Excerpt from Calendar of Letters and State Papers Relating to English Affairs, Vol. 1: Preserved Principally in the Archives of Simancas

N 0 period of equal length has ever been more important for the future of England than the first nine years of the reign of Elizabeth covered by the correspondence published in the present volume. The country was weak, divided and defenceless, ready apparently to fall a prey to one of the two great continental rivals who sought to dominate it. Catholics apprehensive and resentful, Protestants bitter and aggressive, were ready to ¿y at each other's throats, and Englishmen as a whole had no standard or rallying point where a common ground of patriotism might be found. Nothing but the consummate statesmanship of the great Queen, unless indeed we add her marvellous good fortune, would have been able successfully to play off one against the other the two European powers which alone England.

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