By autumn 1558 when Elizabeth came to the throne, Philip II [Spain] and Henry II [France] had begun their peace negotiations. Military operations had ceased, and both realms were determined to make a lasting peace primarily due to their own financial chaos and religious strife in the Spanish-held Low Countries and France. Besides, Philip had wars of religion he was fighting against the Turks in North Africa and the western Mediterranean, and internally against the Moriscos in Spain. The last thing he could literally afford was to fight a powerful Catholic monarch like the King of France. For Philip, matters of religion always took precedence over temporal matters, and it was essential that Catholic governments unite against the very real expansionist threat of the Turkish Empire and the spread of Calvinism. Elizabeth and Cecil, who both had known Philip well when he had been king consort of England, did not need to listen to the incessant distortions swirling on the winds to know that the greatest danger they faced would be a Catholic League against a Protestant monarchy in England. . . .The potential treat of an invasion from France, or from the French in Scotland, was very real, and the only way Elizabeth saw to forestall this was to pander to Philip's paranoia.
-Susan Ronald, The Pirate Queen: Queen ElizabethI, Her Pirate Adventurers, and the Dawn of Empire
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