modern coasting collier. And yet
within the space of a single ordinary life these insignificant islanders
had struck the sceptre from the Spaniards' grasp and placed the ocean
crown on the brow of their own sovereign. How did it come about? What
Cadmus had sown dragons' teeth in the furrows of the sea for the race to
spring from who manned the ships of Queen Elizabeth, who carried the
flag of their own country round the globe, and challenged and fought the
Spaniards on their own coasts and in their own harbours?

The English sea power was the legitimate child of the Reformation. It
grew, as I shall show you, directly out of the new despised
Protestantism. Matthew Parker and Bishop Jewel, the judicious Hooker
himself, excellent men as they were, would have written and preached to
small purpose without Sir Francis Drake's cannon to play an
accompaniment to their teaching. And again, Drake's cannon would not
have roared so loudly and so widely without seamen already trained in
heart and hand to work his ships and level his artillery. It was to the
superior seamanship, the superior quality of English ships and crews,
that the Spaniards attributed their defeat. Where did these ships come
from? Where and how did these mariners learn their trade? Historians
talk enthusiastically of the national spirit of a people rising with a
united heart to repel the invader, and so on. But national spirit could
not extemporise a fleet or produce trained officers and sailors to match
the conquerors of Lepanto. One slight observation I must make here at
starting, and certainly with no invidious purpose. It has been said
confidently, it has been repeated, I believe, by all modern writers,
that the Spanish invasion suspended in England the quarrels of creed,
and united Protestants and Roman Catholics in defence of their Queen and
country. They remind us especially that Lord Howard of Effingham, who
was Elizabeth's admiral, was himself a Roman Catholic. But was it so?
The Earl of Arundel, the head of the House of Howard, was a Roman
Catholic, and he was in the Tower praying for the success of Medina
Sidonia. Lord Howard of Effingham was no more a Roman Catholic than--I
hope I am not taking away their character--than the present Archbishop
of Canterbury or the Bishop of London. He was a Catholic, but an English
Catholic, as those reverend prelates are. Roman Catholic he could not
possibly have been, nor anyone who on that great occasion was found