s no mincing matters when an
opportunity for reprisals occurred. The Spaniards had carried
barbarism to such a pitch in seizing our ships and condemning their
crews to the galleys, that Queen Elizabeth was never averse to meeting
murder and plunder by more than the equivalent in retaliation, except
when she imagined that Philip was showing signs of overpowering
strength; she then became timid and vacillating. She was never
mentally disturbed by the moral side of the great deeds that brought
her vast stores of plunder. Moreover, she could always find an
accommodating bishop to put her qualms (if she ever had any, except
those of consequence to herself) at rest on points of conscience. One
noted personage, who held high ecclesiastical office, told her that it
was a virtue to seize treasure when she knew it would otherwise be
used for the purpose of murdering her Protestant subjects. Sir Arthur
Champernowne, a noted vice-admiral of Elizabeth's reign, in writing to
Cecil of the vessel that had put into Plymouth through stress of
weather with the needy Philip's half-million of ducats on board,
borrowed, it is said, from a Genoa firm of financiers, said it should
be claimed as fair booty. Sir Arthur's view was that anything taken
from so perfidious a nation was both necessary and profitable to the
Commonwealth. No doubt a great deal of pious discussion would centre
round the Vice-Admiral's easy moral but very logical opinions. The
main thing in his mind, and in that of everybody else who was free
from poisoned cant, was that the most shocking crimes were being
openly advocated by Philip, King of Spain, against all European
Protestants, rich or poor, who came within the clutches of the savages
that administered the cruelties of the Inquisition. The canting crowd
shrieked against the monstrous impiety of such notions, but their
efforts to prove purity of motive were unavailing.

After considered thought by a committee of men of high rectitude, it
was decided to act without fear or favour in a strictly impartial
manner, so Philip's half-million of bullion was divided between the
Prince of Orange and the rigid moralist, Elizabeth, who is credited
with having spent her share on the Navy, a very admirable way of
disposing of it.

This act was the cause of a deluge of reprisals on the part of Spain.
But, from all accounts, Elizabeth's corsairs had always the best of it
in matters of material importance. The Spanish are naturally a