The expedition, as I have said, barely paid its cost. In the shape of
wages the officers received nothing, and the crews but a few pounds a
man; but there was, perhaps, not one of them who was not better pleased
with the honour which he had brought back than if he had come home
loaded with doubloons.
Startled Catholic Europe meanwhile rubbed its eyes and began to see that
the 'enterprise of England,' as the intended invasion was called, might
not be the easy thing which the seminary priests described it. The
seminary priests had said that so far as England was Protestant at all
it was Protestant only by the accident of its Government, that the
immense majority of the people were Catholic at heart and were thirsting
for a return to the fold, that on the first appearance of a Spanish army
of deliverance the whole edifice which Elizabeth had raised would
crumble to the ground. I suppose it is true that if the world had then
been advanced to its present point of progress, if there had been then
recognised a Divine right to rule in the numerical majority, even
without a Spanish army the seminary priests would have had their way.
Elizabeth's Parliaments were controlled by the municipalities of the
towns, and the towns were Protestant.
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