englands defeat of the spanish armada helped to ensure englands naval dominance

Moreover, the so-called “enclosure” movement–sparked by the transition of English landholders from agriculture to livestock-raising–evicted tenants from the land and created hordes of landless, jobless peasants that haunted the cities and countryside. Rents and prices rose but wages stagnated.

The skyrocketing cost of land coincided with plummeting farming income. The island’s population increased from fewer than three million in 1500 to over five million by the middle of the seventeenth century. However, wrenching social and economic changes unsettled the English population. The Protestant Reformation had shaken England but Elizabeth I assumed the English crown in 1558 and oversaw the expansion of trade and exploration–and the literary achievements of Shakespeare and Marlowe–during England’s so-called “golden age.” English mercantilism, a state-assisted manufacturing and trading system, created and maintained markets, ensured a steady supply of consumers and laborers, stimulated economic expansion, and increased English wealth.

Spain had a one-hundred year head start on New World colonization and a jealous England eyed the enormous wealth that Spain gleaned from the new World. Nicholas Hilliard, The Battle of Gravelines, 1588, via National Geographic España

Englands defeat of the spanish armada helped to ensure englands naval dominance