his resentment at being disappointed in his views for his son, Elizabeth
was made acquainted with the plot ; whereby " hebbe finalmente quello
che desiderava il diavolo " (471, 472).
Philip is asserted to have said to the legate : " Nullam unquam hoc ipso
vel preclarius vel sanctius compositum stratagema fuisse ; neque vero
majorem unquam visam esse conjuratorum sive concordiam, sive con-
stantiam ; siquidem per tot dies nihil unquam ab ipsis temere enuntiatum
erat, magnaque res bene gerendas atque opportuna sese offerebat occasio.
Sed enim summus ille mundi Opifex, cujus nutu omnia gubernantur,
seu mortalium peccatis id emerentibus, seu ut ex Anglia vigente perse-
cutione plures interim Christi martyres, uti deinceps factum est, in
ccelum volarent, nos alioqui pios conatus irritos esse permissit " (Ada
SS., 659).
\ Ibid.
LORD HOWARD OF EFFINGHAM 15
Elizabeth's part ; but on the part of Philip perfidiously. She did
not restrain her subjects from those maritime adventures which
nourished her naval strength ; and he, in conformity to what was
then the avowed doctrine of the Romish Church, acted upon the
principle that all means were justifiable whereby the interests
of that Church could be promoted. The Spanish ambassador
complained that the rebellious Netherlanders were supplied
with warlike stores from England, and harboured in the Eng-
lish ports ; and, in consequence of his complaint, she ordered
their ships of war to be detained, and those persons who were
suspected of being implicated in the disturbances to leave the
land. The most important events in public affairs, as well as
in private life, often arise from circumstances which, when
they occur, appear of little moment. The ships which the
Prince of Orange had commissioned, though they were expressly
enjoined not to injure any but their enemies, had brought a
scandal upon his cause * by their piracies : insomuch that he
had displaced the admiral and appointed the Lord of Lumey,
William Graave van der Marck, in his stead. That officer,
acting either from timely apprehension, or upon secret intima-
tion, collected his ships, twenty-four in number, and sailed
from England, entered the Maas, and by a sudden assault got
possession of the Briel. This was the first town in Holland
which was delivered from the Spaniards, and with this enter-
prise, the naval power of the United Provinces commenced.
The Water-Geusen, as the Prince of Orange's sailors were
called, had before this time deserved no better appellation ;
they were mere pirates, and by their ill name had done more
injury to him, than by their ill deeds to his enemies. But
after this adventure, which had been undertaken by the ex-
hortation of a better man than Lumey,+ one success followed
* Pieter Bor, 289, 323.
f He was a mere freebooter, and most of his company little .better :
" Animi ferox, idque illi unum pro virtute erat," says Grotius ; " et comi-
tum plerisque consilium, aut animus, non nisi in praedam " (Ann., 1. ii.,
P- 35)-
16 ENGLISH SEAMEN
another. They obtained ports, entered earnestly into the
national cause, and acquired character as they gathered
strength.* Within four months after the capture of the Briel,
they were joined by so many adventurers, French and Eng-
lish, that a fleet of 150 sail+ was collected at Flushing, and by
this fleet the project of an intended invasion of England was
defeated, J at a time when no apprehension of any such
danger was entertained there. For the Duque del Medina
Celi, coming to succeed Alva in the Government, and bringing
with him reinforcements and orders to put in execution the
design of entering the Thames and surprising London, ap-
proached the coast of Flanders, supposing it to be still in
possession of the Spaniards, and that they were masters as well
of the sea as of the shores. But the Admiral of Zeeland,
Boudewijn Ewoutzoon, having intelligence of his approach,
met and attacked him, and captured the far greater part of
his richly laden fleet, the duque himself hardly escaping in a
small vessel into Sluys. Dispirited at the unexpected aspect
of affairs on his arrival, he solicited and obtained his recall ;
and Alva seeing that the scheme of foreign invasion, as well
as of domestic treason, had been frustrated, deemed it advisable
to dissemble still further with England, and renewed the com-
mercial intercourse which had then for four years been
suspended. By mutual agreement it was opened for two
years, and among the articles was a clause, that " if this mutual
good understanding and close amity should happen for a time
to be disturbed, yet should it in no wise be construed to be
broken and dissolved. But if the matter could not be com-
* Tcgenwoordige Staat der Ver. Netherlander*, vol. v., pp. 330-336.
