ich ignored the liberties of every province, and to a persecution
which drove thousands of skilled workmen to the shores of England.

[Sidenote: Alva.]

At last the general discontent took shape in open resistance. The
success of the French Huguenots in wresting the free exercise of their
faith from the monarchy told on the Calvinists of the Low Countries. The
nobles gathered in leagues. Riots broke out in the towns. The churches
were sacked, and heretic preachers preached in the open fields to
multitudes who carried weapons to protect them. If Philip's system was
to continue it must be by force of arms, and the king seized the
disturbances as a pretext for dealing a blow he had long meditated at
the growing heresy of this portion of his dominions. Pius the Fifth
pressed him to deal with heresy by the sword, and in 1567 an army of ten
thousand men gathered in Italy under the Duke of Alva for a march on
the Low Countries. Had Alva reached the Netherlands while Mary was still
in the flush of her success, it is hard to see how England could have
been saved. But again Fortune proved Elizabeth's friend. The passion of
Mary shattered the hopes of Catholicism, and at the moment when Alva led
his troops over the Alps Mary passed a prisoner within the walls of
Lochleven. Alone however the Duke was a mighty danger: nor could any
event have been more embarrassing to Elizabeth than his arrival in the
Netherlands in the autumn of 1567. The terror he inspired hushed all
thought of resistance. The towns were occupied. The heretics were
burned. The greatest nobles were sent to the block or driven, like
William of Orange, from the country. The Netherlands lay at Philip's
feet; and Alva's army lowered like a thundercloud over the Protestant
West.

[Sidenote: Mary's abdication.]

The triumph of Catholicism and the presence of a Catholic army in a
country so closely connected with England at once revived the dreams of
a Catholic rising against Elizabeth's throne, while the news of Alva's
massacres stirred in every one of her Protestant subjects a thirst for
revenge which it was hard to hold in check. Yet to strike a blow at Alva
was impossible. Antwerp was the great mart of English trade, and a
stoppage of the trade with Flanders, such as war must bring about, would
have broken half the merchants in London. Elizabeth could only look on
while the Duke trod resistance and heresy under foot, and prepared in
the Low Countries a securer sta