w what a
weight of fear she had borne for thirty years. The victory over the
Armada, the deliverance from Spain, the rolling away of the Catholic
terror which had hung like a cloud over the hopes of the new people, was
like a passing from death unto life. Within as without, the dark sky
suddenly cleared. The national unity proved stronger than the religious
strife. When the Catholic lords flocked to the camp at Tilbury, or put
off to join the fleet in the Channel, Elizabeth could pride herself on a
victory as great as the victory over the Armada. She had won it by her
patience and moderation, by her refusal to lend herself to the
fanaticism of the Puritan or the reaction of the Papist, by her sympathy
with the mass of the people, by her steady and unflinching preference of
national union to any passing considerations of safety or advantage. For
thirty years, amidst the shock of religious passions at home and abroad,
she had reigned not as a Catholic or as a Protestant Queen, but as a
Queen of England, and it was to England, Catholic and Protestant alike,
that she could appeal in her hour of need. "Let tyrants fear," she
exclaimed in words that still ring like the sound of a trumpet, as she
appeared among her soldiers. "Let tyrants fear! I have always so behaved
myself that under God I have placed my chiefest strength and safeguard
in the loyal hearts and goodwill of my subjects! And therefore I am come
among you, as you see, resolved in the midst and heat of the battle to
live and die amongst you all." The work of Edward and of Mary was
undone, and the strife of religions fell powerless before the sense of a
common country.

[Sidenote: Its European results.]

Nor were the results of the victory less momentous to Europe at large.
What Wolsey and Henry had struggled for, Elizabeth had done. At her
accession England was scarcely reckoned among European powers. The
wisest statesmen looked on her as doomed to fall into the hands of
France, or to escape that fate by remaining a dependency of Spain. But
the national independence had grown with the national life. France was
no longer a danger, Scotland was no longer a foe. Instead of hanging on
the will of Spain, England had fronted Spain and conquered her. She now
stood on a footing of equality with the greatest powers of the world.
Her military weight indeed was drawn from the discord which rent the
peoples about her, and would pass away with its close. But a new and
lastin