270 THE AGE OF HAPSBURG ASCENDENCY commerce, and the capture of her colonies. But Elizabeth did not wish to see Spain ruined; she desired its preservation as The Maritime a counterpoise to France. Therefore she succeeded War. f or the most part in making the war into a sort of perpetual raid on the Spanish Plate Fleets, only once or twice allowing more serious blows to be struck, and making no attempt to appropriate Spanish colonies. Walter Ralegh, however, made a series of attempts to plant on the northern continent a real colony, which should be the English nucleus of a new England beyond the seas, where colonisation. English men and women should make permanent homes for themselves, and for their descendants. Ralegh's efforts failed; but the idea, as a commercial speculation, took root in other minds. When King James of Scotland, the son of Mary Stuart, succeeded Elizabeth on the throne of England, by right of inheritance, a charter was granted to a mercantile company to set up a colony, to which they gave the name Virginia, which Ralegh had chosen for his own settlements in honour of the Virgin Queen. After many vicissitudes the new colony established itself securely, the first of a series, which were ultimately to separate from the British Empire and form the United States of America. The accession of the Scots King James in England united the Crowns of England and Scotland, though the two nations were not incorporated in the one kingdom of Great Britain till a century later. In 1580, on the death of the King of Portugal, Philip claimed the succession in right of his mother, excluding the stronger claim of the house of Braganza. Portugal was thus involved in Philip's wars with the English and Dutch, and at the turn of the century the English and Dutch both began to make entry into the eastern seas, where hitherto Portugal had ruled supreme. From this were to arise the English settlements on the Indian coast, whence after a hundred and fifty years sprang the British dominion in India and the Dutch settlements in the Spice Islands, from which Holland derived substantial wealth. In France, as was noted above, the death of Francis of Anjou left Henry of Navarre heir-presumptive to the French throne,
