ENGLISH SEAMEN.* THESE volumes, alike in theme and dissimilar in
treatment, have one common merit. They are written by two masters
of style, and of each it may be said, as Johnson said of Goldsmith, that "nihil tetigit quod non ornavit." Southey's incomplete naval history has been long familiar to readers interested in the subject. Admirably written, and with a thorough mastery of the materials at his disposal, it fails from lack of proportion. Southey knew so much that, as Mr. Hannay observes, he found it hard not to be prodigal of his learning. "He could tell a story in the minimum of words, but he could not limit himself in the number of stories be wished to tell." Only perhaps in his Life of Nelson did Southey achieve a work of faultless literary art ; but in this selection from the author's elaborate history, Mr. Hannay has succeeded in producing what he justly calls " the finest portrait-gallery of the Elizabethan sea-heroes in the English language." The publication of Mr. Froude's lectures at Oxford in book-form is of more immediate interest. It is characteristic of the historian that the last subject which occupied his attention is the one that had more than once called forth his enthusiasm and eloquence. Again he has related the story of Hawkins and of Drake, and again be has described the fate of the mighty Armada, which threatened to destroy the liberty and the Protestantism of England. Unfortunately Mr. Froude's prejudices, we might almost say his passion for misrepresenting his authorities, have often led him astray in these attractive lectures, and many of his assertions are too strongly coloured to be accepted as history. He maintains strongly, but not always reasonably, that the injuries inflicted upon Spain by English sailors with the tacit consent of the Queen were wholly due to the atrocious cruelties of the Inquisition, and that " if the King of Spain and his Holiness at Rome would have allowed other nations to think and make laws for themselves, pirates and privateers would have disappeared off the ocean." A fierce spirit of revenge may have been generated by this cause, but the expeditions of seamen like Hawkins and Drake were undertaken chiefly for purposes of gain, and Elizabeth, while publicly repudiating the pirates and slave- merchants, took a share in their ventures and lent them her ships. Philip, the mightiest monarch living, was not strong enough to resent the sudden invasion by these bold rovers of the ports in Spain and in the West Indian Colonies. He was kept in check by France, just as France was kept in check by Spain, and for a long period the privateers carried on their game with a success which reads like romance.
There is, we think, much reason to question Mr. Froude's assertion that Elizabeth was " always for enterprises of great pith and moment." She did not mind her subjects under- taking such enterprises at their own risk and for her benefit, but she constantly hesitated and held back when her interest and honour demanded that she should act. In Scotland she encouraged by her promises the Lords of the Congregation to rise against the Regent, and deserted them in their utmost need in Ireland, when Shan O'Neil called himself Lord of the country, and was the most mischievous man (which is saying a great deal) who ever exercised power there, Sir Henry Sidney was the only man capable of sweeping this scourge away and of restoring order. The Council advocated his plan, Cecil and Leicester urged the Queen to give him a free hand ; yet Elizabeth not only kept him short of money, her common habit, but did all she could to damp his energy by unreasonable faultfinding. To free Ireland from Shan's bloodthirsty usurpation was surely an enterprise of " great pith and moment." Of infinitely greater moment was the defence of England on being threatened by the whole power of Philip. When Drake singed the King of Spain's beard by burning his ships at Cadiz, Philip, in order to postpone his revenge till the Armada was ready, proposed, by way of keeping the peace, that England should surrender the cautionary towns of Flanders to Spain. These towns, five in number, were held for a time by Elizabeth as the price of her assistance :—
• (1.) English Seamen in the Sixteenth Century. Lectures delivered at Orford. By James Anthony Fronde. London : Longmans. 1895.—(2.) English Seamen Howard, Clifford, Hawkins, Drake, Cavendish. By Robert Southey. Edited. with an Introduction, by David Hannay. London: htetbnen and Co.
"The towns," Mr. Fronde writes, "had been trusted to her keeping by the Netherlanders. To give them up to the enemy to make better conditions for herself would be an infamy so great as to have disgraced Elizabeth for ever; yet she would not see it. She said the towns belonged to Philip, and she would only be restoring his own to him. Burghley bade her, if she wanted peace, send back Drake to the Azores, and frighten Philip for his gold ships. She was in one of her ungovernable moods. Instead of sending out Drake again, she ordered her own fleet to be dis- mantled and laid up at Chatham, and she condescended to apolo- gise to Parma for the burning of the transports at Cadiz as done against her orders. This was in December, 1587, only five months before the Armada sailed from Lisbon. Never had she brought herself and her country so near ruin. The entire safety of England rested at that moment on the adventurers, and on the adventurers alone."
