States to send so considerable a portion of their land
and naval forces upon a distant adventure. It was also a serious blow to
them to be deprived for the whole season of that valiant and experienced
commander, Sir Francis Vere, the most valuable lieutenant, save Lewis
William, that Maurice had at his disposition. Yet Vere was to take
command of this contingent thus sent to the coast of Spain, at the very
moment when the republican army ought to issue from their winter quarters
and begin active operations in the field. The consequence of this
diminution of their strength and drain upon their resources was that the
States were unable to put an army in the field during the current year,
or make any attempt at a campaign.

The queen wrote a warm letter of thanks to Admiral Warmond for the
promptness and efficiency with which he had brought his fleet to the
place of rendezvous, and now all was bustle and preparation in the
English ports for the exciting expedition resolved upon. Never during
Philip's life-time, nor for several years before his birth, had a hostile
foot trod the soil of Spain, except during the brief landing at Corunna
in 1590, and, although the king's beard had been well singed ten years
previously by Sir Francis Drake, and although the coast of Portugal had
still more recently been invaded by Essex and Vere, yet the present
adventure was on a larger scale, and held out brighter prospects of
success than any preceding expedition had done. In an age when the line
between the land and sea service, between regular campaigners and
volunteers, between public and private warfare, between chivalrous
knights-errant and buccaneers, was not very distinctly drawn, there could
be nothing more exciting to adventurous spirits, more tempting to the
imagination of those who hated the Pope and Philip, who loved fighting,
prize-money, and the queen, than a foray into Spain.

It was time to return the visit of the Armada. Some of the sea-kings were
gone. Those magnificent freebooters, Drake and Hawkins, had just died in
the West Indies, and doughty Sir Roger Williams had left the world in
which he had bustled so effectively, bequeathing to posterity a classic
memorial of near a half century of hard fighting, written, one might
almost imagine, in his demi-pique saddle. But that most genial, valiant,
impracticable, reckless, fascinating hero of romance, the Earl of
Essex--still a youth although a veteran in service--was in the