Protestant refugees from all countries found a place of safety and repose.  In 1585 the Dutch, still carrying on their struggle with Spain, had offered Queen Elizabeth the sovereignty of the Netherlands, and, though she declined it, she sent an army to their assistance.  The French Huguenots also looked to her for support and protection.  Spain, on the other hand, as the representative of all Catholic Europe, had never appeared so formidable.  By the conquest of Portugal in 1580 her king had acquired control over the East Indies, which were hardly less valuable than the colonies of Spain; and with the money derived from both the Spanish and Portuguese possessions Philip supported his armies in Italy and the Netherlands, and was the mainstay of the pope at Rome, the Guises in France, and the secret plotters in Scotland and Ireland of rebellion against the authority of Elizabeth.

This wide distribution of power was, however, an inherent weakness which created demands enough to exhaust the treasury even of Philip, and he instinctively recognized in England a danger which must be promptly removed.  England must be subdued, and Philip, determining on an invasion, collected a powerful army at Bruges, in Flanders, and an immense fleet in the Tagus, in Spain.  For the attack he selected a time when Amsterdam, the great mart of the Netherlands, had fallen before his general the duke of Palma; when the king of France had become a prisoner of the Guises; and when the frenzied hatred of the Catholic world was directed against Elizabeth for the execution of Mary, queen of Scots.

How to meet and repel this immense danger caused many consultations on the part of Elizabeth and her statesmen, and at first they inclined to make the defence by land only.  But Raleigh, like Themistocles at Athens under similar conditions, urgently advised dependence on a well-equipped fleet, and after some hesitation his advice was followed.  Then every effort was strained to bring into service every ship that could be found or constructed in time within the limits of England, so that in May, 1588, when Philip’s huge Armada set sail from the Tagus, a numerous English fleet was ready to dispute its onward passage.  A great battle was fought soon after in the English Channel, and there Lord Charles Howard of Effingham, and Raleigh and Drake and Hawkins joined with Grenville and Cavendish and Frobisher and Lane, and all the other glorious heroes of England, in the mighty overthrow of the Spanish enemy.[18]

Under the inspiration of this tremendous victory the Atlantic Ocean during the next three years swarmed with English cruisers, and more than eight hundred Spanish ships fell victims to their attacks.  So great was the destruction that the coast of Virginia abounded in the wreckage.[19] But the way to a successful settlement in America was not entirely opened until eight years later, when the English fleet, under Howard, Raleigh, and Essex, completed the destruction of the Spanish power by another great naval victory won in the harbor of Cadiz.