Pieter Bor, 365.
f Strada, Dec. i., 1. vii., p. 393.
\ Camden, 191.
Pieter Bor, 393. T'Vervolgh der. Chron. van de Netherlanden, p.
64.
LORD HOWARD OF EFFINGHAM 17
pounded by commissioners, within the time prescribed, the
intercourse was to cease at the end of the two years." *
The good faith and honour of the realm was upon this
occasion well maintained. Elizabeth made a full agreement
with the Genoese merchants, concerning the money which
was the first declared cause of difference : she indemnified
the English merchants for their losses in the Netherlands, out
of the produce of the Netherlanders' goods which had been
embargoed here ; and the residue was restored to Alva,
who made no such restitution to his subjects out of the
English property that he had detained. f It had never been
Elizabeth's wish that the Netherlands should throw off their
allegiance to Philip. Not contemplating the possibility, which,
at that time, was not contemplated by themselves, that they
could ever maintain themselves as an independent State, she
knew that, as it regarded England, it was better they should
be annexed to Spain than to France ; and there was no other
apparent alternative. Nor, if their independence had seemed
feasible, could she, a sovereign princess, have desired that
what she could not but deem a dangerous precedent should
be established. As a Protestant, she sympathised with their
sufferings for religion's sake ; as the queen of a free people,
whose rights and privileges she respected as she ought, she
acknowledged that they complained justly of the breach of
their fundamental laws. But, on the other hand, Elizabeth
felt that the cause of the Reformation had been disgraced and
injured by the excesses the Netherlanders had committed
under its name, by spoliation and havoc, and by cruelties
which afforded the persecutors a recriminating plea, and
which were not to be excused for having been exercised in
retaliation. Moreover, she was sensible that, in such com-
motions, the foundations of civil society are loosened and
endangered. These equitable views were fairly stated, both
* Camden, 191. \ Ibid.
18 ENGLISH SEAMEN
to the Spanish Government and to the States. When Re-
quesens sent an agent into England to obtain her permission
for engaging ships and seamen there, to act against the
Hollanders and Zeelanders, she refused, and prohibited
English seamen from serving under foreign powers, and all
men from setting out ships of war without her licence : " her
ships and sailors," she said, " should not be hazarded in
foreign quarrels ". The agent then requested that she would
not be displeased if those English whom he called exiles, but
whom she termed rebels, served at sea against the Hollanders;
but that she would allow them free access to any of her ports.
Her answer was, " that she could in no wise allow them to
serve under the Spaniards ; and that to give the use of her
ports to rebels and sworn enemies would be nothing short of
madness ". One other request the agent made, that the Low
Country emigrants might be expelled from her dominions.
To this she replied, " that her consenting to a like request,
three years before, had proved most prejudicial to the Spanish
affairs ; for from thence that maritime power had arisen,
against which the Spaniards now found it so difficult to con-
tend ". In proof that she had neither forgotten nor disre-
garded the ancient league with the house of Burgundy, she
forbade the Netherlander' ships of war, which were then in
her havens, from leaving them ; and would, by public pro-
clamation, give orders that none who were in arms against
the Spaniards should be admitted into them, specifying by
name the Prince of Orange, and some fifty of the most con-
spicuous persons of his party ; but she would not expel the
fugitives who had taken shelter upon her shores, ..." poor,
simple people, who had forsaken their country and their
inheritance for peace ; and whom it were inhuman, and
against the laws of hospitality, to deliver into the hands of
their enemies".*
On the other hand, she endeavoured to dissuade the Prince
* Camden, 20.
LORD HOWARD OF EFFINGHAM 19
of Orange from inviting France to protect the States ; and
when she was entreated by Holland and Zeeland to take them
into her own possession, or at least under her protection, as
the person to whom, in defeasance of the Spanish line, the
right of inheritance reverted (that line deriving it from a sister
of Philippa of Hainault, Edward III.'s queen), she answered,
that she esteemed nothing more glorious than to act with
faith and honour as beseemeth a prince : in this case, she
could not be satisfied that she could, consistently with
honour and conscience, take those provinces under her
protection, much less into her possession ; but that she would
earnestly endeavour to procure for them a happy peace.
