With the clue
obtained by Fitzwilliam, and confessions twisted out of Story and other
unwilling witnesses, the Ridolfi conspiracy was unravelled before it
broke into act. Norfolk lost his head. The inferior miscreants were
hanged. The Queen of Scots had a narrow escape, and the Parliament
accentuated the Protestant character of the Church of England by
embodying the Thirty-nine Articles in a statute. Alva, who distrusted
Ridolfi from the first and disliked encouraging rebellion, refused to
interest himself further in Anglo-Catholic plots. Elizabeth and Cecil
could now breathe more freely, and read Philip a lesson on the danger
of plotting against the lives of sovereigns.

So long as England and Spain were nominally at peace, the presence of De
la Mark and his privateers in the Downs was at least indecent. A
committee of merchants at Bruges represented that their losses by it
amounted (as I said) to three million ducats. Elizabeth, being now in
comparative safety, affected to listen to remonstrances, and orders were
sent down to De la Mark that he must prepare to leave. It is likely that
both the Queen and he understood each other, and that De la Mark quite
well knew where he was to go, and what he was to do.

Alva now held every fortress in the Low Countries, whether inland or on
the coast. The people were crushed. The duke's great statue stood in the
square at Antwerp as a symbol of the annihilation of the ancient
liberties of the Provinces. By sea alone the Prince of Orange still
continued the unequal struggle; but if he was to maintain himself as a
sea power anywhere, he required a harbour of his own in his own country.
Dover and the Thames had served for a time as a base of operations, but
it could not last, and without a footing in Holland itself eventual
success was impossible. All the Protestant world was interested in his
fate, and De la Mark, with his miscellaneous gathering of Dutch,
English, and Huguenot rovers, were ready for any desperate exploit.

The order was to leave Dover immediately, but it was not construed
strictly. He lingered in the Downs for six weeks. At length, one morning
at the end of March 1572, a Spanish convoy known to be richly loaded
appeared in the Straits. De la Mark lifted anchor, darted out on it,
seized two of the largest hulks, rifled them, flung their crews
overboard, and chased the rest up Channel. A day or two after he
suddenly showed himself off Brille, at the mouth of the M