' There
was no need to wait for more. It was but two months since Drake had
sailed from Plymouth. He could now go home after a cruise of which the
history of his own or any other country had never presented the like.
He had struck the King of Spain in his own stronghold. He had disabled
the intended Armada for one season at least. He had picked up a prize by
the way and as if by accident, worth half a million, to pay his
expenses, so that he had cost nothing to his mistress, and had brought
back a handsome present for her. I doubt if such a naval estimate was
ever presented to an English House of Commons. Above all he had taught
the self-confident Spaniard to be afraid of him, and he carried back his
poor comrades in such a glow of triumph that they would have fought
Satan and all his angels with Drake at their head.
Our West-country annals still tell how the country people streamed down
in their best clothes to see the great _San Philip_ towed into Dartmouth
Harbour. English Protestantism was no bad cable for the nation to ride
by in those stormy times, and deserves to be honourably remembered in a
School of History at an English University.
LECTURE VIII
SAILING OF THE ARMADA
Peace or war between Spain and England, that was now the question, with
a prospect of securing the English succession for himself or one of his
daughters.
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