After Henry was excommunicated, and Ireland rebelled, and England itself
threatened disturbance, the King had to look to his security. He made
little noise about it. But the Spanish ambassador reported him as
silently building ships in the Thames and at Portsmouth. As invasion
seemed imminent, he began with sweeping the seas of the looser vermin. A
few swift well-armed cruisers pushed suddenly out of the Solent, caught
and destroyed a pirate fleet in Mount's Bay, sent to the bottom some
Flemish privateers in the Downs, and captured the Flemish admiral
himself. Danger at home growing more menacing, and the monks spreading
the fire which grew into the Pilgrimage of Grace, Henry suppressed the
abbeys, sold the lands, and with the proceeds armed the coast with
fortresses. 'You threaten me,' he seemed to say to them, 'that you will
use the wealth our fathers gave you to overthrow my Government and bring
in the invader. I will take your wealth, and I will use it to disappoint
your treachery.' You may see the remnants of Henry's work in the
fortresses anywhere along the coast from Berwick to the Land's End.
Louder thundered the Vatican. In 1539 Henry's time appeared to have
come.
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