From Spain was to come the
army of deliverance for which the Jesuits were so passionately longing.
To the Spaniards the Pope was looking for the execution of the Bull of
Deposition. Father Parsons had left out of his estimate the Protestant
adventurers of London and Plymouth, who, besides their creed and their
patriotism, had their private wrongs to revenge. Philip might talk of
peace, and perhaps in weariness might at times seriously wish for it;
but between the Englishmen whose life was on the ocean and the Spanish
Inquisition, which had burned so many of them, there was no peace
possible. To them, Spain was the natural enemy. Among the daring spirits
who had sailed with Drake round the globe, who had waylaid the Spanish
gold ships, and startled the world with their exploits, the joy of whose
lives had been to fight Spaniards wherever they could meet with them,
there was but one wish--for an honest open war. The great galleons were
to them no objects of terror. The Spanish naval power seemed to them a
'Colossus stuffed with clouts.' They were Protestants all of them, but
their theology was rather practical than speculative. If Italians and
Spaniards chose to believe in the Mass, it was not any affair of theirs.
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