Spanish Armada in 1588 was famously defeated. In turn England launched an equally unsuccessful expedition to Spain with the Drake–Norris Expedition of 1589. Three further Spanish Armadas also failed in 1596, 1597 and 1602. The war ended with the Treaty of London the year following Elizabeth's death. England during this period had a centralised, well-organised, and effective government, largely a result of the reforms of Henry VII and Henry VIII, as well as Elizabeth's harsh punishments for any dissenters. Economically, the country began to benefit greatly from the new era of trans-Atlantic trade and persistent theft of Spanish and Portuguese treasures, most notably as a result of Francis Drake's circumnavigation. The term Elizabethan era was already well-established in English and British historical consciousness, long before the accession of Queen Elizabeth II, and generally refers solely to the time of the earlier Queen of this name. Romance and reality The Victorian era and the early 20th century idealised the Elizabethan era. The Encyclopædia Britannica maintains that "[T]he long reign of Elizabeth I, 1558–1603, was England's Golden Age... 'Merry England', in love with life, expressed itself in music and literature, in architecture and in adventurous seafaring". This idealising tendency was shared by Britain and an Anglophilic America. In popular culture, the image of those adventurous Elizabethan seafarers was embodied in the films of Errol Flynn. In response and reaction to this hyperbole, modern historians and biographers have tended to take a more dispassionate view of the Tudor period. Government Elizabethan England was not particularly successful in a military sense during the period, but it avoided major defeats and built up a powerful navy. On balance, it can be said that Elizabeth provided the country with a long period of general if not total peace and generally increased prosperity due in large part to stealing from Spanish treasure ships, raiding settlements with low defenses, and selling African slaves. Having inherited a virtually bankrupt state from previous reigns, her frugal policies restored fiscal responsibility. Her fiscal restraint cleared the regime of debt by 1574, and ten years later the Crown enjoyed a surplus of £300,000. Economically, Sir Thomas Gresham's founding of the Royal Exchange (1565), the first stock exchange in England and one of the earliest in Europe, proved to be a development of the first importance, for the economic development of England and soon for the world as a whole. With taxes lower