Ferocity was answered by ferocity.  Listen to this!  The Cobhams of Cowling Castle were Protestants by descent.  Lord Cobham was famous in the Lollard martyrology.  Thomas Cobham, one of the family, had taken to the sea like many of his friends.  While cruising in the Channel he caught sight of a Spaniard on the way from Antwerp to Cadiz with forty prisoners on board, consigned, it might be supposed, to the Inquisition.  They were, of course, Inquisition prisoners; for other offenders would have been dealt with on the spot.  Cobham chased her down into the Bay of Biscay, took her, scuttled her, and rescued the captives.  But that was not enough.  The captain and crew he sewed up in their own mainsail and flung them overboard.  They were washed ashore dead, wrapped in their extraordinary winding-sheet.  Cobham was called to account for this exploit, but he does not seem to have been actually punished.  In a very short time he was out and away again at the old work.  There were plenty with him.  After the business at Gibraltar, Philip’s subjects were not safe in English harbours.  Jacques le Clerc, a noted privateer, called Pie de Palo from his wooden leg, chased a Spaniard into Falmouth, and was allowed to take her under the guns of Pendennis.  The Governor of the castle said that he could not interfere, because Le Clerc had a commission from the Prince of Conde.  It was proved that in the summer of 1563 there were 400 English and Huguenot rovers in and about the Channel, and that they had taken 700 prizes between them.  The Queen’s own ships followed suit.  Captain Cotton in the Phoenix captured an Antwerp merchantman in Flushing.  The harbour-master protested.  Cotton laughed, and sailed away with his prize.  The Regent Margaret wrote in indignation to Elizabeth.  Such insolence, she said, was not to be endured.  She would have Captain Cotton chastised as an example to all others.  Elizabeth measured the situation more correctly than the Regent; she preferred to show Philip that she was not afraid of him.  She preferred to let her subjects discover for themselves that the terrible Spaniard before whom the world trembled was but a colossus stuffed with clouts.  Until Philip consented to tie the hands of the Holy Office she did not mean to prevent them from taking the law into their own hands.

Now and then, if occasion required, Elizabeth herself would do a little privateering on her own account.  In the next story that I have to tell she appears as a principal, and her great minister, Cecil, as an accomplice.  The Duke of Alva had succeeded Margaret as Regent of the Netherlands, and was drowning heresy in its own blood.  The Prince of Orange was making a noble fight; but all went ill with him.  His troops were defeated, his brother Louis was killed.  He was still struggling, helped by Elizabeth’s money.  But the odds were terrible, and the only hope lay in the discontent of Alva’s soldiers, who had not been paid their wages, and would not fight