surpass their minds with desire to see
him, that very few or none remained with the preacher, all hastening to
see the evidence of God's love and blessing towards our Gracious Queen
and country, by the fruit of our Captain's labour and success. _Soli Deo
Gloria._'

CHAPTER VII

DRAKE'S 'ENCOMPASSMENT OF ALL THE WORLDE'

When Drake left for Nombre de Dios in the spring of 1572, Spain and
England were both ready to fly at each other's throats. When he
Came back in the summer of 1573, they were all for making
friends--hypocritically so, but friends. Drake's plunder stank in the
nostrils of the haughty Dons. It was a very inconvenient factor in the
diplomatic problem for Elizabeth. Therefore Drake disappeared and his
plunder too. He went to Ireland on service in the navy. His plunder was
divided up in secrecy among all the high and low contracting parties.

In 1574 the Anglo-Spanish scene had changed again. The Spaniards had
been so harassed by the English sea-dogs between the Netherlands and
Spain that Philip listened to his great admiral, Menendez, who,
despairing of direct attack on England, proposed to seize the Scilly
Isles and from that naval base clear out a way through all the pirates
of the English Channel. War seemed certain. But a terrible epidemic
broke out in the Spanish fleet. Menendez died. And Philip changed his
policy again.

This same year John Oxenham, Drake's old second-in-command, sailed over
to his death. The Spaniards caught him on the Isthmus of Darien and
hanged him as a pirate at Lima in Peru.

In the autumn of 1575 Drake returned to England with a new friend,
Thomas Doughty, a soldier-scholar of the Renaissance, clever and good
company, but one of those 'Italianate' Englishmen who gave rise to the
Italian proverb: _Inglese italianato e diavolo incarnato--_'an
Italianized Englishman is the very Devil.' Doughty was patronized by the
Earl of Essex, who had great influence at court.

The next year, 1576, is noted for the 'Spanish Fury.' Philip's sea power
was so hampered by the Dutch and English privateers, and he was so
impotent against the English navy, that he could get no ready money,
either by loan or from America, to pay his troops in Antwerp. These men,
reinforced by others, therefore mutinied and sacked the whole of
Antwerp, killing all who opposed them and practically ruining the city
from which Charles V used to draw such splendid subsidies. The result
was a strengthening o