It was idle to repeat the names of great battles won, in the middle ages, by men who did not make war their chief calling; those battles proved only that one militia might beat another, and not that a militia could beat a regular army.  As idle was it to declaim about the camp at Tilbury.  We had indeed reason to be proud of the spirit which all classes of Englishmen, gentlemen and yeomen, peasants and burgesses, had so signally displayed in the great crisis of 1588.  But we had also reason to be thankful that, with all their spirit, they were not brought face to face with the Spanish battalions.  Somers related an anecdote, well worthy to be remembered, which had been preserved by tradition in the noble house of De Vere.  One of the most illustrious men of that house, a captain who had acquired much experience and much fame in the Netherlands, had, in the crisis of peril, been summoned back to England by Elizabeth, and rode with her through the endless ranks of shouting pikemen.  She asked him what he thought of the army.  “It is,” he said, “a brave army.”  There was something in his tone or manner which showed that he meant more than his words expressed.  The Queen insisted on his speaking out.  “Madam,” he said, “Your Grace’s army is brave indeed.  I have not in the world the name of a coward, and yet I am the greatest coward here.  All these fine fellows are praying that the enemy may land, and that there may be a battle; and I, who know that enemy well, cannot think of such a battle without dismay.”  De Vere was doubtless in the right.  The Duke of Parma, indeed, would not have subjected our country; but it is by no means improbable that, if he had effected a landing, the island would have been the theatre of a war greatly resembling that which Hannibal waged in Italy, and that the invaders would not have been driven out till many cities had been sacked, till many counties had been wasted, and till multitudes of our stout-hearted rustics and artisans had perished in the carnage of days not less terrible than those of Thrasymene and Cannae.

While the pamphlets of Trenchard and Somers were in every hand, the Parliament met.

The words with which the King opened the session brought the great question to a speedy issue.  “The circumstances,” he said, “of affairs abroad are such, that I think myself obliged to tell you my opinion, that, for the present, England cannot be safe without a land force; and I hope we shall not give those that mean us ill the opportunity of effecting that under the notion of a peace which they could not bring to pass by war.”