ffairs political and domestic, which
partially caused and nourished these extraordinary eccentricities, is
almost essential to a proper understanding of them.

66. The year 1586 was probably one of the most critical years that
England has passed through since she was first a nation. Standing alone
amongst the European States, with even the Netherlanders growing cold
towards her on account of her ambiguous treatment of them, she had to
fight out the battle of her independence against odds to all appearances
irresistible. With Sixtus plotting her overthrow at Rome, Philip at
Madrid, Mendoza and the English traitors at Paris, and Mary of Scotland
at Chartley, while a third of her people were malcontent, and James the
Sixth was friend or enemy as it best suited his convenience, the outlook
was anything but reassuring for the brave men who held the helm in those
stormy times. But although England owed her deliverance chiefly to the
forethought and hardihood of her sons, it cannot be doubted that the
sheer imbecility of her foes contributed not a little to that result. To
both these conditions she owed the fact that the great Armada, the
embodiment of the foreign hatred and hostility, threatening to break
upon her shores like a huge wave, vanished like its spray. Medina
Sidonia, with his querulous complaints and general ineffectuality,[1]
was hardly a match for Drake and his sturdy companions; nor were the
leaders of the Babington conspiracy, the representatives and would-be
leaders of the corresponding internal convulsion, the infatuated
worshippers of the fair devil of Scotland, the men to cope for a moment
with the intellects of Walsingham and Burleigh.

[Footnote 1: Froude, xii. p. 405.]

67. The events which Harsnet investigated and wrote upon with
politico-theological animus formed an eddy in the main current of the
Babington conspiracy. For some years before that plot had taken definite
shape, seminary priests had been swarming into England from the
continent, and were sedulously engaged in preaching rebellion in the
rural districts, sheltered and protected by the more powerful of the
disaffected nobles and gentry--modern apostles, preparing the way before
the future regenerator of England, Cardinal Allen, the would-be Catholic
Archbishop of Canterbury. Among these was one Weston, who, in his
enthusiastic admiration for the martyr-traitor, Edmund Campion, had
adopted the alias of Edmonds. This Jesuit was gifted with