England and Europe, 1485-1603 (Seminar Studies in History) by Susan Doran

Author:Susan Doran [Doran, Susan]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780582289918
Goodreads: 2023514
Publisher: Longman
Published: 1986-01-01T00:00:00+00:00

8 Elizabeth 1564–1603

Spain 1564–85

For the first decade of Elizabeth’s reign, England’s relations with Spain were uneasy but not especially strained. Neither Philip nor Elizabeth wanted to sever the traditional Anglo-Habsburg friendship. Philip II, for all his Catholicism, preferred a heretic to a French woman as queen of England and so twice during the 1560s dissuaded the pope from excommunicating Elizabeth. Similarly, at the council of Trent his cousin, Emperor Ferdinand, refused to countenance Pius IV’s proposal to recognize the title of Mary Queen of Scots to the throne of England. Elizabeth, for her part, wanted peace with Spain to counteract the danger of hostility from the Guises in France. Consequently, despite mutual suspicions and the trade embargo of 1564, there was no open breach between England and Spain before 1568. On the contrary, efforts were made to negotiate a matrimonial alliance between Elizabeth and the Archduke Charles of Austria for the purpose of strengthening Anglo-Habsburg accord. During this time cordial relations were greatly assisted by the presence of Guzman de Silva as Spanish ambassador at Elizabeth’s court, a man who was greatly liked by the queen and adept at smoothing over minor irritations [35; 147].

The breach of 1568 was not the result of a new hard-line Catholic attitude in Spain towards England. Despite appearances to the contrary, the expulsion of John Man, the English ambassador, from the Spanish court in April and the replacement in September of De Silva by Guerau de Spes, a friend of English Catholic exiles, should not be taken as signs of a new direction in Spanish foreign policy. Dr Man, a married Protestant cleric, who was reported to have called the pope ‘a canting little monk’, was hardly a wise choice of diplomat for Spain and it was perhaps surprising that Philip tolerated him for three years. Similarly, the transfer of De Silva to Venice was not at all sinister; it had been requested by the ambassador himself, since four years was a long time to spend in such an arduous and expensive posting as ambassador to England [98]. His replacement, moreover, was instructed by Philip ‘to serve and gratify’ the queen, and to try ‘to keep her on good terms’ [5 pp. 67–8]. With the Netherlands in political turmoil, Philip could not afford to lose the friendship of the queen of England.

The origins of the breakdown in Anglo-Spanish relations lay in the events occurring in the Netherlands between 1566 and 1568. Whereas under Charles V the Netherlands had been a loose dynastic confederation of semi-autonomous provinces and cities, under Philip II more centralized rule was imposed. When a revolt broke out in 1566, Philip responded by sending the duke of Alva with an army of 10,000 men, later augmented to 50,000, to suppress it. Elizabeth’s attitude to this turn of events was ambivalent. On the one hand, her dislike of rebels led her to approve publicly the executions of the principals, Egmont and Horn. On the other, she perceived grave security dangers in the

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