Encouraged by the ambitious Elizabeth I, hardy English buccaneers now swarmed out upon the shipping lanes.
They sought to promote the twin goals of Protestantism and plunder by seizing Spanish treasure ships and raiding Spanish settlements.
Even though England and Spain were technically at peace.
The most famous of these semi piratical "sea dogs" was the courtly Sir Francis Drake. He swashbuckled and looted his way around the planet, returning in 1580 with his ship heavily ballasted with Spanish booty.
The venture netted profits of about 4,600 percent to his financial backers, among whom, in secret, was Queen Elizabeth.
Defying Spanish protest, she brazenly knighted Drake on the deck of his barnacled ship.
The bleak coast of Newfoundland was the scene of the first English attempt at colonization. This effort collapsed when its promoter, Sir Humphrey Gilbert, lost his life at sea in 1583.
Gilbert's ill-starred dream inspired his gallant half-brother Sir Walter Raleigh to try again in warmer climes.
Raleigh organized an expedition that first landed in 1585 on North Caro lina's Roanoke Island, off the coast of Virginia-a vaguely defined region named in honor of Elizabeth, the "Virgin Queen." After several false starts, the hapless Roanoke colony mysteriously vanished, swallowed up by the wilderness.
These pathetic English failures at colonization contrasted embarrassingly with the glories of the Span ish Empire, whose profits were fabulously enriching Spain. Philip II of Spain, self-anointed foe of the Protestant Reformation, used part of his imperial gains to amass an "Invincible Armada" of ships for an invasion of England.
The showdown came in 1588 when the lumbering Spanish flotilla, 130 strong, hove into the English Channel.
The English sea dogs fought back. Using craft that were swifter, more maneuverable, and more ably manned, they inflicted heavy damage on the cumbersome, overladen Spanish ships.
Then a devastating storm arose (the "Protestant wind"), scattering the crippled Spanish fleet.
The rout of the Spanish Armada marked the beginning of the end of Spanish imperial dreams, though Spain's New World empire would not fully collapse for three more centuries.
Within a few decades, the Spanish Netherlands (Holland) would secure its independence, and much of the Spanish Caribbean would slip from Spain's grasp.
Bloated by Peruvian and Mexican silver and cockily convinced of its own invincibility, Spain had overreached itself, sowing the seeds of its own decline.
England's victory over the Spanish Armada also marked a red-letter day in American history.
It dampened Spain's fighting spirit and helped ensure England's naval dominance in the North Atlantic.
It started England on its way to becoming master of the world oceans a fact of enormous importance to the American people. Indeed England now had many of the characteristics that Spain displayed on the eve of its colonizing adventure a century earlier: a strong, unified national state under a popular monarch; a measure of religious unity after a protracted struggle between Protestants and Catholics; and a vibrant sense of nationalism and national destiny.
A wondrous flowering of the English national spirit bloomed in the wake of the Spanish Armada's defeat.
A golden age of literature dawned in this exhilarating atmosphere, with William Shakespeare, at its forefront, making occasional poetical references to England's American colonies.
The English were seized with restlessness, with thirst for adventure, and with curiosity about the unknown.
Everywhere there blossomed a new spirit of self-confidence, of vibrant patriotism, and of boundless faith in the future of the English nation.
When England and Spain finally signed a treaty of peace in 1604, the English people were poised to plunge headlong into the planting of their own colonial empire in the New World.