The Spaniards made no attempt to conceal the greatness of their defeat.  Unwilling to allow that the Upper Powers had been against them, they set it frankly down to the superior fighting powers of the English.

The English themselves, the Prince of Parma said, were modest in their victory.  They thought little of their own gallantry.  To them the defeat and destruction of the Spanish fleet was a declaration of the Almighty in the cause of their country and the Protestant faith.  Both sides had appealed to Heaven, and Heaven had spoken.

It was the turn of the tide.  The wave of the reconquest of the Netherlands ebbed from that moment.  Parma took no more towns from the Hollanders.  The Catholic peers and gentlemen of England, who had held aloof from the Established Church, waiting ad illud tempus for a religious revolution, accepted the verdict of Providence.  They discovered that in Anglicanism they could keep the faith of their fathers, yet remain in communion with their Protestant fellow-countrymen, use the same liturgy, and pray in the same temples.  For the first time since Elizabeth’s father broke the bonds of Rome the English became a united nation, joined in loyal enthusiasm for the Queen, and were satisfied that thenceforward no Italian priest should tithe or toll in her dominions.

But all that, and all that went with it, the passing from Spain to England of the sceptre of the seas, must be left to other lectures, or other lecturers who have more years before them than I. My own theme has been the poor Protestant adventurers who fought through that perilous week in the English Channel and saved their country and their country’s liberty.

THE END

Richard Clay & Sons, Limited, London & Bungay.