Merchant adventurers, working for the benefit of a
``joint stock Company'' had laid the foundations of trading
companies which in later centuries were to become colonies.
Half pirate, half diplomat, willing to stake everything on a
single lucky voyage, smugglers of everything that could be
loaded into the hold of a vessel, dealers in men and merchandise
with equal indifference to everything except their profit, the
sailors of Elizabeth had carried the English flag and the fame
of their Virgin Queen to the four corners of the Seven Seas.
Meanwhile William Shakespeare kept her Majesty amused at
home, and the best brains and the best wit of England co-operated
with the queen in her attempt to change the feudal inheritance
of Henry VIII into a modern national state.
In the year 1603 the old lady died at the age of seventy.
Her cousin, the great-grandson of her own grandfather Henry
VII and son of Mary Stuart, her rival and enemy, succeeded
her as James I. By the Grace of God, he found himself the
ruler of a country which had escaped the fate of its continental
rivals. While the European Protestants and Catholics were
killing each other in a hopeless attempt to break the power of
their adversaries and establish the exclusive rule of their own
particular creed, England was at peace and ``reformed'' at
leisure without going to the extremes of either Luther or
Loyola.
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