216

SUSPECTED POLICY OF JAMES VI.

[1587. and activity were of more importance in a sea-fight than unwieldy strength; and the lesson was not forgotten when the day of the greater battle had come. Till another year the mighty attempt upon England was delayed by the skill and courage of the Devonshire captain. Setting sail for the Azores, Drake fell in with a most valuable Portuguese carrack, returning from the East Indies; and he took this ship with a lading which made the San Philipe the greatest prize that had ever rewarded the energy of English mariners. This triumph at Cadiz, and this capture of the rich merchant-ship, were of permanent importance. "The English, ever after that time, more cheerfully set upon those huge, castle-like ships, which before they were afraid of; and also they so fully understood, by the merchants' books, the wealth of the Indian merchandises and the manner of trading in the eastern world, that they afterwards set up a gainful voyage and traffic thither, ordaining a company of East Indian merchants."* Drake came back to Plymouth; and during a year of warlike inaction, with that practical energy which is one of the characteristics of greatness he conferred a lasting benefit upon that town. The populous place had no adequate supply of fresh water. At Dartmoor he found a leat, or spring, that he saw was capable of being conducted from the high ground to a reservoir at the northern suburb of Plymouth. He mounted his horse, says the local tradition, and riding to the distant hills found the desired supply; and having pronounced some magical words rode back, and the stream followed him all the way to the town. The Plymouth Leat still bestows its blessings upon a large population. Science since that time has uttered many words that appear still more magical; but the scientific instinct of this rough sailor was following the track by which philosophy has achieved its most enduring glories, in becoming the great minister to all those conveniences of life whose blessings are of universal diffusion.

After Drake's return there were many months of suspense. The people of England knew that the great attempt of the Spaniard was only deferred. The colonial enterprises in which Raleigh and other bold spirits desired to persevere, in spite of loss and disappointment, were suspended. Never were the prudence and vigilance of Elizabeth's statesmen more required. The position of Scotland was a very doubtful one. James had become of full age; and he was urged on many sides to revenge the death of his mother, by joining in the projects of Spain. It is difficult to understand what were his real inclinations. Henry Cary, lord Hunsdon, was sent as an ambassador to James; and Elizabeth professed great confidence in his friendship. James admitted that he had received tempting offers from Spain: but declared that he detested, as much as herself, the plots of the papists. Hunsdon had no faith in him, and wrote to Elizabeth, "If there were any good inclination in him toward your highness, which I neither find nor believe to be, yet he hath such bad company about him, and so maliciously bent against your highness, they will not suffer him to remain in it two days together." The "bad company "of which Hunsdon speaks consisted of Huntley, and other Catholic lords, who were preparing to collect forces to revolutionise Scotland, and aid, by a diversion, the great attempt upon England. Some of the band were intriguing in foreign courts, and communicating with Spain and Rome. But

* Camden.

1588.]

THE ARMADA ANNOUNCED.

217

Elizabeth and her agents eventually prevented James from being led away by his "bad company." She wrote to him in her bold characteristic style, "Right well am I persuaded that your greatest danger should chance you by crossing your strait paths; for he that hath two strings to his bow may shoot stronger, but never strait; and he that hath no sure foundation cannot but ruin." But James was more effectually made to walk strait by present payments and large promises than by pithy lectures. The schemes. of the Spanish faction were penetrated by the acuteness of Walsingham and his agents; and England was free to concentrate her energies upon the defence of her southern and western coasts, without troubling herself about an enemy on her northern borders.

