e militia-men, however enthusiastic, were neither drilled nor armed,
was it so very certain, after all, that successful resistance would be
made to the great Armada, and to the veteran pikemen and musketeers of
Farnese, seasoned on a hundred, battlefields, and equipped as for a
tournament? There was generous confidence and chivalrous loyalty on the
part of Elizabeth's naval and military commanders; but there had been
deep regret and disappointment at her course.

Hawkins was anxious, all through the winter and spring, to cruise with a
small squadron off the coast of Spain. With a dozen vessels he undertook
to "distress anything that went through the seas." The cost of such a
squadron, with eighteen hundred men, to be relieved every four months, he
estimated at two thousand seven hundred pounds sterling the month, or a
shilling a day for each man; and it would be a very unlucky month, he
said, in which they did not make captures to three times that amount; for
they would see nothing that would not be presently their own. "We might
have peace, but not with God," said the pious old slave-trader; "but
rather than serve Baal, let us die a thousand deaths. Let us have open
war with these Jesuits, and every man will contribute, fight, devise, or
do, for the liberty of our country."

And it was open war with the Jesuits for which those stouthearted sailors
longed. All were afraid of secret mischief. The diplomatists--who were
known to be flitting about France, Flanders, Scotland, and England--were
birds of ill omen. King James was beset by a thousand bribes and
expostulations to avenge his mother's death; and although that mother had
murdered his father, and done her best to disinherit himself, yet it was
feared that Spanish ducats might induce him to be true to his mother's
revenge, and false to the reformed religion. Nothing of good was hoped
for from France. "For my part," said Lord Admiral Howard, "I have made of
the French King, the Scottish King, and the King of Spain, a trinity that
I mean never to trust to be saved by, and I would that others were of my
opinion."

The noble sailor, on whom so much responsibility rested, yet who was so
trammelled and thwarted by the timid and parsimonious policy of Elizabeth
and of Burghley, chafed and shook his chains like a captive. "Since
England was England," he exclaimed, "there was never such a stratagem and
mask to deceive her as this treaty of peace. I pray God that we do not
c