tted and suffered, more exasperated against her.
That he might retaliate the assistance which she gave to his rebels in
the Low Countries, he had sent, under the name of the pope; a body
of seven hundred Spaniards and Italians into Ireland; where the
inhabitants, always turbulent, and discontented with the English
government, were now more alienated by religious prejudices, and were
ready to join every invader. The Spanish general, San Josepho, built a
fort in Kerry; and being there besieged by the earl of Ormond, president
of Munster, who was soon after joined by Lord Gray, the deputy, he made
a weak and cowardly defence. After some assaults, feebly sustained, he
surrendered at discretion; and Gray, who commanded but a small force,
finding himself encumbered with so many prisoners, put all the Spaniards
and Italians to the sword without mercy, and hanged about fifteen
hundred of the Irish; a cruelty which gave great displeasure to
Elizabeth.[*]

When the English ambassador made complaints of this invasion, he was
answered by like complaints of the piracies committed by Francis Drake,
a bold seaman, who had assaulted the Spaniards in the place where they
deemed themselves most secure--in the new world. This man, sprung from
mean parents in the county of Devon, having acquired considerable riches
by depredations made in the Isthmus of Panama, and having there gotten
a sight of the Pacific Ocean, was so stimulated by ambition and avarice,
that he scrupled not to employ his whole fortune in a new adventure
through those seas, so much unknown at that time to all the European
nations.[**] By means of Sir Christopher Hatton, then vice-chamberlain,
a great favorite of the queen's, he obtained her consent and
approbation; and he set sail from Plymouth in 1577, with four ships
and a pinnace, on board of which were one hundred and sixty-four able
sailors.[***] He passed into the South Sea by the Straits of Magellan;
and attacking the Spaniards, who expected no enemy in those quarters,
he took many rich prizes, and prepared to return with the booty which he
had acquired. Apprehensive of being intercepted by the enemy, if he took
the same way homewards by which he had reached the Pacific Ocean, he
attempted to find a passage by the north of California; and failing in
that enterprise, he set sail for the East Indies, and returned safely
this year, by the Cape of Good Hope. He was the first Englishman who
sailed round the globe; and