Overseas Conquest and Religious War to 1648283reformer John Knox and led by her kinsman the earl
of Moray. Elizabeth offered her refuge but held her
under house arrest for nineteen years before ordering
her execution in 1587.
Mary was killed not only because she had plotted
against Elizabeth, but also because the English queen was
convinced that war with Spain was inevitable. Elizabeth
wanted no rival to encourage the hopes of Philip II or of
her own Catholic subjects. These fears, too, were realis-
tic, because for more than twenty years Elizabeth had
pursued a course of intermittent hostility toward Spain.
She had encouraged her subjects, notably Sir John
Hawkins and Sir Francis Drake, to raid Spanish
colonies in the Caribbean and in 1586 sent an English
force to assist the Dutch. From the Spanish point of
view, the execution of Mary was the last straw. Philip
responded by sending a fleet to invade England. The
great Spanish Armada of 1588 failed (see illustration
15.5), but the disaster did not end the war. Philip
rebuilt his navy and tried again without success in
1595, while Drake and the aged Hawkins made an-
other vain attempt on Havana and Cartagena de In-
dias in the same year.
By this time the Spanish were at war in France as
well. In 1589 the Bourbon leader, Henry of Navarre,
emerged from the “War of the Three Henrys” as the
only surviving candidate for the throne. Henry of
Guise and Henry III, the last surviving son of Catherine
de Médicis, had been assassinated by each others’ sup-
porters. Philip thought that, if France were controlled
by Huguenots, the Spanish Netherlands would be
crushed between two Protestant enemies, and he sent
Parma and his army into France. This expedition, too,
was a costly failure, but Henry’s interests turned out to
be more political than religious. He converted to
Catholicism in the interest of peace and ascended the
throne as Henry IV (reigned 1589–1610). To protect
the Huguenots he issued the Edict of Nantes (1598),
which granted them freedom of worship and special ju-
dicial rights in a limited number of towns, most in the
southwest. In some respects, a state within a state was
created, but the ordeal of France was over.Illustration 15.5
The Spanish Armada, 1588.This painting by an unknown
artist shows a critical moment in the defeat of the Spanish Ar-
mada. The Spanish fleet had anchored off Gravelines on the
Flemish coast to support an invasion of England by the duke of
Parma. The English sent fireships into the anchorage, forcing
them to scatter and to abandon the invasion.