America's Hidden History: Untold Tales of the First Pilgrims, Fighting Women, and Forgotten Founders Who Shaped a Nation Paperback by Kenneth C. Davis Read Free Book Online

of Spanish-inspired plots to undermine and then assassinate Elizabeth all failed. Philip conspired with English Catholics to kill Elizabeth and place her Catholic cousin—Mary Stuart, Queen of Scots—on the throne. When that plot backfired, Mary was executed in February 1587. By then, Philip was already planning the “Enterprise of England,” an invasion of England intended to put an end to English piracy and restore Catholicism to England. Mary, Queen of Scots’ execution provided the catalyst for the launching of the enter-prise.
    Construction of the Spanish Armada had begun in earnest in January 1586. Consisting of some 130 ships and carrying more than twenty-nine thousand men, the armada was brought together at Lisbon in | 35 \
    America’s Hidden Hi Ç ory May 1588. England had meanwhile armed many of its merchant vessels and added to its fleet of warships. When it sailed out to meet the Armada, Elizabeth’s navy had about two hundred ships and nearly sixteen thousand men, most of them experienced sailors, with squad-rons commanded by such accomplished privateers as John Hawkins, Francis Drake, and Martin Frobisher.
    Early on August 8, the English sent “fireships,” filled with gunpowder and set ablaze, toward the armada. The Spanish ships sailed out to sea to escape the flames. Later that morning, about sixty English ships attacked an equal number of Spanish ships off the French port of Gravelines, with the English sinking two Spanish ships and damaging scores of others. Crippled, the remnants of the armada attempted to return to Spain by sailing north around the British Isles.
    Storms and high winds wrecked many ships off Ireland’s coast, and only about half of the fleet returned to Spain. Of the other half, there was no word. In a history of the Spanish Armada, Neil Hanson summarizes, “English losses were nil.” As a result of the defeat, Philip was declared bankrupt. 17
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    i n t h e y e a r that Spain’s armada was crushed, a child was born on a country manor in Groton, England, far from the great halls of kings, queens, and popes. The boy’s grandfather, a London cloth merchant, had purchased the manor in 1544. It had once been part of a monastery called Bury St. Edmunds. But when King Henry VIII broke with the Vatican, he had confiscated the Church’s lands and properties, many of which were then sold to men such as merchant Adam Winthrop. In 1588, the former monastery became the birthplace of John Winthrop, the future governor of the Massachusetts Bay Colony.
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    Part II
    Hannah’s Escape
    | timeline \
    1607 Jamestown, Virginia, the first permanent English settlement in America, is founded.
    1608 Samuel Champlain settles Quebec.
    1611
    Publication of a new English-language Bible, authorized by King James.
    1612 Dutch traders establish trading post on Manhattan.
    1619 Virginia’s first elected assembly, called the House of Burgesses, meets; African slaves carried on a Dutch ship are sold as “servants” in Jamestown; a shipload of marriageable young women arrives in Virginia and planters pay 120 pounds of tobacco for each woman’s passage; a hundred London slum children are sent to Virginia as servants.
    1620 On November 11, Pilgrims aboard the Mayflower sign the Mayflower Compact; it outlines rules for a rudimentary democracy.
    After exploring Cape Cod, the Pilgrims establish Plymouth Plantation on December 21.
    1622 Powhatan Indian attacks devastate Virginia.
    1625 Charles I ascends the British throne.
    1629 King Charles I dissolves Parliament.
    1630 The great Puritan emigration begins; Massachusetts Bay Colony is founded with Boston as its capital.
    1634 Maryland founded as a refuge for English Catholics by Lord Baltimore.
    1636–1637 Pequot War fought in New England.
    1638 Religious dissenter Anne Hutchinson is tried in Massachusetts.
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    | timeline \
    1642 The English Civil War begins. In 1649, Charles I is beheaded; his son Charles II is defeated by the forces of Puritan