trained
soldier. Well it was that Elizabeth, even in those dangerous days of
intrigue and rebellion, had trusted her people enough, not only to leave
them their weapons, but (what we, forsooth, in these more "free" and
"liberal" days dare not do) to teach them how to use them. Well it
was, that by careful legislation for the comfort and employment of "the
masses" (term then, thank God, unknown), she had both won their hearts,
and kept their bodies in fighting order. Well it was that, acting as
fully as Napoleon did on "la carriere ouverte aux talens," she had
raised to the highest posts in her councils, her army, and her navy, men
of business, who had not been ashamed to buy and sell as merchants and
adventurers. Well for England, in a word, that Elizabeth had pursued
for thirty years a very different course from that which we have been
pursuing for the last thirty, with one exception, namely, the leaving as
much as possible to private enterprise.

There we have copied her: would to Heaven that we had in some other
matters! It is the fashion now to call her a despot: but unless every
monarch is to be branded with that epithet whose power is not as
circumscribed as Queen Victoria's is now, we ought rather to call her
the most popular sovereign, obeyed of their own free will by the freest
subjects which England has ever seen; confess the Armada fight to have
been as great a moral triumph as it was a political one; and (now that
our late boasting is a little silenced by Crimean disasters) inquire
whether we have not something to learn from those old Tudor times, as
to how to choose officials, how to train a people, and how to defend a
country.

To return to the thread of my story.

January, 1587-8, had well-nigh run through, before Sir Richard Grenville
made his appearance on the streets of Bideford. He had been appointed in
November one of the council of war for providing for the safety of the
nation, and the West Country had seen nothing of him since. But one
morning, just before Christmas, his stately figure darkened the old
bay-window at Burrough, and Amyas rushed out to meet him, and bring him
in, and ask what news from Court.

"All good news, dear lad, and dearer madam. The queen shows the spirit
of a very Boadicea or Semiramis; ay, a very Scythian Tomyris, and if she
had the Spaniard before her now, would verily, for aught I know, feast
him as the Scythian queen did Cyrus, with 'Satia te sanguine, quod
sitisti