ABSTRACT
From the marriage of Prince Arthur with Catherine of Aragon (1501 ) to the marriage of Queen Mary with Philip of Spain (1554), the Spanish alliance was the guiding star of English foreign policy. Often endangered and at times apparently dissolved, it had yet recovered time and again under the double stimulus of the cloth trade and French hostility. Not even Elizabeth's deliberate attack on Spanish susceptibilities from 1558 onwards provoked Philip into active enmity; on the contrary, mindful of the Channel route to the Netherlands and yet hopeful of recovering England for the Church and Spain by peaceful means, he played a leading part in shielding her from the consequences of the renewed schism. Nevertheless, throughout the I S60s, events were undermining the amity which had endured so long. Both sides were guilty of acts which in easier conditions and with sovereigns less bent on peace would unquestionably have resulted in war. Elizabeth permitted her subjects to volunteer assistance to the disaffected Netherlands, received the thousands of refugees who fled from the energetic restoration of order by the duke of Alva's 'council of blood', and sheltered the pirates who infested the Channel. Philip, on the other hand, offered secret assistance to the English catholics and permitted the Inquisition to ill-treat protestant Englishmen in the prisons of the New World and of Seville. The Spanish embassy in London became the centre of plots against the government under the egregious de Quadra, ambassador from 1559 to 1566, andafter the tenure of the discreet Guzman de Silva (I S66-8}-under the meddling Guerau de Spes (1568-73) who did his successful best to ruin Anglo-Spanish relations. Even the commercial link with the Netherlands weakened as the revolt there gathered force. Under pressure from the Merchant Adventurers, Cecil promoted an attack on Flemish privileges which in 1563-4 led to a temporary interruption of the trade. Calvinist riots in 1566 and Alva's terror in 156']-8 began the ruin of the Flemish economy which was completed by the destruction of Antwerp in the Spanish 'Fury' of 1576. Overshadowing all other disagreements, however, were the English incursions into Spain's cherished monopoly in the New World, culminating for the time being in the treacherous attack on Hawkins and Drake at San Juan de Ulua (September 1568); news of this event had • direct influence on events in Europe.1
