Yet there was so much in the political condition of the times to make both Elizabeth and Cecil pause before committing themselves to the Reformation, that it is necessary to believe that religious conviction had a great influence in determining their action. England was not the powerful nation in 1558-60 which it became after twenty years under the rule of the great Queen. The agrarian troubles which had disturbed the three reigns of Henry VIII., Edward, and Mary had not died out. The coinage was still as debased as it had been in the closing years of Henry VIII. Trade was stagnant, and the country was suffering from a two years' visitation of the plague. The war with France, into which England had been dragged by Spain, had not merely drained the country of men and money, but was bringing nothing save loss of territory and damage to prestige. Nor was there much to be hoped from foreign aid. The Romanist reaction was in full swing throughout Europe, and the fortunes of the continental Protestants were at their lowest ebb. It was part of the treaty of Cateau-Cambrésis (April 1559) that France and Spain should unite to crush the Protestantism of the whole of Europe, and the secret treaty between Philip II. and Catherine de' Medici in 1565[523] showed that such a design was thought possible of accomplishment during the earlier years of Elizabeth. It was never wholly abandoned until the defeat of the Armada in 1588. Cecil's maxim, that the Reformation could not be crushed until England had been conquered, had for its corollary that the conquest of England must be the prime object of the Romanist sovereigns who were bent on bringing Europe back to the obedience of Rome. The determination to take the Protestant side added to the insecurity of Elizabeth's position in the earlier years of her reign. She was, in the opinion of the Pope and probably of all the European Powers, Romanist and Protestant, illegitimate; and heresy combined with bastardy was a terrible weapon in the hands of Henry II. of France, who meant to support the claims of his daughter-in-law, the young Queen of Scots,--undoubtedly the lawful heir in the eyes of all who believed that Henry VIII. had been lawfully married to Catharine of Aragon. The Spanish Ambassador, Count de Feria, tried to frighten Elizabeth by reminding her how, in consequence of a papal excommunication, Navarre had been seized by the King of Spain.[524] His statement to his master, that at her accession two-thirds of the English people were Romanists,[525] may be questioned (he made many miscalculations), but it is certain that England was anything but a united Protestant nation. Still, who knew what trouble Philip might have in the Netherlands, and the Lords of the Congregation might be encouraged enough to check French designs on England through Scotland.[526] At the worst, Philip of Spain would not like to see England wholly in the grip of France. The Queen