Relations Transformed

Abstract

It is a commonplace irony of history that a political alliance can often withstand any strain except the victory it is designed to achieve. If the truth of this was not immediately verified by the Anglo-Dutch defeat of the Armada it was partly because few contemporaries saw it as in any sense the final or decisive triumph over Spain which it seemed to some later chroniclers. There was certainly an unprecedented itch, on the English side anyway, to be rid of Nonsuch and its costly alliance, which seemed to point straight to bankruptcy. For once the Queen was united with her Council, including even Walsingham, in wishing the Treaty at the bottom of the sea. But it was not so easily done. ‘I wish our fortune and theirs were not so straitly tied as it is,’ observed Walsingham regretfully, ‘so that we cannot well untie without great hazard.’¹