In the reign of Mary, the Roman Catholic queen, very many English Protestants had fled abroad. They had gone to lands where the Calvinistic doctrines were followed. Under Elizabeth they ventured back into their native land; and the form of Protestantism that they found there was a shock to them. They could not range themselves as members of a Church that had practices which they detested. They formed themselves into a separate sect under the name of Puritans. At once they found themselves in opposition to, not in conformity with (and were therefore sometimes spoken of as Non-conformists), the national Church. They were subjected to persecution even by a Protestant Government. From denying the authority of the Crown as head of the Church, it was not a very long step to denying the authority of the Crown in other, less spiritual, matters. And it was this denial that led to Oliver Cromwell's Commonwealth, to the cutting off of Charles I.'s head, to the sailing of the Pilgrim Fathers to America, and all that was to follow therefrom. Surely we are justified in finding a space to note a difference of opinion in which such astonishing things had their beginning. During Elizabeth's reign our country was reduced to its insular boundaries, and yet never before does there seem to have been a time when England was {66} so aware of her greatness as she was under Elizabeth. Never, moreover, was there such a splendour of English literary achievement, from the plays of Shakespeare downward. The truth is that she really was doing a very great work, though probably Englishmen of that day only dimly realised what that work was. She, with the Dutch and other Protestant States, was gradually wearing down the greatness of Spain, and all that Spain stood for. What Spain stood for was despotic power in Church and State. Our Henry and Elizabeth were despotic in both, but the Stuart kings who succeeded them were not made of the right human stuff for despots, and both Church and State won freedom under them. Spain's power suffered a gradual but constant diminution. She was fighting on all sides--constantly struggling with France or Italy. And Elizabeth's seamen kept harrying her in every quarter of the Atlantic and even in the far Pacific, The English Colony of Newfoundland was established. Elizabeth had relations as far east and south as Persia, as far east and north as Muscovy, where Russia was gradually consolidating herself.