All this they accomplished in half a century, and,
as it were, they did it with a single hand; with the other they were
fighting Moors and Turks and protecting the coast of the Mediterranean
from the corsairs of Tunis and Constantinople.
They had risen on the crest of the wave, and with their proud _Non
sufficit orbis_ were looking for new worlds to conquer, at a time when
the bark of the English water-dogs had scarcely been heard beyond their
own fishing-grounds, and the largest merchant vessel sailing from the
port of London was scarce bigger than a modern coasting collier. And yet
within the space of a single ordinary life these insignificant islanders
had struck the sceptre from the Spaniards' grasp and placed the ocean
crown on the brow of their own sovereign. How did it come about? What
Cadmus had sown dragons' teeth in the furrows of the sea for the race to
spring from who manned the ships of Queen Elizabeth, who carried the
flag of their own country round the globe, and challenged and fought the
Spaniards on their own coasts and in their own harbours?
The English sea power was the legitimate child of the Reformation. It
grew, as I shall show you, directly out of the new despised
Protestantism.
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