the
other new ecclesiastical orders, was displaying a vigor and a boldness
worthy of the days of Hildebrand or Innocent III.

Throughout Continental Europe the Protestants, discomfited and dismayed,
looked to England as their protector and refuge. England was the
acknowledged central point of Protestant power and policy; and to
conquer England was to stab Protestantism to the very heart. Sixtus V,
the then reigning Pope, earnestly exhorted Philip to this enterprise.
And when the tidings reached Italy and Spain that the Protestant Queen
of England had put to death her Catholic prisoner, Mary, Queen of Scots,
the fury of the Vatican and Escurial knew no bounds. Elizabeth was
denounced as the murderous heretic whose destruction was an instant
duty.

A formal treaty was concluded in June, 1587, by which the Pope bound
himself to contribute a million of scudi to the expenses of the war, the
money to be paid as soon as the King had actual possession of an English
port. Philip, on his part, strained the resources of his vast empire to
the utmost. The French Catholic chiefs eagerly cooeperated with him. In
the seaports of the Mediterranean and along almost the whole coast from
Gibraltar to Jutland the preparations for the great armament were urged
forward with all the earnestness of religious zeal as well as of angry
ambition.

"Thus," says the German historian of the Popes,[1] "thus did the united
powers of Italy and Spain, from which such mighty influences had gone
forth over the whole world, now rouse themselves for an attack upon
England! The King had already compiled, from the archives of Simancas, a
statement of the claims which he had to the throne of that country on
the extinction of the Stuart line; the most brilliant prospects,
especially that of a universal dominion of the seas, were associated in
his mind with this enterprise. Everything seemed to conspire to such an
end--the predominancy of Catholicism in Germany, the renewed attack upon
the Huguenots in France, the attempt upon Geneva, and the enterprise
against England. At the same moment a thoroughly Catholic prince,
Sigismund III, ascended the throne of Poland, with the prospect also of
future succession to the throne of Sweden. But whenever any principle or
power, be it what it may, aims at unlimited supremacy in Europe, some
vigorous resistance to it, having its origin in the deepest springs of
human nature, invariably arises. Philip II had to encounter n