The Armada sailed, and now, if at any time, one would have thought that Elizabeth's spirit of enterprise would have been awakened. It was a supreme hour in the history of the country, yet it was long before the Queen recognised this crisis of her fate, and the splendid courage of the men who destroyed the naval supremacy of Spain. Indeed, they may be almost said to have saved the Queen's crown against her wishes. Truly does Southey affirm that "never had England been threatened with an equal danger since the Norman con- quest," and that even that danger " was not in itself so for- midable ; " yet so vacillating was Elizabeth's conduct, and so inopportune her thriftiness, that while uttering brave words in her camp at Tilbury, her desire for a treaty and ready acceptance of a false report led her in the very moment of suspense to cripple and to starve her Navy :—
" She recalled her orders. She said that she was assured of peace in six weeks, and that beyond that time the services of the Fleet would not be required. Half the men engaged were to be dismissed at once to save their pay. Drake and Lord Henry Sey- mour might cruise with four or five of the Queen's ships between Plymouth and the Solent. Lord Howard was to remain in the Thames with the rest. I know not whether swearing was inter- dicted in the English navy as well as in the Spanish, but I will answer for it that Howard did not spare his language when this missive reached him. ` Never,' he said, ` since England was England was such a stratagem made to deceive us as this treaty. We have not hands left to carry the ships back to Chatham. We are like bears tied to a stake; the Spaniards may come to worry us like dogs, and we cannot hurt them.' " The stake, according to Mr. Fronde, was fixed by the Queen, and he goes on to relate that it was not the only obstruction which she cast in the way of her brave defenders. She found fault with Drake for wasting her ammunition, and allowed him no more than would serve for a day and a half's service; she delayed the workmen in the yards, saying that it would be waste of money to refit her ships ; and when the Armada was known to be on its way, and Howard in the 'Ark Raleigh' "joined Drake at Plymouth with seventeen others," we shall leave Mr. Fronde to describe how "the numbing hand of his mistress pursued him" :- "Food supplies had been issued to the middle of June, and no more was to be allowed. The weather was desperate,—wildest summer ever known. The south-west gales brought the Atlantic rollers into the Sound. Drake lay inside, perhaps behind the island which bears his name. Howard rode out the gales under Mount Edgecumbe, the days going by and the provisions wasting. The rations were cut down to make the stores last longer. Owing to the many changes, the crews had been hastily raised. They were ill-clothed, ill-provided every way, but they complained of nothing, caught fish to mend their niess.dinners, and prayed only for the speedy coming of the enemy. Even Howard's heart failed him now. English sailors would do what could be done by man, but they could not fight with famine. ' Awake, Madam,' he wrote to the Queen, 'awake, for the love of Christ, and see the villainous treasons round about you.' He goaded her into ordering supplies for one more month, but this was to be positively the last. The victuallers inquired if they should make further preparations. She answered peremptorily, No ; ' and again the weeks ran on. The contractors, it seemed, had caught her spirit, for the beer which had been furnished for the fleet turned sour, and those who drank it sickened. The
officers on their own responsibility ordered wine and arrowroot for the sick out of Plymouth, to be called to a sharp account when all was over. Again the rations were reduced. Four weeks' allow- ance was stretched to serve for six, and still the Spaniards did not come. So England's forlorn-hope was treated at the crisis of her destiny."
When there were half-rations for one week more, and powder for two days' fighting, the Armada came in sight, the entire line stretching to about seven miles. Our sailors fought with their usual courage, but on the powder giving out, and Howard pressing for more, he was told he must state precisely bow much he wanted before it could be sent. The miserable parsimony which led Elizabeth upon Mary's hasty flight to
England to send her " a couple of torn shifts, two pieces of black velvet, and two pairs of shoes," actuated her also in the hour when all thought of economy should have been flung to the winds. It is, however, unlikely that the Queen was wholly at fault, and much of the blame was possibly due to defective organisation. Mr. Fronde, like his friend Carlyle, was a worshipper of physical courage. The English sea-power was, he assertr, the child of the Reformation. "Matthew Parker and Bishop Jewel, the judicious Hooker himself, excellent men as they were, would have written and preached to small purpose without Sir Francis Drake's cannon to play an accompani- ment to their teaching." What change in English history would have occurred had Philip had hie will, and the Inquisi- tion gained a footing in the country, must be left to con- jecture; but of this we may be sure, that the seeds for good sown by the Reformation in England, had in them a life which did not need to trust for its growth to the fighting qualities of our seamen. The surpassing but lawless achieve- ments of the Elizabethan buccaneers were of service in a lawless age, yet it seems to us that throughout these lectures the author takes a false view of their acts by speaking of them as due to Protestantism. The nine lectures were delivered at Oxford Easter terms, 1893.94, and, like all Mr. Froude's writings, command the reader's attention throughout.
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