“Having that day his hand, his horse, his lance,
      Guided so well that they attained the prize
      Both in the judgment of our English eyes,
     But of some sent by that sweet enemy, France,”

as he chivalrously sings, he soon afterwards felt inclined for wider fields of honourable adventure.  It was impossible that knight-errant so true should not feel keenest sympathy with an oppressed people struggling against such odds, as the Netherlanders were doing in their contest with Spain.  So soon as the treaty with England was arranged, it was his ambition to take part in the dark and dangerous enterprise, and, being son-in-law to Walsingham and nephew to Leicester, he had a right to believe that his talents and character would, on this occasion, be recognised.  But, like his “very friend,” Lord Willoughby, he was “not of the genus Reptilia, and could neither creep nor crouch,” and he failed, as usual, to win his way to the Queen’s favour.  The governorship of Flushing was denied him, and, stung to the heart by such neglect, he determined to seek his fortune beyond the seas.

“Sir Philip hath taken a very hard resolution,” wrote Walsingham to Davison, “to accompany Sir Francis Drake in this voyage, moved thereto for that he saw her Majesty disposed to commit the charge of Flushing unto some other; which he reputed would fall out greatly to his disgrace, to see another preferred before him, both for birth and judgment inferior unto him.  The despair thereof and the disgrace that he doubted he should receive have carried him into a different course.”

The Queen, however, relenting at last, interfered to frustrate his design.  Having thus balked his ambition in the Indian seas, she felt pledged to offer him the employment which he had originally solicited, and she accordingly conferred upon him the governorship of Flushing, with the rank of general of horse, under the Earl of Leicester.  In the latter part of November, he cast anchor, in the midst of a violent storm, at Rammekins, and thence came to the city of his government.  Young, and looking even younger than his years—­“not only of an excellent wit, but extremely beautiful of face”—­with delicately chiselled Anglo-Norman features, smooth fair cheek, a faint moustache, blue eyes, and a mass of amber-coloured hair; such was the author of ‘Arcadia’ and the governor of Flushing.

And thus an Anglo-Norman representative of ancient race had come back to the home of his ancestors.  Scholar, poet, knight-errant, finished gentleman, he aptly typified the result of seven centuries of civilization upon the wild Danish pirate.  For among those very quicksands of storm-beaten Walachria that wondrous Normandy first came into existence whose wings were to sweep over all the high places of Christendom.  Out of these creeks, lagunes, and almost inaccessible sandbanks, those bold freebooters sailed forth on their forays against England, France, and other adjacent