Chapter VIII · 1578-1584 (continued 2)

For five-and-twenty years Philip, against the impatient advice of many of his ministers, had persisted in the belief that his own slow, cautious, diplomatic methods would succeed in conciliating Elizabeth or in substituting for her an instrument more amenable to his hand. The expulsion of Mendoza, in January, 1584, marks the conclusion of the era of peaceful effort. The ambassador left England breathing threats of war and vengeance, and when Philip received the reports of his doings he had no words but those of praise and approbation for them. “You have acted with the same good sense and courage in the manner of your departure as in all else that has happened during your stay in the country. I am entirely satisfied with you, and with your good services, and will take care that they are duly remembered.”

Philip at last had made up his mind: henceforward it must be war to the knife between himself and Elizabeth, and no keener instrument to work the destruction of his enemy could be found than Mendoza, with a bitter personal injury of his own to avenge. From his new post in Paris the ambassador worked incessantly to compass the ruin of the régime in England that had wounded his pride; and for the rest of his active life, until, blind and heartbroken with failure, the brilliant soldier, diplomatist, and historian was shrouded in a monk’s gabardine, Elizabeth had no enemy so indefatigable and rancorous as Don Bernardino de Mendoza. Plans and plots for revolution in England, for the murder of Elizabeth, and for the overthrow by treachery of the Protestant power in favour of Mary Stuart, were the means upon which Mendoza mainly depended.

Philip was willing, in his cool, cautious way, to smile upon such attempts, when he could do so without committing himself prematurely or too far. They might turn out well by chance, and he might reap the harvest where others had sown the grain and nourished it with their blood. But through it all thenceforward there was slowly maturing in Philip’s mind, and preparing in his chancelleries, the great enterprise to which he had been forced by the logic of events—the conquest and domination of England by his own arms and for his own benefit. Such a scheme necessitated patient plotting in every capital in Europe before the material preparations could be even commenced. Of the secret preliminaries, the laborious concentration, and the final disaster of the great Armada in which Philip’s ambitions were wrecked the next chapter will tell.