How the seagoing
population of the North of Europe took so strong a Protestant impression
it is the purpose of these lectures to explain.
Henry VIII. on coming to the throne found England without a fleet, and
without a conscious sense of the need of one. A few merchant hulks
traded with Bordeaux and Cadiz and Lisbon; hoys and fly-boats drifted
slowly backwards and forwards between Antwerp and the Thames. A fishing
fleet tolerably appointed went annually to Iceland for cod. Local
fishermen worked the North Sea and the Channel from Hull to Falmouth.
The Chester people went to Kinsale for herrings and mackerel: but that
was all--the nation had aspired to no more.
Columbus had offered the New World to Henry VII. while the discovery was
still in the air. He had sent his brother to England with maps and
globes, and quotations from Plato to prove its existence. Henry, like a
practical Englishman, treated it as a wild dream.
The dream had come from the gate of horn. America was found, and the
Spaniard, and not the English, came into first possession of it. Still,
America was a large place, and John Cabot the Venetian with his son
Sebastian tried Henry again. England might still be able to secure a
slice.
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