thrust their army on shore there, it will be hard for
those three thousand that are at Margat--twenty-and-four long miles from
thence--to come time enough to reenforce their fellows at the Nesse.
Nay, how shall they at Foulkstone be able to do it, who are nearer by
more than half the way? seeing that the enemy, at his first arrival,
will either make his entrance by force, with three or four shot of great
artillery, and quickly put the first three thousand that are intrenched
at the Nesse to run, or else give them so much to do that they shall be
glad to send for help to Foulkstone, and perhaps to Margat, whereby
those places will be left bare.

"Now, let us suppose that all the twelve thousand Kentish soldiers
arrived at the Nesse ere the enemy can be ready to disembark his army,
so that he will find it unsafe to land in the face of so many prepared
to withstand him, yet must we believe that he will play the best of his
own game--having liberty to go which way he list--and, under covert of
the night, set sail toward the east, where what shall hinder him to take
ground either at Margat, the Downes, or elsewhere, before they at the
Nesse can be well aware of his departure?

"Certainly there is nothing more easy than to do it. Yea, the like may
be said of Weymouth, Purbeck, Poole, and of all landing-places on the
southwest; for there is no man ignorant that ships, without putting
themselves out of breath, will easily outrun the soldiers that coast
them. '_Les armees ne volent point en poste_' ('Armies neither flye
nor run post'), saith a marshal of France. And I know it to be true that
a fleet of ships may be seen at sunset, and after it at the Lizard, yet
by the next morning they may recover Portland, whereas an army of foot
shall not be able to march it in six days.

"Again, when those troops lodged on the sea-shores shall be forced to
run from place to place in vain, after a fleet of ships, they will at
length sit down in the midway and leave all at adventure. But say it
were otherwise, that the invading enemy will offer to land in some such
place where there shall be an army of ours ready to receive him; yet it
cannot be doubted but that when the choice of all our trained bands, and
the choice of our commanders and captains, shall be drawn together--as
they were at Tilbury in the year 1588--to attend the person of the
Prince, and for the defence of the city of London, they that remain to
guard the coast can be of no