The notion of a maritime invasion of England was, to the majority of the people, a dim tradition of centuries long past. There were a few towers on the coast, more calculated to resist a handful of sea-robbers than a large invading army. In the interior of the country most of the old feudal castles had gradually given place to baronial mansions; and those that remained were little suited for defence against artillery. Raleigh, the most sagacious in counsel or action, held that an invader could only be prevented landing by the resistance of a fleet; and he maintained that in a country where there were no fortified places, and the ramparts were only the bodies of men, it was most dangerous not to offer that resistance by a navy of competent strength. The government of Elizabeth knew the weakness of the country; but they also knew its power. They knew the mettle of its mariners; and they had no fear of the loyalty of the people. The mask of negotiation, by which Philip and the prince of Parma thought to divert attention from their real proceedings, had been thrown off. It was now thought the true policy to proclaim their vast preparations and the objects of that mighty arming, so as to terrify rather than delude. Pope Sixtus V. made a solemn treaty with Philip, and promised him an enormous subsidy, to be paid when he had taken absolute possession of any English port. The warlike pontiff was equally ready with his spiritual weapons. He published a new bull of excommunication against Elizabeth, and called all Catholics to a crusade against England, as for a holy war against the Infidel. They came from all lands where the doctrines of the Reformation had never taken root, or had been extirpatedthey came, needy adventurers with high-sounding names, ready to fight for the true faith, and to have each a dainty plot of the English garden.

They

OTA WILLS

thought less of the plenary indulgences Medal struck by the Dutch. The pope, cardinals, promised for their voluntary service,

pope should

than of the stores of wealth that would reward their valour, when the Jezebel, the accursed queen, should be hurled from her throne, and the

"Letters of Elizabeth and James VI.," p. 51.

218

THE SPIRIT OF THE COUNTRY.

[1588.

have bestowed the crown upon Philip or his nominee. Such were the bands that flocked to the standard of the duke of Parma in the Netherlands. But in Spain, and in Spain's newly acquired dominion of Portugal, all the proud chivalry that had won the golden lands of Mexico and Peru were to go forth to an easier conquest of the worse than heathen, who obstructed the universal acceptance of the Catholic faith in the old world, and had dared to dispute the power of Spain to have an absolute monopoly of the soil and the commerce of the new world. In the pride of their invincibility they now threw away all caution and concealment. They were men grown fierce in the confidence of their own strength; and they held it sufficient to commend the cause, armada, and army, to the bishop of Rome, and the prayers of the Catholics to God and the saints; and to set forth a book in print, with maps, for a terror, wherein the whole preparation was particularly set down." *

The unequalled magnitude of this armament wrought no terror in England. The minds of men might be impressed with a solemn foreboding of a great battle to be fought which would determine the whole future destinies of this island; but there was no faint-heartedness. "Many ancient and strange prophecies in divers languages, and many excellent astronomers of sundry nations, had in very plain terms foretold, that the year 1588 should be most fatal and ominous unto all estates, concluding in these words: And if in that year the world do not perish and utterly decay, yet empires all, and kingdoms after, shall; and no man to raise himself shall know no way, and that for ever after it shall be called the year of wonder.'"+ Englishmen heard the prophecy; but there was no faint-heartedness. They interpreted it, after their own resolute fashion, that the year 1588 should be a fatal and ominous year to their enemies; the God of the Bible, which Englishmen had learned to read and study, being with the defenders of the land that had cast off the usurped power and the superstitions of Rome. "The whole commonalty of England became of one heart and mind. .. The English nation were so combined in heart, that I here confess I want art lively to express the sympathy of love between the subjects and the sovereign." The queen called upon her lieutenants of counties to set before the gentlemen under their lieutenantey, "the instant extraordinary occasion " for a larger proportion of horsemen and footmen than had been certified; "considering these great preparations and arrogant threatenings now burst out in action upon the seas, tending to a conquest wherein every man's particular state is in the highest degree to be touched, in respect of country, liberty, wife, children, lands, life, and that which specially is to be regarded, for the possession of the true and sincere religion of Christ." § She had, before this, through her Council, asked the authorities of London what the city would do; and the lord mayor and aldermen had besought that the Council would name what they thought was requisite. "The lords," says Stow, "demanded five thousand men and fifteen ships. The city craved two days' respite for an answer, which was granted; and then entreated their lordships, in sign of their perfect love and loyalty to their prince and country, kindly to accept

Camden. Lord Burleigh's copy of the book "set forth in print" (Lisbon, 1588) is in the King's Library in the British Museum.

