term, the queen's title to that crown continuing good after the payment of that sum. These conditions were ill taken by the people, who considered the loss of Calais a dishonour* only to be repaired by its restoration or recapture. Their indignation was diverted by bringing to trial lord Wentworth the governor, and the captains of the castle and of Risebank: the former was acquitted; the two latter found guilty of treason for abandoning their posts. But, as the sentence was passed in conformity to popular opinion, rather than to any actual demerit on their parts, the punishment was remitted.†

During queen Mary's reign the little island of Sarke was seized by the French: there was at that time only a poor hermitage there, with a little chapel appertaining to it, the isle itself serving as a common to the people of Guernsey for breeding their cattle; but when occupied by an enemy it could never have been recovered by strong hand, the cattle supplying them with abundant food, as well as the ground which they cultivated, and there being but one ascent to it, for nature has so walled it round with rocks, and rendered it every way so inaccessible, that it might be held, says sir Walter Raleigh, against the Great Turk. Some Netherlanders recovered it by stratagem: they anchored in the road with one ship of small burden, and requested leave to bury their owner there in hallowed ground, offering the French,

The lord-keeper Bacon spoke thus concerning it at the opening of Elizabeth's first parliament:-" Could there have happened to this imperial crown a greater loss in honour, strength, and treasure, than to lose that place, I mean Calais, which was in the beginning so nobly won, and hath so long time, so honourably and politicly, in all ages and times, and against all attempts both foreign and near, both of forces and treasons, been defended and kept? Did not the keeping of this breed fear to our greatest enemies, and make our faint friends the more assured and loather to break? Yea, hath not the winning and keeping of this bred throughout Europe an ho nourable opinion and report of our English nation? Again, what one thing so much preserved and guarded our merchants, their traffic and intercourses, or hath been so great a help for the well-uttering of our chief commodities; or what so much as this hath kept a great part of our sea coast from spoiling and robbing? To be short, the loss of this is much greater than I am able to utter, and as yet, I suppose, is able to be understood by any. Marry, withal, I think there is no man so hard-hearted in thinking of it, but for the restoring of it would adventure lands, limbs, yea, the life." Parl. Hist. i. 640.

+ Camden's Elizabeth (English trans. 4th edition), 21-25. Holinshed, 183, 184.

who were some thirty in number, a present of such commodities as they had on board, and engaging not to come ashore with any weapon, not even a knife; for upon this the garrison insisted. A coffin accordingly was lowered into the boat, some of the crew landed, and having been carefully searched, were allowed to draw the coffin up the rocks, which was done with great difficulty. Some of the French took the Flemish boat, and boarded the vessel, to receive the promised present: as soon as they were on board they were seized and secured. Meantime the Flemings who had landed carried the coffin into the chapel, shut the door, opened the coffin, armed themselves with the swords, targets, and harquebusses with which it was filled, and set upon the French: they ran to the cliff and called upon their comrades for help; but when they saw the boat returning with more Flemings, they yielded themselves and the place.*

Till this time the naval history of England had been confined to its own seas and the adjacent shores; but thenceforward a wider range was opened; distant enterprises were undertaken, and events of far greater moment in themselves, and in their consequences, are to be recorded. The individual agents, as well as the actions themselves, become more important; and the history may, from this period, more conveniently be continued in a series of the lives of those great commanders, who, serving their country, each in his generation, asserted, established, and maintained her maritime superiority, and thereby secured her independence, and with it those liberties, civil and religious, wherewith this nation has hitherto been above all nations conspicuously blessed.

Hakewell's

* Raleigh's Hist. of the World, book iv. ch. 2. s. 18. Apology, 258. Heylin's Survey, 296. Thus," says sir Walter, "a fox-tail doth sometimes help well to piece out the lion's skin that else would be too short." The archdeacon calls it a stratagem," in his judgment matchable to any that ever yet he heard of." And Peter Heylin says it is "to be compared, if not preferred, unto any of the ancients, did not that fatal folly reprehended once by Tacitus still reign amongst us, quod vetera extollimus, recentium incuriosi." It was, however, no new stratagem; nor ought any stratagem ever to be recorded with approbation in which the generosity or the humanity of an enemy has been abused.

278

CHARLES, SECOND LORD HOWARD OF EFFINGHAM,

AND FIRST EARL OF NOTTINGHAM.

1536-1624.

