Spacious Days
The Fugger News-Letters. Second Series. (John Lane. 18s.)
Tim.- second series - of The .lougger News--Letters, admirably translated -by Mr. L. S. 'R. Byrne is of exceptional interest. The letters deil ekelusively with English affairs and throw n flood of light on the contemporary impression produced by the acts, the policies, the diplomacies and especially the "wirS 'of England during the reign of Queen Elizabeth.' They were sent by agents and correspondents of the House of Fugger to the headquarters at Augsburg and are the: reports -of educated- and- trained men about such events as
would be likely to affect international finance. -
As news arrived these reports were sent off immediately from the capitals and trading centres of Europe and thus :represent the impression created by news of English affairs at the moment it was received in Rome, Paris, Madrid, Constantinople, Antwerp, Hamburg, and, more sparingly,. London. Often these reports are exaggerated, often they contain statements which proved to be completely untrue, as, for instance, when the correspondent in Rome gave the glad' hews a month after the, flight of the. Spanish Armada. up the North Sea that the English fleet had sustained a crushing, defeat, and that Spanish troops were already being landed in England.'
But these news-Ietters (and here is their fascination and their value) enable a twentieth-century reader to picture himself. as being the head of a huge banking establishment in the- sixteenth century, and opening the wallet of news which has just arrived by special messenger. It may contain the fate of the Armada, or some fresh piratical exploit of that monster Captain Drake, or the edict lately published that'
only the Pope of Rome and the King of Spain may fly their colours at sea (for the Pope has devised the sea to the King of Spain). Again, there may be nothing of particular consequence, except that the Governor of Peru has discovered a country inhabited by very short men with very long beards. But whatever it is, it is news, something never heard before.
The figure that first emerges in this entrancing welter of information, and which grows to gigantic, proportions, is that of Queen Elizabeth, " that Queen," the Jezebel of the North. Whatever history has accepted or rejected about her, we now know how she struck the intelligence of con- temporary Europe. To them she was England ; her ministers, her ambassadors, even her sea-captains were no more than the materialization of her indomitable and detested will. It was she (ipso virgo)' who made alliances with the Kings of Fez and Morocco, who made a puppet of the Due d'Aleneon and a catspaw of Don Antonio, who amazingly addressed the Sultan of Turkey as the greatest of all Princes, and encouraging him- with a clock that showed the motions of the planets, almost commanded him to make war against the King of Spain whom she names as the chief of idolaters. England is hers, and she wields it and loves it. Her personal enemies are the Pope of Rome and the Wing of Spain, and there is no audacity to which she will not rise, no double-dealing to which she will not descend in the great aim of her life, namely to wipe out Spain and the Catholic power.
For nearly twenty years before the indolent and patient Philip IL finally sent forth his Armada, Drake and Hawkins were capturing his ships, raiding the towns of his new Empire, and dirtying his gold and his spices to PlYMouth, and all the
time the Queen was receiving one half of the booty they piratically captured. But with an aplomb whit* would astound the tremulous diplomatists of our day, she roundly asserts, in answer to the King of Spain's remonstrances, that she took no responsibility for what Drake did, and that it was by no order of hers that he committed these outrages. She was not ready yet ; she wanted more ships and she wanted more money; and she built the one, 'and clutched the other. Drake might be at war with Spain, but not the innocent Elizabeth. . . . Miserly she was too, but on a great scale : she hated parting with the money Drake poured into her private treasury, and there is no doubt that had she consented to a larger equipment of guns and ammunition, no Spanish ship of the great Armada would have got back home again. But, after reading these letters, we must acquit her of personal greed ; all she had was in the service of England, her treasure no less than her life, to end which innumerable conspiracies were made. She was economical in the manner of a good housewife, whose house was England.
It is impossible to say whether she had any inkling that 'she was not only destroying Spain, but was laying the founda- tions of the Empire beyond the seas. Probably she had not ; probably she missed the real significance of Drake, and looked on him only as a magnificent pirate, and, when the Armada sailed against her, a dashing Vice-Admiral. Drake's office to the contemporary eye was that of a fighter, not a founder ; his voyage round the world, for instance, was .to the Queen, as to Drake himself, an adventure, and none saw to what that spirit of adventure was to, lead, or what was the legacy which he and Hawkins, Frobisher and • Ralegh left to the little island in the North Sea. She looked on him as primarily the defender of his country, for we find her forbidding
when there was fear of a second Armada, to take his fleet further
than Lisbon. • - • She to whom all men were pawns for her great aim never guessed what the effect of that aim would be, or that she was 'a pawn herself-in the hands of a destiny that she never dreamed of. But to anybody who wishes to realize what-she actually was, and how even in the eyes of her enemies her_ greatness emerged, these fresh Fugger News-Letters are a store of
unfaded photographs. - .
E. F. BENSON,.
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