Clare Avery Part 13

Spain demanded three points from England: and if her demands were not complied with, there was no resource but war.

1. The Queen must promise to withdraw all aid from the Protestants in the Netherlands.

2. She must give back the treasure seized, by Drake the year before.

3. She must restore the Roman Catholic religion throughout England, as it had been before the Reformation.

The first and second clauses would have been of little import in Elizabeth's eye's, except as they implied her yielding to dictation; the real sting lay in the last. And the last was the one which Philip would be most loth to yield. With a touch of grim humour, His Catholic Majesty sent his ultimatum in Latin verse.

The royal lioness of England rose from her throne to return her answer, with a fiery Plantagenet flash in her eyes. She could play at Latin verse quite as well as Philip; rather better, indeed,--for his question required some dozen lines, and one was sufficient for her answer.

"Ad Graecas, [Note 2] bone Rex, fient mandata kalendas!" was the prompt reply of England's Elizabeth.

Which may be rendered--preserving the fun--

"Great King, thy command shall be done right soon, On the thirty-first day of the coming June."

Some knowledge of the terrible magnitude of Philip's preparations is necessary, in order to see what it was which England escaped in 1588.

The Armada consisted of 134 ships, and, reckoning soldiers, sailors, and galley-slaves, carried about 32,000 men. [The exact figures are much disputed, hardly two accounts being alike.] The cost of sustenance per day was thirty thousand ducats. The cannon and field-pieces were unnumbered: the halberts were ten thousand, the muskets seven thousand.

Bread, biscuits, and wine, were laid in for six months, with twelve thousand pipes of fresh water. The cargo--among many other items-- consisted of whips and knives, for the conversion of the English; and doubtless Don Martin Alorcon, Vicar-General of the Inquisition, with one hundred monks and Jesuits in his train may be cla.s.sed under the same head. Heresy was to be destroyed throughout England: Sir Francis Drake was singled out for special vengeance. The Queen was to be taken alive, at all costs: she was to be sent prisoner over the Alps to Rome, there to make her humble pet.i.tion to the Pope, barefoot and prostrate, that England might be re-admitted to communion with the Holy See. Did Philip imagine that any amount of humiliation or coercion would have wrung such words as these from the lips of Elizabeth Tudor?

On the 19th of May, the Invincible Armada, as the Spaniards proudly termed it, sailed from Lisbon for Corufia.

The English Fleet lay in the harbour at Plymouth. The Admiral's ship was the "Ark Royal;" Drake commanded the "Revenge:" the other princ.i.p.al vessels were named the "Lion," the "Bear," the "Elizabeth Jonas," the "Galleon Leicester," and the "Victory." They lay still in port waiting for the first north wind, which did not come until the eighth of July.

Then Lord Howard set sail and went southwards for some distance; but the wind changed to the south, the fleet was composed entirely of sailing vessels, and the Admiral was afraid to go too far, lest the Armada should slip past him in the night, between England and her wooden walls.

So he put back to Plymouth.

If he had only known the state of affairs, he would not have done so.

He had been almost within sight of the Armada, which was at that moment broken and scattered, having met with a terrific storm in the Bay of Biscay. Eight ships were driven to a distance, three galleys cast away on the French coast; where the galley-slaves rebelled, headed by a Welsh prisoner named David Gwyn. Medina regained Coruna with some difficulty, gathered his shattered vessels, repaired damages, and put to sea again on the eleventh of July. They made haste this time. Eight days' hard rowing brought them within sight of England.

A blazing sun, and a strong south-west gale, inaugurated the morning of the nineteenth of July. The fleet lay peacefully moored in Plymouth Sound, all unconscious and unprophetic of what the day was to bring forth: some of the officers engaged in calculating chances of future battle, some eagerly debating home politics, some idly playing cards or backgammon. These last averred that they had nothing to do. They were not destined to make that complaint much longer.

