The latter was partly a result of the former. Elizabeth's victories over foreign enemies strengthened her power at home, and assured that freedom from internal discord which is essential to commercial prosperity. No sovereign distracted by danger from without could have mastered the factions which had sprung up within. The great religious movement known as the Protestant Reformation had not stopped in England with the separation of the English from the Roman Church under Henry VIII. It had brought into existence the Puritan, austere, bigoted, opposed to beauty of church and ceremonial, yet filled with superb moral and religious enthusiasm. It had brought about the persecution of Catholics and the still more merciless persecution of Protestants during the Catholic reaction under Queen Mary. Its successes, which began again with Elizabeth's reign, gave occasion for continual intrigues of Catholic emissaries. It all but plunged the nation into civil war, a war averted only by the victory over Spain and by the statesmanship of Elizabeth. Freed from the fear of war, however, Puritan and Churchman, each in his own way, could apply his enthusiasm to the works of peace. With the return of peace and security, moreover, England first felt the full effect of the literary Renaissance. The revival of classical learning had already transformed the art and literature of the continent, {53} especially that of Italy. When, therefore, England turned again to the classics, it turned also to the Italian culture and literature to which the Renaissance had given birth, and from these sources English literature received new beauty of thought and form. It was, then, in a new England that Shakespeare lived, an England intensely proud of the past which had made the present possible, an England rich enough and secure enough to have leisure and interest for literature, an England so vigorous, so confident, that it could not fail to bring out all that was latent in its greatest genius.