It may be taken for granted that there was no mincing matters when an opportunity for reprisals occurred.  The Spaniards had carried barbarism to such a pitch in seizing our ships and condemning their crews to the galleys, that Queen Elizabeth was never averse to meeting murder and plunder by more than the equivalent in retaliation, except when she imagined that Philip was showing signs of overpowering strength; she then became timid and vacillating.  She was never mentally disturbed by the moral side of the great deeds that brought her vast stores of plunder.  Moreover, she could always find an accommodating bishop to put her qualms (if she ever had any, except those of consequence to herself) at rest on points of conscience.  One noted personage, who held high ecclesiastical office, told her that it was a virtue to seize treasure when she knew it would otherwise be used for the purpose of murdering her Protestant subjects.  Sir Arthur Champernowne, a noted vice-admiral of Elizabeth’s reign, in writing to Cecil of the vessel that had put into Plymouth through stress of weather with the needy Philip’s half-million of ducats on board, borrowed, it is said, from a Genoa firm of financiers, said it should be claimed as fair booty.  Sir Arthur’s view was that anything taken from so perfidious a nation was both necessary and profitable to the Commonwealth.  No doubt a great deal of pious discussion would centre round the Vice-Admiral’s easy moral but very logical opinions.  The main thing in his mind, and in that of everybody else who was free from poisoned cant, was that the most shocking crimes were being openly advocated by Philip, King of Spain, against all European Protestants, rich or poor, who came within the clutches of the savages that administered the cruelties of the Inquisition.  The canting crowd shrieked against the monstrous impiety of such notions, but their efforts to prove purity of motive were unavailing.

After considered thought by a committee of men of high rectitude, it was decided to act without fear or favour in a strictly impartial manner, so Philip’s half-million of bullion was divided between the Prince of Orange and the rigid moralist, Elizabeth, who is credited with having spent her share on the Navy, a very admirable way of disposing of it.

This act was the cause of a deluge of reprisals on the part of Spain.  But, from all accounts, Elizabeth’s corsairs had always the best of it in matters of material importance.  The Spanish are naturally a proud, brave race.  In the middle of the sixteenth century their power dominated two-thirds of the universe, and had they stuck to business, and not so feverishly to the spreading of their religious faith by violent means, they might have continued a predominant nation.