of the hero of San Juan de Ulloa.  He speedily found himself in command of a large irregular squadron, and even Cecil recognised his consequence.  His chief and constant anxiety was for the comrades whom he had left behind, and he talked of a new expedition to recover them, or revenge them if they had been killed; but all things had to wait.  They probably found means of communicating with him, and as long as there was no Inquisition in Mexico, he may have learnt that there was no immediate occasion for action.

Elizabeth put a brave face on her disappointment.  She knew that she was surrounded with treason, but she knew also that the boldest course was the safest.  She had taken Alva’s money, and was less than ever inclined to restore it.  She had the best of the bargain in the arrest of the Spanish and English ships and cargoes.  Alva would not encourage Philip to declare war with England till the Netherlands were completely reduced, and Philip, with his leaden foot (pie de plomo), always preferred patience and intrigue.  Time and he and the Pope were three powers which in the end, he thought, would prove irresistible, and indeed it seemed, after Hawkins’s return, as if Philip would turn out to be right.  The presence of the Queen of Scots in England had set in flame the Catholic nobles.  The wages of Alva’s troops had been wrung somehow out of the wretched Provinces, and his supreme ability and inexorable resolution were steadily grinding down the revolt.  Every port in Holland and Zealand was in Alva’s hands.  Elizabeth’s throne was undermined by the Ridolfi conspiracy, the most dangerous which she had ever had to encounter.  The only Protestant fighting power left on the sea which could be entirely depended on was in the privateer fleet, sailing, most of them, under a commission from the Prince of Orange.

This fleet was the strangest phenomenon in naval history.  It was half Dutch, half English, with a flavour of Huguenot, and was commanded by a Flemish noble, Count de la Mark.  Its head-quarters were in the Downs or Dover Roads, where it could watch the narrow seas, and seize every Spanish ship that passed which was not too strong to be meddled with.  The cargoes taken were openly sold in Dover market.  If the Spanish ambassador is to be believed in a complaint which he addressed to Cecil, Spanish gentlemen taken prisoners were set up to public auction there for the ransom which they would fetch, and were disposed of for one hundred pounds each.  If Alva sent cruisers from Antwerp to burn them out, they retreated under the guns of Dover Castle.  Roving squadrons of them flew down to the Spanish coasts, pillaged churches, carried off church plate, and the captains drank success to piracy at their banquets out of chalices.  The Spanish merchants at last estimated the property destroyed at three million ducats, and they said that if their flag could no longer protect them, they must decline to make further contracts for the supply of the Netherlands army.