enough of their kind. "From highest to lowest you are to
understand the object of our expedition, which is to recover countries
to the Church now oppressed by the enemies of the true faith. I
therefore beseech you to remember your calling, so that God may be
with us in what we do. I charge you, one and all, to abstain from
profane oaths, dishonouring to the names of our Lord, our Lady, and
the Saints. All personal quarrels are to be suspended while the
expedition lasts, and for a month after it is completed. Neglect of
this will be held as treason. Each morning at sunrise the ship-boys,
according to custom, will sing 'Good Morrow' at the foot of the
mainmast, and at sunset the 'Ave Maria.' Since bad weather may
interrupt the communications the watchword is laid down for each day
in the week: Sunday, Jesus; the days succeeding, the Holy Ghost, the
Holy Trinity, Santiago, the Angels, All Saints, and Our Lady."*

--
* Spanish Story of the Armada, pp. 27, 28.
--

"God and one," it has been said, "make a majority." But in this case
God was not on the side of the pious and incompetent Medina Sidonia.

It was not till this same year 1892, after Freeman's death, that the
"Calendar of Letters and State Papers relative to English affairs
preserved principally in the Archives of Simancas" began to be
published in England by the Master of the Rolls. Translated by an
eminent scholar, Mr. Martin Hume, and printed in a book, they could
have been read by Freeman himself, and can be read by any one who
cares to undertake the task. They will at least give some idea of the
enormous labour undergone by Froude in his several sojourns at
Simancas. I cannot profess to have instituted a systematic
comparison, but a few specimens selected at random show that Froude
summarised fairly the documents with which he dealt. That there
should be some discrepancies was inevitable.

Philip II. wrote a remarkably bad hand, and his Ambassadors were not
chosen for their penmanship. The most striking fact in the case is
that Mr. Hume has derived assistance from Froude in the performance
of his own duties. "I have," he writes in his Introduction, "very
carefully compared the Spanish text when doubtful with Mr. Froude's
extracts and copies and with transcripts of many of the letters in
the British Museum." Nothing could give a better idea than this
sentence of the difficulties which Froude had to surmount, or of the
fidelity with which he surmounted them