s friends. While cruising in the Channel he
caught sight of a Spaniard on the way from Antwerp to Cadiz with forty
prisoners on board, consigned, it might be supposed, to the Inquisition.
They were, of course, Inquisition prisoners; for other offenders would
have been dealt with on the spot. Cobham chased her down into the Bay of
Biscay, took her, scuttled her, and rescued the captives. But that was
not enough. The captain and crew he sewed up in their own mainsail and
flung them overboard. They were washed ashore dead, wrapped in their
extraordinary winding-sheet. Cobham was called to account for this
exploit, but he does not seem to have been actually punished. In a very
short time he was out and away again at the old work. There were plenty
with him. After the business at Gibraltar, Philip's subjects were not
safe in English harbours. Jacques le Clerc, a noted privateer, called
Pie de Palo from his wooden leg, chased a Spaniard into Falmouth, and
was allowed to take her under the guns of Pendennis. The Governor of the
castle said that he could not interfere, because Le Clerc had a
commission from the Prince of Conde. It was proved that in the summer of
1563 there were 400 English and Huguenot rovers in and about the
Channel, and that they had taken 700 prizes between them. The Queen's
own ships followed suit. Captain Cotton in the _Phoenix_ captured an
Antwerp merchantman in Flushing. The harbour-master protested. Cotton
laughed, and sailed away with his prize. The Regent Margaret wrote in
indignation to Elizabeth. Such insolence, she said, was not to be
endured. She would have Captain Cotton chastised as an example to all
others. Elizabeth measured the situation more correctly than the Regent;
she preferred to show Philip that she was not afraid of him. She
preferred to let her subjects discover for themselves that the terrible
Spaniard before whom the world trembled was but a colossus stuffed with
clouts. Until Philip consented to tie the hands of the Holy Office she
did not mean to prevent them from taking the law into their own hands.

Now and then, if occasion required, Elizabeth herself would do a little
privateering on her own account. In the next story that I have to tell
she appears as a principal, and her great minister, Cecil, as an
accomplice. The Duke of Alva had succeeded Margaret as Regent of the
Netherlands, and was drowning heresy in its own blood. The Prince of
Orange was making a noble fight; but al