When Requesens died, and there were movements which
indicated a disposition in the other States to recover their
ancient liberties, she exhorted them to bend their minds to
peace, desiring nothing so much as the restoration of order in
their provinces, and good government. This, indeed, her
subjects had great reason to desire ; for while many of those
unquiet spirits, who followed war as a trade, engaged on either
side, the English merchants, seeking their own gain by less
exceptionable means, were plundered by both. They who
were resident in Antwerp, when that city was sacked by the
mutinous Spaniards, were not only spoiled of their goods, but
compelled to pay a large ransom for their lives. And the
Dutch and Zeeland ships of war, with the connivance, if not
the sanction of the States, detained English ships upon the
plea that they imported provisions to their enemies the
Dunkirkers, and that the trade from Flanders to Spain was
now carried on in English bottoms, and boarded them "smally
to the profit of those to whom the ships and goods apper-
tained," even when they were not boldly seized and earned
away as prizes. A breach had nearly been made between the
States and England, when the States blockaded the Scheldt,
and prohibited the English from trading by that river with
Antwerp : the merchants, finding themselves thus damnified,
20 ENGLISH SEAMEN
complained to their own Government, reprisals took place,
and the dispute M r as not adjusted till after much mutual
injury and ill-will. The arrangement was facilitated by
sending four vessels under the comptroller of the queen's
ships, William Holstocke, to scour the narrow seas from the
North Foreland to Falmouth. In that course, he recaptured
fifteen merchantmen of sundry nations, took twenty ships and
barques, " English, French, and Flemings, but all pirates, and
in fashion of war " ; and brought home 200 men prisoners for
piracy, some thirty of whom were condemned to death.*
Such was the desire of Elizabeth that the Low Countries
should remain united to Spain, rather than be annexed to
France, that when Don John of Austria arrived as governor,
she offered him her assistance in case the States should call
in the French. At the same time when, upon the impor-
tunate entreaties of the States, she assisted them with 20,000/ v
it was upon condition that they should neither change their
religion nor their prince, nor receive the French into the
Netherlands, nor refuse a peace if Don John would con-
descend to reasonable conditions ; and that, if such a peace
were obtained, this money should go toward the payment of
the Spanish soldiers, who were then in a state of mutiny
because of their arrears, f But it was with no amicable
intentions towards the Queen of England that Don John took
upon himself the command in the Netherlands. He had been
bred up in ignorance that Charles V. was his father, but in
a manner which qualified him for any rank to which he might
be advanced ; and Philip, after acknowledging him as his
brother, though illegitimate, had placed him in circumstances
the most favourable to an ambitious mind, by appointing him to
the command of that fleet with which he achieved at Lepanto
a naval victory more important and more famous than any
* Holinshed, 321-323, 329-332. Camden, 214.
t Camden, 208, 210, 215.
LORD HOWARD OF EFFINGHAM 21
preceding one in modern history. Having taken possession
of Tunis, he conceived the hope of becoming the founder of a
Christian kingdom, which might one day vie in power and
prosperity with ancient Carthage : * and when Philip refused
his consent to a project the difficulties of which were well
understood by Spanish statesmen, Don John, with the appro-
bation of the Pope, fixed upon England as the seat of the
kingdom to which he imagined himself born. A marriage
with the Queen of Scots was to provide him with a claim to
it, and possession was to be taken by force of arms. The
English emigrants encouraged him in this design ; and he re-
presented to Philip that England might be conquered more
easily than Zeeland, and urged him to grant him some port in
the north of Spain from whence he might invade it with a
fleet. Meantime he had privately communicated with the
Guises ; and this part of his negotiation was discovered and
made known to Elizabeth by the Prince of Orange, as also
that the intention was to occupy the Isle of Man, and that the
aid of Mary's partisans in the south of Scotland was counted
on, and assistance from Ireland, and an insurrection of the
Papists in the northern counties and in North Wales. When
the truth of this information had been ascertained, Elizabeth
entered into a league with the States, f
That league she notified by an ambassador to the King of
Spain, praying him and the governors of the Netherlands to
call to mind how often and how earnestly, and in how friendly
an intent, she had long forewarned them of the evils impend-
ing over those countries ; how carefully she had endeavoured
to keep them within their duty to the king ; how she had
refused to take possession of the rich provinces which had
been offered to her, and refused also to protect them ; and
how she had supplied them largely with money, when all
* Memorial de Ant. Perez, 298.
t Camden, 220.
