pages under the title "A Learned
Discourse of Ecclesiastical Government," making the inconsistent claim of
desiring a return to the Primitive and Scriptural model, and at the same
time of advocating an original scheme, "one not yet handled." It was
practically a demand for the Presbyterian system of pastorate and
government. To this Dr. Bridges replies with a tremendous tome of over
fourteen hundred pages, discharged after three years of laborious toil;
and dealing, as the custom then was, line by line, with the Puritan
attack. To this in the following year an anonymous Puritan, under the
name of Martin Marprelate, retorts with a brilliant and sparkling riposte
addressed to "The right puissant and terrible priests, my clergy-masters
of the Convocation-house," in which he mocks bitterly at the prelates,
accusing them of Sabbath-breaking, time-serving, and popery,--calling one
"dumb and duncetical," another "the veriest coxcomb that ever wore velvet
cap," and summing them up generally as "wainscot-faced bishops," "proud,
popish, presumptuous, profane paltry, pestilent, and pernicious
prelates."

The Archbishop had indeed a difficult team to drive; especially as his
coadjutors were not wholly proof against Martin's jibes. In '84 his
brother of York had been mixed up in a shocking scandal; in '85 the
Bishop of Lichfield was accused of simony; Bishop Aylmer was continually
under suspicion of avarice, dishonesty, vanity and swearing; and the
Bench as a whole was universally reprobated as covetous, stingy and weak.

* * * *

In civil matters, England's relation with Spain was her most important
concern. Bitter feeling had been growing steadily between the two
countries ever since Drake's piracies in the Spanish dominions in
America; and a gradually increasing fleet at Cadiz was the outward sign
of it. Now the bitterness was deepened by the arrest of English ships in
the Spanish ports in the early summer of '85, and the swift reprisals of
Drake in the autumn; who intimidated and robbed important towns on the
coast, such as Vigo, where his men behaved with revolting irreverence in
the churches, and Santiago; and then proceeded to visit and spoil S.
Domingo and Carthagena in the Indies.

Again in '87 Drake obtained the leave of the Queen to harass Spain once
more, and after robbing and burning all the vessels in Cadiz harbour, he
stormed the forts at Faro, destroyed Armada stores