Westward Ho! Or, The Voyages and Adventures of Sir Amyas Leigh, Knight, of Burrough, in the County of Devon, in the Reign of Her Most Glorious Majesty Queen Elizabeth, - [e books for reading .TXT] 📗

thousand a year, could afford to employ the whole of her jointure as Queen Dowager of France (probably equal to fifty thousand a year more), in plotting the destruction of the said government, and the murder of its queen; a Mary who, if she prospered as she ought, might have dukedoms, and earldoms, fair lands and castles to bestow on her faithful servants; a Mary, finally, who contrived by means of an angel face, a serpent tongue, and a heart (as she said herself) as hard as a diamond, to make every weak man fall in love with her, and, what was worse, fancy more or less that she was in love with him.

Of her the Jesuits were not unmindful; and found it convenient, indeed, to forget awhile the sorrows of the Queen of Heaven in those of the Queen of Scots. Not that they cared much for those sorrows; but they were an excellent stock-in-trade. She was a Romanist; she was “beautiful and unfortunate,” a virtue which, like charity, hides the multitude of sins; and therefore she was a convenient card to play in the great game of Rome against the Queen and people of England; and played the poor card was, till it got torn up by over-using. Into her merits or demerits I do not enter deeply here. Let her rest in peace.

To all which the people of England made a most practical and terrible answer. From the highest noble to the lowest peasant, arose one simultaneous plebiscitum: “We are tired of these seventeen years of chicanery and terror. This woman must die: or the commonweal of England perish!” We all know which of the two alternatives was chosen.

All Europe stood aghast: but rather with astonishment at English audacity, than with horror at English wickedness. Mary's own French kinsfolk had openly given her up as too bad to be excused, much less assisted. Her own son blustered a little to the English ambassador; for the majesty of kings was invaded: whereon Walsingham said in open council, that “the queen should send him a couple of hounds, and that would set all right.” Which sage advice (being acted on, and some deer sent over and above) was so successful that the pious mourner, having run off (Randolph says, like a baby to see the deer in their cart), returned for answer that he would “thereafter depend wholly upon her majesty, and serve her fortune against all the world; and that he only wanted now two of her majesty's yeoman prickers, and a couple of her grooms of the deer.” The Spaniard was not sorry on the whole for the catastrophe; for all that had kept him from conquering England long ago was the fear lest, after it was done, he might have had to put the crown thereof on Mary's head, instead of his own. But Mary's death was as convenient a stalking-horse to him as to the pope; and now the Armada was coming in earnest.

Elizabeth began negotiating; but fancy not that she does nothing more, as the following letter testifies, written about midsummer, 1587.

“F. Drake to Captain Amyas Leigh. This with haste.

“DEAR LAD,

“As I said to her most glorious majesty, I say to you now. There are two ways of facing an enemy. The one to stand off, and cry, 'Try that again, and I'll strike thee'; the other to strike him first, and then, 'Try that at all, and I'll strike thee again.' Of which latter counsel her majesty so far approves, that I go forthwith (tell it not in Gath) down the coast, to singe the king of Spain's beard (so I termed it to her majesty, she laughing), in which if I leave so much as a fishing-boat afloat from the Groyne unto Cadiz, it will not be with my good will, who intend that if he come this year, he shall come by swimming and not by sailing. So if you are still the man I have known you, bring a good ship round to Plymouth within the month, and away with me for hard blows and hard money, the feel of both of which you know pretty well by now.

“Thine lovingly,

“F. Drake.”

Amyas clutched his locks over this letter, and smoked more tobacco the day he got it than had ever before been consumed at once in England. But he kept true to his promise; and this was his reply:—

“Amyas Leigh to the Worshipful Sir F. Drake, Admiral of her Majesty's Fleet in Plymouth.

“MOST HONORED SIR,

“A magician keeps me here, in bilboes for which you have no picklock; namely, a mother who forbids. The loss is mine: but Antichrist I can fight any year (for he will not die this bout, nor the next), while my mother—but I will not trouble your patience more than to ask from you to get me news, if you can, from any prisoners of one Don Guzman Maria Magdalena Sotomayor de Soto; whether he is in Spain or in the Indies; and what the villain does, and where he is to be found. This only I entreat of you, and so remain behind with a heavy heart.

“Yours to command in all else, and I would to Heaven, in this also,

“AMYAS LEIGH.”

I am sorry to have to say, that after having thus obeyed his mother, Master Amyas, as men are too apt to do, revenged himself on her by being more and more cross and disagreeable. But his temper amended much, when, a few months after, Drake returned triumphant, having destroyed a hundred sail in Cadiz alone, taken three great galleons with immense wealth on board, burnt the small craft all along the shore, and offered battle to Santa Cruz at the mouth of the Tagus. After which it is unnecessary to say, that the Armada was put off for yet another year.

This news, indeed, gave Amyas little comfort; for he merely observed, grumbling, that Drake had gone and spoiled everybody else's sport: but what cheered him was news from Drake that Don Guzman had been heard of from the captain of one of the galleons; that he was high in favor in Spain, and commandant of soldiers on board one of the largest of the marquis's ships.

And when Amyas heard that, a terrible joy took possession of him. When the Armada came, as come it would, he should meet his enemy at last! He could wait now patiently: if—and he shuddered at himself, as he found himself in the very act of breathing a prayer that Don Guzman might not die before that meeting.

In the meanwhile, rumor flew thousand-tongued through the length and breadth of the land; of vast preparations going on in Spain and Italy; of timber felled long before for some such purpose, brought down to the sea, and sawn out for shipbuilding; of casting of cannon, and drilling of soldiers; of ships in hundreds collecting at Lisbon; of a crusade preached by Pope Sixtus the Fifth, who had bestowed the kingdom of England on the Spaniard, to be enjoyed by him as vassal tributary to Rome; of a million of gold to be paid by the pope, one-half down at once, the other half when London was taken; of Cardinal Allen writing and printing busily in the Netherlands, calling on all good Englishmen to carry out, by rebelling against Elizabeth, the bull of Sixtus the Fifth, said (I blush to repeat it) to have been dictated by the Holy Ghost; of Inquisitors getting ready fetters and devil's engines of all sorts; of princes and noblemen, flocking from all quarters, gentlemen selling their private estates to fit out ships; how the Prince of Melito, the Marquess of Burgrave, Vespasian