22 ENGLISH SEAMEN
things were in a most desperate and deplorable state, that
they might not, for want thereof, be necessitated to call in
another power, and break the design of peace which had lately
been set on foot ; whether these things were unbeseeming a
Christian queen, who affected peace, and was most desirous to
deserve well of her confederate the Spaniard, let the Spaniard
himself and all Christian princes judge ! And now that the
wars might cease, and the Netherlanders again be at his
devotion, she advised him to receive his afflicted people into
former grace and favour, to restore their privileges, to observe
the conditions of the last agreement, and to appoint them
another governor of his own family : for no peace could be
concluded or observed unless Don John of Austria were
removed, whom the States distrusted and hated, and whom
she certainly knew, by his secret practices with the Queen of
Scots, to be her most mortal enemy, insomuch that she could
expect nothing from the Netherlands but assured danger, so
long as he was governor there. It was because she knew
what great forces Don John had raised, and how many
auxiliary companies of French were ready to join him, that
she, to preserve the Netherlands and Spain, and avert the
danger from England, had now engaged to assist the States,
they having promised on their part that they would continue
in the king's obedience, and alter nothing in religion. If,
however, the king would not listen to these representations,
but was resolved to abrogate their rights and privileges, and
reduce those miserable provinces into slavery, as if he had
obtained possession of them by right of war, she in that case
would not neglect to defend her neighbours, and provide for
her own security.*
This was no palatable language to Philip ; but that deep
dissembler, feeling its force, and conscious of its truth, brooked
it, and with simulated good-will besought her to continue her
* Camden, 221.
LORD HOWARD OF EFFINGHAM 23
endeavours for bringing about a peace, and not hastily to
credit false reports, nor believe that he attempted anything
unbecoming a prince in amity with her. How far he favoured
the designs of Don John as conformable to his own Catholic
views, or discouraged them as tending more to the advantage
of France than Spain, is uncertain.* But after the death of
* Strada says that when the Pope proposed a marriage between Don
John and the Queen of Scots, " Cum dotali Angliae regno, ad cujus aggres-
sionem honestior inde titulus armis Austriacis adderetur " ; Philip did not
refuse his consent: " Xeque rex abnuebat, immo licet expeditionem
magis quam ducem probaret," are his cautious words (1. viii., p. 445).
There is a mystery about the fate of Don John. " Nam super natalium
sortem Tunetense quondam regnum, tune et Angliam sperasse manifestus,
et cum Lotharingis in Gallica aula praepotentibus, clam Philippum,
sociasse consilia, facile et res Belgicas in se versurus timebatur. Unde
nee veneni suspicio abfuit, incertum tamen unde dati, quippe inventis
sacerdotibus Romanas professionis, qui suam in hoc operam patriae im-
putarent. Anglos alii suspectabant, non ita dudum supplicio affectis,
qui inde immissi in ipsum percursores dicebantur" (Grotius, p. 61).
The Englishmen here spoken of were Egremont Ratcliffe, and one
Grey, the former son to the Earl of Sussex by a second wife, a man of a
turbulent spirit, and one of the chiefs of the northern rebellion. The Eng-
lish emigrants accused him of intending to assassinate Don John, in
whose army he was serving, and he and Grey were executed upon this.
"The Spaniards," says Camden, " give out that Ratcliffe at his death
voluntarily confessed he had been released from the Tower purposely
to commit this murder, and encouraged to it by Walsingham with
great promises. The English that were there present deny that he made
any such confession, though the emigrants did what they could to extort
it from him" (p. 227). They were put to the torture after Don John's
death, by the Prince of Parma, and executed upon the confession thus
extorted (Strada, 557). If Don John were poisoned, the cause of their
execution is evident enough.
