cumulated for the expedition utterly
destroyed. In spite of this crushing blow a Spanish fleet gathered in
the following year and set sail for the English coast; but as in the
case of its predecessor storms proved more fatal than the English guns,
and the ships were wrecked and almost destroyed in the Bay of Biscay.
Meanwhile whatever hopes remained of subjecting the Low Countries were
destroyed by the triumph of Henry of Navarre. A triple league of France,
England, and the Netherlands left Elizabeth secure to the eastward; and
the only quarter in which Philip could now strike a blow at her was the
great dependency of England in the west. Since the failure of the
Spanish force at Smerwick the power of the English government had been
recognized everywhere throughout Ireland. But it was a power founded
solely on terror, and the outrages and exactions of the soldiery who had
been flushed with rapine and bloodshed in the south sowed during the
years which followed the reduction of Munster the seeds of a revolt more
formidable than any which Elizabeth had yet encountered. The tribes of
Ulster, divided by the policy of Sidney, were again united by a common
hatred of their oppressors; and in Hugh O'Neill they found a leader of
even greater ability than Shane himself. Hugh had been brought up at the
English court and was in manners and bearing an Englishman. He had been
rewarded for his steady loyalty in previous contests by a grant of the
earldom of Tyrone, and in his contest with a rival chieftain of his clan
he had secured aid from the government by an offer to introduce the
English laws and shire-system into his new country. But he was no sooner
undisputed master of the north than his tone gradually changed. Whether
from a long-formed plan, or from suspicion of English designs upon
himself, he at last took a position of open defiance.

[Sidenote: Revolt of Ulster.]

It was at the moment when the Treaty of Vervins and the wreck of the
second Armada freed Elizabeth's hands from the struggle with Spain that
the revolt under Hugh O'Neill broke the quiet which had prevailed since
the victories of Lord Grey. The Irish question again became the chief
trouble of the Queen. The tide of her recent triumphs seemed at first to
have turned. A defeat of the English forces in Tyrone caused a general
rising of the northern tribes, and a great effort made in 1599 for the
suppression of the growing revolt failed through the vanity and
disob