+ Stow.

S Letter of the queen, dated 18th of June.

Ibid.

Ellis, Second Series, vol. iii. p. 187.

1588.]

THE CAMP AT TILBURY.

219

ten thousand men and thirty ships, amply furnished." In such a spirit as this there was something more invincible than all the armadas in the world. At the great camp at Tilbury was collected an army of train bands from the adjacent counties. Another army was in the interior for the defence of the queen's person, and to be used as a disposable force. "It was a pleasant sight to behold the soldiers as they marched towards Tilbury, their cheerful countenances, courageous words and gestures, dancing and leaping wheresoever they came." Well does the old historian paint the national spirit, most cheerful under the pressure of danger;-the spirit of a really free population, ready to fight" as if lusty giants to run a race," and not the less prepared to fight because they had little experience of real warfare. They had country, liberty, wife, children, lands, life, religion, to defend, as their queen had told

them. There was inequality of rank amongst them, but there was equality of duties and interests. The ploughman who followed his master's landlord to the field, the apprentice who was led by the alderman of his ward, had not been chilled into indifference by the insolence of birth, for the true gentleman was never insolent; nor by the pride of wealth, for the wealthy then respected those who were the instruments of their money-making. It was free England, socially free, which in 1588 was called to fight against the hated Spaniards, whose great galleys were rowed along by slaves, and whose

220

THE MARINERS OF ENGLAND.

(1588.

best mariners were regarded only as the drudges of the proud warriors who crowded the decks of the sailing ships. And thus, when an agent of the English council wrote home that the Spanish navy lay under the castle of Belem, expecting wind to set sail, and that he judged they would soon be in the English quarters-"so that the lightning and the thunder-clap will be both in a moment" *-at the same time every port, from the Lizard to the North Foreland, from the Naze to the Tyne, looked to its own little craft, and asked, in no niggard spirit, if it had a ship that could be fitted out at the common expense, to make one in that great sea-fight that was near at hand. There was not a port where mariners were not trained to hardy and dangerous adventure. They had gone forth, once from Deptford and twice from Harwich, with Frobisher, to search for the north-west passage. Three times

had the polar seas been penetrated by this intrepid navigator, who left his name in those regions to which so many other noble sailors have given a nomenclature. Davis followed Frobisher in the same enterprise. Our mariners had circumnavigated the world with Drake; and had carried the terror of the English flag, floating from the Pelican of Plymouth, into what was called the Indian Sea, in despite of the Spaniard, who held that the bishop of Rome had bestowed that vast ocean upon him alone. When Elizabeth told the Spaniard that her ships should sail, and her people should found colonies in places not already settled, in the Atlantic and the Pacific, without any regard to such imaginary right, there was many a gentleman of ancient family, and many a merchant prince of self-created fortune, ready to embark his property in this opening for colonial enterprise. In the year of the Armada, Cavendish was circumnavigating the world, and was warring against Spain, after the example of Drake, upon the coasts of Chili, and Peru, and New Spain; and he had taken a great galleon on the coast of California. But "the intrepid corsairs, who had rendered every sea insecure, now clustered round the coasts of their native island." There were with them at this time an enterprising band who were preparing to send out a new colony to Virginia. The first noble projects of Sir Humphrey Gilbert and his halfbrother, Raleigh, had failed. Sir Richard Grenville had effected a settlement on the island of Roanoak; yet the hostilities of the natives, and the disputes of the colonists had prevented any effectual establishment of the English in North America at that period. The governor had returned home, despairing of success. A few years were to pass over before the Anglo-Saxon race was "to make new nations," amidst dense forests and boundless prairies. England, at the time of the governor of Virginia's return, had something nearer home to think of than the colonisation of North America. But she had tasted tobacco, and she hoped to find gold. The time for that great work of "plantation" was not far distant.

* Ellis, Second Series, vol. iii. p. 134. Ranke, "History of the Popes," vol. ii. p. 173