This was an absurd charge, and could be believed only by that party
spirit which will believe anything. Common as the employment of
assassins was in that age for party motives, the English Government
stands free from all reproach on that score ; and if it had been less
scrupulous, Don John was no object of its jealousy or of its fear. There
is a strange tale of'his intriguing for a marriage with Elizabeth ; this is
24 ENGLISH SEAMEN
that ambitious chief, whose story is more like a fiction of
romance or tragedy than a tale of real life, the plots against
Elizabeth were renewed. Pope Gregory XIII. and Philip, by
whom the scheme was now concerted, had each their separate
views ; the latter saw that he could not reduce the Nether-
lands to subjection unless he were master of the sea, and that
he could not be master of the sea till he should have subdued
England. The Pope, in the plenitude of his authority, was
willing to confer upon him an apostolical title to that kingdom,
giving Ireland at the same time to his own bastard son, whom
he had made Marchese de Vineola. The notorious adventurer
Stukely undertook to conquer Ireland for this king-aspirant,
and to burn the ships in the Thames. For this service, he
asked only 3000 men, while a larger force of Spaniards and
Portuguese were to land in England. To show on what
grounds he proceeded, this arch-traitor presented an instru-
ment to Philip, " subscribed with the names of most of the
Irish nobility, and of divers in England of good quality, ready
said to have been seriously affirmed by letters from the Low Countries,
and it has also been affirmed that Escovedo passed two months in England
endeavouring to bring about a negotiation for this end ; but nothing that
in the slightest degree supports this, appears in all that has come to light
concerning Escovedo's fate, nor in any English documents. It is only
not impossible, because Don John seems to have loved danger and dis-
simulation for their own sakes. Instead of taking a safe course to the
Netherlands, when he went to assume the government, he chose to pass
through France in the disguise of a negro servant, " infuscato ore, vibrato
capillo ac barba" (Strada, Dec. iv., 1. ix., p. 460). The man who could
choose such a disguise, would think no plot too extravagant in which he
was to perform a conspicuous part.
Strada suspects that the story was devised by the Prince of Orange,
for the purpose of exasperating Philip against his brother (p. 556). But
the Prince of Orange was a good man, engaged in a good cause, . . . too
good a man ever to have served it by wicked means. When he charged
Philip in his declaration, with the death of Don Carlos, I am as con-
fident that he believed the charge as I am convinced that the charge itself
was an atrocious calumny.
LORD HOWARD OF EFFINGHAM 25
to be at his devotion ". In order to diminish the queen's
means of naval defence, foreign merchants were employed to
hire for distant voyages the greater part of those merchant
ships which were built and furnished for sea-service.*
It is said that Sebastian of Portugal was intended for the
command of this expedition. Such an undertaking would
have well accorded with his temper, and with the principles
wherewith his pernicious education had thoroughly imbued
him. The massacre of St. Bartholomew's had been concerted
with his knowledge : an armament, which he had prepared
ostensibly against the Turks, was to have sailed in aid of the
French Government, if that massacre had failed ; and when
the news of its perpetration arrived, Lisbon was illuminated,
and processions made, and a thanksgiving sermon preached
by the most eloquent of the Spanish preachers, Frey Luiz de
Granada ; and an ambassador was sent to congratulate Charles
IX. | upon a crime for which, as it regards himself, it may
be hoped that the horror and remorse which speedily brought
him to an untimely death may have atoned. But though
Sebastian had proffered to the Pope his utmost services
against Mahommedans and heretics, early impressions and
national feeling led him to tread in the steps of his heroic
ancestors, and endeavour to recover that dominion in Africa
which they had unwisely abandoned for the sake of more
distant and less tenable conquests. Though the Pope offered
him a consecrated banner as for a holy war, he was not to be
diverted from his purpose ; and Stukely, who arrived in the
Tagus with 800 men, raised for the invasion of Ireland, was
induced to postpone that purpose, and accompany Sebastian
to Barbary. Stukely met his death there, ... in better
company than he deserved to die in ; for braver or nobler-
minded men never fell in battle than some of those Portu-
/
* Camden, 230. Turner, 574.
t Bayam, Portugal Cuidadoso y Lastimoso, 271, 272.
26 ENGLISH SEAMEN
guese who perished on that disastrous day. Whether Sebastian
perished with them, is one of those secrets over which the
grave has closed. But as his wilfulness had been the means
of averting the intended invasion of England, so by the con-
sequences of his defeat and disappearance Portugal became
the immediate object of Philip's designs : his chief care was
devoted to obtaining the succession for himself; and the
forces which had been levied against Elizabeth were employed
in establishing his ill-founded claim against a pretender whose
pretensions were weaker than his own, and who had nothing
to support them but the favour of the populace.