n 1588, a massive fleet of 130 ships set sail. It was one of the largest fleets ever assembled and its size was unprecedented at the time. Its goal was the Kingdom of England, and its mission was to restore Catholicism to the British Isles.
What followed was a harrowing tale of a beleaguered nation against a superpower and a struggle of triumph and defeat that would alter the course of the two kingdoms for centuries to come. European, and indeed, world history, was heavily influenced by the events of the Spanish Armada and the stout resistance of Queen Elizabeth’s Protestant kingdom.
In the 16th century, King Henry VIII started the English Reformation. He was searching for a way to divorce his first wife, Catherine of Aragon, who was Spanish and Catholic. England aligned itself with the Protestant Reformation happening on the continent, and it drew much concern from the Catholic nations, especially Spain, which was, at the time, an extremely powerful country enriched by its plunder of the New World.
However, England’s path towards Protestantism was reversed when Henry’s son, Edward VI, died without an heir, leaving the throne to his half-sister Mary, a devout and zealous Catholic. With her husband being Philip II of Spain, her desire to see England return to Catholicism saw hundreds of “heretics” burned at the stake and earned her the name “Bloody Mary.” After her death in 1558, her half-sister, Elizabeth, took the throne and reinstated the Protestant reforms.