CHARLES, eldest son of lord William Howard, and grandson of Thomas, second duke of Norfolk, was born in 1536. Margaret, his mother, was daughter of sir Thomas Gamage of Coity, in Glamorganshire. His father was one of the courtiers who accompanied king Henry to the Field of the Cloth of Gold, having (it is recorded) in his retinue eleven servants and two horsekeepers; he assisted as proxy for his brother, the duke and earl marshal, at the coronation of Anne Boleyn; and, after the conviction of his niece, queen Catherine Howard, was found guilty, with his lady, of misprision of treason, for not having revealed what they knew of her misconduct, and condemned to perpetual imprisonment, with forfeiture of their goods, and of the profits of their lands during life. This sentence was soon remitted, in consideration of his services, " and it may be of his innocence." He attended on Henry at the siege of Boulogne; and, in the ensuing reign, was one of the first favourers and furtherers, with his purse and countenance, of," what Fuller calls, "the strange and wonderful discovery of Russia," being one of those who were incorporated as merchant-adventurers to Moscovy; and, “at their own cost and charges, provided those ships to discover territories unknown, northwards, north-eastwards, and north-westwards." The expedition is memorable both in naval and commercial history: for the commander, sir Hugh Willoughby, after discovering Greenland, was frozen to death, with all his ship's company, in a haven on the

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coast of Lapland; and the second in command, Richard Chancellor, who had fortunately parted company with him, entered the river of St. Nicholas, travelled to the court of the czar Ivan Basilowitz, delivered the king's letters to that sovereign, and obtained for the English the privilege of a free trade in any part of his dominions, being their first entrance into Russia. On the accession of queen Mary, he was created a peer of the realm, by the title of lord Howard of Effingham, and appointed high admiral of England and Wales, Ireland, Gascony, and Aquitaine; the queen, "in consideration of his fidelity, prudence, valour, and industry," constituting him "her lieutenant-general and chief commander of her whole fleet and royal army going to sea for the defence of her friends." In the discharge of this office, he kept the seas about three months; and having met with Philip, then prince of Asturias, escorted him to Southampton, and attended his marriage with the queen. At the commencement of the following reign, he was one of the persons empowered to conclude peace with France.

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Under such a father Charles Howard was trained, serving under him by land and sea. He was about twenty-two years of age at the accession of Elizabeth; and his " most proper person is said to have been one reason why that queen (who, though she did not value a jewel by, valued it the more for, a fair case,) reflected so much upon him.' ."* She sent him to France, A.D. after the death of Henry II., on an embassy of condo- 1559. lence and congratulation to the young king. He was elected one of the knights for his native county of Surrey in the parliament of 1562-3; and afterwards distinguished himself as general of the horse in quelling the rebellion of the earls of Northumberland and Westmoreland. In the ensuing year, he commanded 1569. ten ships of her majesty's "navy royal;" which, when the emperor Maximilian's daughter, Anne, sailed from Zeeland to marry her uncle, Philip II., were ordered to

* Fuller.

convoy her through the British seas, as a singular testimony of the queen's respect for the house of Austria; and on this occasion, it is said, that he enforced the Spanish fleet "to stoop gallant, and to veil their bonnets to the queen of England." It was probably at this time that he received the honour of knighthood. Having a second time been elected for Surrey, he was installed knight of the garter in 1574, and made lord chamberlain of the household, - an office which had been held by his father, who, dying in 1572-3, had bequeathed to him his collar of gold, and all his robes belonging to the order of the garter. Upon the death of the earl of Lincoln, he was raised to the office of lord high admiral of England; in which capacity he was called upon to perform a more serious service with regard to the Spaniards than when he required from them in peace a recognition of the queen's sovereignty in the English seas.

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Elizabeth, when she succeeded in happy hour to the English throne, was far from entertaining any sentiments of ill will toward the king of Spain. 66 Whatsoever," saith Fox* the martyrologist, can be recited touching the admirable working of God's present hand in defending and delivering any one person out of thraldom, never was there, since the memory of our fathers, any example to be showed, wherein the Lord's mighty power hath more admirably and blessedly showed itself, to the glory of his own name, to the comfort of all good hearts, and to the public felicity of this whole realm, than in the miraculous custody and out-scape of the then lady Elizabeth, in the strict time of queen Mary." To be near the throne was almost as perilous in the Plantagenet and Tudor families as in the Ottoman house; and in her case the danger was fearfully enhanced by a clear apprehension, on the part of the Romish hierarchy, that the reformed religion, which they were labouring to extirpate by fire and sword, would be re-established if Elizabeth should succeed to her sister.

*Vol. iii. 792.