guers had called in to their assistance, readily entered into a
new treaty with Henry, by virtue of which she sent a fresh supply of
three thousand men to assist him in the recovery of this province. Her
expenses however were to be repaid by the king after the expulsion of
the enemy.

Sir John Norris, the appointed leader of this force, ranked among the
most eminent of Elizabeth's captains; and was also possessed of some
hereditary claims to her regard, which she did not fail to acknowledge
as far as the jealousy of her favorites would give her leave. One of sir
John's grandfathers was that Norris who suffered in the cause of Anne
Boleyn; the other was lord Williams of Tame, to whom she had herself
been indebted for so much respectful attention in the days of her
greatest adversity. She had called up his father to the house of peers,
as lord Norris of Ricot; and his mother she constantly addressed by a
singular term of endearment, "My own Crow." This pair had six sons, of
whom sir John was the eldest;--all, it is said, brave men, addicted to
arms, and much respected by her majesty. But an unfortunate quarrel with
the four sons of sir Francis Knolles, their Oxfordshire neighbour,
arising out of a tournament in which the two brotherhoods were opposed
to each other, procured to the Norrises the lasting enmity of this
family, which, strong both by its relationship to the queen and its
close alliance with Leicester, was able to impede their advancement to
stations equal to their merits.

Sir John Norris learned the rudiments of military science under the
celebrated admiral Coligni, to whom in his early youth he acted as a
page; and he enlarged his experience as captain of the English
volunteers who in 1578 generously carried the assistance of their swords
to the oppressed Netherlanders when they had rushed to arms in the
sacred cause of liberty and conscience. This gallant band particularly
signalized its valor in the repulse of an assault made by don John of
Austria upon the Dutch camp; a hot action in which Norris had three
horses shot under him. In 1588 he was a distinguished member of the
council of war. The expedition to Portugal in which he commanded has
been already related, and its ill-success was certainly imputable to no
want of courage or conduct on his part. In the war of Bretagne he gained
high praise by a skilful retreat, in which he drew off his small band of
English safe and entire amid a host of foes. We sh