ertain that if he invaded and conquered
England the English Catholics would insist that he must make Mary Stuart
queen. He did not like Mary Stuart. He disapproved of her character. He
distrusted her promises. Spite of Jesuits and seminary priests, he
believed that she was still a Frenchwoman at heart, and a bad woman
besides. Yet something he must do for the outraged honour of Castile. He
concluded, in his slow way, that he would collect a fleet, the largest
and best-appointed that had ever floated on the sea. He would send or
lead it in person to the English Channel. He would command the situation
with an overwhelming force; and then would choose some course which
would be more convenient to himself than to his Holiness at Rome. On the
whole he was inclined to let Elizabeth continue queen, and forget and
forgive if she would put away her Walsinghams and her Drakes, and would
promise to be good for the future. If she remained obstinate his great
fleet would cover the passage of the Prince of Parma's army, and he
would then dictate his own terms in London.

LECTURE VII

ATTACK ON CADIZ

I recollect being told when a boy, on sending in a bad translation of
Horace, that I ought to remember that Horace was a man of intelligence
and did not write nonsense. The same caution should be borne in mind by
students of history. They see certain things done by kings and statesmen
which they believe they can interpret by assuming such persons to have
been knaves or idiots. Once an explanation given from the baser side of
human nature, they assume that it is necessarily the right one, and they
make their Horace into a fool without a misgiving that the folly may lie
elsewhere. Remarkable men and women have usually had some rational
motive for their conduct, which may be discovered, if we look for it
with our eyes open.

Nobody has suffered more from bad translators than Elizabeth. The
circumstances of Queen Elizabeth's birth, the traditions of her father,
the interests of England, and the sentiments of the party who had
sustained her claim to the succession, obliged her on coming to the
throne to renew the separation from the Papacy. The Church of England
was re-established on an Anglo-Catholic basis, which the rival factions
might interpret each in their own way. To allow more than one form of
public worship would have led in the heated temper of men's minds to
quarrels and civil wars. But conscience might be left free und