"The death of Mary [Queen of Scots] may have preserved England from the religious struggle which would have ensued upon her accession to the throne, but it delivered Elizabeth from only one, and that the weakest of her enemies; and it exposed her to a charge of injustice and cruelty, which, being itself well founded, obtained belief for any other accusation, however extravagantly false. It was not Philip [of Spain] alone who prepared for making war upon her with a feeling of personal hatred: throughout Romish Christendom she was represented as a monster of iniquity; that representation was assiduously set forth, not in ephemeral libels, but in histories, in dramas, in poems, and in hawker's pamphlets; and when the king of Spain equipped an armament for the invasion of England, volunteers entered it with a passionate persuasion that they were about to bear a part in a holy war against the wickedest and most inhuman of tyrants. The Pope exhorted Philip to engage in this great enterprize for the sake of the Roman Catholic and apostolic church, which could not be more effectually nor more meritoriously extended than by the conquest of England; so should he avenge his own private and public wrongs; so should he indeed prove himself most worthy of the glorious title of Most Catholic King. And he promised, as soon as his troops should have set foot in that island, to supply him with a million of crowns of gold towards the expenses of the expedition. ... Such exhortations accorded with the ambition, the passions, and the rooted principles of the king of Spain. The undertaking was resolved." _R. Southey, Lives of the British Admirals, volume 2, page 319._ "The succours which Elizabeth had from time to time afforded to the insurgents of the Netherlands was not the only cause of Philip's resentment and of his desire for revenge. She had fomented the disturbances in Portugal, ... and her captains, among whom Sir Francis Drake was the most active, had for many years committed unjustifiable depredations on the Spanish possessions of South America, and more than once on the coasts of the Peninsula itself. ... By Spanish historians, these hostilities are represented as unprovoked in their origin, and as barbarous in their execution, and candor must allow that there is but too much justice in the complaint." _S. A. Dunham, History of Spain and Portugal, book 4, section 1, chapter 1._ ALSO IN: _J. A. Froude, History of England, volume 12, chapter 35._ ENGLAND: A. D. 1588. The Spanish Armada.