Britain had the greatest naval fleet in the world. Even when challenged by the best Spain had to offer, she was able to uphold her reputation. Now this was a lot to say since, "Spain in the sixteenth century was at the height of her power."(Marx 11) Philip II was on a conquering massacre and Britain was the next to fall victim. Now with Elizabeth I trying to hold her unstable, internally conflicting country together, Spain thought it would be simple. Well, that is what they thought.

Britain was having major problems within herself. Elizabeth I, being a female, did not have complete support from her country. Scotland, Wales and Ireland were in constantly in Elizabeth's face with a threat of revolt. On top of that the small country had no wealth with the taxes being brought in late or being never brought in at all. Now to get an idea of how poor Britain actually was, British land owners were forced to sell their land and personal belongings to buy food when the small amount of taxes were not in on time. The Protestant Elizabeth was an easy target for the Spanish conquest.

Charles V was the father of Philip II and he had an idealist dream. He wanted to wipe clean all other rel

igions besides Christianity. He did in fact accomplish this dream until his created Christendom was split. Charles V was able to conquer all of the land around the Mediterranean and turn all conquered lands into Christianity; this was called Christendom. This was all good for Charles V until the Protestant Reformation ripped his ideal world in half. Now his son Philip II was going to do everything in his power to share in his father's dream. Nothing was going to stop Philip II from having Christianity all throughout the New World. However, the scary thing about Philip II was that he would use everything and anything in is power until he got what he wanted and so far it was working. Philip was finally able to defeat the Moorish invaders after a seven-year struggle. In addition, Philip II also took the neighboring Portugal along with discovering new worlds across the ocean. This caused Philip II to own three-fourths of the known world. Now with such an impressive resume Britain should have been an easy task, should have.

Marrin, Albert. The Sea King: Sir Francis Drake and his Times. New York:

As mentioned before Philip was an idealist, but Elizabeth I on the other hand was the complete opposite. Elizabeth II tried to avoid conflict at any cost because she knew how unstable and poor her country was. At first Philip II was not going to use force to overthrow England. He had a better idea in which he was going to try to marry Queen Elizabeth. He was going to try to kill two birds with one stone. First, have a cute wife with lots of power, and second, take over the Protestant England without a fight. However, Elizabeth I did not want to marry Philip II for reasons unknown. So instead of completely dumping Philip she would play on with him. She would sometimes pretend to like him for months, then put him off for a few more months, then back to liking him again. This went on for many years and so far her plan was working and conflict was avoided. That was until Philip had enough. He had enough of not only the refusing of marriage but of other reasons as well. While in the relationship, Elizabeth was doing extra things on the side. She gave permission to Sir Walter Raleigh to mark territory in the New World where Spain just so happened to be. This all together made Philip II very angry and he had no choice but to attack immediately.

Some common words found in the essay are:
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Approximate Word count = 2510
Approximate Pages = 10 (250 words per page double spaced)