194

REFLECTIONS.

all the arts of eloquence; would be equally need. less and presumptuous. It is, however, important to remark, that she died rather with the triumphant air of a martyr to her religion, the character which she falsely assumed, than with the meekness of a victim or the penitence of a culprit. She bade Melvil tell her son that she had done nothing injurious to his rights or his honor; though she was actually in treaty to disinherit him, and had also consented to a nefarious plot for carrying him off prisoner to Rome; and she denied with obstinacy to the last the charge of conspiring the death of Elizabeth, though by her will, written the day before her death, she rewarded as faithful servants the two secretaries who had borne this testimony against her. A spirit of self-justification so haughty and so unprincipled,-a perseverance in deliberate falsehood so resolute and so shameless,-ought under no circumstances and in no personage, not even in a captive beauty and an injured queen, to be confounded, by any writer studious of the moral tendencies of history and capable of sound discrimination, with genuine religion, true fortitude, or the dignity which renders misfortune respectable.

Let due censure be passed on the infringement of morality committed by Elizabeth, in detaining as a captive that rival kinswoman and pretender to her crown, whom the dread of still more formidable dangers had compelled to take refuge in her dominions:-let it be admitted, that the exercise of criminal jurisdiction over a person thus lawlessly detained in a foreign country, was another sacri

fice of the just to the expedient, which none but a profligate politician will venture to defend and let the efforts of Mary to procure her own liberty, though with the destruction of her enemy and at the cost of a civil war to England; be held, if religion will permit, justifiable or venial ;— but let not our resentment of the wrongs, or compassion for the long misfortunes, of this unhappy woman, betray us into a blind concurrence in eulogiums lavished, by prejudice or weakness, on a character blemished by many foibles; stained by some enormous crimes; and never submitted to the guidance of genuine principles of moral rectitude.

CHAPTER XXI.

1587 AND 1588.

Small political effect of the death of Mary.-Warlike preparations of Spain destroyed by Drake.-Case of lord Beauchamp.-Death and character of the duchess of Somerset.-Hatton appointed chancellor.-Leicester returns to Holland-is again recalled.-Disgrace of lord Buckhurst.-Rupture with Spain.-Preparations against the Armada.-Notices of the earls of Cumberland and Northunberland―T. and R. Cecil-earl of Oxford-sir C. Blount-W. Raleigh lord Howard of Effingham— Hawkins-Frobisher-Drake.-Leicester appointed general.-Queen at Tilbury.-Defeat of the Armada.— Introduction of newspapers.-Death of Leicester.

T

It is well deserving of remark, that the strongest and most extraordinary act of the whole administration of Elizabeth;-that which brought the blood of a sister-queen upon her head and indelible reproach upon her memory;-appears to have been productive of scarcely any assignable political effect. It changed her relations with no foreign power; it altered very little the state of parties at home; it recommended no new adviser to her favor; it occasioned the displacement of Davison alone.

She may appear, it is true, to have obtained by this stroke an immunity from that long series of dark conspiracies by which, during so many years, she had been disquieted and endangered. To de

WARLIKE PREPARATIONS OF SPAIN.

197

liver the queen of Scots was an object for which many men had been willing to risk their lives; but none were found desperate or chivalrous enough to run the same hazard in order to avenge her. But the recent detection of Babington and his associates and the rigorous justice executed upon them, was likely, even without the death of Mary, to have deterred from the speedy repetition of similar practices; and a crisis was now approaching fitted to suspend the machinations of faction; to check the operation even of religious bigotry; and to unite all hearts in the love, all hands in the protection, of their native soil.

Philip of Spain, though he purposely avoided as yet a declaration of war, was known to be intently occupied upon the means of taking signal vengeance on the queen of England for all the acts of hostility on her part of which he thought himself entitled to complain.

Already in the summer of 1587 the ports of Spain and Portugal had begun to be thronged with vessels of various sorts and of every size, destined to compose that terrible armada from which nothing less than the complete subjugation of England was anticipated; already had the pope showered down his benedictions on the holy enterprise; and by a bull declaring the throne of the schismatic princess forfeited to the first occupant, made way for the pretensions of Philip, who claimed it as the true heir of the house of Lancaster.

But Elizabeth was not of a temper so timid or so supine as to suffer these preparations to advance

198 DRAKE'S EXPEDITION TO THE SPANISH COAST.

without interruption. She ordered Drake to sail immediately for the coast of Spain and put in practice against her enemy every possible mode of injury and annoyance. To the four great ships

which she allotted to him for this service, the English merchants, instigated by the hopes of plunder, cheerfully added twenty-six more of different sizes; and with this force the daring leader steered for the port of Cadiz, where a richly-laden fleet lay ready to sail for Lisbon, the final rendezvous for the whole armada. By the impetuosity of his attack, he compelled six galleys which defended the mouth of the harbour to seek shelter under its batteries; and having thus forced an entrance, he captured, burned and destroyed about a hundred store-ships and twó galleons of superior size. This done, he returned to Cape St. Vincent; then took three castles; and destroying as he proceeded every thing that came in his way, even to the fishing-boats and nets, he endeavoured to provoke the Spanish admiral to come out and give him battle off the mouth of the Tagus. But the marquis of Santa Croce deemed it prudent to suffer him to pillage the coast without molestation. Having fully effected this object, he made sail for the Azores, where the capture of a bulky carrack returning from India amply indemnified the merchants for all the expenses of the expedition; and enriched the admiral and his crews. Drake returned to England in a kind of triumph, boasting that he had "singed the whiskers" of the king of Spain: nor was his vaunt unfounded; the destruction of the store-ships and the havoc committed by him on the magazines of every kind, was a mis