Philip’s precarious grasp on England appears to have loosened, until that is he had the bright idea of proposing marriage to Elizabeth as well.Įlizabeth then appears to have adopted some very clever delaying tactics …”Will I, or won’t I?” And whilst all this procrastination was going on on one side of the Atlantic, English ships captained by ‘pirates’ such as Drake, Frobisher and Hawkins were mercilessly plundering Spanish ships and territories in the Americas. When Mary died childless in 1558, her very Protestant half-sister Elizabeth, daughter of Henry’s second wife Anne Boleyn, came to the throne. The English Parliament had only countenanced their marriage on the basis that Philip was to be Mary’s consort and he was expressly forbidden from ruling the country and from becoming its king. Philip’s marriage to Mary, daughter of Henry’s first wife Catharine of Aragon, was as far as he was concerned, fuelled by a religious zeal to father an heir that would eventually return England to the Catholic fold. After Henry died however, his eldest daughter Mary eventually succeeded him and in attempting to restore Catholicism to the country married King Philip II of Spain. Many years previously in the early 1530s, under instruction from Elizabeth’s father King Henry VIII, the Protestant Church of England had broken away from the Pope and the Roman Catholic Church.
The Spanish Armada set sail from Spain in July 1588, with the mission of overthrowing the Protestant Queen Elizabeth I and restoring Catholic rule over England.
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