The Armada Crisis (Fourth Turning, 1569–1594) began when the powerful Duke of Norfolk was linked to a Spanish plot against the English throne, a discovery which galvanized newly-Protestant England against the global threat of the Catholic Hapsburgs. A crescendo of surrogate wars and privateering culminated in England’s miraculous victory over the Spanish Armada invasion (in 1588). The mood of emergency relaxed after the successful resistance of Holland and the breaking of Spanish control over France.

• Reformation entering elderhood
• Reprisal entering midlife
• Elizabethans entering young adulthood
• Parliamentarians entering childhood