender of
Calais at first for a limited period of years. Though peace was still
nominally kept with Spain for a long time, the shift of policy from one
of hostility to France to one of enmity to Spain was soon manifest. As
long, however, as the government relied chiefly on the commercial
interests of the capital and other la