There are plenty of naval officers who have had experience, and within the last ten years of the nineteenth century, of the difficulty, and sometimes of the impossibility, of getting sufficient supplies for a large number of ships in rather out-of-the-way places.  In 1588 the comparative thinness of population and insufficiency of communications and means of transport must have constituted obstacles, far greater than any encountered in our own day, to the collection of supplies locally and to their timely importation from a distance.  ‘You would not believe,’ says Lord Howard of Effingham himself, ’what a wonderful thing it is to victual such an army as this is in such a narrow corner of the earth, where a man would think that neither victuals were to be had nor a cask to put it in.’  No more effective defence of Elizabeth and her Ministers could well be advanced than that which Mr. Oppenheim puts forward as a corroboration of the accusation against them.  He says that the victualling officials ’found no difficulty in arranging for 13,000 men in 1596 and 9200 in 1597 after timely notice.’  This is really a high compliment, as it proves that the authorities were quite ready to, and in fact did, learn from experience.  Mr. Oppenheim, however, is not an undiscriminating assailant of the Queen; for he remarks, as has been already said, that, ’how far Elizabeth was herself answerable is a moot point.’  He tells us that there ‘is no direct evidence against her’; and the charge levelled at her rests not on proof, but on ‘strong probability.’  One would like to have another instance out of all history, of probability, however strong, being deemed sufficient to convict a person of unsurpassed treachery and stupidity combined, when the direct evidence, which is not scanty, fails to support the charge and indeed points the other way.

The Lord Admiral himself and other officers have been quoted to show how badly off the fleet was for food.  Yet at the close of the active operations against the Armada, Sir J. Hawkins wrote:  ’Here is victual sufficient, and I know not why any should be provided after September, but for those which my Lord doth mean to leave in the narrow seas.’  On the same day Howard himself wrote from Dover:  ’I have caused all the remains of victuals to be laid here and at Sandwich, for the maintaining of them that shall remain in the Narrow Seas.’  Any naval officer with experience of command who reads Howard’s representations on the subject of the victuals will at once perceive that what the Admiral was anxious about was not the quantity on board the ships, but the stock in reserve.  Howard thought that the latter ought to be a supply for six weeks.  The Council thought a month’s stock would be enough; and—­as shown by the extracts from Howard’s and Hawkins’s letters just given—­the Council was right in its estimate.  Anyone who has had to write or to read official letters about stocks of stores and provisions will find something especially modern in Howard’s representations.