At one end of the quarter-deck of Drake's ship, the "Revenge," was a group of three young officers, of whom two at least were not much more profitably employed than those who were playing cards in the "Ark Royal." They were all volunteers, and the eldest of the three was but two-and-twenty. One was seated on the deck, leaning back and apparently dozing; the second stood, less sleepily, but quite as idly, beside him: the last, with folded arms, was gazing out to sea, yet discerning nothing, for his thoughts were evidently elsewhere. The second of the trio appeared to be in a musical humour, for s.n.a.t.c.hes of different songs kept coming from his lips.

"'We be three poor mariners, Newly come fro' th' seas: We spend our lives in jeopardy, Whilst others live at ease.'"

"Be we?" laughed the youth who was seated on the deck, half-opening his eyes. "How much of thy life hast spent in jeopardy, Jack Enville?"

"How much? Did not I once fall into the sea from a rock?--and was well-nigh drowned ere I could be fished out. More of my life than thine, Master Robert Ba.s.set."

In something like the sense of Thekla Tremayne's "Poor Jack!" I pause to say, Poor Robert Ba.s.set! He was the eldest son of the deceased Sir Arthur. He had inherited the impulsive, generous heart, and the sensitive, nervous temperament, of his ancestor Lord Lisle, unchecked by the accompanying good sense and sober judgment which had balanced those qualities in the latter. Hot-headed, warm-hearted, liberal to extravagance, fervent to fanaticism, unable to say No to any whom he loved, loving and detesting with pa.s.sionate intensity, constantly betrayed into rash acts which he regretted bitterly the next hour, possibly the next minute--this was Robert Ba.s.set. Not the same character as Jack Enville, but one just as likely to go to wreck early,--to dash itself wildly on the breakers, and be broken.

"Thou art alive enough now," said Ba.s.set. "But how knowest that I never fell from a rock into the sea?"

Jack answered by a graceful flourish of his hands, and a stave of another song.

"'There's never a maid in all this town But she knows that malt's come down, - Malt's come down,--malt's come down, From an old angel to a French crown.'"

"I would it were," said Ba.s.set, folding his arms beneath his head. "I am as dry as a hornblower."

"That is with blowing of thine own trumpet," responded Jack. "I say, Tremayne! Give us thy thoughts for a silver penny."

"Give me the penny first," answered the meditative officer.

"Haven't an obolus," [halfpenny] confessed Jack.

"'The cramp is in my purse full sore, No money will bide therein--'"

"Another time," observed Arthur Tremayne, "chaffer [deal in trade] not till thou hast wherewith to pay for the goods."

"I am a gentleman, not a chapman," [a retail tradesman] said Jack, superciliously.

"Could a man not be both?"

"'Tis not possible," returned Jack, with an astonished look. "How should a chapman bear coat armour?"

"I reckon, though, he had fathers afore him," said Ba.s.set, with his eyes shut.

"Nought but common men," said Jack, with sovereign contempt.

"And ours were uncommon men--there is all the difference," retorted Ba.s.set.

"Yours were, in very deed," said Jack obsequiously.

This was, in truth, the entire cause of Jack's desire for Ba.s.set's friendship. The latter, poor fellow! imagined that he was influenced by personal regard.

"Didst think I had forgot it?" replied Ba.s.set, smiling.

"Ah! if I had but thy lineage!" answered Jack.

"Thine own is good enough, I cast no doubt. And I dare say Tremayne's is worth something, if we could but win him to open his mouth thereon."

Jack's look was one of complete incredulity.

Arthur neither moved nor spoke.

"Hold thou thy peace, Jack Enville," said Ba.s.set, answering the look, for Jack had not uttered a word. "What should a Lancashire lad know of the Tremaynes of Tremayne? I know somewhat thereanent.--Are you not of that line?" he asked, turning his head towards Arthur.

"Ay, the last of the line," said the latter quietly.

"I thought so much. Then you must be somewhat akin unto Sir Richard Grenville of Stow?"

"Somewhat--not over near," answered Arthur, modestly.

"Forty-seventh cousin," suggested Jack, not over civilly.

"And to Courtenay of Powderham,--what?"

"Courtenay!" broke in Jack. "What! he that, but for the attainder, should be Earl of Devon?"