Failing in this, she finally signed the warrant, [Sidenote: Mary beheaded, February 8, 1587] but when her council acted upon it in secret haste lest she should change her mind, she flew into a rage and, to prove her innocence, heavily fined and imprisoned one of the privy council whom she selected as scapegoat.
[Sidenote: War with Spain] The war with Spain is sometimes regarded as the inevitable consequence of the religious opposition of the chief Catholic and the chief Protestant power.

But probably the war would never have gone beyond the stage of privateering and plots to assassinate in which it remained inchoate for so long, had it not been for the Netherlands.

The corner-stone of English policy has been to keep friendly, or weak, the power controlling the mouths of the Rhine and the Scheldt.

The war of liberation in the Netherlands had a twofold effect; in the first place it damaged England's best customer, and secondly, Spanish "frightfulness" shocked the English conscience.

For a long time the policy of the queen herself was as cynically selfish as it could possibly be.