sea rovers, and freebooters. Sir Walter Raleigh planted the first English colony in America, which the maiden Queen named Virginia, in honor of herself. It proved unsuccessful, but he said, "I shall live to see it an English nation yet"; and he did.

Frobisher explored the coasts of Labrador and Greenland. Sir Francis Drake, who plundered the treasure ships of Spain wherever he found them, sailed into the Pacific, spent a winter in or near the harbor of San Francisco, and ended his voyage by circumnavigating the globe. (See map facing p. 222.) In the Far East,

London merchants had established the East India Company, the beginning of English dominion in Asia; while in Holland, Sir Philip Sydney gave his lifeblood for the cause of Protestantism.

393. Literature and Natural Philosophy. It was an age, too, not. only of brave deeds but of high thoughts. Shakespeare, Spenser, and Jonson were making English literature the noblest of all literatures. Furthermore, Shakespeare had no equal as a teacher of English history. His historical plays appealed then, as they do now, to every heart. At his touch the dullest and driest records of the

past are transformed and glow with color, life, movement, and meaning.1 On the other hand, Francis Bacon, son of Sir Nicholas Bacon, of Elizabeth's council, was giving a wholly different direction to education. In his new system of philosophy, he taught men that in order to use the forces of nature they must learn by observation and experiment to know nature herself; "for," said he, "knowledge is power."

394. Mary Queen of Scots claims the Crown (1561). For England it was also an age of great and con

stant peril. Elizabeth's entire reign was undermined with plots against her life and against the life of the Protestant faith. No sooner was one conspiracy detected and suppressed than a new one sprang up. Perhaps the most formidable of these was the effort which Mary Stuart, Queen of Scots, made to supplant her English rival. Shortly after Elizabeth's accession, Mary's husband, the King of France, died. She returned to Scotland (1561) and there assumed the Scottish crown, at the same time asserting her right to the English throne.3

1 On the value of Shakespeare's Historical Plays, see § 298, note 1; § 313, note 2; 2 In his tract on "The Greatest Birth of Time," in 1582.

and $410.

3 See Genealogical Table (p. 207). Mary's claim was based on the fact that the Pope had never recognized Henry VIII's marriage to Anne Boleyn, Elizabeth's mother, as lawful, while she, herself, as the direct descendant of Henry's sister, Margaret, stood

next in succession.

Showing the English discoveries in America in the 15th, 16th, and 17th centuries, with a part of Drake's voyage round the globe in 1577-1579.

AFRICA

1558-1603]

PLOTS AGAINST ELIZABETH

223

395. Mary marries Darnley; his Murder. A few years later Mary married Lord Darnley. He became jealous of Rizzio, her private secretary, and, with the aid of accomplices, seized him in her presence, dragged him into an antechamber, and there stabbed him. The next year Darnley was murdered. It was believed that Mary and the Earl of Bothwell, whom she soon married, were guilty of the crime. The people rose and cast her into prison, and forced her to abdicate in favor of her infant son, James VI, who eventually became King of England and Scotland (1603).

396. Mary escapes to England (1568); plots against Elizabeth and Protestantism. Mary escaped and fled to England. Elizabeth, fearing she might pass over to France and stir up war, confined her in Bolton Castle, Yorkshire. During her imprisonment in another stronghold, to which she had been transferred, she was accused of being implicated in a plot for assassinating the English Queen and seizing the reins of government in behalf of herself and the Jesuits (§ 378).

It was, in fact, a time when the Protestant faith seemed everywhere marked for destruction. In France evil counselors had induced the King to order a massacre of the Reformers, and on St. Bartholomew's Day thousands were slain. The Pope, misinformed in the matter, ordered a solemn thanksgiving for the slaughter, and struck a gold medal to commemorate it. Philip II of Spain, whose cold, impassive face scarcely ever relaxed into a smile, now laughed outright. Still more recently, William the Silent, who had driven out the Catholics from a part of the Netherlands, had been assassinated by a Jesuit fanatic. Meanwhile the Pope had excommunicated Queen Elizabeth (1570) and had released her subjects from their allegiance to her. A fanatic nailed this bull of excommunication to the door of the Bishop of London's palace. This bold act, for which the offender suffered death, brought matters to a crisis.

Englishmen felt that they could no longer remain halting between two opinions. They realized that now they must resolve to take their stand by the Queen or else by the Pope. Parliament at once retaliated against the Pope by passing two stringent measures which declared it high treason for any one to deny the Queen's right to