for
averting it was by forcing the Provinces to accept the terms which were
now offered by Alva's successor, Requesens, a restoration of their
constitutional privileges on condition of their submission to the
Church. Peace on such a footing would not only restore English commerce,
which suffered from the war; it would leave the Netherlands still
formidable as a weapon against Philip. The freedom of the Provinces
would be saved; and the religious question involved in a fresh
submission to the yoke of Catholicism was one which Elizabeth was
incapable of appreciating. To her the steady refusal of William the
Silent to sacrifice his faith was as unintelligible as the steady
bigotry of Philip in demanding such a sacrifice. It was of more
immediate consequence that Philip's anxiety to avoid provoking an
intervention on the part of England left Elizabeth tranquil at home. The
policy of Requesens after Alva's departure at the close of 1573 was a
policy of pacification; and with the steady resistance of the
Netherlands still foiling his efforts Philip saw that his one hope of
success rested on the avoidance of intervention from without. The civil
war which followed the massacre of St. Bartholomew removed all danger of
such an intervention on the side of France. A weariness of religious
strife enabled Catharine again to return to her policy of toleration in
the summer of 1573; but though the death of Charles the Ninth and
accession of his brother Henry the Third in the following year left the
queen-mother's power unbroken, the balance she preserved was too
delicate to leave room for any schemes without the realm.

[Sidenote: England becomes Protestant.]

English intervention it was yet more needful to avoid; and the hopes of
an attack upon England which Rome had drawn from Philip's fanaticism
were thus utterly blasted. To the fiery exhortations of Gregory the
Thirteenth the king only answered by counsels of delay. But Rome could
not delay her efforts. All her hopes of recovering England lay in the
Catholic sympathies of the mass of Englishmen, and every year that went
by weakened her chance of victory. The firm refusal of Elizabeth to
suffer the Puritans to break in with any violent changes on her
ecclesiastical policy was justified by its slow but steady success.
Silently, almost unconsciously, England became Protestant as the
traditionary Catholicism which formed the religion of three-fourths of
the people at the Queen's acce