The great events of Elizabeth's reign, in war, in politics, in legislation, belong to the historian; the great march of mind, the connecting link which that age formed between the darkness of the preceding ones (for during the period of the wars of the Roses all sorts of art and science retrograded), and the high cultivation of later days, it is the province of the metaphysician and philosopher to analyse; and even the lighter characteristics of the time have become so familiar through the medium of many modern and valuable works, that we have ventured only to touch very superficially on some few of the more prominent of them. FOOTNOTES: [120] Harrison. [121] From this separate mention of _tapisterie_ and _arras-work_ by so accurate a describer as Harrison, it would seem that tapestry of the needle alone was not, even yet, quite exploded. [122] Sloane MSS. No. 4106. CHAPTER XIX. TAPESTRY OF THE SPANISH ARMADA, BETTER KNOWN AS TAPESTRY OF THE HOUSE OF LORDS. "He did blow with his wind, and they were scattered." 'Inscription on the Medal.' The year 1588 had been foretold by astrologers to be a wonderful year, the "climacterical year of the world;" and the public mind of England was at that period sufficiently credulous and superstitious to be affected with vague presentiments, even if the preparation of an hostile armada so powerful as to be termed "invincible," had not seemed to engraft on these vague surmises too real and fearful a groundwork of truth. The preparations of Philip II. in Spain, combined with those of the Duke of Parma in the Low Countries, and furthered by the valued and effective benediction of the shaken and tottering, but still influential and powerful head of the Roman church, had produced a hostile array which, with but too much probability of success, threatened the conquest of England, and its subjugation to the papal yoke. Not since the Norman Conquest had any event occurred which, if successful, would be fraught with results so harassing and distressing to the established inhabitants of the island. Though the Norman Conquest had, undoubtedly, _in the course of time_, produced a beneficial and civilising and ennobling influence on the island, it was long and bitter years ere the groans of the subjugated and oppressed Anglo-Saxons had merged in the contented peacefulness of a united people.