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] 📗

Gonzaga, John Medicis, Amadas of Savoy, in short, the illegitimate sons of all the southern princes, having no lands of their own, were coming to find that necessary of life in this pleasant little wheat-garden. Nay, the Duke of Medina Sidonia had already engaged Mount-Edgecombe for himself, as the fairest jewel of the south; which when good old Sir Richard Edgecombe heard, he observed quietly, that in 1555 he had the pleasure of receiving at his table at one time the admirals of England, Spain, and the Netherlands, and therefore had experience in entertaining Dons; and made preparations for the visit by filling his cellars with gunpowder, with a view to a house-warming and feu-de-joie on the occasion. But as old Fuller says, “The bear was not yet killed, and Medina Sidonia might have catched a great cold, had he no other clothes to wear than the skin thereof.”

So flew rumor, false and true, till poor John Bull's wits were well-nigh turned: but to the very last, after his lazy fashion, he persuaded himself that it would all come right somehow; that it was too great news to be true; that if it was true, the expedition was only meant for the Netherlands; and, in short, sat quietly over his beef and beer for many a day after the French king had sent him fair warning, and the queen, the ministry, and the admirals had been assuring him again and again that he, and not the Dutchman, was the destined prey of this great flight of ravenous birds.

At last the Spaniard, in order that there should be no mistake about the matter, kindly printed a complete bill of the play, to be seen still in Van Meteran, for the comfort of all true Catholics, and confusion of all pestilent heretics; which document, of course, the seminary priests used to enforce the duty of helping the invaders, and the certainty of their success; and from their hands it soon passed into those of the devout ladies, who were not very likely to keep it to themselves; till John Bull himself found his daughters buzzing over it with very pale faces (as young ladies well might who had no wish to follow the fate of the damsels of Antwerp), and condescending to run his eye through it, discovered, what all the rest of Europe had known for months past, that he was in a very great scrape.

Well it was for England, then, that her Tudor sovereigns had compelled every man (though they kept up no standing army) to be a trained soldier. Well it was that Elizabeth, even in those dangerous days of intrigue and rebellion, had trusted her people enough, not only to leave them their weapons, but (what we, forsooth, in these more “free” and “liberal” days dare not do) to teach them how to use them. Well it was, that by careful legislation for the comfort and employment of “the masses” (term then, thank God, unknown), she had both won their hearts, and kept their bodies in fighting order. Well it was that, acting as fully as Napoleon did on “la carriere ouverte aux talens,” she had raised to the highest posts in her councils, her army, and her navy, men of business, who had not been ashamed to buy and sell as merchants and adventurers. Well for England, in a word, that Elizabeth had pursued for thirty years a very different course from that which we have been pursuing for the last thirty, with one exception, namely, the leaving as much as possible to private enterprise.

There we have copied her: would to Heaven that we had in some other matters! It is the fashion now to call her a despot: but unless every monarch is to be branded with that epithet whose power is not as circumscribed as Queen Victoria's is now, we ought rather to call her the most popular sovereign, obeyed of their own free will by the freest subjects which England has ever seen; confess the Armada fight to have been as great a moral triumph as it was a political one; and (now that our late boasting is a little silenced by Crimean disasters) inquire whether we have not something to learn from those old Tudor times, as to how to choose officials, how to train a people, and how to defend a country.

To return to the thread of my story.

January, 1587-8, had well-nigh run through, before Sir Richard Grenville made his appearance on the streets of Bideford. He had been appointed in November one of the council of war for providing for the safety of the nation, and the West Country had seen nothing of him since. But one morning, just before Christmas, his stately figure darkened the old bay-window at Burrough, and Amyas rushed out to meet him, and bring him in, and ask what news from Court.

“All good news, dear lad, and dearer madam. The queen shows the spirit of a very Boadicea or Semiramis; ay, a very Scythian Tomyris, and if she had the Spaniard before her now, would verily, for aught I know, feast him as the Scythian queen did Cyrus, with 'Satia te sanguine, quod sitisti.'”

“I trust her most merciful spirit is not so changed already,” said Mrs. Leigh.

“Well, if she would not do it, I would, and ask pardon afterwards, as Raleigh did about the rascals at Smerwick, whom Amyas knows of. Mrs. Leigh, these are times in which mercy is cruelty. Not England alone, but the world, the Bible, the Gospel itself, is at stake; and we must do terrible things, lest we suffer more terrible ones.”

“God will take care of world and Bible better than any cruelty of ours, dear Sir Richard.”

“Nay, but, Mrs. Leigh, we must help Him to take care of them! If those Smerwick Spaniards had not been—”

“The Spaniard would not have been exasperated into invading us.”

“And we should not have had this chance of crushing him once and for all; but the quarrel is of older standing, madam, eh, Amyas? Amyas, has Raleigh written to you of late?”

“Not a word, and I wonder why.”

“Well; no wonder at that, if you knew how he has been laboring. The wonder is, whence he got the knowledge wherewith to labor; for he never saw sea-work to my remembrance.”

“Never saw a shot fired by sea, except ours at Smerwick, and that brush with the Spaniards in 1579, when he sailed for Virginia with Sir Humphrey; and he was a mere crack then.”

“So you consider him as your pupil, eh? But he learnt enough in the Netherland wars, and in Ireland too, if not of the strength of ships, yet still of the weakness of land forces; and would you believe it, the man has twisted the whole council round his finger, and made them give up the land defences to the naval ones.”

“Quite right he, and wooden walls against stone ones for ever! But as for twisting, he would persuade Satan, if he got him alone for half an hour.”

“I wish he would sail for Spain then, just now, and try the powers of his tongue,” said Mrs. Leigh.

“But are we to have the honor, really?”

“We are, lad. There were many in the council who were for disputing the landing on shore, and said—which I do not deny—that the 'prentice boys of London could face the bluest blood in Spain. But Raleigh argued (following my Lord Burleigh in that) that we differed from the Low Countries, and all other lands, in that we had not a castle or town