from resenting the loss of the Armada on its commander, that he
continued him in his governorship of Cadiz, where Essex found him seven
years later, and where he ran from Essex as he had run from Drake.

The Spaniards made no attempt to conceal the greatness of their defeat.
Unwilling to allow that the Upper Powers had been against them, they set
it frankly down to the superior fighting powers of the English.

The English themselves, the Prince of Parma said, were modest in their
victory. They thought little of their own gallantry. To them the defeat
and destruction of the Spanish fleet was a declaration of the Almighty
in the cause of their country and the Protestant faith. Both sides had
appealed to Heaven, and Heaven had spoken.

It was the turn of the tide. The wave of the reconquest of the
Netherlands ebbed from that moment. Parma took no more towns from the
Hollanders. The Catholic peers and gentlemen of England, who had held
aloof from the Established Church, waiting _ad illud tempus_ for a
religious revolution, accepted the verdict of Providence. They
discovered that in Anglicanism they could keep the faith of their
fathers, yet remain in communion with their Protestant fellow-countrymen,
use the same liturgy, and pray in the same temples. For the first time
since Elizabeth's father broke the bonds of Rome the English became a
united nation, joined in loyal enthusiasm for the Queen, and were
satisfied that thenceforward no Italian priest should tithe or toll
in her dominions.

But all that, and all that went with it, the passing from Spain to
England of the sceptre of the seas, must be left to other lectures, or
other lecturers who have more years before them than I. My own theme has
been the poor Protestant adventurers who fought through that perilous
week in the English Channel and saved their country and their country's
liberty.

THE END

_Richard Clay & Sons, Limited, London & Bungay._

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James Anthony Froude

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