ABSTRACT
The hopes of Rome thus once again concentrated on Spain on the one hand and on the missions on the other. Spain was tardy, and the devoted priests were suffering terrible losses; Rome's hopes did not stand very high in the early 1580s. The priests are the more to be pitied because in fact they were pursuing a hopeless quest. They never touched more than a minority of Englishmen, and of that minority few only would in the last resort put their faith before their country. Throughout those years the international situation was growing darker and the name of Spain more obnoxious to Englishmen. When the crisis came the country stood united behind Elizabeth: the first thirty years of her reign, by preserving the peace and by judiciously mingling severe repression with prudent blindness to evasions, gave back to England a solid unity which she had not known since Henry VIII broke with Rome. To English catholics the failure of the Armada \vas only a sign that Spain was not God's chosen instrument, a point which they had long suspected. The catholic attack preserved the catholic faith in England, but it failed to shake the protestant state and in fact assisted, by reaction, in the growth of a more ardent and uncompromising protestantism.
