1580
1583
Francis Throckmorton
confesses under
torture to involvement
in an international
plot to assassinate
Elizabeth and place
Mary, Queen of
Scots on the English
throne. Also implicat-
ed are the Spanish
ambassador, French
Catholics, English
Catholic exiles and
Spanish troops from
the Low Countries.1580
Rebellion spreads in Ireland, and
in September a Vatican-sponsored
expedition lands in the province of
Munster to aid the rebels. After the
rebel garrison at Smerwick surren-
ders, English forces massacre
some 600 soldiers.1586
An Anglo-Scottish defen-
sive alliance is signed at
Berwick on 6 July. Elizabeth
secretly agrees to give the
Protestant Scottish King
James VI an annual pension,
though she refuses to
acknowledge him formally
as her heir.1581
In April Elizabeth knights Francis Drake on board the Golden
Hind, docked near Deptford. The previous autumn, Drake had
returned from a three-year privateering voyage aboard that vessel
that had included a circumnavigation of the globe.1585
In August, Elizabeth signs the Treaty of Nonsuch
with representatives of the United Provinces (the
Dutch rebels against Spain). Although no formal
declaration of war follows, the decision to send
7,000 men to fight in the Netherlands marks the
start of 19 years of fighting between England
and Spain that ends only in 1604.A 16th-century emblem designed
to celebrate Francis Drake’s
circumnavigation of the globe
between 1577 and 1580A modern memorial to Spanish, Italian
and Irish soldiers killed at Smerwick
by English troops in November 1580Spanish ships attack Dutch vessels during the
siege of Antwerp, 1585. English support for Dutch
rebels sparked 19 years of war with Spain